The Hidden Room

I used to think I was a good person.

When I was younger, I followed the rules. I read the Bible. I obeyed my parents. I was nice to people and helpful. I did all the things “good girls” and “good people” were supposed to do.

When I was in my twenties and had moved to NZ, people told me how good I was. A friend once said that if he hadn’t been gay, he’d have thought I’d make a good wife. I soaked it up. I believed it meant something—that goodness would lead to love.

So when one of my friends—who, by the standards we were raised with, counted as a “bad girl” (which in reality just meant she could think for herself and didn’t blindly follow the script)—found love, I thought, Surely my turn is next. Good people get rewarded, don’t they?

Every boy who paid me the slightest bit of attention—a smile, kind words—Here he is, I thought. But when it didn’t work out, or when he didn’t treat me well, I was left confused. ‘I’m a good person,‘ I told myself. ‘Doesn’t that mean people will treat me well?’

I remember the night it finally sank in. I was out walking alone, heart broken, my friends too busy to notice. The thought felt grim, and it was unbearably lonely—but at the same time, freeing. ‘Goodness doesn’t guarantee love. It doesn’t guarantee anything.’ Still, I wanted to hold onto it, because the world already had enough people who didn’t care.

I was drowning in my loneliness. It felt like a dark pit inside me, dragging everything good down with it. I was terrified people would notice—that they’d sense the weight of it and recoil. I’m ashamed of it now, but back then I thought, ‘Don’t I deserve love? How could my friend—a so-called “bad girl”—have found love before me? Shouldn’t that have been me?’

It’s uncomfortable to admit now, but I didn’t really respect people back then. I didn’t see men as human—at least not in the messy, complicated, three-dimensional way. They were characters in my romcom script, placeholders waiting for my “happily ever after.”

I realized this more recently while watching a video of men reflecting on their past creepy behavior. One admitted he used to believe all men were scum except him—that he was the savior, the one destined to treat a girl right. After a stalking incident forced him to see the horror on his parents’ faces, he recognized the truth: his actions came from ego and entitlement, from believing he was owed affection. Listening to him, I caught a shadow of myself in his words.

I didn’t feel entitled to affection the way he did, but I did believe my goodness would guarantee me a love story. I thought that if I followed the rules, a great guy would show up and complete the narrative—like in the Disney movies. It didn’t help that my father would say things like, ‘all of that will fall into place eventually.’ He made it sound like relationships just happened, as if love were something I could wait for rather than learn to build.

It took me years to understand that I lacked the skills to be in a relationship. My parents didn’t model those skills; they didn’t work on their marriage, they just were. And with every unresolved argument, they drifted further into roommate territory. They never taught my siblings and me how to handle conflict either. Problems were swept under the rug, and we were expected to “play nice” while wounds quietly festered. Without that foundation, I wasn’t prepared to love another person as a real, complicated human being—only as the role I imagined for them.

When I finally examined what “good” meant, I realised it was a box I didn’t even want to be in. It meant being obedient, submissive, a doormat. It meant sweeping my own needs under the rug until they festered into silence. And who benefits from that? Certainly not me.

My parents’ version of marriage had been more coexistence than connection—two people side by side, but never truly together. For a long time, I repeated that same mistake, treating relationships like roles in a script rather than encounters with real, complicated human beings.

People can’t be divided neatly into good or bad. Do I think I’m a good person now? No. I think I’m human—flawed, learning, and doing my best.