You’re great, no, seriously, you are, but I’ve spent too much of my life putting other people’s opinions, ideas and feelings before my own.
Hmm, do I sound like a martyr? The thing is I don’t think I’m alone in this. We all are do it, don’t we? We all, at some point or other in our lives, look to someone else for answers. You start with your parents, of course, because to begin with, they do know more than you, even if it’s just the basics, like, why it’s a good idea not to put your hand onto an oven hob or cross a road without looking. As children, we were the centres of our own universes. What we did, what we thought, what we felt, was pretty much the beginning, middle and end of existence as far as we were concerned. I know I certainly felt that way. The first feelings of injustice I can remember were born out of my younger sister arriving on the scene. Until then, I had behaved like some sort of feudal lord, allowing family members to witness me eat or play with my toys, and whatever I did was fucking awesome, AWESOME. How could it not be? I was the first person ever to be doing that shit, as far as I was concerned. Then suddenly this tiny, cute, ball of attention grabbing-ness that looked like me, only an evil me of course, burst in and I was no longer the special one. How dare she? Worse than that, I was told by all and sundry that I was *responsible* for this little person somehow. Life would never be the same again. And it really wasn’t, but for all the right reasons.
