I don’t like you and I don’t apologize for that

This post is based on my personal thoughts on Krapsakas blog (author: Krapsakas Agnes).
It’s not scientific or evidence-based, and it may be triggering for some.
Take what resonates, and leave everything that doesn’t.

The other day I was scrolling through Instagram and came across a woman’s account that I used to follow for years. Like, for many years. I read her blog and watched her YouTube videos. Basically, I was invested in her life.

I remember having this feeling inside me again and again that “I don’t like her.”
I couldn’t really explain why? On the surface, she seemed like a nice person.
At the same time, I had this question in my head: “If you, Agnes, don’t like her, then why are you following her?”
Do you want to know what was one of the main reasons? The herd mentality!

A lot of people followed this Estonian woman. As funny as it sounds, I didn’t want to be the one who was “left behind”.
“If everyone is following her, reading her blog, watching her YouTube videos, watching her Instagram lives. HOW can I miss out on this?”

At the same time, I disagreed with many of her views on the world.
But I DIDN’T DARE to be different or say out loud, “But I don’t like this person! I just don’t like her, and that’s it!”
No explaining. No apologising. Just simply and honestly, “I don’t like this person, period.”

At some point I basically grew out of her and stopped following her. I think she became really depressed at some point and that was the final straw for me.

Anxiety disorder and swallowed words

The other day I was talking to a woman about an anxiety disorder. We have both been diagnosed with it.
She said that having this disorder is really difficult and complicated because it limits the things she can do.
The anxiety is just so, so big that you simply can’t do things.

I know from personal experience what it means to have an anxiety disorder on an extremely high scale. Where you can’t or don’t even want to go to the store, and you get panic attacks in the store because there are so many people! So much energy! EVERYTHING is just too much.
Or how your body can’t cope with the anxiety and because of that you have insane coughing fits, so you think you’re coughing your lungs out because of the anxiety. And this happens every day.
Or that you can’t eat because the anxiety is so intense that you feel extremely nauseous.
Or halfway through eating, your body just locks up and that’s it. You simply can’t eat anymore.
Or you can’t pick up the phone and make a call even though it’s an emergency.
I could keep writing examples like these here forever.

My answer to this woman was the following:
“This is purely my opinion, but I think an anxiety disorder can be connected to a person constantly pushing down their feelings and thoughts and not expressing themselves. And being afraid that if they do express themselves, they’ll upset other people or somehow go against society. Which is wrong! We all have the right to our own opinions and to express them. And we don’t have to agree with everyone else’s opinions.

But at the same time, it’s important to understand the space and the situation you’re in. Where can you express your opinion more loudly, and where is it more appropriate to do it calmly?
Expressing your opinion everywhere, at any given moment, by shouting and being overly confrontational is definitely not reasonable, and I’d even go as far as saying that it’s not very polite either. Because culturally and when it comes to etiquette, there are still rules of basic courtesy. And I don’t mean that you shouldn’t express yourself. Everything has its time and place. Balance.

Not every battle is won by shouting. You have to know how to read the room. Sometimes staying calm is actually the bigger “win”. And there are moments when you have to lose a battle in order to win the war.

We can live and exist in the same world while having completely different opinions, and still find some kind of middle ground on how to move forward.

So! There’s really nothing to be afraid of here! You only have ONE life, and you don’t want to be lying on your deathbed thinking about all the things you could have done differently in your life.

You can start doing things differently TODAY. So actually, everything is okay :).”

And I genuinely do think that – anxiety disorder = a person pushes down their own feelings and thoughts because they have had an experience or experiences with people close to them or with society that have taught them that they are not allowed to be themselves. They are not allowed to express themselves. That doing so comes with danger. Danger either to their mental or physical health.

As a society, we are playing a very dangerous game

A few years ago I was absolutely obsessed with the USA – such a cool place, right!
Such free people!
Until I quite quickly started to understand that freedom does not equal safety.
Freedom does not always mean something is good.

Don’t get me wrong!
I would not want to live under a dictatorship. Under an extremely strict system of order.

What I mean, though, is boundaries and frameworks within society.
That we DO NOT tolerate bullshit where other people are completely destroyed physically or mentally by others.
Where it IS NOT normal to RUN OVER another person with your car in front of a club because you have beef with one of them. And then act as if it was just a regular Tuesday (the UK case this year involving two female influencers, one of whom died as a result of the incident).
Where it IS NOT normal to go to a store or school in pyjamas.
Where it IS NOT normal that we don’t notice. We don’t hear. We don’t see. Everyone just lives their own life. “But why should I care that a car drove off the road? Let someone else call emergency services. I have my own life!”

I think you already understand what I mean on a bigger level.

As a society, we are playing a VERY dangerous game where it seems like everything is allowed for everyone.
Kill someone.
Destroy someone’s reputation completely, until that person has no reputation left (because you didn’t like that person or you are just bored).
Dress however the hell you want.
Respect is a word found in history textbooks that is becoming less and less common nowadays.

