My words sit firm in awkward lumps upon my tongue

Making breathing difficult as sticky syllables

Clog the airways, leaving lips to render blue.

I know that without spitting up, I’ll surely die

But everybody’s staring at me, judging my behaviour.

Dirty habits go unnoticed rarely, punished instantaneously

And all I want is to be labelled ‘good’.

All I want’s that shiny badge of honour.

But what’s the cost of being loved by all, and is it worth

The loss of air that flows between my lungs and heart?

And has my silence robbed another of that air

I’m terrified of losing?

I’m one of those people that likes to be liked by everyone. I have opinions but as soon as I enter into what looks like it might be an argument, I back down. I sit on the fence and pretend that I don’t care, or just play dumb.

It’s served me well in most instances but recent events have made me think that perhaps I’ve done more damage than good. But then on the other hand, the same recent events have made me even more worried about saying something wrong for fear of being attacked from all sides.

I think that it’s obvious that we should be treating everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) with the same amount of respect that we would like to receive. And I think that people who have wrong done to them have every right to call it out. But I am left wondering where the line is. When does the retaliation just make things worse? Can you just go too far and become the aggressor yourself?

I’m often reminded of the famous line that Martin Luther King said: ‘hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’ It’s so true and yet I’m seeing so much hate being flung back and forth at the moment.

I think that my fear of wading into any argument would be entirely because of lack of education and I think that this is what we should be improving. Rather than spending all of that energy on anger, perhaps it would be better to sit down with each other and open up about our struggles with identity. Better still, maybe we should open up and look at the things that make us the same. We are all the same species no matter what our sex, gender, race or religion. We all struggle with the same emotions and hurts and fears so maybe we should talk about these?

Once again, Russell Brand explains it all rather better than I can so I’ve included a video of his that I watched last night. Watch it all the way through because it’s what he says at the end that made me want to stand up and applause like Meryl Streep at the Oscars.

Much Love

Rachel