Breaking Free

Independence is an essential part of life. Relying on other people when you are upset and when you don’t feel like being alone is never a good thing. In fact, it generally always causes trouble. Other people want to be there for you, but often they try to comfort you in ways that really aren’t beneficial. Instead of making you feel better, they end up making you feel confused, guilty, angry, and a lot of other feelings that you could have done without.

When I first started having relationship problems, I started hanging out with my friends more. It felt good at the time, but honestly all of their constant downing of the person I was with wasn’t really helpful. They really wanted the best for me, but they were making me doubt myself and feel like I couldn’t trust my feelings. On top of that, if I ever found myself agreeing with them, I instantly felt guilty, as though I shouldn’t betray the person I love like that.

Eventually, I started wondering if the feelings I were feeling were actually mine, or if they were everyone else’s opinions that I had been siphoning into my own. My friends didn’t see what they were doing to me; they didn’t realize that their disapproval of what was going on was making everything worse. I got angry with them all and pushed them away, because in reality, I am a nice and forgiving person who really believes the best of people—even when they show me their worst. My friends didn’t realize it, but they were trying to get me to go against whom I was. Constant reminders of why I should leave just made me more resolved to stay because I knew that I would want the same chances if I messed up.

The truth is, our friends really aren’t the best people to go to when we want to figure out what to do in our lives. The person we should turn to is ourselves. We will never be happy with a decision that we make unless it was our decision through and through. It’s hard to be this way though, with constant need of approval coursing through our minds, but truthfully, when we do what we really want to do, we shouldn’t worry about pleasing anyone but ourselves. There will always be someone who doesn’t approve of our lives or our behaviors; a nagging parent, an overprotective friend or family member, even friends that have an ulterior motive for wanting to help us. Yet, if we are truly happy, what they think or what they feel really isn’t important. It isn’t their life, and no matter how much they want to help you or keep you from making the mistakes that they made themselves, they can’t. We never truly learn something until we have been through it ourselves, and our decisions that we make help us learn things about our character that we would’ve never known.

The anger, disappointment, hurt, rage, and disapproval of others should never influence our decisions about our own lives. If it isn’t hurting them directly, (sorry if this sounds blunt) then it isn’t any of their business. We will be who we are, and if we use their feelings to guide our decision-making, than we forfeit our identity.