You could say I’m a people pleaser. (Only if you want! No worries if it doesn’t work for you!)
I realized it was a problem while trapped by a fridge.
As a people pleaser, I’m embarrassed to even mention that it happened while redoing my kitchen. I know it’s silly to talk about a home remodel as if it matters, and you might say being trapped under a fridge was exactly what I deserved (for sure! I totally agree!). But, look — I had a flood, insurance would pay for part of it, my friend was a designer, and the whole thing just spiraled from there. And despite my escapade, I certainly wouldn’t want to complain about a contractor who was just trying to do his job — my home looks beautiful now, in spite of it all.
Said contractor had delivered and plugged in the new cabinet-front fridge that day and his workers had told me it was all secure; in retrospect, I think they were probably in a hurry and everyone thought someone else had screwed it into the cabinetry. I began to put in food while listening to Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More audiobook, thinking about all the codependent people I knew who really should read it.
I’d put in one bag of grapes and lifted a gallon of milk into the door cubbies, when all eight feet of Thermador fridge suddenly swayed forward, then tilted, then teetered, then toppled around me.
Both doors caught mercifully on either side of me, resting on the just installed island, but the empty drawers sprang out, pelting me as I shrieked.
One part of me immediately blamed myself for misinterpreting the installers when they said, “It’s ready — you can put your food in it,” and actually putting food in my fridge. (So sorry — I must have heard them wrong!)
Another part of me hoped my family would lie in my obituary, because a true obituary would have been too embarrassing.
Another part of me hoped my family would lie in my obituary, because a true obituary would have been too embarrassing. I imagine now what they might have written: Amanda Erdmann, aged 38, died alone at home, pathetically crushed underneath a fridge she only picked out because her fancy aunt had had one in her house and she wanted people to think she was fancy too.
I got that far before I decided if I could think about my own obituary, I probably wasn’t actually dying and could stop screaming.
The plastic drawers weren’t heavy, and I wasn’t outwardly harmed, but I was still in a predicament. The fridge weighed too much for me to tilt it back. Any attempt to shift the fridge did not budge it, but sent the drawers careening back into me instead. And, I wondered, could my just-installed island actually hold the tremendous weight without cracking or collapsing? What would I do if it couldn’t?
My future obituary writes itself: Amanda, though pleasant, worried too much about what other people thought. She had known her fridge was available to be installed for months, and instead of speaking up, had traveled out to the garage for food and used a Costco folding table all summer long because she didn’t want to inconvenience the contractor she was pretty sure she was overpaying to ignore her home and leave it mostly unfinished, with exposed framing and nails sticking out of the walls, poking her kids’ bare feet and tearing holes in her sweaters. The contractors only returned after she sent a very plaintive email where she tried to represent both how long-suffering she was and also how long she had suffered. When they apologized, she immediately apologized right back (as one does).
I began calling or texting people from the relative safety of my fridge teepee: my husband, the contractor, my friend who’d designed the new kitchen. All were too far away to be useful. There was one person working in the garage on a separate project, but he did not hear either my screams of terror or shouts for help. No one else was home; no one could rescue me. I thought I would likely be stuck there until the contractor whose miscommunications had caused this problem would return whenever was convenient for him, and I would say how embarrassed I was to have given any trouble and how I hoped it wouldn’t affect our working relationship, and how I had survived perfectly fine on the grapes and milk that had fallen on me (thanks so much for asking!).
While I waited for no one to save me, I relived moments where I had rescued others before myself, often paralyzing myself to avoid confrontation: Amanda tried to make sure everyone liked her all the time. Once, after a boy punched her in the face at school, she brought him cookies. Another time, a girl called her a brat when she was in charge of a group project, and she decided never to run for any office, though she was voted most likely to become president by her senior-class peers. At some point, she decided that in order for everyone to like her, other people’s needs would just always be more important than her own. So being crushed by an external weight feels a fitting death for Amanda, after all. May she rest in peace, knowing that at least she never disappointed anyone.
