If you know me, I want you to read this. I've spent a very long time being the person everyone expects me to be. The nice guy. The quiet guy. The guy who doesn't argue. The guy who doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. The guy who will listen, accommodate, explain himself, and let things slide. I've played that role for so long that people have started treating it like it's my personality rather than a choice. And I'm tired of it.
I don't want to be that version of myself anymore. That doesn't mean I've suddenly become an asshole. It doesn't mean I hate everyone. It doesn't mean I'm going to start treating people badly for no reason. It means I'm no longer going to bend myself into whatever shape makes other people comfortable.
If I don't like something, I might say I don't like it. If I don't want to talk to you, I might not talk to you. If I don't want your advice, I don't want your advice. If you keep commenting on my hair, my beard, my clothes, my choices, my career, my life, or anything else that has absolutely nothing to do with you, I might tell you to mind your own fucking business. And no, that doesn't make me disrespectful. You are not entitled to my silence just because you're used to me being polite.
There are people who have known me for years and still seem to think they have some kind of authority over who I'm supposed to be. You don't. My life isn't a committee decision. I don't owe anyone an explanation for why I look the way I do, what I study, what kind of work I want to do, where I want to live, what I want to build, or what I want my life to look like. And if I've been overly nice to you in the past, don't mistake that for permission to keep crossing my boundaries.
I've let a lot of things slide because I didn't want conflict. I've changed things about myself just to avoid annoying conversations. I've kept talking to people I didn't actually want in my life because I felt bad about cutting them off. I've worried far too much about whether someone would think I was rude, selfish, strange, arrogant, or whatever else. I'm done doing that.
If you are genuinely good to me, I'll be good to you. If you respect me, I'll respect you. If you care about me, I'll care about you. But if you repeatedly disrespect me, belittle me, invade my boundaries, or treat my kindness like an invitation to walk all over me, don't expect me to keep smiling and pretending everything is fine. You don't get unlimited access to me just because we've known each other for a long time.
And if I decide I don't want you in my life anymore, I'm not necessarily going to give you a ten-page explanation about why. Sometimes the explanation is simply: I don't want this relationship anymore. That's enough.
I've also thought a lot about leaving. Not disappearing. Not changing my identity. Not abandoning the people I genuinely care about. I mean moving somewhere completely new someday. Somewhere nobody knows me. Somewhere I don't have to carry around the reputation I've accumulated over the years. Somewhere nobody knows what I was like in school, nobody knows what everyone expected me to become, nobody knows what other people my age are doing and can use that to measure me, and nobody has already decided what kind of person I am. I could just exist. Meet people. Make new friends. Build things. Fuck around and find out. And introduce myself as whoever I actually am, rather than constantly being reminded of whoever I used to be.
That's probably why the whole Spider-Man metaphor made so much sense to me. I feel like I've been wearing a mask for a very long time. Everyone knows the mask. Very few people know the person underneath it. And I'm tired of being Spider-Man. I want to be Peter Parker. I want to be able to be myself without constantly calculating how everyone else is going to react. I want to be nice because I genuinely want to be nice—not because I'm afraid of what happens when I'm not. I want to be able to say no. I want to be able to say fuck off when someone genuinely deserves to hear it. I want to be able to walk away without feeling guilty.
And I want the people around me to understand something very simple:
So if you're someone who genuinely cares about me, nothing here should scare you. I'm still me. I'll still care about people. I'll still help people. I'll still joke around. I'll still be there for the people I love. But I'm not going to keep sacrificing my own peace just to maintain an image of myself that other people are comfortable with.
And if you're someone who has repeatedly treated me badly, crossed my boundaries, or thought my being nice meant you could do whatever you wanted—fuck off. Seriously. I'm not interested in revenge. I'm not interested in hating you. I'm not interested in proving anything to you. I just don't want you in my life anymore. And I'd much rather you understand that now than keep trying to force your way into a place where you are no longer welcome.
I'm not trying to become a different person. I'm trying to finally become a person I actually recognize as myself.
That's it.