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Do you know what it feels like, simply walking along minding your own business, but so painfully aware of all the sniggering and remarks between people passing by. Always with my headphones on, but nothing playing; an excuse to ignore them, but I can hear the giggling, the remarks, the attempts to get my attention, the slurs. And every time, it hurts.

I wish I could be invisible again, I just want to blend in, to be accepted as normal, to be equal to everyone else. But there is no equality, there is no fairness. Not all lives can be improved with merely compassion (e.g. people born with physical limitations) but across the board it would be a much appreciated improvement. I’m just trying to live my life; we’re all just trying to live our lives. All of the pain in my life, and there is a lot of it in such a variety of areas, it's caused by people. Of course there are others out there having to live worse lives than mine, but the chances are that you the reader haven’t dealt with quite the continually worsening shit that I’ve been dealing with day after day. If you have a partner, or a car, or a steady job, or a ladder to the future, or some certainty about the next week or month, or possess any desirable skill that’s so hot right now. Or the right body. Or maybe you have all of those things. I have none of them, and less.

On top of everything I have to deal with just to get by, everything going on behind the facade of someone somehow managing to hold it together, and any hope for the sun coming out tomorrow being regularly knocked out of me, it would be nice if I could at least walk to the shop without feeling all eyes on me, being made to feel abnormal, like some sort of freak.

If "it gets better", I'm still waiting for any sign at all.

"Hot N Cold"

I am melting. The dilapidated fan is whirring away in vain, I am wearing just jeans and a t-shirt, and the window is wide open. Yet I continue to melt.

I rotate between sitting at the desk on the uncomfortable chair, collapsing on the bed until it becomes too warm, or just walking around the room with my hands on my head in exasperation.  With those fidgeting factors, this could take a while to write. Although, I don't even know what I'm writing.

The one thing I am certain of is that if I had to choose between the weather being forever cold or forever hot, I would choose cold. A psychologist or some such person may say that if the weather was cold at the moment, I would long for warm weather. They would be wrong. Even in the bitter cold of winter, I have said on numerous occasions that I would rather it was always that cold rather than stiflingly hot.

The heat makes me stressed, uncomfortable, agitated, short tempered, unproductive, and bored. If I want to get something done, I may take a shot at it, and then give up because the heat is all too much. In an attempt to embrace the warm weather, I wanted to sit outside in the sunshine and read a book - something I haven't done in a long time. One problem - the sun is not shining, there was even rain earlier, and the skies have been bland if anything. Yet I still find it warm. I'm just not cut out for warm weather. When it's cold, I can just put more clothes on. When it's warm, well, it would be awkward to remove clothes.

I have an urge to burst out and find some sunshine to sit in, yet I cannot find any.

One whole big game of catch-up

Life. That's what human life is, in this artificial construct we call society.

We spend our lives improving ourselves in comparison to others, dead or alive. But, "life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it". It seems natural to spend most of your life trying to catch up to others, such as parents. Racing to make a financial success out of your life to appease your parents before their clocks run out. But what was their success that you have to live up to? It could be working for some huge corporation that's destroying the planet, selling hours of their life just to buy a house for their own parents to live in. "Steven, I didn't sell out son. I bought in. Keep that in mind." We buy in, in an effort to meet or beat our peers, in a cyclical manner that pushes society forwards.

Instead, you do you. Ignore what society demands, so you can truly focus on what you love doing. By doing so, without the distraction of society's demands, what you achieve may better society in an even greater way than if you'd followed the preset path society carved for you.

Yes, this is cynical as sin, and may even sound arrogant or ignorant, but the bottom line is:

Be the best YOU can be. Aim for your dreams, not someone else's.