I used to be a people pleaser, but as I started understanding and trying to get rid of my internalized bigotry and toxic attitudes, I basically managed to channel the misplaced empathy from people taking advantage of me to marginalized people

Of course there were shitloads of other factors to growing a spine, but when it finally came to cutting off people, I didn’t feel any guilt because it was easy to see how misplaced the empathy had been