People Pleasing Season

There was a season in her life when she lived as if her heart were a garden for others to trample.
She mistook love for compliance, belonging for obedience. She watered everyone else’s roots and wondered why her own branches withered.

It began quietly, with yes. Yes to favours, yes to the late nights, yes to being spoken over, yes to the friend who only remembered her when life collapsed, yes to the man whose attention flickered like a faulty lantern, yes to the family who called her selfish the moment she said no.

Yes became her second skin. It polished her smile, softened her voice, erased her edges. People praised her for it; called her dependable, generous, selfless. They did not realise that selfless meant without self, and she wore that word like a crown while her spirit sagged beneath its weight.

She became the master of vanishing while standing right in front of them. Her body was present, her laugh timed, her help abundant. Her soul was shrinking, curling inward like a burnt page. Each swallowed desire left a scorch mark. Each silenced truth was another layer of ash.

At night, when applause dimmed and rooms emptied, she lay awake in the empty space where her own voice should have been. She wondered if anyone knew her. She feared the answer was no. Perhaps they could not, because she had hidden too well; an agreeable ghost within her own story.

Sacrifice is easy to glorify. The world bows to those who pour themselves out like fountains. But she began to learn that fountains if never refilled, eventually run dry. Love offered without boundaries is not love but a bargain; and unspoken plea. See me as worthy, please, keep me if I disappear for you.

And takers appeared, drawn like moths to her endless flame. The more she gave, the more they expected. her generosity became invisible, her efforts a baseline. When she faltered, when she longed for her own space, their surprise felt like accusation. They had not loved her, not really, they had loved her silence.

In mirrors she sometimes caught by accident she saw the cost. Eyes dulled, shoulders bent. A tiredness, no sleep could touch. Self worth erodes slowly when you keep abandoning yourself. She told herself she was strong, but endurance is suffering dressed in virtues clothing.

When asked what she wanted, her tongue paused too long. Desire felt foreign. Preference felt dangerous. To need was to risk exile. Better to be empty and kept than full and alone. So she believed.

The body remembers what the mind tries to bury. Resentment swelled like storm clouds. Tears came sharp and sudden, rage slipped loose from her hands without warning. She thought herself broken, she had become buried.

The rebellion began small, a declined invitation, a night chosen for rest, a soft but trembling no. The world did not collapse, thought some people recoiled. It revealed a truth she could no longer unseen: those who vanish when you stop disappearing for them were never really holding you at all; only the convenience of your yes.

Grief came next. She mourned the moments she had given away like coins tossed into pockets of theirs. She mourned the voice she had gagged, the body she had used as an alter for other peoples needs. But grief has its own alchemy. It turned her mourning into hunger, for wholeness, for freedom, for the sound of her own name spoken by her own mouth.

She practised saying no. At first it sliced her tongue, jagged and awkward. She explained too much, softened it into apologies. But overtime, no because a sanctuary. No was not cruelty but clarity. No was a fence around her garden. A reminder that her soil mattered, her roots deserved space.

In mirrors now, she began to recognise her self again. Eyes Brightened, Shoulders Rose. Laughter returned with thunder in it. She understood that worth cannot be borrowed, it is grown. It is cared from presence, from daring to be seen as she truly was, imperfect, radiant, unwilling to vanish.

Love, she learned, that requires your erasure is not love at all. Kindness without self respect, is not kindness it is performance. And she has retired for performance.

Her life grew smaller, but richer. Fewer friends, but deeper roots. Fewer obligations, but chosen with care. Less applause, but more truth. In the quiet she hears her own voice; fragile at first, then steady then a song. The season of people pleasing had passed. What remained was scarred but alive; a garden replanted. Her no is holy, Her yes is sacred. Her Self is Hers again.