The Wrap Up – 2020

2020 has been the most trying year for me by far. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve started over this year. Everything about this year has felt heavy and I was not trying to carry any of it, at all, but still found myself doing just that. I owned a lot of shit that was not even close to my mine to own, but because I wanted to stop hearing and talking about it, I added it to my already heavy load. Which might I add is a horrible habit that I seriously need to break because I started taking the blame for things from childhood just so people would shut up. I didn’t even care about the consequences. Now, we’re a few days away from the new year and when I tell you that I am ready to say goodbye to 2020, I MEAN THAT. But it’s not just because of the things I went through but also because of things I’ve discovered about myself.

This year has been the year of, “This should’ve been done” in my personal life and people telling me who I shouldn’t be in my creative life. There were so many people who should have been out of my life. I held on for so long hoping that they’d change but they didn’t and thankfully some fell off on their own while I didn’t have such happy endings with others. But I feel like those endings were necessary because they showed me that they’ll always be that way and that’s all I needed to see in order to let go of them for good. I allow people too close to me – too fast in most cases – and forget to that it’s necessary to set boundaries with both friends and family. That’s a huge part of why my feelings always end up hurt. Now, I truly struggled in my creative life because I feel that’s where I don’t have to talk much but do. I consider everything that I do from blogging to my small business to the content I create for my (blog) IG page my creative side which is why I put it that way. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel too free this year and it started with blogging.

I’ve been blogging since 2013 and I’ve been recreating my blog since then too. It’s been seven very long years, and this was the year I felt ready to talk about things I couldn’t before. Or I should say that I was still ashamed of and wasn’t ready to talk about. That was until people started to tell me who I should be. What I mean is people would tell me things like, “You can’t post positive quotes all day and then go on to talk about how upset you are”. I kept trying to find the issue in posting positive quotes while also expressing myself like the human being that I am. What I’ve come up with is that people want me to fit into this box of who I’m supposed to be on twitter, my blog, Instagram and facebook, in place of who I am. To them, I have to be a million different people in place of being the one person that I am and being okay showing the world that I feel emotions other than happiness. I have to fit into their bubble because they’ve gotten sucked into feeling like they can’t say or do things because someone else probably made them feel that way too. So, it’s okay when I’m Positive Patty 24/7 with the motivational quotes, but it’s not okay when I’m Khy Ye, the creator and writer whose expressing that I dislike stuff? GOOD TO KNOW. I struggled with this for a few months too to the point that I deleted every post and blog post that wasn’t from 2020 no matter how good I felt it was. In the end I chose to not get sucked in which is where I feel that lack of support comes from.

I’m a very social person however I also like staying to myself so it’s a confusing balance that I have. I like putting myself out there and because of that I’ve met a few bloggers this year who were more open than I thought. I’ve gotten tips, tricks and found others through these people, but they’re not supportive at all. I already know not to expect anything from my family and friends, but I thought fellow bloggers would be different. I can’t lie there aren’t too many posts that I don’t like [of theirs] and the way I show my support is by either commenting, sharing or both. I was on a role for a while too, but I had to stop because not only was the support not returned, but they don’t even visit my site. I started to feel like a lot of people just wanted me to be another follower for them so they could keep growing their followers. There’s one person who constantly shares my stuff and I met her through a virtual chat for bloggers, but outside of her no blogger I’ve met this year has supported me how I have them. What bothers me most is it’s always “we gotta stick together” but that seems to only apply to specific people. I’ve even found myself getting out of groups because I noticed that on the days we could promote our blogs, those were the only times people visited mine and it wasn’t many. I feel strongly that if the only time you support me is on the days you know are promote yourself days – and only because you want support – your support isn’t genuine. I’m not dealing with that anymore. I found my voice this year and in finding my voice I not only lost a few, but I had to let people go too. Which takes me to my next 2020 struggle.

I’m done with one sided friendships because I’m way too sensitive for relationships in general. Nobody can tell me that I’m a bad friend, PERIOD! I’ve had people coming to my mom’s house for days at a time, when I lived there, and I knew she didn’t want anybody in her house. But because I knew my friends wanted to get away from the troubles in their lives, I took that curse out often. You gotta think about it I was living in someone else’s house, with my two kids where we barely had space and I had the audacity to invite people over because I wanted to be a good friend. I deserved every curse out. When I finally got my own house, I still had people coming over whether it was to eat, wash their clothes or just be there. I did all that shit. And anybody can say, “It’s not genuine because you brought it up” but I know my heart and so do they, YOU DON’T. I’m hurt and have every right to be because I’ve been in the corners of people who felt like me “not responding enough” was reason enough for our friendships to die because they couldn’t understand that my first semester of college was too much for me. I’ve been in the corners of people who swore they were doing things from the kindness of their heart but was running around telling people that they financially supported me and when I spoke to them about it, they all of a sudden became a victim. I’ve been in the corners of people who have never supported me in anything and when I became vocal about why I don’t support them they acted as if what I said to them wasn’t true. So please don’t talk to me about “real friendship”. I address and fix the problem if I can. I don’t have time to sneak diss anybody … anymore – I have to be honest about that. Life is too short and with the things I’ve dealt with this year alone, I can’t keep acting like friendships don’t hurt too.

