sugar honey iced tea
Do you ever worry about being disliked and wanting to know why?
In 6th grade, someone I befriended told me that initially she thought I was “a bitch” because I wore makeup, but when she got to know me, I wasn’t that at all.
Throughout my life, I’ve been made aware that I have a resting bitch face, which is true, and makes me come across perpetually pissed off. I also have a rather monotone voice, which makes me come across as annoyed or uninterested at times. I’m also rather direct and I need more alone time and prefer to work alone (not necessarily a tEaM pLaYeR), so I have the perfect combination to look like someone that thinks others are beneath her. Oops.
Some others didn’t like me over good grades, as stereotypical as that sounds. Admittedly, during school years I could come across like a know-it-all, so I get it retrospectively. My mother and some others sometimes accused me of making others feel stupid, even though that wasn’t my intention at all. That made me stop infodumping to people or correcting them.
Some people have started treating me worse after seeing what I look like or what hobbies I am into. There’s people out there who haven’t found their interests yet or struggle a lot with executive function, so someone pursuing an interest productively where they can see it or at least hear about it is pouring salt in an open wound, unbeknownst to the hobby person. In the past, sometimes I have been the bitter person struggling with finding things I am interested in, so I understand. I also have some interests and lifestyle things that make others feel guilty and they feel the need to punish me for that.
Multiple times, I have been told that from the outside I am intimidating because “I seem like I have it all together” (which must sound so unfitting with how much of my illness struggles I have shared on here, but that was before all that). Others said I was intimidating because of how quickly I befriended people in a space online, or how others in an online space reacted to me. There was envy about how close I got to specific people or how people tended to reacted to my messages while ignoring others. Things I did were praised more, or upvoted more, than others who were similar. I was perceived as more funny or more eloquent and made people accidentally feel inferior. People noticed that I never got rejected romantically.
These examples are there to say: you shouldn’t sweat it if people don’t like you and for what reasons, if you even know them. I know we’re usually dying to know why because in our minds, it must be something serious that maybe we should consider changing; and maybe occasionally it is, but in my experience, most of the time it is completely arbitrary and meaningless stuff, maybe even things you cannot change or shouldn’t. It often has more to do with them than you; their own wishes, goals, insecurities, their comparisons between your different stages and progress in life. Occasionally, people just want to humble you because they think you have it too good. Or it’s like with bands: once more people like them, there’s a subset of fans who will now hate them on principle.
I remember when a coworker I had at a part time job started being bitter and lowkey making fun of me for doing yoga before work back then. That was usually mixed in with complaints about how she is always late to everything, snoozes the alarm a couple times, and only gets up 10 minutes before she has to leave - at best. So it makes sense that others having better time management would be a sensitive topic for her.
At my current workplace, I’ve had people talk negatively about my choice to study parttime next to work despite this being very common where I work and multiple others in my department who do it or have finished their degree. The people who talked like that have no intention of doing a degree; at least that’s what they say. Who knows, maybe they’re a little bit sad they can’t pursue it due to personal or financial issues, and seeing someone do that is making them feel like they’re missing out.
Maybe they’d like you if you had met 5 years earlier or later. Or there is no reason at all, and that’s fair. It’s like that sentence I see floating around sometimes… “Why do you expect to be liked by everyone, you don’t even like everyone.”
It’s not the end of the world. I don’t like some people simply because they give me a bad feeling and I think there is something sinister about them, like a gut feeling that they’ll soon do something bad or something will be revealed about them. But can I pinpoint what it is or why? No, and they haven’t yet done anything wrong. I just keep my distance and keep quiet about it. Sometimes I don’t like being around people when they remind me of past versions of me, or current weaknesses of mine. In the past, I didn’t like being confronted with someone doing so much better in something I wanted to be good at as well. Nowadays I have the strength to befriend them and learn, but it wasn’t always like that.
So if you feel like you have to deeply worry about what’s wrong with you, maybe this perspective helps. Most of the time, it’s a complete nothingburger and even people you personally like are disliked by others.
If you are curious about the title, it's from the song Sugar Honey Iced Tea by Princess Nokia.
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Published 08 Jan, 2025