I don’t know how long I would have stood there encircled by fridge doors if my doorbell hadn’t rung. When it did, after either five minutes or fifty years, I looked around me and realized I wasn’t trapped after all. There was a gap between the doors resting on my island and the floor, where the freezer drawer had not opened. All I had to do was duck down, crawl out, and I would be free.
But, and I cannot stress this enough, the real reason I rescued myself was not because of my own ingenuity, courage, or clear-headedness. Not at all.
It was because I did not want to keep the person at the door waiting.
The visitor was the man working in my garage, asking for a stepladder. “Of course! I can get that for you right away,” I said, my voice wobbling. “I’m sorry I’m emotional, but I thought I was going to die underneath a fridge. I was screaming for help but no one came, and I’m a little frazzled.” He shrugged, took the ladder, and went back to work, with almost no comment.
As the relief of my own escape settled, I sat in my room, shaking and crying in delayed shock. My husband came home furious and yelled at the contractors, “I just thank the Lord my wife wasn’t killed by your incompetence.” He disputes now that he yelled; I admit it may have only sounded like yelling to ears overly attuned to conflict. Even then, I was embarrassed that he was speaking in a way that might hurt their feelings — I still had to see them, after all, and we needed the work done, and would they still do a good job even if we said they had been negligent? What if they stopped liking us?
Amanda’s house never did get finished, because the contractor took offense when her husband yelled at him, and Amanda in turn, died of embarrassment from it, instead of from the fridge. Without Amanda doing everyone’s laundry, the house fell into squalor and filth. Eventually the children left home and became itinerant vagabonds while her husband languished away, as he always said he would, like the dog in Where the Red Fern Grows.
I don’t know exactly when I began to see the refrigerator as a symbol of my unhealthy desire to be liked. But as the months have gone on, I have learned that the weight of it can become truly too heavy to shift or push back off of me. I feel exhausted by days when I rearranged my own life to swoop in and help other people, offering furniture, housing, hours of time, when often others were perfectly capable of helping themselves. I feel overwhelmed by the moments I let it become my responsibility to save friends or family, fix their problems — not because I wanted to love God, feed the hungry, or clothe the naked — but so I wouldn’t have to confront their ordinary disappointment or dislike. And yet, in spite of the heaviness and exhaustion, the only person who can actually free myself from this Thermador fridge of other people’s needs is. . . myself.
I don’t know exactly when I began to see the refrigerator as a symbol of my unhealthy desire to be liked. But as the months have gone on, I have learned that the weight of it can become truly too heavy to shift or push back off of me.
Now, I try to notice the teetering, the tilting of my world, so I am prepared for when I might feel the weight of imagined expectations pushing on me. I am training myself to say no if it feels too heavy, and to be okay with occasionally letting other people down. I’m learning to calmly duck down and out from underneath these imagined expectations, so I don’t become trapped by them, cowering in an emotional place where no one will hear my screams.
I hope they write a better obituary about me than the one I imagined under that fridge. Maybe something like this: Amanda died in a perfectly normal and reasonable way after a long and happy life, filled with meaning, purpose, and love — the kind of love that is equally balanced between giving and receiving. The best thing she ever did was to recognize that she could choose to say no and it wouldn’t kill her, and that saying yes all the time actually might! This helped conserve her energy for the bigger things that mattered to her physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Amanda’s dreams came true through her own efforts and the choices she made to prioritize them, and her life was filled with abundance, not scarcity; energy, not exhaustion.
You might say now that I’m a people pleaser in recovery — and I don’t care if you want to or not. Mostly. (I’m good either way!)
Amanda B. Erdmann (she/her) teaches writing at BYU, parents four children with her husband, Alan, and is finishing her basement without a contractor this time.

Artist Statement:
“gяL feinting”
Caitlin Connolly
@_caitlinconnolly_ | caitlinconnollystore.com