What I wish I’d known before I said ‘yes’…
I have been self-diagnosed with a syndrome, the yes-to-all- syndrome; characterised by my habitually inclined tendency to say ‘yes’ to almost anything. I get unwillingly swept into seemingly consensual circumstances, that I woefully regret.
‘If you can’t say no, your yes means nothing’: said a guest speaker, at my secondary school. These words struck a chord with me, but I have no idea what the original context of those words were, as that’s the only thing I can remember from the entire presentation. I say ‘yes’ to almost anything; hence a ‘yes’ that escapes my lips, is but a hallow phonetic shell with no semantic value. Subsequently, my ‘yes’ is worth a collective nada, nichts & rien!
In some ways, ‘yes’ is like a single domino piece in a long chain (of regret), one ‘yes’ often leads to another one — and soon I find myself neck deep in water — nay entirely submerged in water, trapped, rolling around, on the seabed, my tears merging with the ocean which surrounds me. I’ve considered DIY’ing a ‘by yes I mean NO’ slogan, to hang around my neck, but I’d still perform a ‘yes’; the irony would be too much bare.
Unfortunately, majority of the time, living in the affirmative doesn’t lead me to ‘amazing’, life ‘transforming’ experiences like Jim Carrey, in ‘Yes Man’. I have a terrible fear of heights, and yet I’ve found myself on dangerously fast rollercoasters and climbing the 533 steps up the Cologne Cathedral bell tower; PTSD is a close companion after such activities. I’d have four deadlines loitering on the horizon of tomorrow and my little niece could request a bed-sheet forte and my answer would be ‘yes’. A black-market drug lord may ask me, to sell my kidneys to him for 5 magic beans and I’d probably say ‘yes’. I have a problem.
After some contemplation, I’ve managed to narrow my yeses into five, often interconnecting categories:
1) Reflex yes, because I am indecisive?
2) Misplaced priority yes, in favour of jumping on the procrastination wagon straight to whatever hare-brained idea or wild goose-chase you so propose.
3) Carpe diem yes, for the laughs and potential adventure.
4)The deontological yes, pulled by the strings of moral duty.
5) The invertebrate yes, because I’m a spineless jellyfish who is incapable of enunciating an assertive ‘no’.
I’ve gotten myself into a lot of uncomfortable, agitating circumstances with this. From the ‘yes’ to my bored hairdresser’s request to go HAM on my hair instead of a slight trim; to the ‘yes’ to my friend, which resulted in a spontaneous, utterly random tattoo which I had to fabricate an entirely bs meaning around to make it seem less pathetic; having studied English Literature at A levels I was fortunately well-qualified for the task.
You’d be an abhorrent pest and I’d deeply detest your very existence, but ask a favour & I’d grudgingly oblige with a simple ‘yes’. My friends have a bet going, whether in 10-years’ time they’d find me in an awkward marriage, simply because I can’t say ‘no’. I don’t know why I can’t say ‘no’, it’s one letter shorter than ‘yes’. It is also less committing, and being the lazy sloth I am, it should appeal to me more. It’s like having Tourette’s disorder, but I am constricted to blurting out an irretrievable ‘yes’ every time someone asks me a question.
The only time, I say ‘no’, is in conjunction with a passive aggressive ‘I’m fine’ in response to my bf’s prompt of ‘Is something wrong?’. Ironically, unknown to my oblivious bf that translates to an overwhelming ‘yes’, you pissed me off.
But it’s not all bad, my inability to say ‘no’ has moulded my outlook on life. I’d like to think it has made me open-minded- more out of need over choice. It has also landed me with a lovely bf who l’d have otherwise said ‘no’ to after the first date. -Which is a story for another time.
