First you must identify the problem – you know a lot of things and think a lot of things about that which you know. Too many thoughts, too many sparks racing across you’re vibrant, loud, exhausted and messy wires.

This inevitably leads to you pissing someone off.

Because. Just when. You want to. Shut. Up. Your mouth explodes into a cacophony of opinions and songs and speeches. And soundbites.

Secondly, you must pat yourself on the back. Give yourself a little supporting cheer because it’s quite difficult to get past step one. But you did it. Well done you.

Thirdly, overhaul your entire internal thought system. I’m talking big, structural changes – slow down the sparks, uncross the wires, squeeze the negativity, the anxieties, the worries and the pre-emption, out of that big grey sponge they decided to call a brain.

It’s a terribly inefficient service that wastes a colossal amount of energy on trying to repair things that can’t be repaired, will into reality things that aren’t possible to will…for now, at least.

Fourthly, after recognising the problem, showing yourself some love and enacting the most ambitious plan for cranial rejuvenation in 19 years, it’s time to just be yourself – whatever that entails.

I’m of course talking about the self that your family get driven round the bend by, but will always love.

The self that your friends fall out with and want to punch so bad but will turn that punch on any twat that spills your drink in a heartbeat.

The self that the world would be so much blander, less diverse, less happy, less creative, less beautiful, more divided, more boring and less well dressed without.

Be that self and fuck putting a lid on it.

He agreed to it on Saturday afternoon, just before we went out to find costumes for a Halloween party. It was an impulsive decision. He’d stuck the tab under his tongue before I could fully comprehend what was happening.

After about an hour of shopping, he began to get uneasy.

“Let’s go home?” He said.

The walk back was beautiful. He developed this child-like fascination with everything around us. He saw colours I couldn’t fathom where the floor was nothing but concrete. He giggled, kissing me and never letting go of my hand. This is fine, I thought. Lovely, even.

“What do you want to do?” I asked him when we got back to his room.

“Music,” he said, still grinning like mad. I searched for a playlist of 60’s hits because that’s what he wanted. We just lay there, listening, him occasionally looking up and smiling at me.

I knew something had changed when he went quiet. I kept asking him if he was ok. He said he was fine. But it wasn’t fine. He was lost in his thoughts. Eventually, he just stopped answering me.

Then he sat up and blurted, “Mum!”

“No,” I said in the calmest voice I could find. “You’re with me. We’re in your room at uni. You’re ok.” He nodded and lay back down.

The second shout was louder. It caused one of my housemates, Jacob, to come and check on us. I didn’t know if I could be scared yet, or if he would soon snap out of it and go back to the wonderful colours and shapes and smiling. Jacob left because he didn’t know either.

The next time he screamed, he jumped up abruptly. I continued with my calm voice, despite everything inside me beginning to panic. “It’s ok. This is just a bad part but you’re going to be ok, you hear me?” 

“Ok, mum.” He said. I searched his face and knew then that he wasn’t in there. I called Jacob back because I had no clue what to do. I thank the universe that I did because what happened next I couldn’t have dealt with on my own.

Whatever he saw in his chaotic muddled haze must have been horrible. He launched at the windows and ripped out the blinds in mad terror, attempting to escape. I managed to pull him back by his jumper but he didn’t stop thrashing until Jacob pinned him to the wall by his throat. I called another one of my housemates to help hold him.

As soon as I left the room, every muscle that had tensed and every tear stinging my throat came tumbling out of me while upstairs he let out blood curdling screams between pauses. As much as I tried to push the thought away, I was genuinely afraid he’d never be the same again.

Eventually we called 999 for an ambulance. When they came, his screams had subsided, but they brought two police officers in case we still needed help holding him down. It seemed like forever, but finally they called for people to come with them to the hospital. Jacob and I rode in the police car, which may have been quite cool under different circumstances.

When they brought him out, I realised I didn’t want to see him. It was hard watching someone I knew so well morph into something completely unfamiliar. His eyes were still alert but they glazed over me. The doctors asked him some questions but he just stared at them. They said we could wait with him, but we didn’t want to.

Sometime later, the doctor came back out and told us he was being moved, ushering us to follow so we knew where he’d be.I stood beside him and held his hand. He seemed better; his eyes could focus on me. His mouth kept opening as though he wanted to say something. He was looking at me like he recognized me and it was keeping me together.

As it was getting late and I hadn’t eaten, I asked him if I could leave. He clung on to my hand tighter, still not saying anything. I told him I’d stay for a while.

