I’ve always been quite the cheerleader. I don’t mean toe-touches and tumbling, though that also applies to part of my life, I’m talking literally, I have led people with cheer. I’ve been the optimist, the encourager, the one you turn to when you’re thirsty for positivity. I smile when I offer compliments and genuinely think that everything will work out. I’ll help you schlepp whatever burden slows you down and pick up the mess when you inevitably drop the pieces that were never meant to be carried alone. Conflict makes me cringe and my peacemaking, people-pleasing skills are pretty damn perfect. I don’t know how else to be in the world. But I’m tired and honestly, sick of smiling all the time.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to start scowling at strangers, sulking from the time I open my eyes until I cry myself to sleep. I don’t plan on complaining through every conversation or actually changing much about the way I interact with others. But I’m tired, and the mask has to come off.
Living as a self-identified proclaimer of cheer, I spent entirely too much energy appearing happy. Despite how I felt, I showed up smiling at the start of the day. I agreed with the world around me, even when it made me feel small. I followed the unwritten rule of people pleasers everywhere – sacrifice the self to make others more comfortable. Instead of speaking up when I heard something inappropriate or that I disagreed with, I’d politely excuse myself and fume in the bathroom. Resenting the woman in the mirror who can’t summon the words she feels in her bones. Rather than say “no” to another commitment that filled me with dread, I’d say, “see you there” and dream up excuses for why I’d later cancel. (Or worse yet, I’d feel guilty and go anyway.) The incongruity of presenting one way and feeling wholly another is utterly exhausting.
More than exhausting, I am now certain that this inconsistency led me to addiction. How could it not? When you feel obligated to present positivity to world but have an internal sense of dread and falsity, it only tracks that you would seek some relief from the tug-of-war. I could do a deep dive into where this need to please comes from – is it cultural? The idea that being pleasant makes life run more smoothly for others, thus for me. Or is it gendered? That as a woman it is my role to passively agree and let men take the lead.
Or could it be my mother’s voice, warning me not to be “too much” for fear I’ll push people away. For fear I’d never find love. This wasn’t a threat, but an act of caring. She was a survivor. She wanted me to be cherished in the way she never felt she deserved so she taught me to do the things she thought would earn love. But the real lesson we both missed is that we’re born deserving of love. Agreeing with a smile or speaking your mind does not subtract from your worth. We are born whole and wholly deserving.
Now, nearly 40 years after being born to that survivor, 6 years of living without her, and after 3 years of a clear mind, I am comfortable admitting that. Admitting that I am deserving of love and respect for simply being who I am. The mask is coming off. Recovery requires it. I do not have to contort myself to fit into the box someone else built to honor myself and fulfill my own needs. I am no longer living in the imagination of what other people told me was true.
There are days I wake up with a tenderness in my heart and sleepy softness to my skin; what I need is comfort and to protect my quiet. There are mornings that I wake up bold and step into the bright world ready to fight loudly for my right to exist in any way I choose. Sometimes I reach out with compassion and the energy to care for others and occasionally it is all I can do to consider myself.
This unmasking will likely not change the way I interact with you. I still prefer to smile. But what I want to share, for my sake and for yours, is all that’s opening up in me…all the possibility in the world. When we live authentically, in congruence with ourselves, there is no limit to how we present. What we feel, how we think, all that we are becomes all that the world receives. There is no longer the need to make ourselves small. It serves no one.
So, to the people-pleasers of the world, stop the show. Take up space. Smile only when you feel joy. Allow yourself the freedom to feel what you do and don’t be afraid to wear it on your body. It is not the job of any one person to lead the rest of us in cheer.
Sober + Brave. Sobbrave.