Selfishness is Bittersweet

If growth demands me to be selfish then I guess that is the bittersweet decision I have to make. I love being in love and can honestly say I have loved more than once and have lost more than once. As a hopeless romantic, life's events made me a cycnic because now when people talk to me about their love lives I seriously have to look at them and question if they actually are listening to themselves. I hear and listen to what they are saying but they don't hear themselves because they try to rationalize everything with an excuse. And I used to be like that. I used to be the girl who after identifying the wrongful doings of my man, I would then find a reason to justify why he behaved like that. It was a long cycle and I would blame myself because I wanted to keep him and make him happy. And then it all finally set into play...I was his person and would have done anything for him. But he wasn't my person nor would he have done just about anything to be with me. After all, he did break up with me to be with the girl who would be universally approved by family and friends. Or the time when I had basically planned a whole trip to a whole continent only to be told in a text message how his relationship status had changed over the course of a weekend; even though we had spoken that weekend and there was no mention of her. Inevitably, none of them were willing to be my person. And everything became so real when I was the one left trying to deal with everything while they moved on to play happy families.

So now I am selfish. And it is bittersweet because I've grown over the past weeks and have been able to do things to please me and no one else. I have had the chance to only consider me when making decisions and it has felt good. This is the sweet part. I have been able to realize that I used to give so much of myself to make other people happy, because by nature I am a person you might call a "people please-r"  but in doing so, I forgot to keep a little pleasure for myself. Which was a mistake because I gave all and kept nothing for myself and that resulted in the loss of who I was and am as a person.

But now I have been able to recapture that lost part of me and grow through the hurt and appreciate life more because I have learned through my past mistakes of what to keep at bay and at the first sign of danger, run in the other direction.

While being selfish is never seen as a good thing, it is a bitter moment because for the first time, I am letting people down and pleasing myself. I am "arousing pleasure tinged with sadness or pain" so says the Oxford Dictionary as I choose to make sacrifices that affect more than myself but please me directly. But the thing is, the sacrifices I am making are for someone else who wishes things could have been done differently. Me. A part of me wishes things could have been different but they are not. But with everything that seems to have gone on in my life, I can't go back to try to please them (I can't please the person who I was, nor the people who left me behind and especially the people in my life now. I am one person and I cannot please everyone.)

As we all grow up, we all have to make decisions and hard choices even when we do not want to. Certain people have to pursue the road that has been set out because as much as they "almost" think they have made the right choice by choosing you, you might not be ready to be their choice. It does suck to know this but honesty is what is best.

Whether if this is the wrong decision right now, I am choosing me because for once, being selfish will make me a better person eventually.

I just hope that they see that they will be better off having been given this chance.