I love this and can completely relate to every word. I'm glad that you recognised that people pleasing tendency and took positive steps to overcome it in order to become more true to yourself - and also more true to other people, even if they weren't so pleased at first to discover they couldn't walk all over you so easily - at least they were getting the true you, not some version of you that you thought they wanted you to be... If that makes sense.

The poem was wonderful too. Seriously, I was thinking of having it framed just to look at sometimes to remind myself not to be a people pleaser. Then a saw you straightaway apologise for it! You don't need to apologise for your art.. It's who you are, and you don't need to apologise to anyone for being who you are. That's who you're supposed to be.