We live in such a pushy society. Pushy to do, pushy to be, and pushy to believe. Us soft spoken people are getting mixed up in all of this. We're "doing", "being", and "believing" because that's all that we know. We don't want to cause any issues with the people that are pushing us around, but I'm tired of being put down.

My parents raised me to be a very open-minded, understanding person. They always told me to take the high road when someone wanted to fight with me. They persuaded me to ignore problems that could arise if I made a snarky comment. They taught me to go above and beyond in my endeavors. Over time, this has changed me into being a very soft spoken, hard-working person. I love that people feel that I am very open-minded and understanding. I love that people feel that they can confide in me through any situation. I think it's great that people can trust me and rely on me for different things, but I've come to the conclusion that people are beginning to take advantage of me.

Over the years, I've realized that I could've stood up of myself plenty of times, but I chose to ignore the situation or apologize for something I wasn't guilty for. I could've stood up for my friends when they were being put down, but instead I decided it wasn't my fight to fight. There were plenty of times that I should've voiced my opinion about something, but decided not to in fear that it would start a argument. I think at some point through all these quarrels, through the people who put me down, who told me what they thought and assumed I would agree, who pushed me around--they got used to it. And so did I. They realized I wasn't going to stand up for myself, so I became a doormat for them to walk all over.

The time has come to stand up for myself, for ourselves. When people are putting us down, we need to tell them that it's not OK. We need to voice our opinions about what we believe in, passionately. We cannot keep letting people tell us what to do, what to be, and what to believe.

Soft spoken people have great ideas and most of the time, we are the ones to go out of our way to help others. We are the ones that are hurting in times of crisis, but are too scared to tell people how we feel. Since we are the last to say what we feel, you never know what we could be struggling with. Rather than put us down or take advantage of us, respect us like we respect you.