Please?

The next few posts (except Silent Saturday, of course) will be about those aspects of myself that I dislike and that I've had a hard time correcting. I tend to be such a negative, pessimistic person and maybe doing these few posts about the parts of me I dislike, I can then turn around and write about the parts of me I do like. This is therapy, people.

I have always been a pleaser. I think it stems from half of my family hating me. OK, maybe hate is a strong word. How about extreme dislike?

When you guys were kids, was there ever a time in your lives that you remember an adult not liking you, of being constantly displeased with you, just because of your presence? And if that ever happened to you, do you remember the utter confusion and frustration, the heartbreak of trying so desperately to figure out why those people, those adults, people you were supposed to look up to and admire and want to be when you grew up, hated you? You, a little kid. When it happened to me, I could never wrap my head around it.

I posted about my Aunt Joy a few months ago. You know, the one who couldn't have children of her own and when she found out her only sister was having me, she made it her goal in life to treat me like crap. Yeah, that one. Because of her jealousy of me and my mother, the rest of the family rallied around her hurt and pain and my mother and I fell along the wayside. I think this is where my need to constantly please comes from.

I can remember trying to be funny, creative, smart, helpful, or quiet - anything and everything that I could do to please the adult members of my mom's family, to make them less frustrated with me and more understanding. But nothing worked and I was so confused. This has now, I believe, carried over into my adult life.

I am constantly on the look-out for how to please people. Don't be too argumentative, then they won't like you. That person commented that I look good in coral! Going out to dinner with that person so I need to wear coral again. My alumnae group asked me to head a committee. I don't have time, but I don't want to say no - that may make someone angry. So, I should say yes. I also tend to keep what I truly think and feel close to my chest. I'm afraid that if I tell one friend that I disagree with her political leanings or if I tell another friend that that dress truly doesn't look good on her, that I'm going to lose those people, that I need to keep them happy in order to keep the balance. And oddly enough, it upsets me greatly when I find out someone doesn't like me. Even if that someone is a person I don't like, it will drive me to eat mounds of chocolate. That, I don't get.

I know, it's my problem. I get that. I'm owning that. And I'm finding that after 30-odd years of being a pleaser, it's exhausting trying to figure out what makes those around me happy and keeping them happy through my actions when, in fact, what I do probably goes unnoticed and said pleasing actions were pointless to begin with because those around me are fine with my presence, fine with my friendship, and find minimal fault with me.

Teaching an old dog new tricks is difficult and teaching an approaching-middle-age-SAHM to quit trying to please everybody all the time is even harder. I'm working on saying No! and I disagree! more but I still feel massive amounts of guilt whenever I do say no rather than yes. And I don't blame my family for that. I blame me for trying to make them happy when, in fact, they were never going to be happy with my presence. Finding a quiet corner and reading a book, staying out of their way, would have made much more sense.

Right?