Compromises?!

This weekend was truly a learning experience for me.
I'm never sure whether having to go through certain learning processes are worth the lesson.
You know what I mean?
Sometimes I do things, just to try them out, and then I ask myself afterwards: Why did you have to compromise your integrity - your beliefs that way?
But at the time it didn't seem that way. At the time I just wasn't sure what I wanted or what was right or wrong. I can be so focused on being easy going and just trying things out that I don't even realize that something is wrong.
For example, I never learned how to be angry.
There are things that should make me mad! Raging mad... but they don't.
And afterward I wonder why I had to behave that way, because in retrospect it was 103% stupid.

But I'm so fixated on being liked that I forget myself. I forget who I am and what I stand for. I forget that I don't have to live by other people's standards.
I'm not going to forget anymore. Because it doesn't matter what other people think.
They don't have to live with my conscience. I do.
And I'm sick of putting those people first, those people that don't care one bit about me, who would drop me in a second and never look back. I don't need them in my life.

My friend Alice told me the other day that life is the worst kind of teacher because you learn the lesson after the test.
But then you know ... let me tell you... i know