Little Fawn
Notes on Becoming, Chapter 2: on fawning, pleasing, and other masks you may be carrying.
Dear reflection,
I came across this pin on Pinterest, which says that people pleasers aren’t driven by wanting validation or love, but rather, they are running from the shame they tend to feel when they disappoint someone else. Of course, this instinct to please is built from a lifetime of expectations; a mother that can’t handle your tears, for example, so you only cry in bathroom stalls or in the privacy of your car; a boyfriend that also hates your crying and rejects confrontation; it could be a friend that is consistently upset by little mistakes you make, turning them into paragraphs of meandering—and you, you little fawn, you always fall into apologies and excuses rather than standing up for yourself. This isn’t fair, your mind tells you, but your fingers are already typing out the I’m sorry.
Control. You want control over how you’re perceived, which means you deny yourself your rights. One day, perhaps young, you realized where speaking up would get you—you realized your authenticity was rejected. So you forfeit your rights. Your right to have your tongue slip, occasionally. Your right to be late, or wrong, or honest. Your right to know if he loves you as much as you do him. Your right to talk about the hard things. Your right to cry in front of your mother, to be held and soothed by her, your right to think of your pain before hers, or anyone’s, for that matter. Your right to be broken, or stupid, or wrong but forgiven. And we all deserve to be forgiven, but sometimes, I forget this. I forget that I am allowed forgiveness—that I should be making mistakes. I am plagued by the belief that love is centered on behaving within the confines of others opinions of me… confines based only on their comfort rather than mine. That love is only offered if I successfully keep them pleased. Love is a reward, I’ve believed my whole life. A reward for good behavior.
They call this fawning, which I have noticed myself doing quite often over my years. I’ve known the term fawning ever since I snapped awake after my first relationship, an abusive mess of five years. Me, I know the terms, but there are periods of autopilot I fall into—I behave on the broken instincts that kept me safe growing up. We all do. But this means that, on average, I betray myself much more than I honor her. And this is the problem, this is the source of the vein of pain that runs through the pieces I write to you, my dearest reader. I’ve long ago understood my function—my archetype within my family system, and I fell into repeating this in my relationships to others… over, and over again. I am here to please, to soothe, to make better. I am here to look down at the floor when you complain. I am here to take the beating, quietly. I am so agreeable. I am here, my edges so soft you won’t even feel me when you swallow.
Familiarity is a soft bed with broken springs, is a quote I think of often. You know it hurts, but it's yours.1
“Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries.”
–Pete Walker, The 4Fs: A Trauma Typology in Complex Trauma
The idea that I could be running from shame rather than approval/love struck me and the words have echoed through my mind on repeat this week. This week, which reminded me that life has a funny way of surprising you. That things can turn around in seconds. That rock bottom often opens before you a portal, bright and shining and urging you through it. Sometimes, that portal is the sun streaming in through Berlin’s train stations. That light has shined on me. Oh, I am a lucky girl, come alive again, surrounded by the bustle of a city I love dearly.
Some force in this world repeatedly catches my fall right before I hit the pavement, but I must admit within me remains a broken piece. The people pleasing—a deep, gnawing pain of wanting to give, wanting to be easy and enjoyable. On my escapades with my brother (first Japan, now Europe) the cut burned hotter—there is a deep sense of urgency to hide from disappointment, to cower from imagined upset. I am always tip-toeing. It’s heightened when I am around him, a childhood dream of impressing him re-emerging like a ghost. I’d like him to be pleased with me. I’d like him to be pleased more than I would like to be pleased. Really, I’d like everyone to be pleased—the waitress, the hotel receptionist, the stranger beside me at the tram stop, the boy I flirt with on Instagram, the friend that is passive-aggressively upset with me, at the moment. Most of the arguments my brother and I had throughout our week-long vacation were because of a repeated exchange. He’d say, “Want to go here?” and I would respond, without thinking, or even glancing at his phone or building or cafe, without even giving myself a chance to think of my own interests: “If you want to!”
Oh I hate the discomfort of someone upset with me. There is no bigger pain in my mind; my body stops functioning, the mental turmoil quickly turning physical: shaking, shortened breaths, heart racing. He was honest, cut-throat with his words, when we finally reached the height of frustration with one another: It is annoying, Amal. Your indecisiveness. Your fear. You’re shadowboxing—just struggling against yourself in some imaginary argument with me.
Shadowboxing. He used this term a lot. I’d think or assume something, or ask if he was okay with something, or particularly if he was upset, and he’d shut me up with “You’re shadowboxing. It’s in your head.”
