I care about a lot of things. I may as well live in the clouds, have moons and stars printed on my stomach so I can shoot a rainbow from it. I care.

 

But there’s some shit I don’t care for.

 

I don’t care about you promoting ‘kindness matters’. I’ve never seen kindness in you. I’ve certainly never experienced it personally. I’ve definitely experienced a lack of, on many occasions. Sure, we can all be dicks in our youth but some people are old enough to know better. Or go on to feel remorse, like I have for mistakes i’ve made. I’ve seen friends be absolute assholes behind their ‘mate’s’ back.

I guess I should be grateful that in my case it was often to my face, and my low self esteem tolerated it.  I don’t care for your virtue signalling, insincere ass. I am torn between frustration and amusement. But I don’t want to care enough to be frustrated or annoyed, or mildly irritated.  I need to work on myself, I guess i’ll never stop trying to be better. But I wish I didn’t find the hypocrisy at all frustrating. One day I hope to be the person that doesn’t.  I just want people to practise what they preach. I want people to be better. To be real. Sincere. Authentic. To not give a shit about presenting a version of themselves that is pretty far removed from the reality of their being.

 

I won’t tell you about my (mostly) shitty childhood because that doesn’t justify all of the mistakes I made. Times when I could have been cooler, kinder.

Quite honestly, I know you lack genuine compassion anyway and would probably laugh at the shit you learn about me. I’ve seen you laugh at things that are bad. Not as bad as that, but things that I don’t think i’d ever feel anything other than sadness about. And i’m someone who tries to find humour in even the darkest of times. Laughing at inappropriate shit got me through those dark times. I mean, there were months where I forgot what it felt like to laugh, but eventually I laughed again. But fuck dude, you were harsh. So painfully harsh.

 

But hey, capitalise on the ‘positive vibes’ and ‘kindness is cool’ shit. The facade continues to work. I’m pretty sure it always will.

But I promise you, if you do learn what real kindness feels like, you won’t just see it as a word on some merch or a framed print in your home, an embroidered cushion or a pretentious poem you wrote.

 

Integrity matters.

Compassion matters.

Sincerity matters.

Selflessness matters.

Self reflection matters.

Owning your shit matters.

 

Kindness fucking matters.  Of course it matters. But fuck, at least live up to the postcard  you bought with the word kindness on from that paper craft shop. Or the floral picture you repost on social media with the word written in between a laurel of leaves and flowers. At least live up to the fucking quote you probably didn’t check the legitimacy of before sharing it and covering it in parmesan and stilton hashtags.

 

You’re not my kind of person, but at least be kind.