i just feel like i spent my adolescence/teen years figuring out how to read others. how to predict their emotions, how to receive validation. i spent all those years learning those skills, so focused on them that i didn’t have time to learn or develop my own personality. and now, here i am in my 20’s, when a lot of people my age are building on their interpersonal skills and figuring out what they want from life, i’m stuck trying to spot behavior patterns that aren’t genuine and were made for people pleasing (but have become second nature), and learn who i actually am. 

it feels like i am light years behind people my age. i keep trying to use radical acceptance about how i grew up and what it did to my emotional development, but it just is so damn embarrassing to not know what my priorities, beliefs, boundaries are at almost 24 years old. and to have to dissect my behavior/reactions and figure out what is genuine versus what my people-pleasing emotions tell me. it’s almost like i don’t even know how to be genuine. and i have to learn and it’s hard.