I'll be the first person to admit I'm a people pleaser. I go out of my way to ensure that everyone around me is happy and that I'm well-liked. Sometimes, I worry more about what those around me think of me than I worry about doing the right thing. It's a flaw of mine that has good intentions, but that I'm not always that proud of.

Recently, I've struggled with getting warm regards from others. I haven't always made the most popular decisions, and I've heard comments about me from others that weren't that positive. As someone who has worked so hard to get on everyone's good side, because I want more than anything to be a person that others feel comfortable with and enjoy being around, it's been devastating to understand that not everyone is going to love me, or even like me. It's taking a lot of time and reflection to be comfortable with this fact of life: I'm not going to be everyone's favorite person.

However, in order to love myself, I had to accept that everyone else isn't always going to love me.

I will never be perfect to everyone. The very things that I do for some people to make them feel happy and allow them to enjoy their time around me are the same things that make other people grow a stronger dislike for me. If I'm constantly fighting this battle of trying to be everyone's favorite person, the Miss Congeniality in every aspect of my life, I'm going to fall farther and farther away from the person that I truly am. If I'm just a morphed version of the different things different people love about me, how am I really myself? How am I really someone that I'm happy with?

Trying so hard to be everyone's favorite person has affected me so much that I've started disliking pieces of myself that I once loved. When someone points out that I'm overly emotional or that I try too hard or that I'm too trusting of others, and that they don't like that about me, I feel terrible. I feel like I've failed someone yet again.

I can no longer keep fighting this game of being everyone's favorite because at the end of the day all I have is myself. That's the only person besides me every moment of every day, who knows why I choose to be the way I am. I will never be loved by everyone and that's okay, as long as I love myself for the person I really am.