You Don't Have to be Everyone's Dream

I’ve always been good. Since I was small, I’ve tried my best at everything. I’ve been the best athlete, the dream part-time Tim Hortons employee, the student whose parent you wanted to be on Parent-Teacher night. It always felt good to be good.

I never understood people who didn’t try in school, or in life in general. When I confronted them about it they would always say “I don’t care enough”. Well, what do you care about, then? I could never quite wrap my mind around living without a care.

My whole life I’ve gone around caring. Caring about other people’s well-being, caring what other people might think of me, caring about being good at things. Not caring just never seemed like an option to me-

Until people started taking advantage of my caring nature. I started doing things not only to help other people, but exclusively for their benefit at the expense of my own energy and sanity. On busy school nights, classmates would ask for my homework and I would help them, because I knew they were struggling. I would be all of my friends’ “therapist”, at the expense of my own mental health, because I knew they had nobody else to turn to. I’ve worked shifts that were very inconvenient on extremely short notice, for bosses and managers who didn’t deserve to be saved. And the list goes on. But as the list of favours goes on, so does the list of things that have ultimately contributed to my unrelenting anxiety that I carry to this day.

I would always, and still unfortunately do, take on people’s problems as my own. My justification for all of this is that I want to give people a break. I want to be a dream student, because teachers deal with so many bad ones. I want to be a good friend, because those are really hard to find. I want to be a reliable employee, because I made a commitment and I will be sticking to it.

But there’s a flip side, and I never saw it clearly before. I also want to be a good student because it feels good to be praised, and I desire approval. I want to be a good friend because I’m hoping the favour is returned. I want to be a good employee because I want to stay employed and be able to pay my bills.

So a lot of my anxieties have come not only from taking other people’s problems on, but also assuming that I MUST be a dream in order to achieve the bare minimum- good grades, friendship, and employment. I decided, mostly on my own, that I am only valuable if I’m serving someone else.

If I ever dared put myself first, in any situation, I would convince myself that I was a bad person. That I was being selfish. That I couldn’t possibly refuse to work an inconvenient shift, or decline to help somebody who otherwise would’ve hurt themselves. That if I didn’t get 100% on my assignments or if I quit swimming, I would be letting people down.

A horrible way to live.

This mentality has hurt me in every area of my life, from losing out on amazing opportunities in order to cover someone’s shift to not recognizing I was in a toxic relationship.

Although through hard work and reflection I have shed some of these expectations over the years, they still linger and rule my life in a significant way. I have a lot of trouble saying no to people, and if I see them struggle I will do anything to help them. I’ve found this mentality a lot in my interactions with superiors at all the jobs I’ve ever worked. You need me to work a shift even though I just quit? Sure. You need me to come in and work in the middle of a pandemic? Sure.

Wait a minute.

Why sure? I don’t feel comfortable with that at all. Why would they ask me, of all people?

And then I realized why. Because they know I care. They’ve seen it in action. They know I will come in and risk my health for minimum wage because I care about the well-being of the owner, who is obviously very overwhelmed by the whole situation.

While I was freaking about the situation, my boyfriend (who happens to be one of those people who “don’t care”) brought up a very good point:

What if I didn’t go? What if I finally realized that the well-being of the business is not my problem? What if I realized I don’t have to be the hero employee? It is taxing on my mind, body, and soul.

And I suddenly finally understood “not caring”.

Somebody else could be their dream this time.

My value doesn’t come from serving other people. Don’t get me wrong, you should care about others; but you definitely should care about yourself too. I’ve been living my life for other people’s benefit- people who don’t particularly care for me in the first place. There is no praise in real life- just expectations that you are upholding every time you say yes to something that doesn’t feel right for you.

Breaking this thought pattern is really difficult. It is soul wrenching and crushing and hard. But it’s worth it. I’m at last realizing I don’t have to be everybody’s dream; and this is the freest I’ve felt in years.