This New Year's Resolution
(I'm hardly the most eloquent of writers, so apologies for any gramatical errors or general in-cohesiveness. But I had to get this down one way or another.)
First and foremost, I want to address all of the people who are now rolling their eyes at the computer screen who believe that waiting until New Year's to change the qualities that you dislike about yourself, and the habits that you no longer wish to have, is pointless as you can make these changes whenever you so choose, and the fact that it is the end of yet another year is absolutely irrelevant.
This is extremely true; if you really want to change, then you can indeed just go ahead and do it, whenever the bloody hell you want.
However, for myself, and I suspect millions of other people, the end of the year is an extremely reflective period. After-all, our world does work in cycles, both natural and numeric, so why not take advantage of this? Start the next calendar-cycle doing something different. If you didn't like last year, then reflect upon why, and make that change to make next year better, and start your own brand new cycle. I really don't understand why people get so riled up about it!
This is what I have done anyway, and there is one thing above all others that I feel needs to change.
In my second year of college I've made loads of new friends, which is great. However, at the same time I feel as though I've let a lot of these new people walk all over me.
This is where my random numbers on twitter come in. Each one of the numbers above represents the amount of times any one of my friends has made an offensive comment, regarding either my sexuality, my mannerisms, the way I talk or what I choose to wear. Whilst the number fourteen seems relatively low, this is over a period of just over three weeks, and it's also something that has been ongoing for the past two or three months. Inside, I feel it's gotten to the point where I've became an outlet for public ridicule, or that I'm just somebody to laugh at, and it's really starting to get on my fucking nerves.
Now, these may have just been flippant comments, not intending to hurt or offend, and initially they didn't. It wasn't until I actually realised that I had begun censoring myself around my own friends, through watching the way I spoke down to what I wore to college etc. when I realised that these comments were actually damaging me in a sub-concious kind-of way. It has gotten to the point where I actually started making fun of myself for the very same things. I think it took me until the other week when I just decided that I was perfectly happy with who I was. Yeah, I'm hardly the most masculine of blokes, but who the fuck gives a shit? It's not okay by any means to make any such comments towards anyone of any gender or sexuality for just for being themselves.
I think the worst part is that one of the main culprits actually singled out somebody who used the word fag, in the most least offensive way possible, and told them that they weren't allowed to use that word, and basically everyone got really angry and bitter towards this other person, and I was just kind of sat there thinking "You absolute, fucking hypocrite. How fucking dare you."
Furthermore, it wasn't until I shared these feelings with a friend, that I realised how angry and bitter that the whole thing had actually made me feel.
So next year, I'm not going to just let people walk all over me and make me feel like shit because to be honest I have a much greater amount of self respect than I do complexes about who I am. So in summary, if it does continue, I'm not just going to sit there and laugh along with the 'joke'. I'm going to single that mother-fucker out, in the way that they've previously singled out other people, for doing exactly the same thing as what has been done to me. And if they dislike that, then they are clearly not worthy of my friendship.
Happy-Fucking-New year, guys.