If I’m still reaching out to you even after you haven’t responded to me just know I care about you and that’s my way of showing you that I want you as my friend. But keep in mind that I’m human, I have feelings and will chase nobody so eventually I’ll stop reaching out and there will be no conversation as why I stopped. I’m tired of explaining myself to people because they know what they be doing, and they also know that they wouldn’t like it if someone did it to them. That’s when people start talking about how “your energy is off” when the reality is they can’t own what they did to you.

Come 2021 I’m not matching anybody’s off-putting energy. People use the word energy so freely that they don’t even realize that they’re the negative energy at times. I don’t want to be around anyone that’s not okay owning that they’re bringing everybody down. While I’m on the subject let me say that someone expressing themselves is not negative energy. Someone who’s always in a bad mood, speaking negatively to or about others, tries to force you to feel how they feel, and you never see a change in their mood is a person with negative energy. I saw that mix up too much this year too and dealt with it personally. 

You’re allowed to feel how you feel, but don’t bring it around me. Also, the whole “my face will tell it before my mouth will” is cool too, but I still need people to speak up. What your mouth says and what your face does are two totally different things. I keep seeing people say that they don’t like drama and negativity, but continuously surround themselves with those that do. Yes, that’s them but you’ll eventually get sucked in if you don’t learn that it’s okay to separate yourself regardless of who it’s from.

LISTEN! I have been quiet all of 2020 and I’ve gotten nothing but, “Don’t be yourself” and that’s what made me bite my tongue and shy away from just about everything. I’m getting older, I have children who’ll be taller than me in the next few years, I’m tired of people using me and my patience is running really thin. I’m done living by the rules that somebody created to apply to others and not themselves. Others may create and write their best work from positive experiences, but I don’t. Some of my best work comes from my darkest days. I had a lady get mad at me for something she did and told me, “You need help”. You know how bad that hurt me coming from someone who once sat in my face and called me “friend”? But you know what, anybody who’ll use my mental health and anything else I tell them in confidence as some kind of middle finger to me is a sick individual anyway. That’s got everything to do with them and nothing to do with me.

Do you know how hard it is to keep trying to be somebody that I’m not for a bunch of people I don’t even know and who want to act like things don’t happen in their life too? I have to be able to live with myself so your opinion of me can’t matter more to me than my own. So, if you are someone who had the audacity to call me anything negative because I’m not afraid to show people that being positive patty all day is impossible than I cordially invite to Thee Unfollow Khy Ye On ALL Platforms, and don’t search me later to roam my page, Party. Something else before I get off the blogging subject because people asked a lot why I don’t show my face, so I just wanted to leave this here. You’re not going to determine the worth of my content from what I look like which is why I’m The Faceless Creator. Which is just a name I gave myself because I feel it goes with my purpose. There are people who know me personally and have seen me and I would hope that they wouldn’t put me out there like that. I also do video chats, so people know what I look like just not from my pictures. I feel that social media has made us focus more on things that don’t matter than things that do and my face and my content have nothing to do with each other. Follow me and enjoy my content because you genuinely like it not because you’re hoping to one day see my face. 

I wanted to make sure I did everything I felt I needed to do before the year ended so I did two things on top of everything else. The first thing is I decided to revisit my original idea of a space for women to not feel alone. Originally called The Village I chose to change it because so many people already had that name. So, I came up with Golden Intentions which is also my blog twitter name. I also had to change the slogan for that which was real, raw and relatable to real, unfilitered and relatable because someone had the original as well. I know it’s not a crime to have the same ideas as others and broadcast them too, but I want to be original and fair and if someone had something before me then it’s theirs. I know what’s it like to work hard for something only to watch someone else steal your ideas and be more successful at it than you. I also decided to change my blog slogan from “I can only speak for me” to “Somebody gone feel me” because of what I experienced this year within the blogging community. I have to be okay with what I’m putting into the world and not allow those that don’t like it to bring me down. There’s an audience for everyone and although I haven’t found mine yet I know that I will and once I do, I know they gone feel me.

I write about some dope stuff which I’m supposed to feel because it’s me, but I’m serious. I use my platform to talk about things I’m no longer ashamed of, afraid to admit and shouldn’t have ever been. I don’t use names regardless of the vibe of the post because I don’t like to unless it’s an interview and they give me permission. It’s really a respect thing even if I don’t have respect for you outside of that. Someday I’ll find a tribe of supporters who won’t/don’t look at my freedom to express myself as an attitude or negativity. Someday I’ll find a tribe of supporters who’ll take time to actually read my post and share. Someday I’ll find a tribe of supporters who’ll probably become more than “some people I met off the internet”. Someday the love and support will start pouring in, but until that day I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing. I can’t give up on myself. 

This was my 2020 and I have no intentions to spend another year like this. I’ll be back in 2021 renewed and true to what I feel without worrying about who people I don’t even know telling me who I should be.