Not all men harass women, but all women have been harassed by men.

CN discussions of sexual violence, including rape, sexual harassment & assault

I really, really love dancing. I am incredibly self-conscious and need a good few drinks before I’ll do it, but when I do, I love it. Especially to music from my childhood or adolescence, in a sticky club with my best friends, dancing until my knees are killing me. I have so many good memories of last minute Friday nights out while I was at university, with good music and dancing for hours. It was one of the only ways I was able to relax or reward myself during my final year, where the stress of finals and degree classifications and my ongoing health problems felt like they could kill me.

I don’t go out dancing very much any more. I realised today that the last time I’d properly gone out has been months ago, at least. I don’t remember when it was. There’s a number of reasons for this — London is extortionately expensive, getting home is a pain, I’m skint and tired and can’t travel very much. But the main reason I don’t really go out dancing any more is because of men.

If you ask any woman or person who is read as a woman in their 20s, they will tell you about the times they were told as a teenager that sexual harassment was a normal part of an evening out, especially a night in a club. Expect to be groped, felt up, kissed, touched without your consent. It just happens. It happens to all of us. Why are you making a big deal? You were really drunk, anyway. Get used to it.

Everyone is told this, because every person has had the experience of a man touching them in some way without their consent on a night out with their friends. Not all men harass women, but every woman has been harassed by a man.

A few nights ago I was out in a city I don’t live in with a relatively big group of people, all of whom would be read as women. As we’d arrived early in the night, we’d managed to secure an area for ourselves where we could sit down and had our own space to dance, alone, without the usual club crowds. It was going wonderfully. 

And then a middle aged man came over to us and said, “alright, ladies?” or something to that effect. I asked him to please leave us alone, that we didn’t want to talk to him. At this, he became affronted. He insisted on staying with us, because it was a free country and he had the right to stand where he wanted, apparently. It didn’t matter that I had pleaded with him to please, please just let us be. It didn’t matter because he didn’t care. He didn’t care because he was so angry that a woman he did not know did not accept his perceived entitlement to a conversation with us, to sharing a physical space with us. We told him no, and he did not accept our unacceptance of his advance. He stood leaning at the bar, looking my friends up and down as they danced, who were unaware of his glances; his eyes lingering on the curve of their calves, the dress tied at their waist, the plunge of their neckline. It made me feel sick and I wanted to cry. 

At this point, I ended up asking a staff member who had been going to and fro from the area we were in to the bar with empty glasses, to ask him to leave. The staff member got security, which is not something I would’ve chosen to do given my own bad experiences with security staff members in clubs. They’re the ones who didn’t believe me when I was in tears telling them I’d just been groped or assaulted by a man, and they’re the ones who then threw me out of their club because I was drunk and crying and I was the one to blame. Oddly, the security staff were good. I could count on one hand the number of times this has happened. But I know they were only good because I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t slurring my words, I was sober and alert and articulate and purposefully did not let the less sober members of our group talk to them, because I knew they wouldn’t take us seriously. Which is bullshit. I played their game, because without doing so, we would’ve been thrown out. 

It was exhausting. I hadn’t been in a club for months. And this was why. Of all the things to happen on a night out, spending too much money, talking to groups of women you don’t know in the bathroom and being harassed or assaulted by a man are almost all of the guaranteed ingredients, no matter where you are. 

In my first year of university, like many others, I went out a lot. And so I was sexually harassed or assaulted at least once a week, often more. I became so angry, all of the time. I had so much rage inside of me, because men thought they could touch me when I didn’t want them to, and no one thought anything of it. I started hitting back, literally and figuratively. I remember an incident in a club in Belfast, where a man I didn’t know pinned me against a wall and kissed me furiously, one hand on my cheek and one grabbing my waist. I struggled to get free, and when I did, I punched him. And then I was promptly thrown out. At one point, I was boycotting a well known club and bar because they threw me out after I reported that I’d been felt up — they told me I was on drugs and I was causing problems. I remember months later my best friend texting me drunkenly, telling me she was sorry that she was going to the bar because the work party she was out with wanted to, and she felt so guilty about it. She was the only friend to even acknowledge and legitimise the pain and anger i felt towards the club and its staff. Everyone else ignored it as another thing that crazy Aisling was doing because she’s a crazy feminist. 

