Holy shit, I'm a hardcore people-pleaser.

To understand where I'm coming from in this post, I want you to first read this blog post from Let's Queer Things Up.

I..... Holy shit. This is so true it hurts a little.

Totally fits with my pattern of shitty exes. The first one left me so desperate for approval that I let the second one treat me like garbage so I could make it up to him (because he always made me feel like his anger was my fault) and then repeat the cycle. I hid so much unhappiness in both of those relationships because I wanted the people around me to think that I was happy. Confessing my unhappiness to the people who loved me would make them sad, and I didn't want to make them sad, so I kept it to myself.

Boundaries? What are those?

The summer I was 16 I kissed my boyfriend for the first time. The teenage hormones and the excitement led from gentle kisses to heavy making out. At the time, I was waiting to have sex until I was married. We played around at second base a lot, and I always enjoyed it in the moment, but I was riddled with confusion afterwards.  I knew I needed to tell him that I wasn't sure I was comfortable with it and that I definitely didn't want to go any further - to make my boundaries clear - but I was terrified. I was too young and naive to fully understand why I was afraid to talk to him - he was nowhere near abusive, and I'm sure the worst he'd have done would have been breaking up with me if he really wanted to go further - but I see now that I was fawning.  That conversation might have made him unhappy, so I simply didn't talk about it. Instead, I avoided him for the rest of the summer until my best friend finally told me that breaking up with him was the right thing to do, both for myself and for him. I'm still kind of sorry that I let it end that way.

The next time I knew that I needed to set boundaries for myself, I wasn't sure where I needed them to be, and I told him exactly that.  Simply saying "I need boundaries but I don't know what they are right now, so please be patient with me while I figure them out" was fucking HUGE for me. But didn't give me the space I needed, and I let things happen on his terms anyway because it didn't make sense to me to stir the pot by saying "I shouldn't be texting you several times a day every day, and I'm not comfortable with you starting a conversation with 'hey sexy'" when I liked him so much.

When he asked me to be his girlfriend (via text message), I knew I was not ready to say yes. It wasn't that I wanted to date other people or "keep my options open" - I simply was not emotionally ready to be in a committed relationship. But I couldn't imagine telling him that, especially not via text message.  So I fawned and said yes. This ended up setting the stage for seven months of doing whatever it took to keep him happy.  He'd get mad at me over some bullshit, we'd fight via text message, I'd dwell on it and plan what I had to say to his face to make it okay, I'd go over there, and he'd initiate passionate sex before I could say a word.  Did I ever ask him to stop so we could talk first? Absolutely not. That would upset him. I liked the sex, and I liked him seeming so passionate, and I liked not having difficult conversations. So I let it keep happening until it broke me.

There is one difference between me and Sam Dylan Finch: I don't back away from my healthy relationships. I do tend to vent to a selection of them, as the Sam said is common among fawners.  I was venting to my best friend of over ten years when I realized that I had to break up with my then-boyfriend. My best friend burst into angry tears and shouted "Kate he doesn't treat you right." All I could do in the moment was also burst into tears, hug her, and tell her how lucky I was to have a friend like her. I have always been grateful to have her as a friend. I am eternally grateful that her reaction to whatever garbage I was telling her about made me see how right she was and decide to stop taking the garbage from him, even if it meant breaking up with him.

But there was a tiny part of me, the fawning people-pleaser, that was ashamed that I'd made her cry. She had her own struggles and her own garbage to deal with - how dare I worry her so with my problems? That's not something that I've ever dwelled on or continued to feel guilty about, but it was definitely there in the bottom of my gut and it illustrates the amount a people-pleaser will suppress in order to avoid making others unhappy.

I'm not really sure where this stems from. The original author suggests that a chaotic and/or abusive childhood often leads to fawning, but I grew up very, very far from abuse. Yes, my parents argued, and I suppose it's possible that when I told myself "I'm never going to get a divorce" I unconsciously made the decision to let myself be bendable, to make myself cave in order to keep the peace.  It'd probably take a therapist to confirm that theory or to uncover anything else that breeds fawning tendencies.

I've got a happy ending - well, not ending because I'm not dead and don't plan to be for quite some time - so a happy next chapter, if you will. I actually took time to sort myself out between romantic relationships. I got confident enough in myself that, when I dated someone who was pretty in to me but the feeling wasn't mutual, I didn't make myself believe that I owed him a relationship.  I let myself be an individual instead of a mirror, and I broke it off with him.

Shortly before that, I was hooking up with someone who I knew to be 100% wrong for me. I didn't fawn to please him, didn't tell myself that it was okay to be with a pessimist, didn't decide to settle for him just because he was there and showing a spark of interest. The second I saw that spark fade, I stopped trying to initiate anything and I let the fling flicker out into nothingness.