I later discovered that he hadn’t recognised me at all. Apparently, we looked terrifying, towering over him, but he was just willing himself to stay calm.

He was moved again, another curtained off room. Now he could speak but was still disoriented.

“Do you know who these people are?” The doctor asked.

He glanced at us. “Some people I met at uni, I’m guessing.”

When Jacob and I went outside, I called his brother to ask if I should contact his mother.

“No,” he said. “Just wait for it to wear off, for him to understand what’s real and what’s not.”

He was sitting up and smiling like normal when we returned. Too normal. He was giddy, as though nothing had happened, but he still wasn’t himself. He pointed, convinced there were Aztec symbols on the walls and that the curtains were moving. It all seemed so absurd.

“Same time next week?” he joked.

I suddenly realised that he had no recollection of anything that had happened. I couldn’t breathe, the room suddenly felt so small. I went out into the corridor, Jacob following. Neither of us knew what to think, and although it was just shy of midnight, we were completely exhausted.

He was still grinning, pointing at “snowflakes” on the walls when we got him home. I ordered him to go to sleep.

At around 3am, I heard voices, one of them his, in the kitchen. There he was, arguing with my housemate’s boyfriend. Finally, he actually said the words, “I was in control for most of that time.” And I screamed. Everyone fell silent.

He finally listened. In his room, he apologised, and meant it, but he still didn’t really remember anything. He asked me to stay with him, so I did. In the dark, I asked him if he felt better now, if he felt safe.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you?”I didn’t answer.

The unstoppable and undeniably tumultuous force of the media is now stronger than ever. The ability to access the world is only the click of a button away. The world’s obsession with the ‘perfect image’ has been consistently at the forefront of the digital age, making pressure on young girls even more apparent. The unattainable and frivolous nature of our consumerist society has left many girls vulnerable and exposed to the fiction created through social media platforms and the snowballing effect of reality television, ultimately distorting young minds and expectations, whether concerning body image or societal expectations. This is not dismissing the idea that all these issues were non-existent before this, however suggests that the internalisation of the ideas portrayed through the media have heavily exacerbated their existence.

The life of a teenager is consistently and understandably notorious for being a stressful and unnerving time. However, this period within a young person’s life has only been further disrupted and disillusioned with the heavy emphasis upon a driven media.  The constant reminder of ever-changing expectations and realities are thrust upon easily influenced young people, through their daily consumption of television and social media making it next to impossible to avoid over sensationalised ‘celebrities’ or ‘influencers.’ The staggering incline in reality television has also contributed to backlash from medical professionals, with Dr Kousoulis from the Mental Health Foundation stating that “research shows a large number of young people have said that reality television has had a sincerely negative impact on how they view their bodies, which have prompted strong links to the development of anxiety and depression.”  This can further be supported by the findings of the YouGov survey, conducted on four thousand five hundred and five teenagers between the ages of thirteen and eighteen which found that “one in four people say that they worry about their body image.”

 It is notable that within this superficial age, that according to the Medical News Centre that, since the boom of reality television in in 2000’s the concern of eating disorders in girls aged between thirteen and nineteen have almost tripled. Many television stars are meant to embody the quintessential beauty ideal, causing a severe drop in teenagers’ self-confidence as they subconsciously digest and internalise the images presented to them. It is increasingly more apparent that reality television has been hit with an abundance of scrutiny due to embodying these types of issues and abandoning any potential opportunity for a form of female empowerment, which should be at the forefront of a proposal to represent any type of woman in the modern world. The continuing problem with these programmes is that they are frequently portrayed as authentic , where as many of them are altered in a multitude of false pretences, purely for entertainment in order to engage a depleting audience. This causes a legion of complications, especially considering many teens have been altering their appearances and ‘beliefs’ drastically to ‘mould’ themselves into these lifestyles which more often than not are based solely on a consumers perception of an ideal.

We look towards the dawn of the modern world through the mediums of magazines and social media to find an image to model ourselves on and influence us; shaping  and altering our perspectives as to what is considered ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ Contradictory to perspectives of the fame hungry ‘socialites’ who flood our newsfeeds and timelines with their frequent and often scandalous attempts of self-promotion. The battle for the removal of these social media sensations has been in the process of construction for a long period of time, however, the emergence and uproar set in motion by body positivity activists have now begun to take the internet by storm. The astounding and revolutionary ‘I weigh’ campaign and page created by Jameela Jamil has allowed for the progressive mindset to be spread throughout the social media world, which is gradually extending itself to the young girls who need it most. Her most notable and recent action was in regard to counteracting and responding to the promotion of the Kardashians weight loss tea.  Tweeting that ‘tweeting that the Kardashian’s “pockets are lined with the blood and diarrhoea of teenage girls’ She has been able to draw upon her own experiences, stating on several occasions that as someone who, as a teen, was easily influenced by celebrities, Jamil urged the ‘Kardashian collective’ to be mindful of what they are promoting and profiting from. Viewers and fans may take these promotions too far, which could lead to dangerous effects.

