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...

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...

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...

SPOILER ALERT! This post discusses my experience of playing “Life is Strange” and contains some spoilers as to what happens in the game. If you don’t want to know what happens in the game then don’t read on!! Last week I (finally) downloaded the game series “Life is Strange”. In a nutshell, the game follows the story of Max, who discovers her ability to turn back time after she witnesses the murder of her childhood best friend, Chloe. In the the game, you have the responsibility of making decisions which can have small or large impacts on what happens throughout the game and in the future. The butterfly effect and chaos theory are very strong themes throughout the game which really makes you think about how such small choices or events throughout your life can lead to a chain reaction that results in something very significant. I would rate the game a solid 8/10 with minor improvements being better graphics and animations, and also smoother gameplay. The story of the game was enthr...

When the iceberg hits, some will not make it, Some will go down with the vessel, Accepting their fate, not fighting, but giving up. Others will escape to the lifeboats and sail away to Serenity, Leaving those less fortunate behind, To either die, or survive. Everyone around you is screaming for help, It is your name they call. “Why me?” you ask. You are struggling as much as anyone else to survive But still you are deemed responsible for ensuring the survival of others. So you take a deep breath. The piercing Water punctures your lungs And your chest begins to collapse As hypothermia begins to take over. But you suppress it. You need to save the others. In the pursuit of helping others, Your body becomes numb To all feeling and emotion. Putting them onto rafts, And ensuring they reach Serenity, Is your priority. As the icy Water penetrates your body, Like a virus clinging onto a host for survival, You notice you can no longer feel anything. Numbness, for ...

"Now, are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then we will begin." Remember that episode of Doctor Who (back when the series was still watchable and David Tennant was the Doctor) when The Wire sucked off the faces of the residents through the television and trapped them within the screen leaving their bodies as lifeless and faceless beings? Well, I believe that the episode predicted the future of society but, rather than television, it is our phones that have sucked up every morsel of our lives, personality, and humanity. We have become almost faceless and soulless beings in real life who can only exist or survive through a screen on social media, as if trapped by some external force. The big phenomenon is that the majority of us cannot seem to live our daily lives or do basic tasks without first consulting our phones. It seems to have been ingrained into our generation that Social Media and our phones are more important than real life and spending real moments with re...

As the days get closer to Glasgow Pride, I find myself reflecting on my own sexuality and how much life has changed for me in the past few years. To make a long story short, my personal experience with being gay is not exciting, or tragic, or painful. From personal memory, I realised I was gay over a period of time and there was no one moment where I had a gay epiphany and Lady Gaga came down on a rainbow unicorn to throw glitter over me (although that would be awesome). But I suppose my story is still important to tell because it is important for younger LGBT people to understand that being LGBT does not have to be a big or dramatic realisation. Life for an LGBT person does not have to be a struggle and you are not always going to be persecuted for it. I became more comfortable with being gay as I grew older, but there was a period of time when I thought I would grow up, have a wife and kids and live in a perfect white picket fenced house in a nice neighbourhood. That was most lik...