And now? I have an amazing boyfriend. One who has never once made me feel like I had to mold myself to meet his needs - we have always naturally been a great fit. And all those red flags for abusive relationships that I see on social media - the lists of behaviors that each of my serious exes line up with oh so well - are completely unrelatable for him. Any time I'm unnecessarily emotional (from my own internal logical perspective), rather than ignore me or tell me I'm being silly or to stop crying or any other emotionally abusive bullshit, he'll ask what I need to feel better right now. My response is usually just for him to hold me for a while, and he is perfectly happy to do so. (He's usually already holding me when he asks, and we just snuggle in and get more comfortable.)  Conflict between us is nearly nonexistent. Not because I deny my own boundaries, wants, or needs, but because most of those things align for us - or because he is willing to work with me to find a compromise when they don't.

I am going to make efforts to keep an eye out for fawning behaviors now that I have a word for them. At work, with friends, with family, and with my boyfriend, just to make sure I don't fall back into old habits.  Caving to other people and putting myself at the bottom of my list is so 2017 Kate. 2018 Kate started getting over that shit, and 2019 Kate is going to continue to work even harder at making sure 2020 Kate and beyond makes her boundaries and needs clear to others - even if those boundaries and desires aren't what the people around me might like best. 🍓💙

Ode to Medicaid

I want to take some time to talk about how much I appreciate Michigan's Medicaid program as it currently stands in 2019.

This isn't a tragic story filled with needs for life-saving care and nights laying awake worried about how I was going to afford my life-saving medication.  I am thankful everyday that I do not have any conditions that require daily medicine or emergency backups.

This is simply a story of an average healthy person, struggling to find full-time employment, who wanted to make sure she was functionally healthy while she was struggling financially.

As a woman, I see my gynecologist every year to make sure that my breasts are lump-free and that my ovaries and uterus are cyst-free.  The timing worked out so that I didn't need a pap smear while I was on Medicaid, but I do stay up to date with that exam as well.

I also visited my gynecologist for a full STD panel (vaginal swab + blood work) between sexual partners to make sure I wasn't putting the next person at risk.

Again, I visited my gynecologist to talk about issues with excessive bleeding - we're talking 40+ days straight of menstruation.  The result is my business but it was definitely necessary to seek medical treatment on that one.

I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned for the first time in over nine years.  As a new patient, I also got a full set of X-rays.  Four small holes were discovered in my teeth, so they were filled in.

When I had a random episode of vertigo that was so bad I could barely walk across the hall to the bathroom, I went (having gotten a ride) to urgent care.  Thankfully it was just fluid trapped in my ears after a cold, so I bought some antihistamines.

I got my flu shot and thankfully avoided catching the flu - a bigger challenge for someone working retail during the holidays.

I also got the Hepatitis B vaccine when there was an outbreak traced back to a restaurant I'd dined at and thankfully avoided catching that disease, too.

When I had a cough lingering for a whole week after getting over a cold, I went to urgent care to ensure that it wasn't something more serious.  I was prescribed a nasal spray and an antihistamine - which Medicaid thankfully covered, since even store brands can be $20 or more, and my $10/hour, 16-hour work weeks left me with very little emergency money.

When that cough lasted a full month even with the nasal spray and antihistamines, I finally sought out a GP.  (I hadn't had a regular doctor or an annual physical since I outgrew my pediatrician.)  She gave me the peace of mind that my cough was allergy-related triggered by the cold I'd caught, prescribed me a cough suppressant, and also sent me to the lab for bloodwork to see if I was anemic (related to the excessive menstruation, not the cough).

When a bug bite turned dark purple and red, and had lines of bruise color streaming down towards my ankle, I rushed to urgent care to have it looked at.  Thankfully it wasn't a tick bite or Lyme disease, but a simple infection.  I was prescribed both an antibiotic pill and a cream to treat it.

When frequent headaches and eye fatigue started to set in, I got an eye exam to see if my prescription had changed.  It had, and I would have gotten a new pair of glasses completely covered, except that my exam ended up taking place on the last day of Medicaid coverage before my insurance from my new full-time job started up.

100% of these services and prescriptions were 100% covered for me.  The situations I've laid out took place across almost two years of me being underemployed and underpaid, and thanks to Medicaid, I never had to worry about how I was going to afford any of these office visits or prescriptions.

I guess I have a few main points here:

1) Medicaid is actually good health coverage and I am eternally grateful to the state for supporting me when I was down. 

2) Please do not talk down to or about people who are on Medicaid.  Many of them are people like me - people who are trying desperately to find full-time employment with health benefits, but for reasons that are personal to them have been unsuccessful.  (Bear in mind, too, that some of these people are working 40 or more hours per week, but spread across 2 or more jobs.)

3) Please do not vote Medicaid away.  I can't imagine what I would have done without the coverage that I had in the last 2 years.  Don't do that to people who rely on the system for support.

4) Please don't make the "I don't want MY tax dollars supporting ____!" complaint when it comes to Medicaid.  I mean, I hate that argument in general, but when you're talking about the health and the lives of your fellow statesmen, it's just incomprehensible to me that anyone would complain about contributing 2.9% of their salary for that.  That's less than three cents per dollar.  For every $100 you make, you're contributing only $2.90 towards the people you share a state with to have health insurance.  Please be a compassionate enough person to be okay with that tax.