In my short eighteen years of life, I have been exposed to a lot of hurt. I have been backstabbed, used, abused and lied to. It could be because I deserved it, it could be because of the situations I got myself involved in, or it could have simply been the fact that I want and try to save everyone. When I see hurt and pain within others that I have experienced myself, my first instinct is to help them. I found the light and I have always had the naive belief that everyone else can too. I choose to see the good in everyone, even if there is not much. You could run me over with a car but if I liked that you made me laugh I would forgive you. Totally illogical, right? Yeah, I learned this the hard way.

This may sound ignorant or just brutally honest but for some reason I am attracted to leeches. People always seem to want a piece of me because they know I will gladly give it to them. I am not proud of this. My caring nature is truly a blessing and a curse. I have received immense amounts of unconditional love because of it but unfortunately I have also received the same amount of disloyalty and betrayal.

I continued on this path of destruction until recently. I finally had enough. I deserved way more than this. I no longer wanted people in my life who only caused me hurt, pain, and toxicity.

One of the first things I did was pretty much a cost-benefit analysis of all of the people in my life. How much was it costing me internally to have a relationship with them? How much did it cost them to have a relationship with me? How much was I benefiting from the relationship? How much were they? I had finally decided to be selfish; something that my parents had always warned against. I could no longer put other people's needs before my own. This personal sacrifice had worn me down. I felt like a rag doll version of myself.

As I began this analysis I came to a few important realizations. One being that I was friends with people that I simply did not like. These people made me feel horrible about myself all of the time. It took a lot out of me to maintain friendships with these people but not much for them. I also felt like these "friends" were benefitting way more than I was by being my friend. I also realized that I deserved better friends. I deserved to hang out with people who I felt were there for me as much as I was there for them. I wanted to be around people who had a positive attitude instead of being constantly negative all of the time.

As hard as it was, making this decision was the best thing that I ever did for myself. I finally realized I was worth more than I was allowing myself to be.