The secular nature of our society is constantly transpiring and adapting, fusing together different cultures, ethnicities and beliefs, which can be positively shared through online platforms. However, on e thing remains the same throughout all of this change: the need for more positive female roles is more apparent than ever an =d the ideals stemming from feminism prove that women are stronger together – helping to create the women of tomorrow, through the actions taken today.

You lie on your friend’s bed waiting for her to come back from the co-op with lemonade. You remember that your mum asked you to call your sister. Your mum has been going through a rough time lately, so you need to do it. You start talking about your week, telling her funny things about your lectures – nothing important – she starts discussing politics with you and you transform her very intellectual, clever, working-woman insights into scenes from Gilmore Girls and parrot them back to her.

You realise that you don’t really have political views apart from the things she tells you. She explains them so convincingly that you believe them, and they become your views so you convince your friends that they should believe these things too. You become informed through her perfectly phrased arguments. You realise that you’re the pop-culture, younger version of her: you have the same intent and desire to argue with people – make sure other people know they can’t talk shit around you about racist things and Brexit – except unlike her, you lack the facts to back you up. ‘Yeah I agree, it’s a bit like when Lorelei made gay jokes about Michele – when you watch it for the 112^th time in 2019 it’s just so politically incorrect, don’t you think?’ Nailed it.

Snapchat got to you too soon. Instagram stunted your need for actual knowledge. But it’s ok. You only need the headlines. You can bullshit the hind legs of a donkey and make your point convincing to your friends with references to the tv programmes you all watch.

You’re sat with your friends talking about nothing, showing each other Instagram stories of people you semi-know and making feigned political observations about Brexit and North Korea. You sound informed, like you know things; and even though you all know that you don’t know anything, with a shifty side eye confirming you’re all talking through the abstractly flickering flame of a candle – you all sound so smart and worldly that you think you should definitely all record a podcast. Matt– the only carnivore left in your group – doesn’t understand why you all agree that Beth’s housemate shouldn’t be re-posting #woke Instagram stories about the environment and plastic straws and the oceans eight times a day, when he eats more bacon than anyone we’ve ever met and guzzles the blue milk from the carton. ‘Yeah but – I understand what you mean but…. If he cares about it he’s allowed to post about it,’ Matt’s low voice and Brummy accent defend him like a cheap barrister- lads gotta stick with lads I guess. It’s one of those forehead slapping moments of ignorance which drive you crazy. What’s so hard to understand about not preaching what you don’t practice yourself? You feel bad as your frustration bubbles up to the surface, drowning you in a hot swell of molten anger. He can’t help it if he’s a bit ignorant, he means well. You know that you don’t really keep up with the news, but at least you don’t post about it. Maybe sometimes we should say nothing?                                                                                                                                                                        ‘Ok I get what you mean, but…. what’s the harm really?’ He pipes up for the 8th time. Surely he’s taking the piss at this point? He metamorphosises into a 4 by 4 truck, reversing down a narrow, one-way country lane without checking his wing mirrors, backing up over and over again expecting a different result.

You wonder on the way home what the harm is, really, in not knowing anything below the surface. You think about the real, physical change that social media has made because of this year’s fashion of veganism, with a considerable push almost definitely coming from reposts on Instagram. Lazy, disengaged youth can gain backing for political and world issues through doing nothing more than tapping a button. They don’t even need to read beyond the headline. It might seem shallow, no one’s really bothering to properly research what they preach to their followers, but real change happens – subway has a new vegan sub, every pub and its mother won’t give out plastic straws. Maybe it is better to post it, even if you don’t care. We’re always in each other’s faces, lighting up each other’s phone screen. We’re always engaged, always informed on what someone else is thinking – always communicating. Does it matter that we don’t really know what we’re talking about? We’re never alone except for when we put our phones down for 15 minutes; probably to be presumed dead.

