The Phoenix Diaries: The Chapter Where I Started Disliking More People

A completely unapologetic dislike list, the spiritual gift of knowing within fourteen seconds, and why my Irish Mammy was right all along

Phoenix Diaries
Personal stories of transformation, heartbreak, and rebuilding from ground zero.

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I have developed, in my mid-forties, a completely unapologetic dislike list. Nobody asked for this. Here we are.

Women are supposed to be understanding, compassionate, evolved, soft around the edges, full of grace and emotionally intelligent while drinking herbal tea.

Meanwhile, I’m developing the spiritual gift of walking into a room and knowing within fourteen seconds who’s going to drain the absolute life out of me.

My body simply issues an internal memo. Absolutely the feck not. And I trust that instinct now, because I spent years overriding it.

I adapted myself to environments, people, expectations, marriage, productivity culture, emotionally unavailable men, emotionally chaotic family members, loud personalities mistaken for depth, and people who performed authenticity as if they were auditioning for a TED Talk nobody asked for.

I smiled through things my nervous system was begging me to run from.

These days, my body rejects things faster than a toddler rejects olives.

Which is fitting, because I also reject olives. Vehemently. Europe has taken this personally.

The older I get, the less interested I am in pretending. Pretending I enjoy certain conversations. Pretending I want to stay longer than I do. Pretending someone’s energy doesn’t feel like being trapped beside a man on a plane who wants to explain cryptocurrency before takeoff.

Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash

I used to think adaptability was maturity. Turns out a lot of it was self-abandonment in a nice outfit.

Now, before anyone panics, this isn’t me becoming bitter. I still love people deeply. Probably too deeply. I cry at old couples holding hands while walking. I’ve had entire emotional experiences over strangers laughing together in cafés.

But I’ve become deeply intolerant of certain dynamics. Manipulation. Liers. Passive aggression. People who confuse chaos for personality. People who leave you feeling like you need a nap and a priest afterwards.

And public spitting.

Sweet suffering Jesus.

Public spitting needs to end immediately. Straight to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

I don’t know when society collectively decided we should all calmly witness grown men launching bodily fluids onto the pavement like malfunctioning llamas, but I reject it entirely. Every time someone does it near me, my soul leaves my body and starts walking home without me.

My dislikes have become very specific lately. Networking events where everyone says “circle back.” People who brag about how busy they are like they’re competing in the Exhaustion Olympics. People who take phone calls on speaker in public as though the rest of us gathered specifically to hear about Karen’s situation with the landlord.

I used to override myself constantly. Stayed longer than I wanted. Said yes when my entire body was screaming so loudly it could be heard in the Himalayas.

Women are trained into this strange performance of agreeability. Be easygoing. Don’t be difficult. Smile. Don’t say you dislike things too loudly, or people might think you’re negative. Meanwhile, half of us are internally screaming in tapas restaurants while chewing olives we never wanted in the first place.

I’m no longer available for that.

The older I get, the more immediate my body becomes. Before my brain catches up, my body already knows. It knows when someone is lying, when a room feels off, when I’m abandoning myself to keep the peace, when something looks good on paper but feels dead in my chest.

For years, I ignored those signals.

Now they arrive like a very stern Irish Mammy standing in the kitchen doorway saying: “Absolutely not, Tanya, catch yourself on.”

She’s usually right.

I think this is what happens in the second act. Your tolerance shrinks, your intuition sharpens, and your body gets so loud that pretending not to hear it becomes its own kind of exhausting. Things you once ignored now feel unbearable. This is just what honesty looks like when it stops being polite about it.

Sometimes growth looks like saying: that dynamic is unhealthy, that person exhausts me, that lifestyle is overrated, and I no longer want to abandon myself to participate in it.

There’s a freedom in that. Slightly ungovernable.

Also, olives still taste like salty little betrayal buttons.

Some things simply are what they are.

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Tell me…

What's on your unapologetic dislike list? Public spitting? Circle back? Someone explaining cryptocurrency before takeoff?

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