We are no longer safe. Because everything is allowed. There are no boundaries. There are no frameworks.

A life without boundaries leads to anxiety, which leads to swallowed words, which leads to a situation where only the strongest survive

Where is the general point of this whole post, Agnes?

Look. As human beings, we need some general rules so that we ourselves, other people, animals, nature, etc. can all be safe.
Whether it is that no logging is done in protected natural areas and nature is not disturbed in general.
Or that it is not okay under any circumstances to physically hit another person.

It is not normal to walk around and spit in other people’s faces (a worldwide idiocy that became quite popular for a while, not sure if it’s still popular today?)
It is not normal to take your shitty personality or bad emotions out on other people or, for example, shop assistants.
It is not normal to wear sports clothes absolutely EVERYWHERE and then say, “But it’s fashionable!”, “I can do whatever I want!”.

All of this may sound like exaggerated examples. But think about it for a moment.
If we have no boundaries or frameworks. If everyone is allowed to do everything, then that means that no one is safe.
And the ones who survive are the ones who fight back. Who dare to express their opinions.
Who stand by their own opinion, even when there is actually anxiety or fear inside.
But you don’t give up.

The point of what I’m saying is not “Stand up for stupid shit or things that matter to you even if it costs you your life!” Not at all!
My point is also not that if you don’t express your opinion, you will die tomorrow. No.

My point, the point of this post, is that YOU, the person reading this. You CAN make the world a better place, a more normal place, even with very small steps.

Let me give you an important real-life example:
Recently, someone sent me a video where there were three male actors from Estonia. One of them had made some kind of comedy sketch, in his opinion, where they were talking about rape in general and also about women being raped.
So basically, it was a reaction video where they watched an old video and gave their opinions about it.
One of these men essentially LAUGHED at the video until he was almost in tears.
The second one tried to hold back his laughter and the third one occasionally smirked.
I don’t remember everything from the video anymore, but one part was that the dormitory supervisor (an older woman) was raped. Students had gone to her to ask for clean towels and then raped her.
And this man was literally laughing so hard he was doubled over.
NO ONE SAID THAT THIS WAS NOT OKAY!

The person who sent me this video LAUGHED at it. He is a man himself.
And he knows very well that I have been raped multiple times in my life.

I actually watched that video. I got a huge lump in my stomach. A heavy feeling.
I started feeling sick inside. Tears wanted to come to my eyes.
I felt how much I wanted nothing to do with this topic. I didn’t want to hear or see anything about it.
But at the same time I knew that if I stayed silent, then with my silence I would be sending the message that this “joke” was funny.
So I swallowed my fear. And I quietly said, but with the confidence I still had left at that moment, “That is not funny! Not a single joke about rape IS. NOT. funny!”

This made this man offended at first. Then he became confused and said, “How can you not understand this joke?” after which he EXPLAINED the same video to me all over again, piece by piece. What was in the video.
His expectation was basically, “Now that I’ve explained it to you, surely you understand that it’s funny?”.
I stood by my opinion and expressed myself again: “That is not funny!”.
If you were wondering whether this man then understood that this kind of “joke” IS NOT a joke, is not funny, then no. He did not understand it.

The point of this story is not that as a woman, or as a man, you should now go and start arguing with someone until it turns into a fight and “make them see sense”.
It is a SIGNAL when you calmly say once (without laughing)- “This is not okay!” and that it enough for a start.

In summary

I want to say with this post that big things start with small things.

Because people didn’t just suddenly start going to school or the grocery store in their pyjamas either.
Someone had to break that “barrier” somewhere.
Someone had to be the first one to go to school wearing pyjamas.
Someone had to not react, not tell them off at school, not say that it’s not okay.

But the same principle works the other way around too.
You either react, or you swallow your words.

You either swallow your gut feeling, your opinion, your feelings, your thoughts. And put on a good face.
Or you tell even just that one person, “This is not okay!”.

You step in and maybe just go and stand next to the woman or girl or man who is being harassed by someone else.
Not because you always need to put yourself “in the middle of two fires”.
But to send a message to the person doing the harassment that this is not okay. And to send a message to the more vulnerable person that “You are not alone!”.
Maybe you don’t dare to do anything more than simply stand next to that person.
At best, smile at the vulnerable person.
But the message has already been sent.

The world is not flowers, butterflies, unicorns, and rainbows. Unfortunately.
Of course, there are beautiful days, moments and periods of time too.
But there is also a lot of evil, darkness, and hatred in the world.

The question is – How do YOU react to it?
Do you tell it to fuck off?
Do you swallow it?
Or do you say it straight out: “I don’t like you!”.
“No” is a complete sentence.
And we all have the right to a safe society.
At the same time, we are all, as individuals, the creators of that society.
It doesn’t matter which corner of the world you happen to be in.