NELG

Okay, so today at college, I plugged my phone in to play some music. When I was about to put it on, someone, who I shall refer to as Will because that's his name and it's easier than calling him someone all the time, told me that I could only put on music if it was "happy music, and not that 'I want to slit my wrists' music, like Emily plays" (Emily is my closest friend), amongst other things.

You may be thinking that okay, this isn't that bad. Granted it's pretty rude, but he's expressing his opinion about music, right? Wrong. The 'I want to slit my wrists' music is what he uses to cover all rock and metal music (today's music was mostly Blink-182 and Green Day, I think). Okay, so I'll accept that there is music out there about self harm and suicide. But not all music from one particular genre is the same. And the songs that are about self harm and suicide usually aren't promoting them (I can't think of one that is). I'll let him off for saying that to me because he doesn't know what I'm dealing with, but he shouldn't really be saying that to anyone.

Usually I would just try to ignore his comments, but I've had enough. He's also made misogynistic comments in the past, alongside many other offensive ones, and I've had enough. I have got some music about self harm and suicide, but not promoting it, and tomorrow I shall *hopefully calmly* explain why he can't dismiss music like that and also that it's not smurf well acceptable to make comments like that (okay, maybe not so calmly then). But I'm not stopping there. I'm going to make a stand about people's attitudes towards issues like self harm and suicide while I'm at it. I'm fed up of people making jokes, like planning on calling the Samaritans each day "just for a laugh", the vandalism on a poster about mental illness saying "who cares?", people who draw lines on their skin and when asked say things like, "oh, I cut myself; hah, I'm joking, I'm not an emo freak". It's time someone opened their eyes.

I want to write more, but my laptop is glitching at me writing so much for some reason, so this will do for now.

I've just emailed the college charities committee about organising a charity event for #CutCakeNotWrists, which is a charity that raises money and awareness for support for those suffering from depression and self harm. My friend's on the committee, so I'm hoping she'll agree at least. If it goes ahead, I'm hoping to be allowed to organise an assembly to go with it about the still-present stigma against mental illness too.

That's a pain, some people are particularly judgey and downright dickish about this sort of thing, evidently you're fairly (understandably) pissed off by now which is annoying but i hope your whole assembly thing works out.

At the moment it looks like it's going to go ahead, although it still has to get past the head (2 out of 3 in the committee have said they'll back me - haven't heard from the third yet - and some random person who found out says that she wants to be involved too). This is more than just about that music now though. It's about the other things I mentioned in my first post too, and the general attitude. I'm glad I'm doing something to help now.

Guys

Guys

Guys

(That's a gender-neutral term in my book, btw)

I have the whole committee on side! Meaning that I can basically come up with ideas for fundraising and awareness and as long as they're safe and everything, I'm allowed to do them .

Excellent job, Cho!!!

That's great! Well done, Cho.

That's awsome Cho, great job well done.

I meant to update this a while ago. Basically, I was arranging for the founder to come and give a talk, but because he donates all of his income to his charity, he has to charge travel expenses and the school are being too tight to pay it (despite how much we have to pay them), so now I've been roped into giving an assembly about it. To be honest, I'm really nervous about this. It's one thing helping to raise money, writing the odd article and all that, but it's another thing to find yourself giving an assembly to the whole college about the charity, having to go into great detail on what is a difficult topic to talk about. I don't know how I'm going to do it.

Not brilliantly. The assembly was mediocre and the only other thing they'd let me do was a cake sale, which I didn't have time to arrange. A friend of mine managed to get them to donate some money from something else to it but the actual awareness bit didn't happen. The HoY never got on well with me and thought I was wasting my time, so offered no support.

I had to get someone to do it with me because I was shaking all the way through. I have a habit of getting overly passionate about things though. It would probably have been easier to ignore the whole thing, but that's not my style.