Being Nice

It's a lot of pressure to be nice all the time. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like I always have to be nice and kind and caring. Most of the time it's natural, and I'm actually just being nice, being me. But the small fraction of time when I'm just done, I feel like I have to be just as nice as I usually am. It's stressful. I feel like I'm not allowed to say a mean word, ever. When I do, people either laugh because I'm joking or they look at me with these hurt eyes and then I have to apologize. Sometimes it isn't my fault. See, when you're nice all the time, you say yes to things, which leaves your to do list longer than most. And when you have that much to do, sometimes you just want help. And when no one is helping me, I get frustrated, and then I either yell at a friend who then looks hurt, or I yell at my family, who totally doesn't deserve it because they do help me. I just need to learn to say no. I'm spreading myself too thin, always doing something, always choosing the nice option. Well, I don't want to. I don't want to be really nice.
Another thing about being nice it that you can be too nice. You all know that person that's really annoying and people don't like simply because they're too nice? I'm scared all the time that that's me. Sometimes I truly think I'll become that. Now I know this seems weird, complaining about being nice, and maybe some of you are thinking "what is she going on about, she isn't nice", but it's not really about that. It's about the pressure. The feeling that other people expect me to be a certain way. When people ask me to do something, they expect it to get done and get done well, because that's how I do things. I'm capable and I like to help people out. And usually, I don't like to ask for help.
People like me are too proud. We know that we can do something, or at least we want to be able to, and we won't ask someone to help us. We'd rather do it or attempt to do it than admit that we want to be helped. Truthfully, I wish someone would come along and help with something. Anything. It'd just be nice if they could scratch one thing off the list so that I could breathe a little easier.
In this day and age, we're expected to do a lot of different things, mostly to boost our resumes so we can get into a good school. It's ridiculous. And it makes me feel like I have to do all of those things perfectly, including grades.
Everyone has these pressures, I know. I just feel like people act like it's super easy for me. The phrase "of course you are, Mackenzie," pertaining to just about anything, pisses me off. There's no "of course". I do a lot of work in everything that I do, and it exhausts me just as much as it does everyone else. Then you could argue that if I have time to write a blog, then I have too much time. This takes me about ten minutes to write, at most. And it's not really about the time. It's about the work, and the expectations. And the feeling that no matter how much I do I'm never going to be done.
This is all about being nice because through all this, I'm expected to be happy all the time? To never get mad at anyone? To be nice? I can't tell you how many times the first adjective used to describe me has been nice. Not smart, funny, pretty, or anything else. It's almost always nice.
It's not that people aren't nice to me. People are generally nice to me, so it's not one of those issues. It's just that I can picture most of my friends yelling at us for no reason and we'd shrug it off, but if I did that? I feel like I'd get strange stares. I try. I really do try to keep it together sometimes...but no one really seems to get it. This whole post is probably going to make no sense to anyone who reads it. Sometimes the things that go on inside my head don't want to stay there, and I want to scream at people for assuming that I'm fine, that I'm always nice, and that I don't do things wrong. Then again, this is called Inside My Mind A Moment, and the world is selfish, so what can I do?

"which is impossible, but what can you do?"-Company by Stephen Sondheim (book by George Furth)