This post is dedicated to my friend, confidant, and dare I say soulmate. I’m sorry I can’t be there for you like you are for me.
“Does this dress make me look fat?" This question ambushed me while on another of my “thifting” outings. The woman with dress in hand was a stocky, healthy looking black woman (think Serena Williams) with a beach blonde afro. She said she was fifty years old but the way her jeans clinched to her body, I would swear she was 35. Black don’t crack you know. And oh how optimism was she. This woman wanted this dress badly, but in typical female fashion, she needed a bit of reassurance before taking the plunge.
But the dress in question did nothing for her shape. It was matronly. And any woman would had a blonde afro was not matronly. So there I was, her 6 foot, beefy, frame hovering over me, hope gleaming through her eyes craving that I would instantly agree with her and say the dress was stunning and would make her look like Halle Berry. Or something like that.
So this leads me to question for you ladies. Can you be too nice? Well there are a few things that you can never have too much of like chocolate or novels, niceness is definitely something that can overfloweth in your cup. It can be a silent killer, trapping you in relationships, romantic or otherwise, that are stale, toxic, or even abusive. And while it is rewarding to go out of your way for someone, the danger lurks when they are a permanent negative spot on your bright shirt of life.
Another type of niceness danger zone can also slowly corrode into something more malignant: when someone is in your life and they are not necessary. They don’t harm you in obvious ways, they are just a distraction. They prevent you from focusing energy on the productive while they happily sip on your spirit. Akin to a semi-tolerable toothache, you can bare the pain and drain they bring. They just make life a lot suckier.
I really don't think I am a genuinely nice person to be honest. I am nice because I am scared not to. When you are nice to people, you expect them to be nice back. You expect them to see your worth and value as a person. You expect they will give you what you want. But life has shown me that being nice guarantees none of that. A lot of times I am nice just so I can be validated as a person, get what I want, and spare any kind of conflict. I don’t think I am alone in that.
But it is ok to say no. I make my own worth. Not my actions alone. And I don’t have to be nice and sacrifice the truth in the process. Sometimes being “nice” requires a bold face lie because you don’t want to be responsible for hurting someone’s feelings. But in this case, it is not really about them, it’s about you. Nice girls don’t like feeling at fault so we sometimes make up a fantasy. Yes, we sometimes call them “little white lies”, but I can say from experience those tend to grow into big, giant, holy shiitake mushroom fabrications because you never learn how to say no to little things. And by you, I mean me. I have hurt a lot of people because I thought I was being nice and sparing them from the truth.
However, a dear friend of mine planted a seed which is slowly starting to flourish when he said, “Hurt me with the truth, but don’t betray me with lies.”
But back to that woman with the dress. I thought for a second and decided to be nice in a different way. I was upfront with her. I told her she should save her money on something that flatters her figure better. Sure, my fear made the worst case scenario to be her cursing me out for having no tastes and disagreeing with her. But she didn’t. She didn’t buy the dress either. And I felt like a real nice person that day.
