Sometimes My Kindness Tastes Like Battery Acid.
Or at least what I imagine battery acid would taste like— a sharp, chemical burn that I’m forcing myself to swallow— and my gut just wants me to vomit up.
Actually, let’s be honest: my kindness is bitter.
It feels bitter in my chest, so it can only taste bitter in my mouth.
I am naturally kind. That’s a real thing. There are people in the world who are just genuinely kind by default. I can get angry, I can get frustrated, I can certainly be a bitch…But the factory setting is “Kind.”
Default-kindness means it isn’t always a choice; it’s a reflex.
The Debt of Too Many Chances
I don’t hate being kind, but I hate being kind.
I am often kind to people who haven’t earned the right to see that part of me.
In the past, I’d let people treat me like dirt and just keep smiling.
I’ve grown past that, but I still struggle with the math of mercy.
What is the correct number of chances to give a person?
Does it differ by person?
By offense?
The Teeth Behind the Boundary
It’s literally easier for me to be kind than it is to make an effort to be unkind.
I have to try and be “mean.”
I have to talk to myself like a coach in a locker room:
“Brittany, girl, enough. Show your teeth.”
I think that maybe when I’m being “unkind”— I’m not actually being unkind.
I’ve realized when I show my teeth, I’m just holding up a boundary.
Kind people struggle with boundaries. (Hi, it’s me.)
I used to have zero boundaries. That’s not an exaggeration.
Every emotion, every feeling, every everything was somehow always on me.
The Curse of the Default
You call that guilt.
But this guilt? It’s a maladaptive, undeserved entire complex— a guilt complex.
It wasn’t mine to carry, yet the onus was on me to hold it and fix it.
That’s probably where my “default-kindness” was born; from the desperate need to keep the peace so I wouldn’t have to feel the weight of everyone else’s mess.
It’s a curse, really.
Sometimes I’ll fall back into old pattern and feel a sense of PTSD. It freaks me out when I catch myself offering default-kindness to someone who has already proven that they don’t deserve it.
I feel the “mask” slipping back on, and I get mad.
At myself.
The New Default
Here’s the ironic part: I’m learning to be kind to myself.
I am learning to be less “default-kind” to the jackasses and more “default-kind” to the woman in the mirror. (Hi again, it’s me.)
It’s a wild shift. If you’ve never had to dismantle your own reflex to be a doormat you won’t understand.
But for those who have spent a lifetime swallowing battery acid just to keep everyone else from feeling the burn?
Showing our teeth is the kindest thing we’ve ever done.
Awwwww Brittney this was beautiful!
As a recovering people pleaser I definitely felt this one too. Like you said, kind is in your nature and who you are... But when people see that as weakness they try to step all over you. You'll make EVERY excuse as to why they might be acting that way when they are really just a royal jackass who needs to be checked.
It took me a VERY long time to be courageous enough to say, "I'm kind, but I'm NOT stupid. And I deserve better." And that's a little embarrassing at 34 years old, but it's better to learn now than another decade down the road.