#4 As a wise person once said: All you are is mean - how is this the world we're living in

22/10/23

Hellou, hellouuuu! I had a topic planned for this post, but I’m postponing it. We’re gonna have a nice little catch up instead and talk about things that have been on my mind.

I’ve just watched a bit more than the first episode of David Beckham’s documentary and honestly, I’m just time and again so distraught over how excruciatingly mean people can be. It makes me so mad how little empathy there is for other human beings. With Taylor Swift’s documentary as well, or the whole Olivia-Joshua-Sabrina thing. It just makes me so mad, the way people think they are entitled to make other people’s lives a living hell. It makes me furious. I’m just so … overwhelmed with disappointment in humanity sometimes. Quite often actually.

I remember when I was little, like seven or eight probably, and I’d always say to my dad how stupid humanity was. How cruel and reckless. But I still wanted to believe, still want to believe now, that it doesn’t have to be that way, that we can be kind and considerate. Because I know we could be, I know we could choose to be. Which is why I hate reading the news. I still do read them, but I feel this deep sense of grief, this anger and helplessness and disappointment and, well, it really is grief, for humanity, for everyone I’ll never meet and everyone I’ve ever met that has been at the receiving end of (in)human cruelty. Every time I read about the wars and the hunger and the murder and the torture and the rape and just everything that is going wrong with the world, the grief is overwhelming.

I’ve just recently finished reading ‘The Silence of the Girls’ by Pat Parker. I had trouble reading this at times. Not because it’s not good, it is, though at times it was a bit action-less for my taste but other parts of the book and the writing more than made up for it, especially the end. But it was hard to read, because it made me feel this fury, this female rage that’s always there, always inside, rage not just for myself but for every women that has ever lived. I grieve for them. I am furious for them. And not just the Trojan or Greek women like the ones in this book, but every woman at any time that has ever lived. I don’t think I can express it, I don’t think I can put it into words. And infuriating unfair things are still happening, and people are too f*cking blind or stupid to see it. Maybe they don’t want to see it. I remember for the longest time when I was little I wanted to be a boy, and not in the way trans people know that they were born in the wrong body but simply because of the way I was treated. I wanted to be treated like boys were treated, and so I wanted to be a boy. It took me quite a while, and almost all of girls and women I know struggle or have struggled with this as well, to see my femininity as something worth being celebrated. And I’m not even talking about ‘just’ that, I’m talking about the child brides, the rapes, the murders, the comments, the expectations, the invisible walls, the looks; generally the sexism, the misogyny, the F*CKING INJUSTICE and it’s quite simply too much to take. And here we are, living with it. Every day. And this book, it encompasses and expresses a lot of this grief, this anger and sadness deep within.

It’s an interesting thing, the way grief and fury intertwine. This undirected, wild, intense, fierce, savage, violent, ferociously mad anger at inequity, at injustice, that tears up your insides with no place to go. I think about that a lot.

It’s also interesting how people that have experienced this cruelty and injustice recognize each other. Like how Sir Lewis Hamilton is such a big advocate for women in F1. Which, by the way, is the reason that he is my favorite driver. Besides him being an amazing driver. Bit of a topic change, from women being raped and slaughtered by men who killed their families and set their home on fire to black and female people being at a systematic disadvantage in motor sport. But really, even though those are two very different things, it’s also all the same thing. And everyone that is female, queer, black, disabled, fled from a war or survived a genocide or, in short, was in some way or another systematically oppressed, will know what I mean. And like with people who experienced verbal abuse or suffered from a mental illness or are addicts, you recognize it in each other because to a certain extent you know, you know the patterns, you know the feelings. To a certain extent you know, even if you don’t know this person and their story.

Honestly, I just can’t believe how some people live with themselves. Like, what do you mean there is a genocide happening right now and most western media is supporting the government that is committing it?? What do you mean there are people who are not allowed to vote or take part in the government or even freaking renovate the houses they live in because they have the ‘wrong’ skin color or gender or religion? What do you mean there are black people who had their babies taken from them and given to white people to raise? What do you mean there is an entire f*cking country that’s cut off from the rest of the world and no one knows what is happening to the people living there? What do you mean corrupt government leaders are supported to gain access to resources not matter the suffering of real human beings? What do you mean hospitals are being targeted? What do you mean people are drowning trying to get to a safer place and then they are sent back to the hell they risked their lives to flee from? What do you mean kids lose their whole families in a war they were born into, sitting alone in the rubble and ash of what they briefly called home? What do you mean people are starving and freezing to death, living in tents, dying of treatable illnesses because they aren’t given access to the treatment, all while there are people actually thinking about using nuclear weapons? What do you mean there are people that want to kill others just because they can? What do you mean???

Everyone shudders at famous historic examples of racism and sexism and misogyny and oppression AS IF IT WASN’T ALL STILL HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. You are disgusted with the Nazis and with Apartheid and with Stalin’s genocide and yet here you are just accepting (or even worse, denying) that this current situation ‘is just the situation’. Like it’s okay. Like there is nothing you could do about it anyway. You’re privileged and goddamn lucky to have been born where you were and now don’t have to know about all the terror happening elsewhere to others, so that makes it okay. That makes it not your responsibility, not your problem, not your fight.

It makes me SICK to my stomach, to my bones. And if you’ve read this far, chances are it makes you sick too. Like. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS IS THE WORLD WE’RE LIVING IN???