Shame can ruin a person, it can make you feel 2 feet tall, it can make you lock yourself away to the furthest corner in the darkest room of the house you don’t find comfort in anymore. I think as a young teenager everyone carries around a cage of shame keeping everyone just far enough, so they don’t get trapped in there with you. The older generation will harp on about how we are the lucky ones, we don’t have the weight of the world on our shoulders, we don’t have the same troubles that they had. And they’re absolutely right. We have a different world on our shoulders. A world with judgment and ridicule, a world that makes girls and boys feel like shit six and a half days of the week. The people you bring into your shame cage aren’t supposed to leave, however Stockholm syndrome that appears to be, they are supposed to stay in there with you and help you dig out from underneath.

I was packing my bags for my first holiday away without parental supervision, seventeen-year-old me thought I was the dog’s bollocks. I was going with my best friend, my shame cage roommate, Kira. Her and I had been digging for many years together and with this trip just around the corner we were so close to the final escape. Kira, late as always, arrived 2 hours after the requested time with clothes in an assortment of different supermarket bags with options, because girls love options. Both with our hair tied back, trackies on and full oily faces, we tackled the suitcases.

Although Kira and I are known as a double act in the south east we had recently become a trio with Miss Emily Kirsch Mills joining the group, after all the strongest shape is a triangle. As this trip was a gift from my mother, there were only two tickets, and as Emily had been too recent an addition in my mothers’ eyes, the obvious choice was Kira. We made our peace with and it and Emily didn’t hold a grudge, I respected her for that.

I remembered that I had some last-minute shopping to do, so Kira and I jumped in the car and made our way into town to scope the Poundland holiday range. Whilst we were in the car on the way home, Kira got a call from Emily.

“Where are you, I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes?”

Confusion washed over our faces, Kira’s response mimicked our expression and Emily became more enraged at our blank reaction. We were told, in no specific terms, to hurry the fuck up. We discussed a game plan as we made our way back home, deny everything, as luck would have it, this time we really didn’t know what she was on about.

We met with Emily in the market square where she confessed, she felt left out, that she had a front row seat to the Kira and Giulia show but wasnever brought up for audience participation. I felt horrible that I could make another person feel so isolated. But as Emily went on, I could see the anger build behind her eyes. Although Emily was a reasonable and fair judge her superpower was knowing your weaknesses and keeping them for a rainy day. She reared her ugly headand turned against Kira first telling her she was useless, thick, too focused on boys instead of building a personality. With a beat she faced me. Cold and stern. Emily knew my shame, the largest weight on my cage. I, for longer than I like to admit, was the other woman, knowingly, regretfully, but at the time unapologetically.

“Slut!”, “Disgusting!” and my personal favourite, “You’ll never be good enough.”

I could see the colour drain from her face, she realised what she had done. I consider myself a calm person 98% of the time, but that 2% became enough to snap her in half and laugh at the pieces that remained. I felt the blood curdle under my skin as I spat at her feet. As my arm wound back and my fist began to clench, I felt a touch. Kira brought me back to where I was, she told me to leave it, she wasn’t worth it. I looked her in the eye and told her she’d be nothing but a smear on my memories, the blank face I’ll laugh about one day.

I haven’t forgotten her face. But I don’t want to either. I act as if I was merciful on the day, but I was hurt. Hurt that a friend would turn on me like that with no remorse. Oh well, still got to go to Amsterdam. 

I had been nervous to attend that party. The assortment of alcoholic drinks built up a pleasant buzz that protected us as we sat with friends from past times when a girl – we’ll call her Louisa – patted me on the shoulder. Minutes later, we’re laughing freely as we exchange memories. The group are still together. They’ve fallen out with Rhea (who hated me all through school for reasons I still don’t know) and whenever I run into them, they act as if nothing happened. Partway through the conversation she informs me with a little smile that she ‘completely forgives me.’

At school, Rhea was the only one of us who had a boyfriend. In a group of girls becoming very much interested in boys and ‘dating’, this granted her extreme power as friends of Rhea and her boyfriend had access to his friends – a whole array of opportunity for potential awkward playground relationships! As I was someone very much led by my own imagination and considered ‘weird’ (a trait seen as negative in a pubescent setting), I struggled to fit in but desperately wanted to.

I was 13. There is a naivety at 13 that friends are loyal, boys are worth losing your education over and that your experiences then are representative of the life you’re going to lead, so you need to get used to it. So, when I entered a harshly silent classroom whose giggles had previously drawn me in from down the hall, suspicion was an especially hairy spider creeping up my neck.

