Friendship or Folly?

I don’t know whether as I’m growing older I’m becoming wiser or more bitter, but honestly I find myself tolerating a lot less nonsense from people, and constantly redefining who I genuinely would class as a “friend”…

I wouldn’t say that I’m cold and heartless and I hate everyone, because I don’t.  I mean, I have some friends that I reckon I’ll have for the rest of my life… They’re the kind of friends that I would give my last slice of pizza to… and that’s really something because I harbour a deep, emotional love for pizza.  It’s not even like I intended to make such close friends, and I’ve realised that the best friendships are the ones where you can’t pinpoint when exactly you became as close as you are.  I don’t think there’s a particular moment when I realised they were my close friends… It’s just that I found myself noticing the few people that actually made the effort to physically be there for me when I needed someone.

Honestly, you really know that a friendship isn’t what it used to be when you notice the levels of effort start to slip.  If you find yourself asking why you’re always the one to start the conversation and come up with topics to talk about…  If you notice that you always make an effort to be there when they need you but they’re rarely there when you need them… If you’re scared to tell them about certain (harmless) things you get up to because you’re worried you’ll be judged too intensely… The odds are you’re slowly drifting apart.  It’s a terrible thing… I look at some of the people that I thought I’d still be meeting up for coffee with when I’m 40 years old, or sharing uni dorms with, and sometimes it makes me a little sad that I struggle to meet up or make conversation with them now, while we’re still young and have summer holidays.

I’m not implying that friendships can’t have rough patches… It’s a fact of life, friends argue.  I have a few friends that are basically family and we have odd days when we get mad at each other and don’t talk/are really blunt with one another for a while.  However, after a few days one of us will defrost the icy coldness between us because we know that we’re stuck with each other whether we like it or not due to the inexplicable bonds of friendship.  Sometimes your friend will disagree with some of your life choices, and sometimes you wanna judge them for some of theirs, but that’s because friends should want to change each other for good (excuse the ‘Wicked’ reference).  I hold my friends to a high standard and I hope that they do the same for me.  If I’m acting like an idiot, I expect them to be able to turn around and tell me that I’m acting like an idiot… I may get offended for a second, but at the end of the day, I trust my friends and I know I’d do the same thing to them.  If you ask me, that’s what a real close friendship should be like.  When people get mad at you and ignore you, or tell everybody apart from you why they’re mad, you start to realise that you don’t need that kind of “stresship” in your life.

I understand that people change and grow apart, and I’d be lying if I claimed to be the same person I was five years ago.  Let’s be honest, I’d be lying if I said that I was the same person I was last year.  I’ve gained a little more confidence and I don’t rely on the crutch of other confident people to make friends through anymore.  I’m also a lot more opinionated than I used to be, and not as afraid to speak my mind when it needs to be spoken… But honestly, I don’t think that these changes are what have made me drift apart from some people.

I feel like the older I get, the more I’ve come to realise that I can’t be putting in 100% if someone else is only going to put in 40%.  I don’t have to be the centre of my friends’ attention 24/7, but we should all be able to feel like our friends want to talk to us as much as we want to talk to them.  If you find yourself being pushed aside for others, or constantly being stood up/ignored, I’m not saying that you should cut the person loose, but maybe re-evaluate whether you class them as a “friend” or an “acquaintance”, because the closer I get to my true friends, the greater I realise the distinction is between the two words.

Read, comment, and don’t take anything personally.  Remember we’re all still forming opinions.  Byeeeee!

Toxic Togetherness…

So exams are over, I’m back at school, and I have to say that with all the focus on exams and then the two week break that followed, I forgot the emotional strain that comes with group work.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully capable and up for working in a team… When the team is as cooperative as I am.  Even when I’m in a bad group, I’ll see that the work is done, it will just emotionally exhaust me.

I don’t mind being in groups with varied abilities.  I mean, I rarely consider myself to be the best person in a group, I just want to work with people that are aiming for the same outcome as I am: the best work that we can produce.  I don’t even mind bossy people!  If someone wants to be bossy and take charge, providing that they’re doing a good job, I’ll passively sit back and let them (as long as I manage to get a few of my ideas in).  What I hate is negativity.  Don’t tell me you think our work will be terrible.  Don’t tell me it’s going terribly.  You think that we’re on a rapid decline?  Work with the rest of the group to fix it!

We probably all know that person (we’ve either been them or worked with them) that does nothing but moan and moan and moan during group work, and we’ve all probably wanted to kill that person (or felt the death glares received when we were that person).  I honestly don’t see the point… you think it’s bad?! It’s your group too, don’t disown it, change it.  You owe yourself that much.

It’s like an experiment I did in chemistry in year seven.  Can’t remember what we were trying to prove, but we dropped food dye into water and watched it spread throughout, darkening and ruining the clearness of the water.  During group work that one negative person effectively squirts a big old glob of food dye into the water of the group, and when you hear someone’s negativity, you can end up simultaneously feeling terrible about the work you’ve put in and doubting the foundation of the team.

