You are a smart girl, I love how you think and act…These were the comments I’d get when I was in my early teens and for some reasons, I got older and it seemed like I got a bit out of it. Now I’m still smart but then, I find it hard to speak up like I use to, it takes me a lot of thinking now to be the smart girl I use to be. Back then, seeing a girl of my age speak up for herself was impressive but now, I will be held accountable for every word I say so I’m a bit more conscious of what I say, how I speak up for myself and somehow I’ve got more withdrawn just trying to find a balance.
The truth is, back then I was able to speak up for myself and others because my siblings were also the quiet ones so I felt like it was necessary for one of us to be out spoken and I decided not to fear what will be done to me if I speak up and that was how I became better at it but then, things changed when I started living almost at the mercy of people, I started finding it hard to speak up even when I feel oppressed or misunderstood.
I started seeing me speaking up as being ungrateful to those who are trying to be of help to me so I most times take whatever it is they do to me and now I feel that is affecting me negatively because I find it so hard to stand up to what I know is right, instead I just try to understand anything from the point of view it is coming from. Well, I still have some times when I get to speak up for myself or others but I know how much I’d have to summon up courage to do that and most times it drains me, for real.
To an extent, it has proven to be helpful though but then I do know that there have been some times when I should have spoken up but I was too scared to do so and that kept bringing down my self esteem. But then, in the midst of not trying to be rude or something, I know that shouldn’t be an excuse to lose my self esteem so lately I’ve been trying to be conscious about how I can start speaking up for myself and avoid being rude or thoughtless at the same time.
The thing is, no matter how you try to, as long as you try to speak up for yourself you might easily offend someone but that shouldn’t stop you from speaking up because it will most times save you from future problems and even help the other person to not misunderstand you further. The major thing that gives me the courage to speak up lately is that I know that no one can beat me, the worst they can do is say no or reject my idea or better, they will try to correct me.
This has been my major weakness for a while now and I hope to keep working on it because it has definitely hindered me in so many ways and I want that to end. This is my response to the topic on ”A WEAK POINT “.