Thank goodness for Louisa! Louisa was the smart, amicable one who everyone adored. Far too mature, too honest; too kind, pretty, even, to leave me uninformed. In a moment of insecurity I once asked her, ‘do the others ever talk about me?’ and she blinked her Disney Princess doe-eyes down at me and, in a voice several pitches higher than usual, feigned complete ignorance, insisting everyone loved me. She assured me that because we were friends I could trust her and if I told her who I was worried about, she would tell me if anything was said.

I couldn’t be more grateful. I carried on as I was. I smiled, listened, laughed at insults thrown at me in the name of banter. All to be a good friend to these incredible, intelligent, funny people. The year before I’d abandoned a less interesting group of friends. They preferred sitting down and talking about shows I didn’t like to making jokes and messing around. They were kind to me but they didn’t make life exciting in the same way.

I felt included, occasionally even comfortable, and then one evening Louisa didn’t answer my Facebook message. Holed up in my room on a weekend, I opened snapchat out of boredom and there it was. All of them at Louisa’s, snickering into cider cans and wailing along to some of the shitty indie pop I had introduced them to.

It was like a pole had been thrust into my stomach. All I could see was red. I felt a sharp tingling run from every corner of my body and meet in my nose, snatching my breath and whirling my small suspicions into an epiphany: all of my friends were complete wankers.

I was being left out, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand what was so complicated about explaining to someone what they do that makes you hate them so much. I thought, if I was only told what was wrong with me I could at least try and make myself better. Instead an inkling that I wasn’t liked by everyone eventually evolved into ugly paranoia that made me so convinced everyone hated me that at some point it probably became true. A collection of betrayal and confusion and hormones forced my fingers to type like quickfire through my tears and shaking. Before I could think rationally, I had poured all my anger into a single (albeit several paragraphs long), ridiculously abusive message to Louisa.

It did nothing. Louisa saw the message but never responded. When the anger dissipated, it didn’t feel like it was any weight off my shoulders. The fire was extinguished by a pitiful need to be included. Maybe it was the loss of naivety, but I’ve never flown quite so off the handle since.

In hindsight, this was an example of terrible, terrible people. My efforts to suppress the ‘weird’ parts of myself felt like a waste of a lonesome edition of happiness. Now there are a couple of people who like me as I am. Something they taught me is no matter how safe or bored I might feel, I would rather be part of a loving and accepting community than spend my time laughing at jokes that root from hate.

Social media can be toxic. Interestingly, the reason they stopped talking to Rhea? She sent an aggressive message after they met up without her in the pub across the road from her house. She saw it on snapchat. But without exposure to that snapchat story I might have gone much longer thinking the wrong people were my friends. Without social media I wouldn’t have met the friends who love me. Ignorance may be bliss, but the longer you remain ignorant for, the harder it is to overcome.

I’m going to describe a person, and I’m going to describe them in the only way I think they’d describe themselves – methodically and logically. From bottom, to top.

Two feet spaced perfectly shoulder width apart stand in two neatly polished black laced shoes. The laces have been left in a perfect figure-of-eight bow, sitting exactly two centimetres from the ground on the left, and the same two centimetres on the right. The shoe-lace knot is a newly mastered skill and one that is taken most seriously. A gently worn away patch on the living room mat is a quiet reminder of the important and time-consuming ritual of inserting one’s foot and checking the laces are tight enough, over and over.

A slim hand firmly grips the handle of a school bag. Practical and purposeful in every sense, this bag is A4-sized and fits everything just so. Black and simple, this piece of carrying equipment is everything it ought to be and nothing unnecessarily more. This school bag: equipped with safety torch, each zip aligned with the next to the most acute degree, contains three books which have been carefully placed, descending in height order.

There was trauma last week. The zip broke on his trousers after the six-minute routine of getting dressed and tugging at the zip to ensure they were absolutely on properly finally took its toll. That was the second pair in three weeks – mum is tearing her hair out.

The over-sized coat, navy with luminous stripes to keep him safe. The chewed cuffs, chewed as a method of coping, of calming, taste of sodden waterproof fabric. This is the taste of unnerving social situations, of scary unknown places and constant questioning.

The grin and uncontrollable and excessive laughter are beyond charming because you won’t meet a more charming boy. You soon realise there’s a glaze over his eyes – he’s cracked the code to something funny.

He remains silent towards me because he prefers it that way. It’s nothing personal. I know that by now. I know what he’s doing; he knows what he’s doing; he knows that I know what he’s doing. Obviously.

You must understand, this routine is well-practised, another feature of the well-oiled mechanics of our home.

