When did life become so vile that it stopped being OK to be individual? When did standing up for your opinions stop being praised? When did it start being  shouted at with a myriad of insults and looked down upon with the stares you read about in books that involve shooting daggers from the eyes? How is it that we're told to be ourselves one minute, and torn down for being ourselves with the turn of the clock?

Society's become a backwards place. It boldly declares to us that we should not be afraid to be who we are. We shouldn't put walls up to the world; instead we should tear them down and let those who would judge us see over the rubble - see past the masonry of makeup and the stonework of silence, the words we never spoke because we were too afraid of what they'd say.

But then, the minute the walls come down, instead of treading carefully through the wreckage to examine the person it's exposed, society shoots flaming, hate-ridden arrows past our non-existent defences, while they hide behind their fake imperfections, and the inevitable happens. Brick by painstaking brick, we rebuild our walls, all the while dodging the insults that are hurled at us from behind stronger defences than ours could ever hope to be. Their walls are built with prejudice as the cornerstone, littered with intolerance, reinforced with ignorance, and the slits in the walls that they spit abuse from are composed entirely of cowardice. Our walls will never be that strong... unless we join them, and build our own castle of hate and malice.

For once, I think, society should take its own advice.