How I Stopped Needing Everyone to Like Me
I carried a tray of cookies down the hallway, and I was exhausted before I reached the first locker.
It was Friday, and I had baked two dozen of them the night before. Nobody had asked me to. I just had a feeling that if I gave everyone a cookie, nobody would be able to dislike me. I handed them out to the girl from math, the boy from the bus, the librarian, the janitor, two kids I had never actually spoken to, and Mr. Fenn, who is allergic to nuts and was very kind about it.
My tote bag was heavy with extra pens, a spare water bottle, three tissues for other people and a bandage I had been carrying for a month in case someone needed it. I smiled at every hand that reached out. My cheeks hurt.
I wanted everyone to like me, and I wanted it so much that I had started to disappear into the wanting.
What if someone doesn’t like me?
What if I forget someone?
Why am I so tired of being so nice?
A number I did not expect
That night, I told Zoe that I felt like a vending machine with a very cheerful face.
She came over with her pencil in her hair and sat on my bed with a notebook she had brought. She did not tell me I was wrong to be kind. She said, “Kindness is not the problem. The problem is who it’s for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you handing out cookies because you want to? Or because you want to be safe?”
I opened my mouth to say because I want to. Then I closed it, because that would have been a small lie, and Zoe always knows.
“Safe,” I said. “It’s so no one is annoyed at me.”
“Thank you for saying it.” She patted the notebook. “Now let’s do some very boring math.”
· · ·
The Three Names
“Write down,” said Zoe, “the people who would still sit with you on your worst, most tired day. The ones who would listen to the same story three times. Don’t count people you want to impress. Only people who already know you.”
I wrote slowly. It took a long while to write the first name, because my brain kept offering me impressive ones. In the end I wrote three.
Zoe. My mother. And Noor, who sits next to me in art and once drew a tiny heart on the corner of my worksheet without ever mentioning it.
She circled each name in a warm gold pen. “Look at that,” she said. “You have been spending all your energy on two hundred people, and your three most important people were never even worried.”
I looked at the page for a long time. I had assumed that being liked by everyone would feel like a warm blanket. It had actually felt like holding a very heavy tray.
Setting the tray down
The next Monday, I did something that felt both tiny and enormous. I went to school with no cookies.
The world did not end. The girl from math said hello anyway. The boy from the bus asked if I had finished the homework, and I said yes, and he said thanks, and that was the entire event. One person, Dev, did not say hello at all. For half a minute I felt the old prickle of panic.
Then I remembered the notebook. You do not have to be everyone’s cup of tea. I took a breath and let Dev be Dev. He probably had a hard morning of his own.
That afternoon, Noor and Zoe and I walked to the little café near school. We sat at a wooden table by the window with three mugs of tea and a plate of cookies, which I had not baked. Someone else had. It was very strange, and very nice, to simply eat one.
I still like to bake, and I still enjoy giving a cookie to someone who has had a hard day. The difference is that now I give because I want to, and not because I am afraid.
Not everyone will like me, and that is not a flaw in the recipe. Some people just prefer a different cookie.
With love,
Lina
