HOW TO BE A PEOPLE PLEASER - by Light Martins

How To Be A People Pleaser — Part 05 My roommate loved to drink a lot of sugar. She was a soft drink addict. 😂 Every day, she bought a bottle of Sprite or Fanta, no matter how broke we were. She used to lament about how her mom used to complain about it. 😂 She influenced me too, though. I eventually started joining her to buy drinks every day, except that I was never able to finish a bottle. On this particular day, she was having stomach pain. She just laid on the bed to rest. I was about to step out and join my other housemates for our usual gist and laughs, but before I left, I asked her if she was doing alright. She said she was having stomach troubles. So I casually told her sorry and asked her if she had eaten. Then I suggested that maybe her period was coming, that was why, even though I wasn’t exactly sure. At that point, I didn’t think there was anything particularly serious going on. To me, I had asked if she was okay, asked if she had eaten and even tried to figure out what could possibly be wrong. So I went about my day. Her babe eventually came that night. They had their usual cuddles and everything seemed normal. But then the next morning, something happened. She called her mom the next morning to complain about the stomach pain she was experiencing. I was overhearing her conversation over the phone while I was asleep. She told her mom that she was bleeding and was scared. Now, me in my sleep, I laid on the bed wondering: 🤔 How come she was bleeding? Because she never told me she was bleeding. After the call, in order not to sound like I was snitching or like I was listening to her conversation, I laid awake for a while. I didn’t say anything. But by this point, something else was already happening. The next thing I heard was her complaining to her boyfriend about how I didn’t care that she was bleeding and had serious stomachache. He consoled her and decided to step out. And when he was out of sight, she came over to my bed and woke me up. She said she wanted to talk to me. So I sat up to listen. And this conversation would stay with me because, at the time, I didn’t completely understand why she felt the way she did. She went ahead to say that when I was having a cold, she had to call her mom all the way to ask her what they could do to help me because they were genuinely worried about me. But I, on the other hand, was careless when it came to her health. She said she had been bleeding with stomach aches and I never for once flinched. She was deeply hurt. She kept talking about how much she carries my issues on her head, but I never seemed to reciprocate them. And then she brought up something else. She talked about how I used to wake up sad and quiet and not say anything. Now, this part was actually funny to me because she and I were complete opposites when it came to mornings. 😂 When I wake up from sleep, I usually do not talk for a while. Nothing is wrong with me. It’s just the way I am. I need to fully wake up first before I start talking to people. 😭 My roommate, on the other hand, was very noisy and high-spirited once she woke up. This girl could wake up and immediately start talking about a dream she had. Or something random that happened. Or something she just remembered. There was always something to talk about. 😂 And her boyfriend was very much like her in that area. They could wake up and start talking and laughing, and I would just be there wondering how these people had so much energy this early in the morning. 😭😭 Meanwhile, I could wake up and spend a good amount of time in silence without anything being wrong with me. So when she complained about me waking up sad and quiet, I remember thinking, but I wasn’t sad. That was just me. But as she continued talking, I began to understand that the issue wasn’t necessarily what I intended. It was how my actions made her feel. And that opened my eyes to something. You could be living in your own world thinking you are doing everything right. But that’s how humans are. We judge others based on their actions and judge ourselves based on our intentions. And that was exactly what I was doing. I assumed that because I had good intentions, my actions automatically translated that. But that wasn’t true. I could genuinely care about someone and still make them feel like I didn’t care. I could have no bad intentions whatsoever and still hurt someone’s feelings. And that was something I was slowly beginning to understand about friendships. So we talked. I apologized and made her understand how sorry I was for being so careless about what was happening to her. I didn’t want her to feel like I didn’t care about her. Because I did. I really did. We immediately moved on from the matter and continued with our daily lives. And just like that, we had finally gotten to the end of our year living together.(Eventually, we found out that the bleeding was actually her period, and the early cramps she had been experiencing were linked to her high sugar intakeSo thankfully, it wasn’t something more serious..) One whole year. When I think about that first year now, it is actually crazy how much happened in that house. The friendship. The fights. Her boyfriend practically living with us. The awkward moments. The things we never said. And somehow, despite everything, we were still friends. But now there was another decision waiting for us. Our rent had expired. It was now time for us to decide whether or not we wanted to live together again. And honestly, I didn’t know what that decision was going to look like. To be continued…..

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