Be Yourself

I get a little bit lost sometimes. I forget how to be me.

I get pulled in so many different directions and allow outside influences to twist things to the point where I forget myself.

I can be a bit of a people pleaser. It’s not a good thing. I mean, to some extent it is useful in keeping the peace when fighting against things is really unnecessary, but it is really born out of fear and self-preservation.

Everyone has ideas about how they would like the people around them to behave, how they want their loved ones to treat them, how they want their partner to look on a date or how they want their kids to dress for the family photo. Everyone has expectations and plans for how they want situations to play out, or how they want a planned event to unfold. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem comes when you try to force those ideas onto other people.

We were leaving the house to go for dinner with my family. It was just a casual, pub dinner. Nothing fancy. No dress code required. My husband was in the process of putting on a very bright, summer shirt, and my immediate reaction was to grimace and say that I would rather he didn’t wear something so bright. He, like the loving man he is, immediately started to get changed. I went cold.

When I was growing up, I was a tom-boy. I hated skirts, hated dresses, wanted to be permanently running round in jogging bottoms and jeans and couldn’t care less if I was half covered in mud. Oh, and the cloths had to be dark colours, preferably black. Then I started to get comments from everyone. My mum wanted me to look nicer, wear something pretty, wear a bit more colour. My friends would tease me for my choice of tops or trousers. As I got older, people would tell me that I would never attract anyone if I looked like a boy, would never get dates if I looked scruffy. I started to be told that tight closed showed my podgy belly but baggy clothes made me look frumpy. Long hair was beautiful and short hair was ugly.

By the time I was dating my ex, I had been programmed into thinking that I was fortunate to find someone who cared about me that much, and therefore had to do everything I could to keep the relationship going. He didn’t like when women had short hair, so I always kept it long. He said short skirts were for sluts, so I made sure not to wear them. He said fake buttons on clothes looked trashy, so my favourite top was thrown away. Eventually I found I was running everything passed him first, just to make sure he wouldn’t go off me.

The day I decided it was over between me and my ex, I tied my hair into a ponytail and cut it off.

It has taken years for me to even vaguely begin to feel like me. It is immensely difficult to shake off the habits of placating someone by altering myself to suit their ideals. It is also terrifying. I still have it imbedded in my mind that if I dress wrong, act wrong, say the wrong thing, laugh at the wrong thing and am not exactly how someone expects me to be, then that person will reject me. I fear people not liking me for who I am, so much so that I often find myself warping and twisting who I am to try and fit what I think they want.

I have come a long way in regaining myself. I have my short hair, my dark clothes, my tattoos, my piercings. I have my witchy-gothy aesthetic that I love. I am learning that there are better ways to deal with other people’s opinions of me. I still struggle when someone is obviously disappointed or disapproving of my choices, but I am learning that with every one person who disagrees with my choice, there is another person that celebrates it. It doesn’t make breaking that habit any easier.

Why had I told him to change? It wasn’t that the shirt was inappropriate for the venue, or the company. It wasn’t even that I didn’t like the shirt, not my taste, but a perfectly good shirt. Admittedly more of a holiday shirt, but it is still technically summer, so I can’t fault him there. Also, it wouldn’t matter if it was the dead of winter and he chose to wear it, only that he would likely be cold. No, the issue was that it was bright and colourful and, in my mind, it would make him stand out. Standing out and being different are things that get you noticed, not necessarily in a good way. Standing our and being different, in my mind, invites people’s opinions and gives them an in to say that they dislike something that you like. I cringed at the idea and I reacted by trying to get him to change. But you shouldn’t change who you are in order to fit in. You shouldn’t change who you are for fear or being disliked. (Unless you are in a truly unsafe environment).

I know this probably all seems ridiculous. This is such a stupid anecdote. My husband couldn’t care less what he was wearing. But I had made him change. I had caused him to alter himself to fit my ideals in that situation.

I said sorry to him. I asked him to wear the shirt. He said it didn’t matter, but it did in the larger picture.

Don’t let my bad mood dim your whimsy.

He wore the shirt, and looked fabulous in it.

JT