Taking a Stand for Myself
Finally Doing What’s Best for Me

Illustration by Felicia Lankford and Reuben Buchanan | VOX Staff

By Anoymous
Special to VOX

Have you ever felt like no matter what you do, you could never satisfy anyone around you? I certainly have, my whole life actually. Whether it was my parents, my friends or even my boyfriend, I could never please anyone. They always expected something better, and when I gave them what they wanted, it still seemed like it wasn’t enough. I used to be able to push what I wanted aside to make everyone else happy. It was a sad way to cope with my own inadequacies, but it worked for me – until late last year, when everything spun out of control all at once. When things hit rock bottom, I finally decided it was high time I started making decisions for my own benefit and not everyone else’s.

Addicted to People-Pleasing
I’ve been a chronic people-pleaser for as long as I can remember. I could never bear the feeling of someone being unhappy with me or thinking of me as unreliable. I felt terrible when someone expressed disappointment in me. It was as if my stomach was tied up in knots, like I’m nervous or anxious.

The earliest memory of this problem that I can conjure is my mom telling me at 9 years old that I was getting too fat. I remember going shopping for school that summer and coming close to tears as my mother’s expression became more and more disgusted with every pair of jeans that I could not fasten. Feeling very low, I made a vow to exercise every day and cut out sugary foods. This started a weight battle that lasted nearly half my life. But this was not a battle for my own health; it was a battle to obtain adoring looks from my mother, signs that she was happy with me.

My peers had the same effect. I’m relatively quiet and reserved; I’m not the type of girl to speak endlessly around just anybody. My true personality only ever comes out around those that I am close with. Sometimes my personality comes off as being snobby. I can’t count the times my friends relayed to me that so-and-so didn’t like me because I acted as if no one was good enough to speak to, though that was not the case at all.

I often found myself trying to fix the situation by smiling more and trying to speak to my classmates more but censoring my words so that they wouldn’t sound condescending in any way. These actions continued through the years and became increasingly compulsive. If anybody had any issues with me, I would worry about them until I felt like the issues were resolved, but they never were. I wish I understood then as well as I do now that people are always going to want more and more from you, but you can’t satisfy everyone.

Desperate for Hope
My flawed way of thinking was tested late last year when my grandfather died. He had been sick for a while, and a part of me knew that he wouldn’t make it. During that time, I was writing my first article for VOX. I’d told him about my acceptance onto the staff, because we both shared a love for writing and journalism. He couldn’t wait to finally see me published. I wanted to hurry up and finish my article so that he could see my work in print. Unfortunately, I didn’t meet my own deadline, and he died without seeing my story. I felt like I had cheated my grandpa out of a wonderful opportunity. I was convinced that when he died, he thought of me as a failure.

This disaster led to a series of other disasters, mainly between my boyfriend and me. Most of our issues centered on what I would and would not do sexually. I tried my hardest to keep him happy, often at my own expense. Each time I did something for him that I wasn’t totally fine with, I felt empty and ashamed inside. Thankfully I never took it too far, but the damage was still done. On top of feeling utterly used, I felt worthless too. I knew it wasn’t OK to compromise my beliefs for someone, especially a boy, but I couldn’t disappoint the one person who I thought was always on my side. These feelings tormented me for about a month.

I was so stressed out from not being able to please everyone that I stopped eating normally. My ever weight-conscious mother noticed as I steadily dropped from a size 11 to a size seven. I figured my weight loss, though unintentional, would at least make my mother happy so that I could thrive off of this small triumph.

However this was not the case. My mother sat me down one day to ask me if I had an eating disorder. I was crushed. Yet again, I had failed to please her. I was depressed for two whole months. Around October, I hit my ultimate and last low.

Entering the Darkest Abyss
I will never forget the day. I had a project to do, and I was just not in the mood. My boyfriend offered to help me, noticing I had not been myself lately. He came over to my house and tried asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him that I felt like I couldn’t make anyone happy anymore. I was scared I would see disappointment in his eyes, and I just couldn’t handle one more look of dissatisfaction.

So I put on a fake smile and decided that I could try one last time to get someone’s approval. I spent 15 minutes forcing myself into something that, in that state of mind, I was not ready for. Again it didn’t go too far, but it didn’t help the situation. It only added to the stress that ate away at me.

After trying and failing to please everyone else, I had finally disappointed the one person I thought I could never displease – myself. I couldn’t hold back the tears as I sat on the floor feeling like I had slipped into the darkest abyss of my soul. It was even worse that my confused boyfriend was sitting next to me, trying to rub my back and assure me that it would be okay.

When my boyfriend left that afternoon, I did the stupidest thing I could have ever done: I cut myself. In my desperate attempt to relieve the pain inside of me, I opened a pair of rusty scissors and dragged them across my arm. As I pulled the blade across my skin, I sat holding my breath, waiting for the relief I thought would come. It never did, and my cutting days ended before they ever began. All cutting gave me was a pale white scar, a wake up call that I had to change.

Emotional Rehab
After replaying the scissors scene in my mind, I decided that I couldn’t go on like I was. I needed change desperately or else I would become even more depressed, something I didn’t want to be. So I finally thought about what I wanted and focused on it. I decided that whenever people asked something of me that conflicted with what I wanted, I would stand my ground and reject their wishes. Don’t get me wrong. I accommodated those who really needed something from me, but with my boyfriend, for example, I drew a line where I was comfortable.

It was and still is hard. I was working against 16 years of practicing a bad habit. But as I stayed true to my wishes and stuck to my goals, I began to feel so much better about myself. I was literally a new person. I even got positive feedback from my friends and peers about how much happier I looked. To top it all off, for the first time, people seemed to be more focused on me than I was on them.

Changing my perspective was like lifting a tremendous weight off my chest. No one is perfect, so people will always have their complaints about you. But I learned that if I wasn’t happy with myself, I couldn’t make anyone else happy either. You can’t make it your job to try to be everybody’s favorite person.
When people make comments about me that bring back my old feelings, I ask myself what these people really know about me. And upon coming to the conclusion that they know nothing, I am able to happily move on with my life, content.

These thoughts have become my secret weapons to fend off regression. Besides, it is my life. If someone doesn’t like the way I live it, then that’s too bad. In the end, all that really matters is what I think of myself, and I’m learning more about who I am each day.

The author is a junior at a DeKalb County High School.