The familiar blare of the minibus horn toots. The well-versed dramatic hurry ensures. He’s not really running late. None of us could possibly allow for that as we all know it is no easy process leaving the house. He crosses the threshold of familiarity to the unnerving unknown. But he knows it’s only 7.25 hours until he can return.

Two blue eyes stare back at you as they try to figure you out; they stare slightly to the left of your face. This is an acknowledgement of your presence, but it allows for some space to frantically piece together the next confusing and unnecessary question you are inevitably about to ask.

And then he is gone. iPad charging quietly in the corner, patiently waiting. Empty cereal bowl with the abused shreds of muesli discarded just perfectly on the fifth panel of the ten-panel draining board, one hand’s width from the left of the taps; one hand’s width from the right. The door is locked and checked twenty-one times in between twenty-one blinks. Why twenty-one? Because it is just so.

Soft black leather slip-on shoes, with a single gold buckle on each. They pad softly on the tiled kitchen floor, before reaching the thin wooden chair. The embroidered pillows covering the seat and back are years old, from when her hands could still hold the needle.

Those hands were nimble long before I came to be, her nails yellowed, but manicured, cut perfectly just passing her fingertips, the crescent moons at the base rising to high into her nail bed. The blue veins protrude from the crepe-paper skin as if the paper folded, never to be smoothed out again. The creases of her wrinkles, the dark spots, like tea stains on a page of a book; her hands tell stories she herself has forgotten.

Her foundation, slightly too orange, the lipstick on her ageing teeth, the eyebrows that seem to fade more and more each time I see her, the pencil lines becoming increasingly clearer as the hair itself thins. Evidence of a beauty that once was, and still is.

Her clothes in sepia tones, knit cardigans with gold buttons to match the shoes. Tailored trousers, ironed with a fold down the centre of each leg. With each visit, that fold seems to become more shaky as her hands struggle to hold the iron as straight as they once did.

As she lowers herself onto the wooden chair, it is a vision of faded tones. The terracotta tiles that fade to off-white walls. The clothes are a spectrum of autumn despite the summer sun. Behind her, through the glass doors tells a story of life. The vivid greenery that gives life to her just as she gives life to it. The oxygen they secrete seemingly going straight to her lungs, each bud that blooms gives her a lease of life. The garden truly was the recipient of much of her love and attention before the stone steps that weave between the flowerbeds got too tall: before the uneven ground wasn’t navigable with the stick that can no longer leave her hand – she now admires it from her chair by the window longingly. 

We sit, sipping tea from bone china cups. The same cups we have drunk from for years. She, with her mug painted with garden shears, manicured hedges and flowers. Me, with mine: plain and white and slightly tanned in a ring, three-quarters of the way up the inside, a mark from the endless cups that have been sipped, the line never too close to the top, as the shaking hands allow an increasing amount of liquid slosh to the tiled floor.

“You look well dear”

Coming from a dual-nationality family where my mother came to England not knowing a word of English and being a woman, I naturally grew up a feminist. Equality is one of the most important things to me and when I see or feel inequality, rage is something which grows inside of me as fast as the Great Fire of London.

My Bulgarian mother and grandmother were always major influences on me growing up since they both lived under the same roof as me and they both have specific views on how to be a woman. Be loud, be outspoken, be strong, be respectful, move on from hardship. However, a major part of their view on women also includes modesty. Nothing too short, nothing too slutty, not too much makeup, not too much skin, not too much fat. Don’t stand out in your appearance, don’t be different. I always found that these views contradicted each other and yet they have built me up to be the woman I am.

Despite my mother’s inspirational lectures encouraging me to be opinionated, growing up in the current society also means growing up with the societal view that women should be passive and certainly never angery. No matter how much I was told that to have an opinion is to be powerful and impactful, I was always ceased the privileged of fighting back against any of my mother or grandmother’s views. Don’t upset your mother she would say. Don’t upset your grandmother she would say. For most of my life, anger was something which I fought against and told myself was a bad quality to have. After all, I had seen the first-hand negative effects of it at home and fading into the background and being agreeable was something which helped me survive my childhood years. Men, and unfortunately many women, label angry or strong-minded women as ‘bitches’. This too makes me angry. But as the story in Frozen “conceal, don’t feel” was my internal mantra.

But why shouldn’t we be angry? Women have been mistreated and marginalised for years and just because we talk more openly and more often about feminism doesn’t mean that we are equal in the slightest and the fact many women think that what we have is enough makes me angry. We are deserving of basic respect and equality. Yet, does all this anger ever amount to something in my personal life? The answer is no. Because, I too, am weak and scared to defy the patriarchy or my mother in my day to day life.

