Being disliked isn’t something I take lightly. Since I was a child, I was accustomed to this notion that in my life, it was required of me to become a good girl.
A good girl is nice. A good girl apologizes profusely. A good girl puts others before herself. A good girl only has sex when she is in love. A good girl is liked. A good girl is loved. However, what I realize now is that this belief system that I was handed as a child from both my parents and society hadn’t once guaranteed that all of this would in turn lead to my own internal peace or contentment.
But I carried on and followed along this path blindly. As a young child, I was a people-pleaser, as most us women find ourselves to be. I found that the best way to do that was to be at service to the people that I cared for. My duty in life was to bring others joy, and in turn, I would be loved by them. It wasn’t too long before I began to define myself by my role in another’s life. I was a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a girlfriend. And that seemed to be enough. It should have been enough. They told me that that would be enough.
It wasn’t.
I entered a rebellious stage in my life as a young adolescent. My teenage-self was reckless. She was depressed, she was angry, she was insecure, she was needy, she was addicted, and she was passionate. She also broke the rules and did so frequently.
At the time I didn’t know what I know now, which is that a lot of the disruption within myself came from this psychological state of cognitive dissonance, which is when your beliefs about yourself don’t match your behaviours. I believed I was a good girl but I wasn’t acting like one. At least, I wasn’t acting like the one they told me to be.
The conclusion I came to was that it was my emotions that were the problem. That they were hindering my chances of being the person everyone told me I should become. That I was “too much” and needed to quiet down. So I shut them off, and I shut them off for a really long time. I call that version of myself “pre-therapy Misha”.
After four years of therapy, I came out a different person. I unlearned a lot of patterns in my thoughts and really became a better version of myself.
But we’re never done, are we? In this school of life, we’re always becoming.
After taking time and space away from my current relationship, I understand now that this part of me hasn’t been healed yet. That yet again, I allowed for myself to become smaller and smaller in order to alleviate another’s discomfort. That I pushed my emotions down because it made someone uncomfortable to see them. I compartmentalized those same emotions, scheduling them to be felt at a time when I was alone so that no one would be bothered by my highly sensitive nature. If who I am is a problem, then I will push that aside because that is what a good girl should do. So that is exactly what I did.
Until I stopped.
There came this moment that it all clicked and I realized that I loved myself more than I loved this identity I was told I needed to become. I realized that it cannot be my job anymore to be liked. That instead, I’d rather be heard and understood by people who accept me for the person that I actually am. And it turns out, after having to spend this time in isolation with myself – I actually like me. This woman is a hell of a lot more interesting than the person she was trying so hard to become and the person others wanted her to be.
I have to admit, it’s still very uncomfortable for me to know that I’m the villain in some people’s stories. That maybe throughout their lifetime, they will never see me as good. And I have to accept that that’s okay.
I suppose I’ve finally started to accept that not everyone has to like me, but I do.
It’s funny, Misha — one of my 12 drafts currently sitting on my computer is also about being the villain in other people’s lives, but it’s more about my old relationship and an old friendship that didn’t end well. I haven’t published it out of privacy (it would be very obvious who I was talking about since I only have one ex), but it’s still interesting to see your points about the matter!
You make a lot of good points about the “good girl.” I definitely fall more into the “good girl” trope than the bad girl, but there are definitely things about myself that are seen as problematic, unpleasant, and probably just down-right annoying to be honest. I can be mean sometimes, especially when I’m hurt. I’m hyper-sensitive. I’m passionate and strong-willed and well-spoken, a quality men tend to love when I agree with them but hate when I disagree with them. I’m definitely “too much” to a lot of people and “too little” to others.
But we all have our flaws, like you do. It makes us interesting. We can learn a lot from each other this way.
When I finally ended my last relationship after months and years of putting someone else’s comfort and dreams before mine, when I ended one of the most toxic friendships I ever had because I couldn’t be a punching bag anymore, I didn’t care if I was the villain anymore. I, too, had to just accept that it would have been to be okay.
Thanks for being brave enough to share this. We’re all villains here.
It’s so interesting that we all have a type of story like this, whether it’s fear of being “too much” or “overly passionate”, “too opinionated”, etc. all of which I have also been told by many different people, ha! At one point, as you mentioned, we do have to recognize that these words are never used to define men, but are somehow bits and pieces of vocabulary made to keep women in “our place”.
It angers me when I find myself falling into these same traps of misogyny and believing people when they tell me this. Like you, I’ve also had to end very toxic friendships and relationships, mostly because I learned (the hard way) that we have to be extremely selective about the people we choose to have and keep in our lives. At the end of the day it’s because those same people have the greatest amount of influence on us, whether we like to admit it or not. It’s science, really.
I love that when it came time where you identified what the real problem was, you didn’t care about the labels that were thrown at you any longer. I completely resonate with that because you understood at that point, who you are and what you needed, and for the first time in a really long time, you decided that that was a priority. Honestly, living in that feeling makes us unstoppable.
Thank you for being brave enough to live through your story and come out the other side with such a positive outlook.
Used to think this way too – I should be the good girl. It’s very hard to live by what other people think I should be. While I know that not everyone is meant to like me, sometimes I still do find myself trying to be a version some other person will like. But what matters is I love me for who I am and when I remind myself of that, I stop pleasing everyone else. You’re right, in this school of life, we’re always becoming.
Awe Liz, it’s disappointing when these negative beliefs resonate with so many of us. I think most women are raised with the idea that we are to adhere to unrealistic standards of being “good.” It’s definitely something we all have to unpack as we grow. Being a people-pleaser myself, there’s so much guilt attached to not fitting inside the box of what others would like you to be. I’m glad you’re on your journey of self-love and putting yourself first!