When you finally get sick of trying to make everyone happy

I wrote a blog post this weekend and a day later I deleted it because I realized it was another example of me trying to appease other people who I may or may not have offended and darn it to heck, people, I’m tired of kissing the feet of every Tom, Dick or Harry who is offended by the world.

I spent six years of my life cowtailing to a group of people in my life, desperate to change who I was so they would like me and I would fit in with them, only to be constantly reminded I didn’t. I’m in my fourth decade of life and I just don’t have time for the game called Popularity where no one wins.

I remember changing posts on Facebook or deleting them after private messages were launched at me about my thoughts on faith or my son’s so-called private school that turned out to be some weird cult where you died if you left it. Trust me, I prefer being dead to those people than when I had to cage who I was to be sure I didn’t offend them.

Was it all their fault? No, but yes. No, because it was up to me to ignore those who are chronically offended but yes because they were chronically offended.

I used to hide feelings, what movies I watched, music I listened to, books I read or beliefs I held just to be sure I didn’t offend them. I made sure I didn’t comment, even on my private page on Facebook, because the cult apparently had people stalking me and I would find warning, scolding emails or Facebook messages to me and once I was even called to remind me what I was and was not allowed to say online. That’s no way to live but it wasn’t until they started doing it to my son that I had finally had enough.

So when I wrote that blog post to try to appease someone I knew I had pissed off and who, as usual, chose not to speak to me about it, but act out in other ways, I realized I had fallen back into the same butt-kissing, floor groveling, sad, pathetic person from my past. The one who begged people to like her. The one who was willing to change who God made her to be so others would accept her. The one who was sick and tired of the cold shoulders, the pursed lips and the sideways glances through narrow-slit eyelids.

People, please. Don’t keep bowing to people who don’t even care enough about you to ask how you are or who, most likely, don’t even care the way you think they do. Don’t be like me and project your feelings onto them. Don’t think they are sitting there hating you, or loving you, when they may not be. Just be you and forget what everyone else thinks – to a point. I don’t mean intentionally offend people or get up in their face but just write what you want, if you feel it needs to be said, draw what you want, listen to what you want and watch what you want. I don’t really want you to listen to trashy music or watch a bunch of violent sex-filled movies so don’t go too far here but you know what I mean, right?

Let’s just stop trying to make everyone like us and accept not everyone is going to and if they don’t like you for who you are then they don’t need to be in your life anyhow – no matter how good of a friend they used to be.