Growing up, we all hear that the best thing to do is to just "be yourself," but that is one of those things that is easier said than done. At least for some of us it is. No, I'm not saying that we've gone a couple of decades of our lives pretending to be someone we're not. But what I am saying is that sometimes, people use us to their advantage just because we're "nice."

Many of us are probably known as the people who can't say "no." When someone asks for a favor, we have a hard time turning them down, mostly because we just love helping people out. Regardless of how much we have on our own plate, we would rather lend a helping hand than "be selfish" and focus on ourselves. We hate being selfish. We hate doing things for ourselves. We hate being the center of attention. But sometimes hating all of those things becomes difficult. We start running out of time in the day to do our own work, eat a decent meal, or get a decent amount of sleep at night. We're not asking that people stop coming to us for help (again, we love helping people out), but if it isn't urgent, see if it can wait another day or even hour. Sometimes we just need a little bit of time to breathe for ourselves.

A lot of us are also too forgiving. We're not people who normally hold grudges, and when we do, you know you've done something bad - but even if we do hold grudges, they last for a month max. We just aren't the kinds of people who like staying mad at others. So we forgive people. Regardless of how hurt, betrayed, or disrespected we felt, we will find it in ourselves to forgive you. And depending on how painful it was, it may take us a little longer, but we will in the end. But sometimes, being forgiving makes life so much harder on us. It makes us so much more vulnerable than the average human being, and some people get the impression that we're naive, that we're setting ourselves up to get hurt all the time. And maybe that's true. Maybe we do set ourselves up to get hurt, but it's not because we're naive. It's because we love everyone we come in contact with, and it doesn't make sense to us to have bad relationships with them. So we forgive. But when people start to realize that they can push us around and make us feel small without getting any backlash, they do it more often. But we're too forgiving to do anything about it, so we just let it keep happening.

It gets to the point where we feel like its a burden, being nice. It's hard when we get to that realization that people take our traits for granted. And whether they know they're doing it or not, it hurts. It makes us feel like we aren't human, like we're just other people's tools to get them what they want. 

I've gone through 19 years being the person that I am. I've gone through 19 years of doing the nice thing because that's just what I do; it's who I am. But 19 years has left me burnt out, tired, torn, and in pain. It's like I have to convince myself that being who I am is worth it, but I know that it will be worth it because being who I am is what makes me happy. 

This isn't an article meant to have anyone to take pity on the nice people in the world. It's for our sanity. So for the sake of all those worn out, nice people in the world, remember that we are all human, too. We all have feelings, and sometimes, we need time for ourselves whether we like it or not. We take so much time and effort to make sure that we consider everyone else's feelings and situations, and I think it's time that people start doing that for us, too.