Basically… negativity spreads.  And it spreads badly.  You hate your group?  Suck it up and make the best of it.  You hate the work you’ve done?  Think of a positive way to change it.  I’ve had groups I’ve loved working with and groups I haven’t liked as much, but as The Rolling Stones once emphasised, you can’t always get what you want.

I started this on group work because being back at school provoked it, but this is a lesson that can be applied to life in general.  I once read a quote (it’s actually one of my favourite quotes) saying:

“Life isn’t about waiting for the cloud to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain”

It’s basically my favourite life lesson.  Like jealousy, you can’t help negative thoughts popping into your head, but you can control the way you react to them.  Take that terrible work, or that bad day, or that bad grade and figure out how you can improve it.  It’s not always about looking for the best, sometimes it’s about finding the worst and making it better.

Read, comment, and don’t take anything personally.  Remember we’re all still forming opinions.  Byeeeee!

Going Green… Eyed

I like my life.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for everything I have and everything that I’ve been given.  I have food, shelter, people who love me… I know that I could be a lot worse off, and I know that there are people out there with a lot less than I have.  However, I’d be lying if I said that I’ve never been envious of someone with “more than I have” in my life.  Jealousy, whether we care to admit it, is something that we’ve all felt… Whether it be through an ugly thought, a little moment of self-doubt, or an actual action.  I refuse to believe that there’s someone reading this who can genuinely, honestly admit to themselves that they have never, in their lives felt what it’s like to be jealous.

It’s an intriguing emotion and probably one of the most commonly hated and vilified by our society in general.  It’s portrayed as ugly and negative, depicted as a “green eyed monster” (Which personally, apart from the monster part doesn’t seem like an issue to me… I love green eyes).  It’s this portrayal that has led to the emotion being a guilt-ridden one, but I don’t think it necessarily has to be a bad thing.  The way I see it, the emotion itself isn’t bad.  You can’t help how you feel… It’s how you take the emotion and act on it that determines how monstrous it really is.

“She got a better grade than me.”

As a sixth form student, the above can be one of the worst thoughts to float around my head.  It’s not that I expect to get the best grade out of everyone in every class I’m in.  I know my weaknesses, and I’m not an arrogant person… If I do get the highest mark in something my initial reaction is usually shock.  But sometimes I still feel a little bit of a pang (I’d say 30% jealousy, 70% self-doubt), wishing that I could be as smart as that person, and think the way that they think.  It’s a desire that we’re conditioned to act on: we want to be successful, (and often, we want to be the most successful).  However, this need to be the best, or at least better, is sometimes the fuel that we need to try harder and study more and get that success for ourselves.  It’s only when this envy turns to hatred and you actively try and suck away somebody else’s happiness that you’ve created a monster. (Excuse the literature reference… I’m a little geeky, it will probably happen a lot).

“When did they become such good friends…? She was my friend first…”

I know that it sounds like the musings of a primary school student but possessive jealousy is way more common than you’d think.  Again, I’m not talking about actually acting upon it, but the thought itself is rather popular.  It’s simple really: You have a friend, you get close to that friend, then you watch as they start getting close to another friend… Even though they may still include you, sometimes you can’t help but get a little green on the inside, wishing that you had that closeness to yourself.  It’s rarely acted upon (except for TV shows where it often escalates and before you know it angsty chaos ensues), and often it’s a thought that you keep to yourself, that eventually subsides.  Honestly, I feel like it’s less of a jealousy thing and more of a fear of being left behind… There’s always the worry that they’ll become closer than you ever were with either of them, bringing us back to the want for something that somebody else has.

I think the thing that makes jealousy such a burden is the fear and insecurity attached to it.  The real problem isn’t that you feel jealous, it’s that you worry that you’ll never have anything close to what your jealousy is causing you to seek.  I have times when envious thoughts pop into my head, and they can be really ugly… I mean, I wouldn’t confess them to anyone.  It’s not that I want to think them, I just can’t control my instinctive thoughts.  I never act on them, but sometimes I still worry that they make me a mean person.  Over time I’ve come to realise that I don’t think them because I want to be mean, I think them because I have days where I doubt that I’m capable of anything.  We’re all our own toughest critics.  Jealousy is basically our way of doing the whole “Why aren’t you more like them?” thing.

Read, comment, and don’t take anything personally.  Remember, we’re all still forming opinions.  Byeeeee!

Fearing Feminism

Feminism.  A word known by all, argued by a significant amount and feared by many.  Why is it that nowadays a girl being referred to as a feminist by a guy is seen as more of an insult than a compliment, or simply a fact?  Feminism is a serious issue that’s worth fighting for, however over time it’s lost its meaning and subsequently lost the support that it so rightly deserves.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way an expert on the subject.  I mean, I took GCSE History and I studied the suffragettes and I’ve read enough articles and literature to at least form the basis of an opinion on the subject.  However, I don’t have to know every fact there is to know about feminism inside and out, and I’m not going to use this post to argue for feminism.  I want to use this to explain what feminism really is, because honestly it’s a lot tamer than many people who fear it believe it to be.

