selfishness

very briefly for today: where does care for self end and selfishness begin? i am hearing left and right about honoring myself and what i need and what i want, and making sure that i am not making my desires subservient to those of others. i must be willing to say no when others want me to do something that is in conflict with my own wants. bear in mind that i understand this whole dynamic changes when those 'want's are changed to 'need's. wants will very frequently be subsumed by needs.

but essentially, i have so very rarely put myself first that i have no idea how to strike the balance when things get gray, when that line is blurred. i have been trying very hard to determine what some of my needs and wants are, and now that i find some of them in conflict with those of others the pendulum is swinging back toward where i always have been. if i have this want, but everyone else has an opposing want, does not the greater number rule? do i really deserve to have what i want, or am i simply being selfish?

simply put, i don't know. i will continually second-guess my own choices, and i will worry and wonder how my life might have turned out if i had put myself all along, but most of that doesn't matter now. it is in the past. i have now what choices i have made, and i can only build on those with the choices i have yet to make. but how does one do that if one cannot even trust that one is acting with the right interests? where do my choices cease to be my choices? where does my responsibility to myself end and my responsibility to others begin? how do i know when i am being selfish instead of honoring myself?

bugger.