I harboured so much rage and anger in my body that year, and together with a cocktail of then-undiagnosed mental health problems, it ruined my time in university. When I am back in Belfast, my main memories stem around where and when I was assaulted, at which time, and what I was wearing. I know I am not alone in this, because this happens to most women at some point during their life. Learning this, learning about the politics of structural oppression and patriarchy and feminism helped — I had a framework in which to place my experiences and the thoughts I had. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t any of our faults, even though we all felt like it was. 

What I didn’t realise or expect was the long-lasting effect these years have had on me. Granted, I’m still young. I’m only 23. But a lot has happened, a lot has changed and I have grown hugely since the age of 19. My life is very different now, and I feel older than my years. What I didn’t expect were the flashbacks and dreams that periodically dominate my life these days. I didn’t expect that I would stop wearing certain things, especially heels. I didn’t expect that I’d drastically change my hairstyle, partially in an effort to look less conventionally attractive to men. I didn’t expect that a few words from a middle-aged man in a nightclub in Edinburgh would send me over the edge, anxious, awake and crying till 4.30am, reliving the past experiences I’d had and ending up taking a valium in an attempt to quiet the images and the taunts swirling around my head. I didn’t expect to ever identify with the term ‘survivor’. But here I am. 

Death is not noble.

Content warning for discussions of death, frank discussions of suicide including methods, mental illness.

Death is not noble. 

In so many pieces of writing on mental illness, the diagnosis, the experience, the horror of it all - it's all romanticised as hell. And that's bullshit. Dangerous, dangerous bullshit.

I remember reading these kinds of posts when I was a clinically depressed teenager who kept being told that I was an attention seeking little shit. Because I was attention seeking, because I felt like I was dying. I felt like my mind was killing me from the inside. And so I looked at how to make that inside-dying seem like it was worth something, like it meant something, like it could mean something other than the ending of a life prematurely. I tried to make myself feel better because I could have followed a line of tortured genius artists who lived and died by depression. 

But it didn't. And I am still here, several dangerous suicide attempts later, I am here. 

And in the twelve or so years I have suffered and lived with mental health conditions, the one thing I have learnt most of all is that there is no glory in death. There is nothing cool about being so unwell you want to hurt yourself. There is nothing edgy about drinking yourself to oblivion because you don't know how else to get yourself to sleep. There is nothing epic or romantic or amazing or incredible or noble about death, and there never will be.

I don't know what I believe about what happens when we die. I know that I think about those I've known who have have died a lot, but I don't know what that means. 

I know a lot of young people who have died by suicide. I do not use their lives and their deaths as a bullshit positive means to 'keep myself going', because that implies that there was something good about their deaths. And there wasn't. There is nothing good about parents being left and siblings being left and a life being ended fifty years before it should have been. Every death was in some way preventable and every death was a life on earth ended far too short. 

Death is not noble and neither is depression. Those of us who suffer with chronic depression and suicidal ideation and tendencies will tell you that at the worst moments, there is nothing we would not do to rid ourselves of what we feel. I would trade my pain for anyone else's, because depression makes you a selfish little shit. And if you're reading this and you've never experienced depression, I am glad. I am glad because it is the worst thing I have so far gone through in my (admittedly short) twenty-three years, and unfortunately for many of us it is chronic. People do not see when you haven't showered in ten days, when getting changed makes you cry, when doors and phones and bills go unanswered, and when you're such a horrible irritable little dick that people can barely stand to be around you. Because depression isn't cool and it isn't romantic because it is fucking shit. 

Death is not noble and me dying at the age of 13 would have done absolutely fuck all. It would have broken my parents, my wonderful caring parents, and it would have destroyed my three sisters. It would have scarred my best friends and it would have (metaphorically) killed my grandparents. I was a scared, ill, lonely child, who thought suicide was the only way to end the pain.  

