“No.” For a word that’s only two letters long, it’s the most difficult one for me to say. In my family and small hometown, selflessness was something to aspire to. I was taught to never say no whenever anyone asked for anything because that’s just what a good person did. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about being a kind person and helping people! However, somewhere along the line, the idea of not saying no led to the internalization that other people’s needs are, simply put, more important than my own.
Whether in relation to covering a shift at work, making plans to see someone, or helping my neighbors, I say yes if I don’t have a legitimate excuse. It’s not that I’m unwilling to do things, I’ve just become completely incapable of saying no to people. And in the rare pre-pandemic moments where I have been able to say no, I still feel compelled to give a reason why. Now, thanks to COVID-19, I have become more comfortable saying no to people, but that’s largely due to the fact I now had a widely accepted reason to not be able to do something, and I could say it through a screen rather than in person. But with the end of the pandemic in sight, I had to come to terms with the fact that I could not rely on COVID-19 as an excuse anymore.
As the transition to a post-pandemic world began, I knew I had a lot on my plate entering my first real semester of college on campus. My academic obligations alone included a full double-major course load, volunteering for my honors seminar, three honors classes, and working as a peer advising assistant while also trying to find clubs and organizations to join. And on top of all that, I was also trying to maintain a quasi-relationship with someone I had started seeing over the last half of summer. From an objective standpoint, balancing this would be a lot to ask of anyone, but I was determined to make it work. (Spoiler alert: I couldn’t!) It wasn’t until sometime around the third or fourth week of the semester that I reached my breaking point. I just couldn’t give 110% of myself to all of these different areas of my life.
I FaceTimed my older sister in a panic one night, stressing over how I couldn’t handle the time and effort it took to maintain being with someone along with all my academic obligations this semester. After listening to me give numerous reasons for why I thought I couldn’t end things with the person I’d been seeing, she stopped me and gave me some words of wisdom that changed my perspective on everything. “Natalie,” she said. “It’s okay to put yourself first. This is your life. Stop being so concerned about the way it might impact him and take a look at how it’s affecting you now. You don’t need to make excuses for putting yourself and your academics first. You’re not living for him, or me, or mom and dad, or anyone else, you’re living for you. Be selfish.”
And that’s when everything clicked. My sister was right. I had no obligation to give reasons or excuses for saying no to someone or something, and I certainly didn’t need to apologize for putting myself and my health first. I’d been so caught up in the consequences of saying no to others that I neglected to realize the harm not saying it had on me. It takes a certain amount of courage to say no to others, but saying no to yourself takes a lot more. Breaking things off with the guy I had been seeing was more difficult than anticipated, but it was a necessary step for the sake of my own health and well-being. Yes, there’s beauty in selflessness and doing things for others, but there’s also beauty and power in putting yourself first and being, dare I say it, selfish.
The word selfish has a lot of negative connotations, but I’ve been trying to reclaim and redefine it. To me, selfishness is not something bad. Selfish is doing what’s best for you in that moment, and putting yourself first ahead of others because this is your life. Now I wish I could say I’ve become an expert at listening to myself and putting my own needs first, but that would be a lie. I still find it incredibly difficult to choke out that silly two letter word, whether to myself or anyone else, and unlearning years of selflessness is no easy feat. But at the same time, I owe it to myself, and all the past versions of myself, to be selfish and put my needs first.
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