People who Choose You
Sometimes I forget that one of our greatest daily assets is the people around us. The people we surround ourselves with every day influence us most. That is why it is so important to choose these people carefully.
I spent the first few years of high school trying to get everyone to like me. I didn't care who you were, a teacher, lunch lady, or classmate. My goal was to make you like me. I put so much effort into people, but I rarely felt like I got that same effort back. Eventually, it became exhausting. I was constantly worried about what other people thought of me and how they perceived me. I cared more about what the girl across the room thought about me than what I thought about myself.
One day during my first year of high school, I was sitting at the dinner table when my dad told me a story about Maya Angelou. He said there came a point when she decided to stop being the person who was always reaching out to everyone around her. She wanted to see what would happen if, for once, she stopped making the first move. Of all the people she considered friends, only one reached out.
My dad told me this story to teach me something I didn't fully understand then: sometimes you don't realize how much of a relationship you are carrying until you stop carrying it.
In other words, sometimes, you have to stop reaching out and see who reaches back.
This doesn't mean friendship should be a test or that every relationship has to be perfectly equal all the time, because that's simply unrealistic. People get busy. People go through things we know nothing about. Sometimes one person needs to give more than the other. But there is a difference between giving someone grace and constantly making excuses for why you are the only person putting in the effort.
It took me a while to understand that I didn't need to stop caring about people; I just needed to be more careful about who I was giving so much of myself to.
As I have gotten older, I have realized that the goal isn't to have everyone like me. The goal is to surround myself with people I genuinely like, trust, respect, and feel like myself around. The goal is to surround myself with people who I can truly be myself around, people who truly value and respect me as I do them.
Instead of constantly wondering what the girl across the room thinks about me, I have started to care more about what I think about myself and the people I choose to give my time and energy to. The people we surround ourselves with can shape so much of who we become. We should make sure they are people who make us feel like we don't have to change who we are to earn a place in their lives.
