Life of Liam

It's been just under a year since I last wrote for this blog. I don't really know why I stopped, but I guess life just gets busy and you get caught up in so much that you don't take time to reflect. But I think that's what I need to do now. It's been a very eventful year from last April to now. My partner and I got our own flat, I passed my driving test, and we went on a few small breaks in between around Scotland. We spent a lot of time with friends and family, went to a wedding, and welcomed my nephew to the world. The past month or so, however, has been challenging. The Coronavirus crisis has put almost the entire world on hold and has really affected the UK in the past few weeks. My life has been sort of flipped upside down in this crisis due to my employment situation. I won't go in to too much detail but, in a nutshell, I was due to start my first proper full-time job (what I thought would be the start of my career) a few weeks ago. On my start date...

In November 2018, the Scottish Government made the monumental move of making LGBTQ+ inclusive education compulsory in the Scottish education system. This is a move that will likely save many lives and make young LGBTQ+ individuals feel safe and included with their peers. LGBTQ+ inclusive education is an essential in 2019, and it is a fact that school curriculums must come to terms with. We teach young people to be respectful and considerate at school, yet bullying against LGBTQ+ people is still prevalent. Looking back on my own experience of being a young LGBTQ+ individual, I now realise that it was isolating and lonely in some ways. Despite never feeling overtly uncomfortable with being gay, and despite having a good support network of friends and family, I feel that I was quite reserved and, in some ways, felt that I couldn't fully express who I was until I was in my final year of high school. Perhaps if LGBTQ+ inclusive education was part of the curriculum from a young age ...

Content warning: this blog post discusses suicide and mental health issues that some readers may find upsetting. Samaritans has produced a full research report about male suicide called which can be read  here . Suicide and poor mental health is something which is still very under-discussed in society, in my opinion, and is something that people need to be more open about. Whilst suicide affects both males and females, males are at a higher risk of suicide than females. In the UK, men are three times more likely than women to commit suicide, with the highest suicide rate being men aged 40-44 in 2017  (read the full 2017 suicide report by Samaritans here) . Data collected by Samaritans indicates that male suicide supersedes female suicide in all age categories, however, and in all areas of the UK. The 2017 report did also find that female suicide is on the rise and male suicide dropped a little from 2016 though, according to Samaritans, it is too early to tell whether th...

Writing is something I have always enjoyed and, in recent years since starting this blog, it has become an outlet for me to express how I am feeling. In my final years of high school, for assignments, I began writing about issues which were very close to me - in particular, as I grew more comfortable with my sexuality, I used my writing to understand what I was going through and how I came to understand my sexual orientation. I started this blog to provide a public space for me to comment on my life's experiences and what I was making of the world around me. As my blog has grown, writing has become more important to me and has been an essential part of my life as I progress into adulthood. My writings come from a place deep inside and are cathartic in nature - they allow me to expel my (potentially corrosive) thoughts and emotions in a healthy and safe way. Writing allows me to connect and engage with what is happening inside my head, giving me a space to analyse and understan...

The title of this post is a question that I have been asked many times, usually after I have said I was born and grew up in Livingston (a town in Scotland). It is a question that could be rephrased to "what is your ethnic background?" or "where are your parents from?" - though the need for this type of question to be asked at all is questionable in itself, unless it is the topic of conversation already. What I take from this question is "you can't be from Scotland, you're not white" and so I must divulge into the long spiel about my family background to appease their curious mind, after which they seem to switch off. I am mixed race. My mother was born in Singapore and my father was born in Scotland. It is a mix I am proud of, and one which has enabled me to experience so much more in life than many others may not be able to. However, living in a country where you do not exactly look like everyone else will of course lead to these types of que...

The following is a poem inspired by a dream I had a while ago - or, rather, a nightmare. The dream itself was terrifying, and words can barely convey the fear I felt waking up. Here I lie with my family around me. The beeps of the heart monitor becoming less and less frequent. My breathing becomes strained, Chest struggling to cope as if a weight presses down on me. I know what awaits me, and I am at peace with it. Death will come as a relief, The long battle is almost over. It will not be a victory from me this time, But I have said my farewells and am ready. Feeling the darkness set in, My eyes begin to cloud over. I give a last smile to my dearest who squeezes my hand one last time, Trying their best to hold on to that last glimmer of life. Feeling my warmth one last time before my soul is taken. Forming memories, however painful they are. As I prepare for the inevitable, I take one last deep breath in. The smell of the ward is not one I had hoped for, But ...

