Judgement.

Since the beginning of June, I decided to make a change in my life and restart. At the beginning of the year I was feeling really uncertain with what I wanted to do with uni, my workplace was closing and I was feeling distant from my friends. When June rolled around and it was time for second semester, I decided to stick with uni and take a few "filler" subjects that I was interested in and eventually I quit my job.

I began the semester with a new outlook. I can't really pinpoint how I got to this, but I had a new found self confidence and was feeling better about my self and body in general. So with that, I was more willing to step out of my comfort zone.

At the beginning I was really enjoying this semester! I met all these new wonderful people who have quickly become some of my best friends, I've gone to more events and basically become very comfortable around uni. That's what I always lacked, feeling like I belonged somewhere at uni whether it was in a club or committee or volunteer group or even in a lecture theatre, I would be self conscious everywhere I went.

During the end of september a few personal things happened that became known to quite a few people. Of course I'm not going to discuss what happened on a public forum, but the situation was quite sensitive to people who didn't know the whole story. Since becoming known to people who did and didn't know me or the situation, I've had quite a bit of backlash and a few comments made about me in passing. With the nature of the situation, there were some double standards about judgement and who to direct it at. I tried to not let it get to me because I had the support of friends and tried to not think about it.

Since all of this, my self confidence has slowly been chipped away. I began feeling a lot more insecure about my body and personality. I always felt eyes on me at events and just wanted to sit in the corner away from people. This is the polar opposite of how I felt only a few weeks ago. People began making comments that normally didn't bother me and pointing out insecurities I had as jokes. I feel like I'm back to square one.

Recently, one of my friends had a chat with me about things people were saying and assuming about me. Furthermore, she commented on my actions which has made me really think some things over. It has reached the point where I'm balancing out keeping friendships vs. what other people think of me and what would be the best for everyone and next year. Unfortunately it's not as simple as one or the other, as the two variables overlap. You can imagine what I'm trying to deal with here. The last thing I want is to give up friendships, but I don't know if I can handle anymore judgement of me.

I never saw myself in this position; where I'd actually let people dictate my life. Never have people's comments had such an impact on me and I just feel like I'm in a fragile state. The fact that I have to rebuild confidence and esteem again, along with sorting out everything above, I'm just really confused about a lot of things. I wish it was a easy as just ignore them and haters gonna hate, but these are people I have to interact and work with next year.

Bit of a personal post and I may remove this later but just had to write it down somewhere. I hope your lives are going better and if you are in a situation where people are getting you down, say fuck them and carry on!

Katie xo