You might think that all of this, all this emotion and thinking and writing, is an overreaction to watching someone I didn’t know much about a few days ago and still don’t know at all, getting cussed out and publicly verbally assaulted over a split-second singular movement for months. That someone being David Beckham, I’m jumping back and forth a bit haha. But firstly, it’s not just that, it’s everything everywhere all at once, and secondly, that’s exactly the problem though, isn’t it? That people didn’t see, didn’t try to empathize, didn’t think about how what they were doing would affect him. And yes, that might not seem as important as A FREAKING GENOCIDE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW and I agree that it’s not, but it still is a simple question of morals and common sense and basic humanity.

Ugh, what do I know. Things like this always get to me. I’ll just never understand the way people can be so mean to others without knowing them, without knowing the situation, without knowing much at all. Even with the people we think we know, we often only know them from the moment we meet them and then we only spend a fraction of their living time actually with them and we can’t read their thoughts and we don’t feel their feelings and really, do we actually truly know anyone? But somehow, people think they are entitled to say mean, hurtful things about others anyway. And I’m not only talking about famous people, I’m also talking about bullying in school, I’m talking about gossiping and excluding people from conversations and all of these things that sadly so so so many people experience. Because it all comes down to the same thing: People don’t realize how little they know and how much their uninformed, subjective, probably off-handed comments can affect real human beings permanently.

I’ve just now realized that I think about this quite a lot. It shows, doesn’t it. I’ve got a lot to say.

Obviously, everyone has an opinion and everyone judges, everyone jumps to conclusions, it’s quite human. But it really is true that it says more about you than them, it says something about where you are at in that moment, about your experiences, about your instinct, your moral compass and your perception.

And perception, perception is everything. Because it changes everything. Perception is such a weird and abstract thing and at the same time it’s not abstract at all, if that makes sense. And it’s so easily manipulated. So easily changed. It’s weird how we rely so much on something that is so… whimsy and unreliable and everchanging. How we operate under the assumption that it’s reliable, that what we know is real and true, when it’s so hard to know what’s true. But then again, what is truth anyway? What’s reality? Life is weird. And it’s unfair and horrible and gorgeously beautiful. It’s contradictory and honestly, maybe it would be boring if it wasn’t. That’s the conclusion I always come to because you gotta survive right? You gotta live on somehow.

Okay, now that I got that out of my system, I think I might name this blog post a lyric from the song ‘Mean’ by Taylor Swift. Very appropriate in my opinion, given that what she has been through in her life very much so relates to some of topics I raged about just now. As does the song, go give it a listen. Ugh, the bridge goes so hard. She’s so real. And unserious. All you are is mean and a liar and pathetic and alone in life and mean? With the clapping? Give me a break. A bit ironic and silly to name this blog post after that. I love it. Great, that’s decided then.

Where I’m at

Believe it or not, I’m doing great. HAHAHHA :,) I’ve had an amazing month so far. I went to the 5SOS show in Paris and it was EVERYTHING, I love them so much. Can’t believe I finally got to see them live! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! I had avoided spoilers, like the setlist and the dice and the videos, I didn’t know ANYTHING, and I don’t know how I managed that but it was the best. I was exhilarated whenever I heard the very start of a new song and recognized it right away, I screamed at the top of my lungs because I know every single lyric by heart, I danced my heart out like I had so many times before alone in my room. I had the time of my life, simple as that. I cried as well, tears of joy and overwhelm. I don’t know how I managed to take surprisingly decent videos, that I will treasure forever, even though I did not film most of the show so that I could just enjoy it completely in the moment. It really was pure joy. It was my first concert as well, can you believe that? Twenty years old and I’d traveled out of the country, to Paris of all places, to see 5 Seconds of Summer, my favorite band. My expectations were high and they topped it, no question about it. I can’t stop grinning whenever I think back to it. I went with a friend from high school, we spent some days in Paris together as well, and it was absolutely lovely and relaxed. I also spent time with family at the beach in the last days since, which was wonderful. I’ve been reading a lot, read ‘Forth Wing’ among other things and it SO deserves the hype, I’ve been enjoying the sun and the water, and especially being with my family. I’m healthy and content and at peace. And now I’ve got a Grand Prix to watch with my siblings 😉

Very acutely aware of just how LUCKY I am. In so many regards. But especially in the sense that I can write about something like this and then escape to my more than decent life. That to me all of this horror is not a daily reality I am made to live in but instead a knowledge and a feeling, absolutely horrifying and terrible, yes, but also escapable because I can go on to think about what I’ll eat for dinner and what I’ll talk to my family about. I am privileged to have the opportunity to blend it out and live and laugh and cry and dance and write. I’m SO lucky for that. And if you are able to read this, chances are so are you. I hope you feel it today. I hope you truly appreciate it.

Closing Comments

I’m working on a song analysis at the moment, we’ll see, maybe I’ll finish it tomorrow. Maybe not, don’t get your hopes up. I love how delusional I am, acting like anyone would read this and care. But they might one day. It’s quite fun, being delusional. Delulu is the solulu, isn’t that what people are saying? I don’t have TikTok so that might be embarrassingly wrong but I’ll ask my sister before I publish this. Either way, I’m not gonna stop anytime soon. See you next time! Take care.

Lotsa love, Skye