Dani's Writing Journey

For the longest time, I struggled to tell people no, and when I did, I always had to have a reason, or else I would feel incredibly guilty. Yes, I was a full-on people pleaser, and it took a toll on me. After years of bullying (I lay partial blame on the first-grade teacher who showed my classmates it was ok to, even though the consistent and sometimes daily bullying from my classmates started a few years later), I was tired of being the outcast. I didn’t want to be popular, that meant being friends with the people who thought it was cool to be jerks, but I wanted a place to fit in while also staying invisible to the “popular” crowd.

By high school, I finally found my friends, but I found that silencing myself and my own needs kept me hidden from the bullies (mostly). There were still instances of bullying sporadically throughout high school (the worst of it was from the drama kids I thought were my friends), but it wasn’t nearly as bad as what it once was. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t completely become someone else, but I only brought out my true self when I wasn’t in school, and I struggled to set boundaries for myself. When I did try to set these boundaries, probably around my junior year of high school (year 11 for anyone outside of the US), I received such push back that I was bullied more (I also wasn’t the best at setting a boundary so I might not have handled it as well as I could have, so I cannot put all the blame on these friends). I learned really quickly then that I did NOT want to deal with this again if I was only going to be misunderstood.

It took another three years, the sudden death of my father, and an emotionally abusive boyfriend for me to finally respect myself enough to set boundaries with people. After being with a partner who constantly criticized my weight and being considered fat (even when I was 20 pounds underweight), being kept from my friends because they were “bad influences” (they were just bi or pansexual, like myself), and constantly making me feel guilty for wanting to do something I liked sometimes, I finally gave up on being a people pleaser. Getting rid of these tendencies was hard work and I lost a few friends that I had made (after the toxic boyfriend was out of my life) but I started to learn more about myself and what I wanted out of life. Although my life isn’t exactly where I want it to be, I am happy with how my life is turning out and how much I have learned about myself and how I fit into this world (and want to continue to fit it and change it).