Cougars and blouses oh my!

I had the weirdest dream last night, I dreamt that I was sick, so I went to a hospital, and that the doctor was really a tattoo artist. The weird part was that I asked him to draw a cougar on my left thigh. The problem was that he ended up drawing a HUGE cougar on me that spanned both my thighs. In my dream I looked in the mirror at my tattooed thighs and thought “this all happened because I was too weak to say no”. This is all very symbolic according to the website I ran to for advice this morning! Apparently something that started out as a small “game” to me has ended up as a permanent mark on me that I feel could have been avoided had I said no early on. I could think of a dozen things that the dream applies to through out my whole life. I have always been hesitant of saying NO to someone, not because I’m scared of them or because I’m such a wimp…even though I guess I am, but because I truly do not want to hurt their feelings. This applies to me when I was five or fifteen. When I was five and my mom insisted on me wearing a white puffy short sleeve blouse to school instead of me saying I don’t want to wear that shirt, I would just cry, and cry and when she would ask me why I would say nothing scared that she would be hurt. When I was older and my friends wanted me to do stuff I was not so comfortable doing I would do it anyways because I did not want to be the one to ruin anybody’s time! I would stay quiet and than later on lament my having done the things I did but mostly feel guilty because of the fraud that I really was. I look at myself now and to no great surprise I am that same five year old. Who just can’t bear to make anyone upset because of her, so I work extra for no extra pay, or even though I get to work early so that I can eat breakfast and read the news at my leisure, when my boss asks me to do something mid bite I still get up and go do what ever I am told. My roommate has eaten about 20 boxes of my cereal and other food, yet I still act all BFF with her. Not one peep out of me, instead I run home and cry with my puffy white blouse. Don’t get me wrong I have tried to stop this self-defeating behavior I try my No from time to time. Ex: when my father insisted on discussing my divorce, and by discuss I mean badger me till I want to jam the jalapeño in my eye, I said “NO I don’t want to talk about that.” Later on I called my mother completely upset that I might have hurt his feelings, but still I said NO. When my boss came in the other day while I was munching on my cereal and he wanted me to do something, twenty minutes before I even had to be there, I said “Sure, I will definitely do that when I’m done.” Moral of the story? Just say “NO” than go home and cry.