Whether or not there is an after life with a higher religious power isn't important. We can all believe and have faith in whatever we want to believe and have faith in. What matters is that death is not romantic and it is not cool and it is not noble. There is nothing romantic about being found covered in your own vomit, or a train driver having to live with the fact that they hit someone. 

Death is so often the premature ending of a life that should have gotten grounded at some point for staying out too late, that should have gained their college qualifications, that should have grown as an adult and developed political beliefs and went on demos and yelled at Tories and had their faith in the world broken and torn down and rebuilt by the people around them. That should have fallen in love, which is the best and worst thing a person can have happen to them. That should have gone in and out of periods of being a dick, because we all do. And that then should have wised up.

I am currently going through a rough patch. I have tried to kid myself that if I died, I would be doing it for a higher cause. Right now, that the DWP would have another person to add to their list of people they've denied benefits to who have then committed suicide. That the mental health services in my area are stretched to breaking point and the lack of care results in patient suicide. That trying to live a life in London on barely any money eats away at your head, and your heart, until it's too much to live with and you can't do it anymore. But none of that would have mattered. Because even if all of those things were true, my poor sister would still have to identify my body, and my parents would have to arrange for it to be flown home. People would have to organise a funeral. My room in London would have to be packed up, my bank account closed, the posters on my wall taken down. And none of that is romantic. None of it is cool. None of it is heroic. And no matter how much incredible poetry or music I could have written, or lives I could have touched - it wouldn't have made it any less terrible. 

I came across this PostSecret postcard years ago, when I was a depressed teenager. And unsurprisingly, it always stuck with me. I don't know what the answer is to chronic suicidal ideation. I don't know why some of us suffer with this. But we do, and the least we can do is make sure that we keep talking the romance out of it. There is no romance in suicide and there is no beauty in death. 

Being worn down by sexism.

I am worn down by sexism. I am worn down by the word sexism. I am worn down by the thought of sexism. I am worn down and try not to think about it, because I find it so draining.

Last week I attended an event run by the Centre for Feminist Research in Goldsmiths. The centre is run by my tutor, Sara Ahmed, and runs events in Goldsmiths throughout the year. This event was on sexism, and the speakers all focused on sexism in higher education.

The first speaker talked about a 'bloody document' she has carried with her for 30 years. As a young graduate student, she wrote an essay and her professor covered it in red ink, 'correcting' her 'mistakes'. When I saw each slide, my jaw dropped. I imagine jaws dropped across the room. She is now a professor and head of a department at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Her old professor is still teaching. She has kept this essay for 30 years. 

Here is the paper she wrote.

I thought,

This feels strange, but I can't think of a time where I faced institutional sexism while at this university.

I thought,

I've never had a lecturer or professor treat me the way this speaker was treated.

I thought,

Maybe it's because in Goldsmiths, I've only been taught by women. And mostly black women. My course classes are very different to what they used to be. There's occasionally one or two men in the classroom. 

I thought,

Queen's wasn't like that. In Queen's I was often the only woman in my class. I was taught almost entirely by white men. I was surrounded by men. I became a feminist killjoy. I was angry, all of the time.

But I still can't think of a time where my tutors or professors sexually harassed me. That feels strange.

But then I thought,

Hang on. 

I have spent a lot of time arguing with Goldsmiths as an institution about being disabled. 

I thought,

I spend a not inconsiderable amount of my time explaining to other students how to navigate disability bureaucracy. 

I thought,

I sat with my friend and the staff member who approves assignment deferrals, as she sat in tears, shaking with anxiety, and he visibly did not care. He did not offer a tissue. There was no empathy in his voice. My friend and I left the meeting and she cried for a while. She was shaking with the ferocity of her sobs. I was furious. I wanted to complain. I was so angry at how she had been treated by a staff member who was responsible for supporting disabled and unwell students. 

