When 'Nice' isn't Enough

Once upon a time, I was very confident of the validity of my own opinions. Way back when I was in high school and even college, I very much owned my thoughts and I wasn’t afraid to voice them, so confident was I that I was right.

Where did that girl go? When did I become a passive-aggressive, ‘nice’ person who worried more about the opinions of other than about standing up for myself and my own opinions?

I had that I no longer stand up for myself. I hate that I just stand there when someone else is spouting off nonsense.

I want to be that strong girl I once was. No, wait. I want to be the strong woman that girl was destined to be before she suddenly became scared of offending people.

I was so self-confident when I was seventeen years old. Oh, sure, I had some body image issues, but I never doubted my intelligence. I never doubted that I knew what was right and wrong. And I was never, ever afraid to tell others if I thought what they were doing was wrong.

Take me to when I was twenty-five and suddenly I was shy, reserved, unsure of my own place in the world. These days? I’m a little better than I was when I was twenty-five, but nowhere near where my confidence level at seventeen.

Of course, there is the fact that most seventeen year olds think they know everything. Perhaps I grew up and realized that I don’t know everything.

But I want some of that self-righteousness back. I want that confidence in my own sense of right and wrong back. I want that voice back.

Obviously, I don’t want to go out and start fights, ignoring the rights of other people, but I don’t want to continue to walk away when someone is being an idiot. I want to remember what it was like to have a sense of entitlement, a sense that I have a right to my own opinion and a right to voice it.

I want to model that behavior for my daughters. I don’t want them to grow up with a weak, meely-mouthed mother. I want them to know that we women have ideas, thoughts, rights and we have the right to share those things with the world.

I’m on a journey of self-discovery, of finding who I am and who I want to be. It’s obviously going to be a struggle, but I know it will be worth it when I find that opinionated, strong seventeen year old who is probably going crazy inside this passive-aggressive, ‘nice’ forty-one year old brain.

I kind of feel sorry for those around me as I work toward finding my strong self again. They’re in for a few surprises, I think.