OK...so maybe I AM a bitch

I mentioned earlier I wanted to chat about liking yourself. Let me see if I can make my thoughts clear because this is important to me, and it should be important to anyone who can relate to what I'm talking about.

Let me start with a recollection of a conversation I had when I was in the Cuckoo's Nest. When the smokers had just gotten back from their smoke break, a guy I had become friends with came in and sat next to me. Another guy who didn't smoke asked my friend why he ever started smoking in the first place. Recalling my own experience, I answered quickly, "Peer pressure." The guy looked baffled and asked, "Your friends actually PRESSURED you to smoke?" I responded, "No, but when you see the kids you try to hang out with doing it, you do it too. No one ever really hides in a corner pushing smokes on kids." He understood that...it was the same reason he played football in high school when he didn't really enjoy it.

So, when you ask, "How can another person tell you that you're bad and make you think less of yourself?" Good question, but that's not how it happens. It happens not so much from the actions of the jerk. It happens because there is no one else to counteract his negativity or, at the very least, his lack of positivity.

This is why it's so important to like yourself. And, like it or not, you have to be around other people who like you to know how likable you are. The reasoning behind that is the fact that you can't even BE yourself around someone who doesn't like you because you're constantly trying to make things better. You don't even do that consciously, you do it one minute at a time to avoid a negative situation and before you know it, that's what you've become. Unfortunately, that steals the real you away so you couldn't possibly like yourself because you AREN'T yourself. People who like you free you to be yourself. Only then can you know who you are. And people who don't like you won't like you one way or another. Trying to keep the peace is nothing more than delaying the inevitable so just get the hell out now. The harder you try to make that person happy, the higher they set the bar and you spend your entire life trying to clear moving hurdles.

So, what does that have to do with me being a bitch? I don't know but it seems as though people like to use that word when discussing me. I don't know if I am a bitch or not, but I know I know how to be a bitch. I also know that labelling people is a detriment to no one but myself so I don't like to do that. Whatever I am, I like being free to be it. If people don't like me, that's fine, they can go find people they DO like. Just let me be free to be myself and then I'll end up surrounded by people who DO like me.