Waking up a few weeks ago, I felt confident in myself as a woman and decided to dress for my comfort and not for the pleasure of other people, especially not men.

Standing naked in front of the mirror I looked at my body. I simply looked at the way my body indented in and out and grinned because this was one of the first times that I could see that there was nothing wrong with my body. My boobs aren’t a G cup and yet they are most definitely not perky. My hip dips are something massively underrepresented in the media and my cellulite and thigh dimples are demonised online. Yet I saw myself for more than what I have been made to believe I am, more than a body that needed to be made smaller, smoother, or perkier. These curves are beautiful, and with that, I decided that I wouldn’t wear a bra out. I didn’t need to change the shape of my breasts for the sake of other people.  With the help of one of my favourite outfits, I felt good and checked myself out in the mirror before leaving.

My favourite Paramore album blaring in my headphone and the sun on my face told me that the bounce in my step wasn’t misplaced. I began strolling down the hill to town. Then something shifted, a flicker shocked my body making me sweat. A feeling of utter discomfort and anxiety began to creep in. I tried to push down that feeling in an attempt to get the bounce in my step back, but I felt so exposed and vulnerable, almost as though I had left my house naked.

Continuing my way down, I walked past a man in a high visibility jacket and a hard hat and felt his burning gaze as he followed me with his eyes. I lowered my head, unable to meet these types of men with my gaze and feel myself flushing red with embarrassment. A flame. Trying to shake off the feeling of having been molested with his eyes, I walked on further past a builder and he wolf whistled and kissed his teeth at me. I felt helpless and disgusting.

Don’t feel, push it down.

The following day I dressed myself in a way which I thought would gather less attention, an outfit that my grandmother would approve of. I wore a long-sleeved top and a pair of trousers. Nothing special, nothing remotely bare skinned or provocative. I walked down the same way to town and the same man was there. He did it again. I tried to ignore it and take a deep breath, as I had been conditioned to do. I had almost made it all the way into town without any more harassment until this man honked his horn at me and gawked at me in a sleezy way from his window, at this moment I wanted to scream “what is your problem?” A fury began burning in my chest. I didn’t.  In these moments I feel less than a feminist. I don’t feel strong and powerful as the movement may suggest. I feel like a deer in headlights wishing that the ground would swallow me up. I want to disappear, to cry and to be saved. I wish I could break through and feel safe enough to speak out, and shout, and make these men feel as disgusting as I do when they treat me this way, but I don’t know how. I have never been the person to feel comfortable getting visibly angry. And that is what makes me the angriest.

The fire inside me is however undeniably growing. Events line up like houses and the fire spreads just as easily; without getting the fire out we will all burn alive from our suppressed anger. Get angry. Get vocal. Get equal.

It’s 2016 and we’ve just finished our A-Levels. As is custom now, there was only one way to give our school years the sending off they deserved; a lad’s holiday.

I’d been to Santa Ponsa perhaps fifteen or sixteen times in my life. My mum’s friend owned a flat out there which enabled us to have a cheap family holiday abroad every year for a fraction of the price that it would cost, even to go away in the UK. It is for this reason, that Simon’s flat, as it is known in our family, became the venue for our week of debauched antics on the sunny Mallorca peninsula.

The charm of Simon’s flat was, ironically, its complete lack of charm. Simon’s parents bought the flat back in the sixties. At that time, it was just the block of flats and the beach. Now, it is a thriving beach resort flocked to by the masses every summer. After they died, Simon and his brother inherited the flat. However, Simon and his brother were not on speaking terms. It is for this reason that Simon never saw fit to renovate or glam the place up. If he did, then what was to stop his brother enjoying what Simon had paid for? As a result, walking in to the flat was the equivalent of walking back in to the sixties. Olive carpets and a tangerine colored sofa, grandiose wooden bookshelves and cabinets. Even the original fridge was in there. Yet, as I mentioned, the charm really was its lack of charm. No matter how it looked or smelt, it was basecamp for the week. And it was always a good week there.

So, myself and five other friends set up camp in the flat for the week. It slept four. A double bed and two single beds. Luckily there was a spare mattress under the double bed which we pulled out for the fifth member. Unluckily for Olly, who was always the brunt of the jokes, he had to make do with the sofa. Alas.

