(Book shown is Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today by Rachel Vorona Cote)
I am not for everyone.
I can say this now and appreciate what it means. I was not always able to see it for the truth, and freedom that it really entails.
There’s a societal message that gets pushed into most of us in this country (U.S.A.)
And that message is, “It’s good for people to like you. It’s good to be popular. And if you’re not, that is a BAD thing.”
Cue people pleasing, changing yourself to suit others, never succeeding in pleasing everyone and losing yourself completely. End scene.
It’s a sneaky, tiny, bullshit message, that infiltrates the core. And even when intellectually we *know* that it isn’t true, it still puts its tiny sharp needle claws into everything we do and experience and makes it toxic.
Like that black goo from Fern Gully.
All the messages of being “too much”, “too loud”, “too strong”, “too smart-- (although that last one tends to come out as “you think you’re SOOOOOOO smart!”).
Too much *what* exactly?
One of the many blessings of midlife for me was TRULY getting the message that not everyone is going to like me. And that’s not only okay, it’s a GOOD thing.
As someone (anonymous) said, “Not everyone is going to like you. YOU don’t even like everyone!”
True words, anonymous person. True Freaking Words.
On this, the month where I celebrate my 54 rotations of the earth and begin my 55th …
I can celebrate that I have finally… FINALLY … truly come to peace with who I am.
The too much, the not enough… those are meaningless.
I am me.
I am enough.
P.S. So are you.