My whole life I've seen people who don't want to express themselves for fear of judgement from others. I identify with this on a personal level because I used to place so much value on what people thought about me. I denied myself things I enjoyed, like reading, because it wasn't "cool" and was "nerdy." Fifth-graders have a funny way of thinking. Now that I'm older, I know all I have is me, myself and I, and my opinion is all that matters.
I think not caring is something that just comes with age. Waking up and realizing that the only opinions that matter are yours and your loved ones is truly liberating. Even then, if your loved ones don't fully agree with you, that shouldn't affect your decisions too much. At the end of the day, all we truly have is ourselves, and it's important to live authentically, openly and honestly.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially during this hot election. I've seen a lot of tweets lately where people don't want to talk about their opinions during this election because they don't want to create a divide between them and their followers. This is the first election I can vote in, and the first time I have truly followed politics. This is true for a lot of millennials. We are in the stage of truly discovering ourselves and forming our opinions. So I'm bothered when I see that people don't want to tweet their own beliefs on their own Twitter accounts. YouTube makeup guru KathleenLights tweeted, "these elections make me hot with anger but I have to repeat to myself 'don't tweet about politics. Too personal. TALK ABOUT MAKEUP.'" And her followers responded to the tweet agreeing, expressing that it "was better that way. Politics cause too much drama." Why? Why should people have to bite their tongues and censor themselves on their own accounts? This isn't advocating people shoving their opinions down others throats, or telling people to be rude about it. You can simply tweet your opinion without polarizing others.
Why can't we get personal? Why can't we be open? If we don't share what we so badly want to say, for fear that we are being too personal, for fear that people won't agree, and for fear that there will be drama, then we have failed. Our opinions and voices carry so much more power than we can imagine and we should never feel like we can't express ourselves. Let there be honesty and let there be voices that don't go unheard.
If we can't be personal and open, then what's the point?