My mums one rule whilst we were out that is that we MUST LOOK AFTER THE FLAT. This had been drilled in to me for the weeks leading up to the holiday and so I implemented the rule in military fashion. I was nearing on fascism by mid-week. Yet, the lads knew that looking after the flat whilst we were in there was a fair trade off for having such a cheap holiday. Well, most of the lads. One of us, who I shall name James for disclosure purposes, was hellbent on ruining our holiday.

Firstly, we had all decided to go to Western Water Park, which we were all thoroughly excited for. However, James decided that, despite being outnumbered five to one, that we should go on a boat trip around the island. Yes, this seems nice, but the water park felt, firstly, way more fun and, secondly, more in tune with our lad’s holiday. This was the first thing to make him strop. It was because of this unfair ruling, or at least unfair in his eyes, that caused him to act up when we got there. We were all having great fun on the various rides and slides until he said he was bored and going to sit back on the sun beds where we kept our drinks and snacks. We didn’t mind too much as his moping around was dampening the fun anyway. When we eventually deemed it water and snack time we headed back to the beds. This was the first incident that got me slightly riled up. He had drunk ALL SIX water bottles and ALL OF OUR SNACKS. It was thirty-three degrees and we now had no water. Buying it in the park cost about four euros a bottle which frustrated us all immensely. How could he be so selfish? He was in the bad books for the rest of the day.

Then, later, we visited Toni’s Pizza. Another favored attraction of my family when we used to come. Paco, the owner recognized me and surprised me and the lads with free ice creams for dessert; five choc ices and a Cornetto. Now, none of us lads were picky and would quite happily have had whatever Paco had kindly gifted to us. However, it was obvious that the Cornetto was the favored treat of all of them. Now, you’d think there’d be a fair, judicial way of deciding who gets the Cornetto, right? WRONG. Before we’d even had a chance to negotiate, James helped himself to the icy treat and began eating it. HOW can one person be so audacious!? By now, my internal stress gauge was near busting and about to be pressed to the limits.

That night, we all went back to the sacred flat to cool off and scrub up with a brief shower. A few of the lads had their shower and then it was James’ turn. Now, whether he did this or not, I have no idea. Whatever the reason, however, I was not happy. And I really want to emphasize that I was NOT HAPPY. He’d been showering for five minutes when I noticed water pouring out from under the bathroom door. At first, I was confused but then realised. He’d left the shower curtain OUTSIDE OF THE BATH meaning that the entire contents of the shower head was spilling out on to the bathroom floor, under the door, and in to the hallway and dining room of the flat. I was FUMING. I thumped on the door for him to immediately halt his shower and come and look at what he’d done. The water still spilling out from under the door and now almost in to the bedrooms. He came out, looked at the puddle of water flooding the flat and shrugged. ‘Wasn’t my fault’ and walked in to his bedroom to dry off. I didn’t say anything at this point but was so close. I demanded he use his own beach towel to mop it all up to which he replied ‘I’m, not using my towel’. It was at this that really made me shout. As if his negligence and lack of remorse wasn’t enough, he then grabbed my beach towel as well as one of the other lads and mopped the floor with OUR towels. OUR TOWELS. For the first time in my 18 years on this earth I SCREAMED. ‘GET OUT! GET THE HELL OUT! I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU IN HERE AGAIN. GET THE HELL OUT!’. He, with no remorse, traipsed out.

A couple of years later, we all met up, having not seen each other with our respective life choices intervening at every opportunity. All of us, that is, but James. They had no interest in seeing him anymore. I, however, couldn’t hold a grudge. Ironic really as I was the one who lashed out at him.

Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t hold a grudge. Did I feel guilty? The short answer, yes.

I wish it was black and white that James ruined our holiday and that I wasn’t unreasonable for my reaction. But as with everything, it’s never black and white.

James’ dad had died the same year. I’m fortunate enough to have never dealt with any such trauma. Perhaps this is where my lack of understanding comes from, that I’ve never had to deal with that kind of trauma. One of the few people who gives you their undivided attention suddenly shuffling off this mortal coil makes you plea for attention elsewhere.

If I wasn’t young and caught up in just having fun, then perhaps I’d have noticed that.

He wasn’t a dick, he was a mate silently crying out for help. And what did I do? I denied him that. To this face. Forcefully. We lost our holiday, he lost his Dad. I don’t know how I failed to see this before.

I met up with him recently. It was the elephant in the room. Surprisingly, he apologised to me. Not only did I think that incredibly brave, but equally I found it unjust. Why should he apologise? I told him I refused his apology. I was in the wrong and I was the sorry one. Sufficed to say, I don’t get angry anymore.