The TV anthology series Feud  hit the screens in March 2017 in America. When I first heard that Ryan Murphy was creating a television show based on the feuds of pop culture icons and that the first series would be starring Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon, I was filled with excitement of what was to come. However, as the show was not aired in the UK at the same time, I was not able to keep up to date with each episode so had to wait until this week when the BBC aired the show on UK television and provided the whole series on BBC iPlayer. I have since became engrossed in the series and it is proving to be more enjoyable than I would have thought. As this is a television show review/analysis, the content of this post will contain some spoilers. The first season of the show presents a dramatisation of the famous Hollywood feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford - focussing on the one film they starred in together What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the promotional tour whic...

September 6th was the three year anniversary of me moving out of home and beginning my first step into adulthood. In 2014, I moved from Livingston to Glasgow. Not too far away from home, but far enough away that I would begin to understand what is was like to live independently. Timehop  is an app which lets you know what you were doing in previous years each day, based on your social media updates. Seeing my previous posts on social media is nostalgic for me but also an awakening reminder of the person I was when I first moved to Glasgow and how much my life has changed since. Timehop serves as a good and a bad reminder of my past. It often reminds me of past events that I have forgotten about, but the memories of those (often petty) tweets or cringey status updates make laugh. Sometimes, however, Timehop reminds me of the hard times in my life and of some of the people who I have met in my life that perhaps didn't treat me right. More often than not, however, Timehop just make...

Note from Liam: an edited version of this post has been included on The Glasgow Guardian's (University of Glasgow student newspaper) website as part of their LGBT History Month 2018 coverage. You can see that post here . 2017 marks 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in the United Kingdom (which applied only to England and Wales). Scotland would not legalise homosexuality for another 14 years until 1981. Photo Credit - DrRandomFactor (Wikimedia Commons) 50 years. It really is not a long time at all. 50 years is within my parents' generation, which means that those older than 50 were alive in a time where homosexuals could be legally reprimanded for being themselves. For Scotland, it is only 36 years which is even less time and may include some people of my generation. Although a lot of change and progress has occurred in the past 50 years, I think it would be ludicrous to try and ignore the fact that homophobia still exists in some form in Scotland and need...

It is very disheartening to think that, in 2017, white supremacy still exists. In recent days, there was a white supremacist march in Charlottesville (VA, America) which was met with counter protests. Violence broke out and three people have died in total with more injured. It is 2017 and people are still dying because of racism. This is one event which has made the news but there are likely many more white supremacist campaigns going on all the time and we are not aware of it. Some people will argue that they are exercising their right to free speech but, I believe, there is a line. As mentioned in one of my previous posts , free speech is fine until it becomes hate speech and starts inciting violent, offensive, or discriminatory values. The saddest part is that this hatred is arising over something people cannot control - skin colour, the amount of pigment in someone's skin. This hatred is based on ignorant stereotypes and years of oppression on the "other" which have...

I have been thinking a lot about social media recently, whilst looking at those around me, and I just cannot ignore how false it all is. I have written about social media before, and will be writing about this topic for my upcoming university dissertation, because it is impossible to ignore. We are living in a real life “Black Mirror” episode. We have become that dystopian society that is described in fictional stories as a warning to us so we do not become mindless robots consumed by technology. We are living our life for social media, for others to see, for the likes and validation. I am guilty of this myself and it is beginning to take its toll on me. This is a topic I feel very strongly about because I see so many around me suffering from different issues and I believe that social media and constant connection to the internet is playing a massive role in these issues. I want to find answers. I want to find explanations. The way people act online compared to real life is very dish...

A few days ago, the BBC  revealed  who the new Doctor would be in  Doctor Who . It was announced that Jodie Whittaker would be taking  on the role,  from Peter Capaldi ,  which received a mixture of reviews.  Whittaker’s Doctor will be a very important one as she will be the first woman to play the role. This is a tremendous step for gender equality in the media but left many people wondering why there is a need for the Doctor to be played by a woman when the actor has been male for the show’s history. I can respect this point of view, however, the main point of criticism here would be that the Doctor is an alien who regenerates into a completely new person, so why could that person not be a woman? I am not going to preach on about feminism or woman’s rights because, as a male, I do not feel I can comment or ar gue my poi nt on behalf of women as I can never understand what it feels like to be misrepresented due to being a woman .  As a...