Bittersweet Candy Bowl

bf to the rescue

I’d say poor Mike, but he did dig his own grave with Sandy. It’s good to see that James cares about him though.

I mean, regardless of who built the grave, its still ok to be sad someone is lying in it.

Beautifully put

Oh James...sweet sweet James...

I have a feeling Mike is going to knock him out.

Or it will remind Mike that he has second chances. Honestly mike seems to be trying to make changes and apologize so he can move on.

Let's just hope Mike realizes Lucy needs distance from him now. Now that he's genuinely apologized, there's really nothing else he can do at this point. If Lucy wants to reconnect after Mike gets his life together, and thats a BIG if, that'll be her call, not Mike's.

James: I just want to tell you that I was able to capture Ash's Pikachu, so we got to get to the Meowth balloon and get out of here right now!

Mike: Huh?

Ugh I wish I could say I don't know this feeling... but every "nice" person has to learn this lesson eventually, usually the hard way.

When you spend all of your energy trying to make everyone else happy and put their needs and feelings before your own, ironically, you become a very good liar. Denying other's perceived happiness or needs feels like active harm, and because you're constantly in harm-reduction mode (since you want EVERYONE around you to like you and be happy ALL THE TIME) you'll say whatever it takes in the moment to keep someone on your side.

But not only is this unsustainable from a personal level (since your own needs aren't being met), life is too complicated for this strategy to work in the long term. Eventually you're going to hurt someone, both because people hurt each all the time without meaning it, but also because you can't always say "yes" to one person without saying "no" to another.

And for a perpetual people pleaser knowing there's someone out there in pain, and in pain (at least to your understanding) because of YOU, is mental torture. You'll find yourself desperately trying to make it better, and when that (almost certainly) fails, you'll become miserable beating yourself up about it. Or you'll become resentful, because can't everyone see how hard you're trying???



But none of this resentment or self-loathing accomplishes anything. The person you hurt isnt any less hurt because you're miserable, and in the meantime, you've lost the one thing you've built your entire self-concept on. It only takes one person's unhappiness to keep you from your goal of sustaining EVERYONE's happiness.

This ends up being the lesson, that you can't win on the strategy of pleasing others to the exclusion of yourself. Your "sacrifice" ultimately means nothing, since your initial goal (to keep everyone happy) is not only impossible, but, ironically, incredibly selfish. Telling people "yes" when you deep down want to say "no" is dishonest, and denies them the ability to make decisions on real premises. You need to respect other people enough to see they can handle "no"... which will be very hard to do before you learn to say "no" yourself.

Being a person is hard.

An thus, we circle all the way back to that one pertinent phrase, "You're too nice." Something interesting that's worth noting though, early on in the comic Mike HAD tried to be fairly honest and candid, trusting others to work through their emotions. The most blatant of these examples is Mike's attempts at correcting Yashi whenever she said he was single which, in an ironic twist on this subject, LUCY was the one to try and silence using a, "think of the kids," mindset. I highly doubt Lucy would pull that on anyone now, but it's interesting to consider how she might have inadvertently passed the mindset onto Mike, or at the very least reinforced what was already there.

Tangent aside, very well said!

Get rekt

Ah James, always showing up when Mike needs you most

Gosh I love them, but Sandy is still in the way at the moment. I hope Mike gets his shit together.