Firstly, feminists do not hate men.  In fact, the most common misconception is that feminism encourages the demeaning of the male species in order to boost females.  This is a lie, and any feminist that believes this doesn’t fully understand the fundamental principles of feminism.  The feminist movement is built on the foundation of equal rights for all.  That’s right.  Equal.  Not women being better than men.  Not men suffering like women once did.  Everybody being equal.  Do you believe that women should be paid an equal amount to men when they do the same job?  Do you believe that women and men should be judged equally in specific situations?  If you agree with these then believe it or not you have feminist views, whether you call yourself a feminist or not.

Yes, it was created to get better rights for women, but feminism benefits men too.  Equal rights means that in certain situations men would be judged and ridiculed less as well.  Take the case of feelings being expressed:  a woman expresses her feelings and it is fine, because she’s a woman, but a guy expresses his feelings and he’s ridiculed for being a “pansy” or “gay”.  Why is communicating how you feel a girly thing to do?  Do we not all have feelings?  Feminism aims to discourage double standards, helping everyone (and that means both genders) be treated equally.

So why do so many people fear the feminist movement?  Because, like every other cause, there are extremists that taint the general view.  Think of it like a celebrity fandom:  you get the fans who love a celebrity and what they do… and then you get the fans who send death threats to the partners of a celebrity, because they want them all to themselves, thus ruining the general image of the fandom.  It’s those extremists that dominate and argue with their anti-male attitude, creating the negative views of feminism that are so greatly seen by the majority of people.

And yes, we’ve progressed, and girls can wear trousers and work in non-domestic jobs, but even though it’s more discreet, women are still not equal.  The sad truth is, in the 21^st century women are still not receiving an equal amount to men.  In fact, according to ‘The Fawcett Society’ the overall gender pay gap still stands at 19.1%!  That’s right.  Men on average are still earning 19.1% more than women doing the same job!  (If you don’t think that’s a significant amount of money, consider how much of a difference a 20% off discount makes when you’re shopping).  We are slowly making progress, and that gap has fallen from the 27.5% that it was in 1997, but we’re still not there, and the difference is rather worrying.

So where do you stand on the feminism issue?  Are you ready to fight or are you still in fear?

Read, comment, and don’t take anything personally, remember we’re all still forming opinions.  Byeeeee

The Trials and Tribulations of a Teenager…

It seems that with the ever-growing popularity of sites like Tumblr and Twitter, teenagers only ever seem to express two opinions: incredibly strong hatred or incredibly strong support.  And it makes sense, because we are the generation that lives on social media, generally only fed one biased view of most situations, and so we’re left to either accept it or blatantly disagree and accuse the media of slander (which is nice and all, but the majority of us have these hyperbolic reactions without bothering to actually research what is going on).  I suppose that’s why we all categorise our teenage population, with a variety of different labels that we, as a generation, have made up ourselves.

For example, the “Hipster” Population.  Most teenagers must know what I’m talking about.  In this day and age we’ve either been called a “Hipster” personally, know a friend that is the epitome of “Hipster” culture, or have accused someone of having “Hipster”-like traits.  It’s ironic, really; the term was used to describe those who rebel against social norms and don’t agree with the “cliché”, “mainstream” views of the rest of us teenagers, (who apparently are pop culture loving brain-washed air-heads who possibly can’t have any original thoughts because we enjoy the odd cheesy rom-com and like a few songs by Top 40 artists).  And yet, through this grouping Hipster’s themselves have become their very own cliché, managing to create a stereotypical image in their effort to defy teenage stereotypes.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Hipster culture, or any other teenage culture, and as a teenager I understand why we feel compelled to have strong opinions on issues that we’ve barely scraped the surface of.  I’m not ridiculing any teenager who strongly hates or loves an issue and fights (usually via social media) to make their opinion heard, but I believe that we’re all still forming our opinions, and it will take a while before we fully understand why we feel the way that we do.  But to be honest, we have time.  Lots of time.  We have our whole lives to experience new things, and talk to new people, and read more articles and tweet and post more of our views and argue with other users… and through this time we will slowly but surely form concrete opinions, and eventually know where we stand.  I mean, who knows?  In ten years time you could be fighting passionately for a cause that completely bores you at the moment…The beauty about opinions are that we can chop and change them whenever we want.

And that is why I decided to write a blog.  I’m a teenage girl with a bunch of opinions on issues that both bother and intrigue me and my views may not be right but they’re my views that I’m still trying to figure out, so I figured what better place to materialise my thoughts than on a random internet blog.  Every so often, I’m gonna voice my opinions on a current issue, whether it be political, religious, or celebrity related, and if you completely disagree with me, I’d love to hear your reasons why because one of the best ways to learn is through other people’s points of view.

So keep a look out for new updates! I’m gonna aim to have them out at least every two weeks, but between sixth form and extra-curricular activities, sometimes I may slack.  However, summer is coming up so you may hear from me ridiculously frequently!

Read, comment, and don’t take anything personally, remember we’re all still forming opinions.  Byeeeee