Striving For Acceptance

My mind is a constant flow of thoughts and emotions. I swear to God it never stops. Ever. It drives me crazy sometimes, especially when I can’t even figure out what I am thinking about or what made me burst into tears or cause a smile to appear on my face. Then there are the times when I can follow my thought process perfectly and know exactly what is running through it.

Recently my thoughts have been overtaken by dance, love and acceptance. I have done a lot of thinking on a certain dance teacher. He came into my life 2 years ago in the 2011 school year and I had him through January of this year. Since then I realized how shitty he treated me. He acted like he cared about me and wanted to see me get far so I worked towards those good feelings from him to me. He is a teacher who picks his favorites and focuses solely on them. I strove so hard to be one of his favorites. And occasionally I would get there. There were classes were he loved me. There were classes where he hated me and I came home crying and so upset with myself and had the lowest confidence in the world. Why did I put up with this? Why? There were other teachers out there who cared about me, loved me, and TRULY wanted to see me get far in dance. There were teachers who would focus attention equally among the students in their class. But I stuck close to this teacher’s side. I wanted so badly to be one of his favorites that I was willing to do anything in the dance world for him. I gave up so much of my own time to “help” him with different productions and I felt honored to do so. I loved it when he would compliment me on my quick thinking brain and good memory. But in the end that is all that he used me for. He actually used me for my good memory. He didn’t really care that I had it for my own sake but for his and everyone else’s. I would help everyone else stay together because of what I brought to class through intelligence not my dancing. But I wanted his attention, and his love so I stuck it out. I thought it made sense at the time because hey, at least he was paying attention to me, right? Wrong. I was soo wrong. I hate myself now for doing that. I am SO upset that I did not realize it sooner. I should not have put up with that kind of behavior from someone who clearly should know better than to treat a teenager that way. But I did. I stuck with it. I strove for his acceptance and that was the only way it could be obtained.

The more I think of this teacher and how he treated me the more I realize that this is just what I do. I seek love, compassion, friendship and acceptance from anyone and everyone around me. I want people to see me as a good person. Someone who they can always come to. Someone who will drop whatever she is doing to be there for the other person. But in the end I give up way too much in my own life and end up jeopardizing my future to do so. I put up with too much shit to obtain what I want from other people. A lot of the guys who I have had “things” with have treated me like straight shit in one way or another. But I put up with it for the occasional times where they show me love and friendship. Those are the moments I focus on as rationale to put up with their other behaviors and treatments. I regret it later on, but usually much much later on. I don’t realize I’m doing it until after. I hate myself for doing this because I need to find some self respect through it all. Instead I just want others to see me as a good person which tears me down in the end.