Fatma

For the past few nights, I’ve been letting the Cherry Bomb: The Documentary play through while I go to sleep. Illegal Civ and Tyler, The Creator’s creativity is so inspiring to me and I feel like it has been influencing me to be more carefree.

I’m the kind of person who says that I don’t care about what people think about me but deep down, I do care. However recently, I felt the need to re-evaluate how I’ve been dealing with my haters. Through my non-existent social life and constant overheard gossip from people in my school, people don’t think I’m as cool as I think I am. I’m like Eric Andre’s 15-year-old long lost twin (I find poop and fart jokes hilarious and I’m really childish), so I’m not surprised that people in school think I’m weird and I can’t control their opinions of me. But what I can control is how I react to their opinions of me and I’ve realized that the best way to actually stop caring about what people think about you is to literally dust them off of you. It sounds crazy, but listening to Jay Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” whilst physically dusting off my shoulders helps me make my haters disappear. It’s like I’m dusting away their negative energy.

Recently, there have been a few events that have not made my life so pleasant (my crush now has a girlfriend who’s not me, during an one week school holiday; I only went outside once; and overall I felt like no one cared about me). But then, using my new technique, I thought about my situation. Firstly, my crush never thought about me as much as I thought about him and that’s a fact that I could never come to terms with because I was blinded by love (I know “blinded by love” is a disgusting phrase and I kind of want to punch myself for being so stupid and not listening to what Destiny’s Child said in “Survivor”). I had to realize that my crush never cared about me. The second problem was easily solved when I remembered that during the days I spent in my room, I had caught up on multiple seasons of Malcolm In The Middle, which is something I’d been wanting to do for so long but I was pre-occupied with school.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, you have to dust the haters off of you. Once I did, my skin cleared up, my curls were less frizzy and my soul felt content. Drop anyone who doesn’t care about you because you don’t need them or their negative energy. It’s better to be alone and feeling positive, instead of surrounded by “friends” who are constantly pulling you down. Be confident like the star that you are and when in doubt, remember that if Jennifer Lopez can do it, so can you. ♦