Now this entire thing would sound like a humble brag but it's not, neither is it a portrayal of fake humility. It is what every essay is, just a way for me to understand why we feel what we feel.
In multiple occasions by multiple people in all facets of life, I have been accused of being too nice. "So nice that you're annoying", "So nice that you feel fake", "So nice that your words feel meaningless", "So nice that I don't know what you want out of me". These are obviously well-meaning people & friends in most cases. But let's just say that if a stranger were to judge me, they would outright call me a people pleaser. In my defense, whether it be early conditioning or circumstances I've found myself in or the need to overcompensate for all the other shortcomings with niceness, this is the only way I know how to be. But I'm slowly realizing the difference in being kind towards others and being nice all the time and how blurry the line between them is.
Speaking of being nice all the time, do you know about love bombing? It's when a person overwhelms another person via loving words, actions, superfluous gifts & more as a way to win their trust so they can achieve some personal goal, it's a form of manipulation. When I learnt this via a random page while doomscrolling Instagram, it hit me like a jolt because all my life I've been guilty of low-key doing this. Obviously not with the intent to manipulate or any ulterior motive but the other person has no way of knowing it. I could immediately attribute a lot of my past miseries to this when I learnt about it. It's a tricky balance between being genuinely nice and falling under the textbook definition of being a manipulator.
A friend once pointed out (rightly so) about how I always act like a God as if everything's okay when it's clearly not and how it's not normal to always act fine in a poor situation. And another small request, if I could talk like a human for once instead of sounding like a bottomless pit of goodness all the time. In my head, I'm trying with the best of my intentions to be more accommodating, more patient, more understanding towards the curve balls life throws. But from the outside, there's a strong reason to believe that I might just be putting up a facade desperately wanting to be accepted with no real substance within. I can neither confirm, nor deny this about myself.
To be honest, even I would be fed up with someone who doesn't seem to get upset, angry, resentful or feel any of the negative feelings that we're supposed to feel, or rather express. And this is a genuine problem I'm trying to solve within me. How to be nice yet not superfluous, how to be forgiving yet hold boundaries, how to be tolerating yet have needs, how to be giving yet draw a line, how to express love yet not love bomb.
I mean look at the way this essay starts, with a justification to strangers that this is not an act of pretense rather than jumping right in.
A lot of it also seems to have stemmed from excessive self-pity and feeling inadequate. For a lot of my younger years, I almost expected to being treated wrong so I can resort to feeling pity about myself and frustrated about how the world is failing to realize the fuzzy ball of goodness I am. And believe me, this is an addictive (and draining) feeling to feel, victimizing yourself as soon as something doesn't go your way so you pass the onus of blame to the world at large and then, comforting yourself with pity.
So how do we get out of this, how do we be more human, less God? Maybe by reframing internal experiences to say ourselves stories that don't involve self-pity, people pleasing or being a bottomless pit of goodness for the sake of it. Maybe by expressing ourselves more honestly and trusting that the world or the people in it won't abandon us when we do it. Maybe by understanding that we have full control over completely being ourselves but little control over how the world chooses to accept us. Maybe by realizing that too much optimism gives us the will to power through a crisis but everyday life requires us to tone it down a bit. Maybe by not being chained to past hurt and believing that life indeed is a box of chocolates.
Some day we'll internalize all of this and have answers to every unresolved conflict within us. But today is not that day. Today, let's be a God and be okay with the fault in our selves.