People pleaser who can’t please

I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. Days and months went by, and reading other people’s works made me think differently. How is it that their statements can reach my heart so well, yet mine seem like empty words structured in correct grammar? Correct grammar only, nonetheless isn’t special.

I’ve always dreamt of writing to capture people’s feelings. Every day, I write and write words that hopefully will lift my friends up because I genuinely care about them. I want them to see the world that I see, to feel more of what they deserve than what is dumped on them out of their control.

Why do I feel like these words aren’t enough, that writing itself isn’t cut out for me? I feel like everything I’ve done hasn’t reached any of their hearts. I try to lift them up, yet I can’t move them, not even an inch, away from where they are stuck at.

It’s like I’m painting a canvas only to fill it up but not to make it meaningful and pleasing. When I reread what I’ve written, all I see are the wrong structures I formulated and the boring combination of meaningless vows.

“I wish for you to be happy; I want to see you actually living before you pass, so that all of your suffering just by barely breathing, and the fact that you endured those by yourself, seem to become worth it in the end. I hope that as much as happy times are temporary, your sorrow also gets kicked out of your heart because it’s been staying there for too long. The rent is long due.“

I usually say that to people, but I believe I’m being insensitive. I just can hear them say, “It isn’t that easy.“

I know they might think that, but I don’t know how to actually open their hearts and feel like my own opinions can contribute a little to forming the ladder they can use to climb their way up.

Maybe it starts with myself. I’ve always heard this quote, “You can’t love somebody else when you don’t even love yourself.“

I don’t fully love myself, and I’ve always focused on criticizing my ugly parts. “You should’ve done this/that. You should not have said that. You must change.“

However, looking at it, I vowed when I was 12 that I’d be others’ noise canceller, hopeful to mute their own battles for a second and see how delightful the world is because they are present in it.

I want to make people feel like I’m extending my own two arms to cover their ears from hearing the pain others bring to them, even the pain they bring to themselves. I want that as much as they hear hurtful words from others, they’d slightly see different hues of positivity when with me.

I’d sometimes beg them. “As much as you take it into heart that someone insulted your being, please, I hope my words, too, will be taken by you into account and considered as something truthful. That is because, unlike others, I’m saying what I truly see about your character, and I’m talking about things to help you stand and walk away from them.“

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Because I know, just like how I blind myself from my own good qualities because I feel undeserving of love and acceptance from my own self, they, too, are just not looking at the mirror of truth, stuck and chained just because others made them so.

Hi! I’m a people pleaser, and I aspire to be a writer who can contribute to people not seeing their own beauty. I aspire to be one of the fuels for them to invest in themselves rather than in judgmental, inhumane beings. I aspire to treat them how I cannot treat myself because I’m still trying to learn to accept and forgive my own shortcomings. They don’t deserve to think like that and feel like that, especially when they’re still young (even 90 is young enough).

I don’t feel like I do much though, and that’s how I conclude that I am failing even though I have been writing since I was two years old. All those times I blabbered about anything and everything—including tales of a princess and a knight in shining armor, unrequited high school love, a long-lost empress of a powerful country, and more cliché and classic plots—seemed to have become an irrelevant factor in the development of my works now. I still can’t give motion to the man who can’t be moved.

To whoever is reading this—even if this may not be enough, you still need to hear this—congratulations on enduring for so long. You are seen. You are loved. Even if I do not know you personally, I’d give my life to see you smile.

Bea Lorrine O. Piedad, 16, is a Grade 11 HUMSS student and campus journalist (feature writer).