I have sat opposite men members of staff who have rolled their eyes at the hysterical angry woman in front of them.

I have sat in the disability room in the library while a male staff member stood over me, making me explain why I was in the room. Why I was allowed to be in the room. In front of a room full of students I didn't know. Afterwards, the shame burned my face and I felt like a child. 

I thought,

This is sexism repackaged and combined with disablism, entwined with racial and class dynamics in the case of my friend's experience. 

After the event, there was a wine reception and I talked with a few of my classmates. I talked about how lucky I felt to have had such incredible teachers during my time here. 

A classmate has taken an elective module with another department, and has had a tough time. She is taught by a man who, within the first two classes, she knew she couldn't stand. She knew it was going to be difficult to get through this term, being taught by him. 

We talked about the way that sexism has worn us down to the point where we think we do not encounter it. 

When we encounter sexism in class, from male classmates, we are exhausted before we put up our hand to tell a man why what he has just done was incredibly sexist. We feel the weight of the response our response will get. And we decide in that moment whether or not we have the energy to respond to the response our responding to sexism will receive. And more often than not, we decide the effort is too great, and we don't put our hand up. 

Changing Minds Fest

At the weekend the Southbank Centre in London held the #ChangingMindsFest, a weekend long festival dedicated to mental health. I had seen it advertised and thought about going, but that was before I started to become more ill in December and stopped really organising things to do.

As part of A Day In The Life, they invited contributions answering the questions:

"How was your day, what made your mental health better and what made it worse?"

I decided to submit the speech I made at the TUC Mental Health & Austerity event that day, and just found out that it was included. The slideshow played for 36 hours on a loop at the Southbank. 

My answer are slides 11 - 24, with a content note for suicide.

Calling in and calling out.

This post is inspired by conversations I've been having recently with people, mostly offline, on how we feel people should respond to criticism, critique, and call outs, particularly in relation to privilege. It's a conversation I've been having so often I thought I should properly write about it.

When I first got involved in liberation activism, I had no idea what privilege was. I didn't have a very good understanding of the structural inequalities that exist in the world, even though I thought I did. I had experienced sexism, misogyny, ableism, queerphobia - but probably wouldn't have been able to name those experiences as being part of a wider structural issue. I looked at those experiences as a series of one offs.

The first time I was called out - for using stigmatising language in relation to mental health - I was appalled. I was disgusted. I was beside myself that I, someone with mental health problems, could ever possibly misuse words that can be seen as derogatory. The person who called me out did it - in a way I would now say - incredibly politely. They sent me a short email, off the email list, explaining that the language I used was problematic for A, B & C reasons, and were perfectly pleasant. And I still felt like I'd been wronged the biggest wrong to ever happen in the existence of the world.

Fast forward five years. I have wised up. I have changed a lot, my politics have developed, and I've grown up. I'm not 18 years old anymore. I still slip up, I am still called out on things, and I am still trying to grow and develop my politics around liberation in particular and I know I will continue to slip up and will need to keep reflecting on my behaviour and actions as I get older. And the way I look at call ins and call outs is radically different.

It is quite a human reaction to be upset or anxious or panicked (especially if you suffer with mental health problems around anxiety) when someone calls you out, no matter how respectfully or politely they do it (and they're under no obligation to be polite or respectful about it). You worry about who you've upset, and how you've upset them, and what the affect of whatever you've done/said has been. 

But, if you too believe that being called up on your privilege is a very useful and helpful process during which you are able to learn about an aspect of something you overlooked, or hadn't considered, then you must continually remind yourself that you want to be called out. You want to be a better ally to marginalised groups you do not define into. And that means listening whenever someone calls you up on your shit, and acknowledging that in all likelihood they are coming from a place or experience that you may not know as much about.

No matter how emotional your reaction, or how poor your mental health, the person who is giving you their time and labour to call you out should not have to calm you down, or console you, or reassure you that they understand you didn't mean to do whatever you did. 