Sometimes, the people around you drop sentences that hit like secrets of the universe. They unlock subconscious facts about yourself you didn’t quite know before; realizations suddenly unearthed, hitting you like a gong, snapping you awake.
This week, between European cities and planes and trains, I explored my feelings of loneliness and my constant grappling with love. Love for others. Love for myself. And most painfully—the love I wish I got, throughout my life—always wishing for a love so undeniable, so overwhelming, and never-ending. Training myself like a soldier—strict and careful and succinct. Reading others and adjusting, trying to fit into their world like the perfect, perfect painting. I’d wish only to be displayed above their mantle. I would be good. I would be pretty, beautiful, just if I were to be chosen. It’s the love my fourteen year old self would pray for, knees against the prayer mat, hands open towards the skies. Please, God. I will pray everyday, for the rest of my life, if you just give me love.
There is a human-shaped emptiness inside of me, I’ve come to understand, like a chalk outline at a crime scene. Who stole this piece of me, suspiciously shaped perfectly to fit another? Was it a childhood friend? Was it a family member? Was it one of the losses I’ve lived through? Is it karma from a past life? I’ve always yearned for a someone to sit inside this void, to make me whole rather than let me do the work of it myself. I have been oh so desperate to fill it, only realizing in the mass of people in the cities I get to explore that I am one person out of billions, and my body is the only home I will forever be living in—people will visit, they will enter, they will stay for a coffee, perhaps, they will kiss me in the smoking area of a bar in a foreign country, but at the end of the day, I must say goodbye, and lock the door behind them as they go back to themselves.
“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
―Richard Siken, War of the Foxes
How do you find yourself when your whole life you’ve been more aware of others? Me, I can spot a mood change miles away. I can sniff out discontentedness like a dog. I am hardwired and trained to watch people’s emotions. I psychoanalyze deeply and with undeniable detail—often I am correct about my perceptions. The people, they are but characters in my novel, and I must world-build. I must create backstory. I must study. But I can never pinpoint what I’m feeling, nor do I care to wonder about it, not until later, in the aftermath, when I meet with the page and write.
The worst part of it all: no one likes to be watched. In the little fawn’s desperate attempts to bring people in, she only scares them away. On the surface, it’d be easy to assume that being kind and giving and selfless is a quality trait that others would enjoy, but an over-giving person is exhausting to be around. A hyper vigilant person, tiring. Many will play with you for a while, sure, interested in your giving and constant loving—they will enjoy you as a platter, until they tire of it. I mean, how do you choose which museum you want to go to when your partner is so disillusioned by selflessness that they can’t even think of what they would be interested in, only wondering what you’d be interested in? Only trying to choose the answer they believe you’d like? How do you find faults? How do you make decisions? A desperate person is difficult. It is hard to be around a shapeshifter that constantly attempts to cater to your every need. Too easy. No roughness. Shallow. Mindless, almost.
A people pleaser enjoys steadiness, you see: the same order at the restaurant, the same person they have memorized in and out, the same city they’ve grown up in, and they learn the most perfect ways to retain these things. A fawn would like to be comfortable—which is why this animal loses all rationale when confronted with problems, when noticing discrepancies between what they’d like to see, and what they wouldn't. A fawn can feel other’s emotions so deeply and vividly, they feel like their own—they manifest in their body, real and painful. Honest and true.
His smile falters, for example. Or he looks down at his phone too long. Your wound burns, your heart heavies. What did I do? What did I do?
The fawn is the center of her universe, a queen of an imaginary kingdom she has full dictatorship over. The masses must love her, they must always be pleased with her, and above all, they should never, ever experience an emotion.
Because she may have to. She may be forced to. She feels their emotions, and it ripples through the fences she oh so carefully put up.
And this fawn—this fawn doesn't like emotions, not at all. An emotion is a coup, it’s an undertaking, it destroys the facade of a perfect ruler.
She has learned to contain them carefully, the tears, the rage, the sadness; the rebels that tip-toe around her land. It’s what brought her reign: it’s what made her loved, it’s what got people to keep her around. In her essence, this queen is selfish. And she loves her power. How dare you not love her when she’s been so giving to you? So giving, there’s not much left. But the conundrum comes: how do you love an empty person—a person that only knows to love you? How do you love them back? No one likes their reflection that much, after all.
But I am using too many metaphors, here.
