Daniel’s Diary.

Diary entry 008

Two years ago, someone called me a horrible person, and for some reason it felt like my whole world was crumbling in front of my very eyes. This was my worst fear come to pass because I was a pathological people pleaser. Pathological. I tried to do as much as possible to make sure people didn’t hate or dislike me. To make sure people didn’t have a bad thing to say about me. Obviously, it didn’t work, because someone called me a horrible person. In fact, the morning she sent that text, my anxiety had just started to act up, and we’d gone incommunicado for months, because she said I shouldn’t text her again.

I feel like you guys need some backstory. Oh God. Okay.

This girl, let’s call her…Ireti, added me on snap. I added back. She sent a snap, I sent a snap. She asked a question along the lines of “I’ve seen you before. Do you go to Nile university?”, and I immediately thought to myself, “oh, brother.”

Needless to say, we had a conversation that day, which spilled into the next, until one day became one week. She was cool. Extremely cool. One week turned to two, and we finally decided to meet up physically. Because of how intense my schedule was, she offered to come meet me in school, and I said “that works”, because my plan was to rework my entire schedule around her for the day. She came over, we sat down in a class and had some conversations. I was rushing in and out because I was still busy, and she felt uncomfortable and that’s where I realized my first lesson: when you’re doing multiple things at once, something will take priority while others will suffer, so you have to choose one.

I chose to sit with her.

We continued our conversation. Until she told me she’d kissed a friend of mine.

‘Well this was fun while it lasted’, I thought to myself, because I will never, and I mean this emphatically, I will never ever get involved with someone who has been with any of my friends in any way, shape or form. I don’t care if it’s just a kiss. I am out.

Anyways, just to cut the long story short, I told her there and then that this won’t work out. The mood obviously shifted. I walked her to her uber at the end of the day and said goodbye. We spoke a few times over the next few days but the vibe was not the same, and rightly so. I’ve forgotten the events that led to me completely removing her from snap, but I did. I probably didn’t need to, but I did. After this, we didn’t talk for months. I moved on with my life, but a part of me still wondered “what if”.

She sent a text early on a February morning. I read it. I spiraled. I was on the brink of falling back into depression and that was the catalyst to a whole different story. I mean, I replied, to salvage some of my dignity, but that message decimated me.

Until I had the bright idea to shoot a short film series about it (which I’ll most likely complete this year, maybe). In fact, that message inspired a lot of my music and poems and stories because it helped me realize something.

Not everyone will like you, or be comfortable with the decisions you make for your sanity. And guess what? That’s life. It was hard to come to terms with at first, but I did it regardless, and I’ve made peace with the fact that even though I’m someone’s “God abeg”, in the same breath, I’m another person’s “God forbid”, and maybe that’s why being humble isn’t so hard anymore. I don’t even like a lot of people, so why do I want everyone to like me? Exactly.

Bonus tip: don’t apologize for standing on your positive values and principles. They’re there to guide you.

My incessant need for people to like me made me a people pleaser, and I was miserable. Immediately this realization hit, it was like a switch got turned on, and the curtains in my mental faculty were finally pulled back.

Life gets easier when you’re not worried about people not liking you. I don’t know how to explain it, but it just does.

Why did I even write this article? Because there are times I fall back into old habits, and I find it useful having this digital diary to remind the current version of myself what the past version of myself went through and learnt in the process.

Sometimes I catch myself people-pleasing and I have to clock myself, because my aim in life is to grow, and not regress into old habits, and so far, I’d give myself a 7/10.