I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darnit, not everyone likes me.

Hello Funseekers! Welcome to today's edition: approval-seeking people-pleasers and the people who still don't like them.

I feel like there's some valuable lessons I missed as a child. One was that there's a thing called "panic attacks" and no, I'm not in fact dying. Also, piss after sex. It's just smart. Another is that no matter what I do for the rest of my life, not everyone in the world is going to like me, and that's OKAY. This is a lesson I just recently learned, and let me tell you, approval-seeking is a hard habit to break, my friends. I have spent my whole life trying not to piss a single person off for fear that they may not like me, and may I tell you: it's been exhausting! On the other hand, it's become akin to breathing for me, so I've been having to really change my ways to become a bit happier and more accepting of myself.

When I was in Grade 7, at the end of my years in elementary school, I received the Citizenship Award: for being suuuuch a gooooood girl. After that, I was addicted. I finally found something I could do well! I studied my ass off but there would still be students who put less effort in who achieved better grades. I practiced dance for hours a day but very rarely won first place - it would go to the naturally perfect dancer who rarely practiced. As for niceness, though, I was a pro. I was raised by parents who were reared in strict religous families, one of whom had been instilled with a thick dose of good old Irish Catholic guilt. I am female, which meant that I was raised understanding that good girls are generally obedient, and to boot my parents had a relationship where my father had the final say in all things parenting related.

I transfered this niceness in particular to my friends, family and boyfriends. I soon began to learn that doormats such as myself tend to attract people who like to take advantage of doormats. I was ripe for the picking and found myself in some poor relationships - both with friends and lovers. Boyfriends would tire of me and cheat, and friends would get mad at me if I wasn't available enough for them.

Luckily, I now have some strong-minded females in my life who have encouraged me to take care of myself and others, but not to sacrifice my own happiness or comfort if it wouldn't be acknowledged or appreciated. Slowly but surely, I am reinventing myself (with the odd slip and emergency phone call to a friend so I could be convinced that I wasn't the worst person in the world.)

As I begin to reinvent myself, I have learned some astonishing lessons along the way. Well, astonishing to me. One is that sometimes when you stand up for yourself, you get called some pretty mean names by some pretty self-loathing, abusive people. Only in the past few years have I been called a Bitch, and a Cunt. The latter was because I was breaking up with an abusive man who didn't like that I asked him to leave after 45 minutes of him telling me what a piece of useless shit I was. I get called a Bitch if I flip the bird to a group of men who catcall me on the street. I know - where do I get off?

Today, I was told by a tenant in my building (who shall of course, remain nameless) that I filed two noise complaints on him out of spite. Spite, you ask? Yeah, so did I. See, when I ended my fling with him and began dating someone else (please note that I did such in a particular order of informing him THEN moving on a month later) he began harassing me with texts and telling me what a terrible person I was and how I treated him like shit. He then proceded to pretend I didn't exist. As such, when I made noise complaints against him, I was obviously being spiteful. It couldn't have had anything to do with him making a lot of noise and then slamming his door in my face when I tried to confront him. But I digress.

Why am I saying all of this? Well, I told you I had learned astonishing lessons while making more of an effort to be genuine and less of an effort to be "nice". The best leasson I learned from this is that the more I respect myself and stand up for the way I feel I should be treated, the less it hurts me when someone I don't respect accuses me of being a bad person. In turn, the less I respected myself when I was younger, the more I got hurt by the people who didn't deserve my time or energy. The incident with my neighbour today made me start thinking about all of this as I realized with reckless abandon that I didn't give a shit! He can go fuck himself and I don't care! I realized how far I have come after all these years.

Now if only they taught that in Grade Five Girl's Sex Ed Class.

Signing off after another daily insight,

Cunt.