The worst part about being a fawn is that you don't really understand why people don't like you—I mean, you’ve perfectly built yourself to be liked by them. So you keep adjusting: the smile, the timidness, the outfits, the conversations. And the more you adjust the more they lose interest. The more you argue and you give no solid explanation, no true show of your emotions, the care fizzles out. They see you for what you are: an empty-eyed animal, loyal, sure, but only reflecting to them what you believe they’d most like to see—thus you’re showing them what you think they are. And sometimes—often—you may be showing them wrong. Or too right.
The fact that you see them this way—it hurts them even more. Don’t you trust your lover to see you for who you are? Don’t you trust your friends to hold you through your pain? Don’t you want the intimacy you crave, true and built on nothing but care and openness?
Sure, sure, yes, of course, but—
well.
It seems I am broken in a very specific way; a way in which I care more to be loved, than I care to be true.
Occasionally, the constant holding in reaches a height where I lose all rationale and instincts and I break. I say everything: I say the truth and I shout and I bite. An animal can only be docile for so long. And the words I save for the kill, they hurt. And the person often stands before me in disbelief: how could this fawn become such a monster? How has she remained so kind when she had so much anger in her heart, so much disdain, so much frustration I never knew of?
The shame comes then, swift as a wave, overtaking everything. The water eats the shore and cleans it of its’ roughness.
Back to the empty slate. Desperate, you begin looking for the next victim.
The fawn may overstay her welcome, but when she leaves—she never comes back.
I’m a good leaver, though I always do it too late. We call it ghosting, though I have always been a ghost—translucent and difficult to see. The leaving is reminiscent of a death for me. I kill myself. It’s easy. The people I’ve left, they may have found it vain. Perhaps cruel. But in my senses I gave them exactly what they wanted, even then; they found something they disliked in me, so I ceased to exist.
You’re welcome.
A fawn is a good actress, after all. When the audience is always watching, you understand how to please them. You can taste the point of no return—you know when the curtains must close. You don’t mourn the loss of them, but the loss of the you you built for them. It was such a beautiful version of you. So loving. So caring. So giving. So patient, undeniably perfect for them, had they only just appreciated it.
Little Fawn, you must find yourself.
This trip I realized I love Chai Lattes. Cold, iced, whatever. Coming back to yourself is a series of these little divine pleasures: slowly understanding your likes and dislikes. They say healing is not linear and it hurts that it’s so true—over your years you will find things and then lose yourself and then find things and then lose yourself. Anchors will come but they rust and dissolve into the sea, and you will have to survive being lost for a while. But another will find you. Or you will build one, a new anchor to hold you still. Little fawn, you will run in the wild and grin maniacally, despite the fact that you’d always thought yourself a scared one, content to hide in the bushes. You will realize it was another that wished you small and weak. You will meet strangers and enjoy the conversations, you will press your lips against a pretty strangers’ lips and find contentment, rather than the fear you always imagined. You will be a self you’d never been before, alive and real, sometimes for only seconds before you revert to the animal you are. It’s okay. The seconds will turn to minutes, the minutes to hours, the hours to days, and the days, eventually, years. Believe it—you must. You will forget the party tricks, the steps to the dance you’d perfected. The small version of you will fade. You will surprise yourself. You will become big, all teeth, but so much heart, too. Your heart will stay—I know you are afraid you will lose it. But it will stay. You will just learn to hold it, steady. You will remember: it is yours. In all its glory. In all its brokenness. And you will realize, the human-shaped emptiness was the exact build of your body.
The piece you’ve always been missing was right there: it was you.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty out of.
Don't be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer
& failing. Ocean. Ocean —
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.
—Ocean Vuong, Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong
Poetic License © 2025. The author reserves the right to bend the truth, to distort, to embellish—but she always, always, pulls from what she has truly touched.
Similar pieces I’ve written on this topic:
"just as all beings wish to be loved, i, too, wish to be loved." *highly recommend. I come back to this piece myself, when I feel lost.
If you relate to this, I recommend the following videos:
Attributed to “Anonymous”, found on Pinterest.
Tears in my eyes.
Holyyyyy i felt this so deeply
Amal, this was so beautiful. it was like reading the story of a younger me. "Your heart will stay—I know you are afraid you will lose it. But it will stay. You will just learn to hold it, steady. You will remember: it is yours. In all its glory. In all its brokenness. And you will realize, the human-shaped emptiness was the exact build of your body." can confirm :,) although still waiting for wholeness to replace the void. thank you for sharing <3