2016 - the year that was a dumpster fire

2016, the year that was a bit of a bastard for many. This post is quite sweary, be warned.

It was the year when so many famous people died that self-righteous arseholes on social media stopped shaming others for grieving for celebrities. Funny how that changes when THEIR favourites started dying.

It was the year that people stopped reminding others that horrible things are going on all over the world and we shouldn't mourn for celebrities if we're not mourning for all the senseless deaths in Syria, etc, and that's because.......

It was the year when horror became normalised. When an orange cheeto with grabby hands finagled his way into the White House, borne on a wave of xenophobia and hatred that would have survivors of the Holocaust spinning in their graves. It was the year that Brexit happened, when in a somewhat similar way to America's path to white supremacist hell, selfish arseholes doomed us to a hellish future, just because they don't like that the old pub in town is now a Polish convenience store or that they see a few more brown people on the street.

It was the year that I stopped mourning individual terror attacks and mourned for the whole damn world. It was the year that I donated more money than ever to charity, not because my circumstances were better, but because it assuaged my guilt for living in such of dumpster fire of a world and feeling so completely helpless about it.

But it wasn't all bad news.

It was the year my step dad recovered from cancer. It was the year my mum and step dad renewed their wedding vows. It was the year I became a moderator for Alternative Curves. It was the year James and I moved into a lovely new home. It was the year my dad came to stay with us for a week to help us move, the longest amount of time I've spent with him since my mum and dad divorced when I was 7. It was the year I started (then stopped) writing for She Might Be, a great new body positive online magazine with an all-woman team. It was the year I realised it was OK to limit the amount of people and things I let into my head. It was the year I discovered the beauty of the binge-watch in relation to soothing my mental health. It was the year I really learned who my friends are. The year I learned so much about myself and my mental health - be that through the repetition of groundhog days, or by wising up after making colossal fuck ups. It was the year I learned I didn't have to intimately follow the lives of everybody in the UK plus size blogging scene to be a good person, which was handy as because with one ranty post I made enemies of half of them anyway.

It was the year I really put my own happiness at the fore and stopped living for my critics. Their opinions ain't paying my bills. 💰💰💰 It was the year I learned family and good friends are all that matter. It was the year of being such a proud auntie to my two little nieces. It was the year I realised I'm enough, just as I am. It was a year when my body love just grew and grew and I worked on loving a lot of things I'd previously been unhappy with. It was a year when all the things I'd been beating myself up about to do with my blog fell away because I'd unplugged from the scene and thus had no one to compare myself unfavourably to. It was the year I started believing in myself again. It was the year I fell deeper in love and lust with my husband than ever before. It was also the year I was DM'd the most unwanted cock too, but hey ho. 😝

Was it a great year, overall, aside from my personal life? No. It was still a dumpster fire. But here's what I learned. Good people need to group together. White supremacist and other intolerant weapons-grade fucknuggets are great at organising hate online so we need to be even better at organising love. Straight people need to advocate for and support the LGBTQIA folks of the world (without speaking over them). White people need to advocate for and support (without speaking over) people of colour. People who aren't in war-torn countries need to support those who are. We all need to do better by one another, in ways large and small if there's ANY hope of this world not devolving into a Dante-esque seventh circle of hell. A small amount of immensely powerful people are hell-bent on destroying the earth and all in it with their unquenchable thirst for money and power. We can't let it happen.

The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing.

Thanks for reading. Leah xoxo

No comments