Let Them Dislike Me
I must have been eleven, maybe twelve, when I first realised that people did not like me. It was during recess at school. I’d finished my snack and fished out that day’s Thane Plus that I had brought in to show to my class teacher. The previous weekend, I’d entered a city-wide live essay writing competition in which I’d placed second, and my name was printed in the paper. Proud and excited, I’d carefully brought it to school so I could show it to my teacher. Only, when I opened up the paper, I saw that my name had been carefully scratched out in pen. In its place, someone had written “VOLCANO” in small printed letters. “Volcano” was the mean nickname the boys in my class had given me based on my science project the previous year (and, I assumed at the time, my famous temper). My heart folded in on itself with the weight of the cruelty and injustice. I don’t remember a lot of what happened next, but I do remember crying to my teacher, her asking the class who did it, and I think someone did stand up and take the blame but I might be making that up. I did eventually get an apology for it, but, if possible, the whole saga made me even more unlikeable.
Truthfully, I don’t think that was the first time I realised that I was disliked, but it may have been the first time I cared. When I was younger, I knew that other children weren’t fond of me: I was too arrogant, a teacher’s pet, a goody-two-shoes. But it didn’t matter at the time. I had always been a child too sure of herself. Raised by a mother who was equal parts my greatest champion and my worst critic, who always encouraged me to push myself in ways that she believed I could be great, I bought into the hype. I had a strong moral compass and didn’t hesitate to judge anyone that didn’t meet those standards.
But then I entered secondary school. I got my period. Boys became…boys. With my own adulthood appearing attainable, adults and their validation lost their sheen. They were just flawed older humans with varicose veins, family drama, and a notoriously poor memory. All of a sudden, it was harder to ignore the mean nicknames. Monkey, volcano, bandar (monkey again, but in Hindi, where it somehow sounds worse). The footballs kicked at my face for a bet to see who could knock off my glasses. The chalk thrown into my hair from across the classroom. The whispers behind my back.
I started changing who I was in different settings. In class, I continued following instructions, doing my homework, being likeable for the teachers. Meanwhile, I’d let my bench-mates copy the answers off my sheet during exams. On the phone with a boy from class, I would joke and flirt and help out with his homework, and the next day in school, I’d act as though I didn’t care that he told all his friends that I was desperate to be his girlfriend. I used to cry every night because it didn’t matter how much I pretended to be someone else, someone that was funnier, sillier, didn’t-give-a-shit-er, I was still ugly and everyone still hated me.
Today I’m as old as—and in some cases older than—the adults whose validation I sought. I am finally as old as I always was in my head. But that preteen who thought she had to change who she was in order to be liked and accepted? She's still here. She runs my life now.
I continue to code-switch. Not just my accent, which changes depending on who I’m talking to but also my personality depending on how cool I need to appear. I don’t make close friendships, because what if I accidentally reveal the part of myself that’s unlikeable and they break up with me (true story)? I spend hours upon weeks upon years, in some cases, wondering how something I say or believe in will be perceived by people, and what if they think I’m a terrible person and proceed to say mean things behind my back (also a true story)? I continue to put off writing because what if the stories I want to tell or explore make people dislike me? Most heartbreakingly, for me, though, I seem to have lost a handle on who I am. Am I the person that I see in all my interactions with people or am I someone else, buried deep under the layers of all these other mes?
This was a tough subject to choose for my second post, I think. I’ve tried to write this piece over two weeks hoping that the second half, the “Let Me” piece will reveal itself if I just allowed myself to dig deep enough (never seen a better argument for an editor than this, just now). I could say “Let me not care what people think,” but that would be as inauthentic as my softened American Rs. I could also try “Let me move on,” which doesn’t track either because if I just kept moving on from friendships or relationships that stopped working I would end up with no one.
Maybe the key here is that I don’t really have a place to go here except within. That I can’t not care what people think but I can try to get comfortable with some parts of me being unlikeable. As my therapist used to say, we don’t like sitting in discomfort but getting comfortable with being uncomfortable might be the best thing we can do for ourselves. So maybe the lesson is… Let Me be okay with not being okay? Let Me start to like being unlikeable? Curious if any of you have any thoughts on this.
Weekly edition of things I’m trying to “Let Go, Let Them, and Let Me” this week:
Someone made an offhand comment about me being a hater a couple weeks ago and it’s refusing to leave me like that smudge on the edge of your glasses that you can’t get off no matter how hard you try. I like to think I’m a skeptic; I don’t buy into the hype very easily. But the reason this thing is bothering me is not that they might be right but because this is the part of me (the unlikeable part) that I usually have on lockdown! Now that I have apparently let it loose, do they dislike me? What have they told others about me? Yeah, trying to let go of that stream of anxiety and let them.
I’ve been having a hard and confusing time at work recently. I won’t go into too much detail but I’ve been having some difficulty advocating for resources or being brought into things that are ostensibly part of my job description, and it’s been sending me down the rabbit hole of do they not think I’m good at my job? Am I in trouble? I’m trying to practice telling myself that I don’t have any real evidence as to why they might think that way.
I’ve been trying to become better friends with a couple other new mums I know because it’s hard not having other mum friends who get it. One of them is a terrible texter but also somehow very good at always having plans and I keep having to tell myself “it’s not me! She’s not not texting me because she hates me.” It’s hard to believe it and try again the next time, but I’m working on saying “Let her be bad at this and Let me keep trying.”
That’s it for this fortnight! See you all in a couple more weeks, hopefully I’ll pick a less heavy topic for that one.