They have no obligation to be polite when calling you out. In all likelihood they have a reason to be angry, and that reason is legitimate. They should not have to bear the responsibility of dealing with your emotional reaction. It's not up to them. They're doing you a massive favour by calling you out - recognise this. Recognise that you are incredibly lucky to have someone take time out of their day to tell you that you fucked up. You are not the injured party here, even if your initial reaction is to be upset.

It is important to develop coping mechanisms for immediate emotional reactions to call outs. When my anxiety is particularly bad, a message from someone telling me I've done something shit and oppressive can make me have a panic attack. And I have begun to accumulate skills to deal with this, including (but not limited to) breathing exercises, reminding myself that this is something I value and appreciate immensely when people take the time out to do it, reminding myself of how I wish people would respond when I call someone out on something, and as someone who can slip into black and white thinking and catastrophising quite easily, reminding myself that the world is not over because I fucked up.

To take an example - I am middle class. I have a financial safety net, I have parents I can borrow money from if I needed to. I did not grow up being shamed for getting free school meals, my parents were able to afford to buy my school uniform brand new, we went on family holidays, we always had food in the fridge. I am skint, but I am not poor. I am not working class. 

And so when someone who comes from a working class background decides to take time out of their day to tell me that I fucked up - I said something shitty (e.g. 'Omg, I'm so poor, this is so shit, you all have no idea how poor I am right now'); I didn't consider an aspect of something (e.g. 'We should totally all go to this event/club/bar/dinner/restaurant! Are you coming? Why aren't you coming?', forgetting that not everyone has disposable income and can afford to spend a fiver on a pint); or I behaved in an oppressive way - I need to sit down and listen. I need to consider my behaviour, and reflect on what I did. I need to appreciate that this person was willing to call me out on my behaviour, and recognise the fact that they may have an incredibly different life experience on this issue than I do, because I come from a privileged position. 

I see 'calling in' as something that people with privilege should do to other people with privilege - it's my job as someone who is white to educate other white people about racism and the impact and effect of white supremacy. I should 'call in' the fact that they may have done or said something racist. I am responsible for educating other white people to look inwards at our experiences of whiteness, how our whiteness is reflected everywhere in society, how we benefit from a system built on white supremacy and racism. I am also responsible for constantly reflecting on my own white privilege, looking inwards at my own experiences and questioning why they are the way they are.

I see 'calling out' as something that marginalised people have a right to do to people with privilege. As previously mentioned, I believe marginalised people are under no obligation to be polite with their call outs - if you're calling someone out on their oppressive behaviour it can be a very upsetting, frustrating and angering thing that they have done, and you are under no obligation to be kind about it. 

Here is a post about being a better ally in general, here is one about being a better ally to people of colour and here is one about being a better ally to disabled people. If anyone has any articles about being an ally they would recommend, please let me know and I'll include them in here.

On welfare reform, and those who matter.

Content note for suicide

These last few months have seen some good campaigning, particularly from all sectors around the proposed tax credit cuts. Whilst they weren't reversed in their entirety, I do believe that the work from trade unions, Labour, and other charities and campaigning organisations definitely helped this.

But take ESA cuts.

What is ESA? It stands for Employment & Support Allowance, and is the disability benefit for those of us who are too unwell to work due to disabilities and long-term health problems. When you apply for ESA - an incredibly stressful, over-complicated and difficult process, you usually are called for a Work Capability Assessment. 

Initially brought in under Labour, the coalition government outsourced the WCA to ATOS, a French IT company. ATOS were so bad at their job - to assess ESA claimants to find out if they were fit for work or not - that appeals skyrocketed, costing the government (aka the taxpayer) a shit tonne of money in processing appeals and eventually backdating lots of claims. There were many headlines detailing tragedy after tragedy of people who had died by suicide, usually after being found fit for work and being overcome by despair at their (sometimes inevitable) homelessness and poverty. Some claimants aren't put through a WCA, but this is rare.

Once you have your WCA, you're assigned a group - the work-related activity group, or the support group. The idea behind it is that those who are in the work group may have limited capability to work, but will be able to do some form of 'work-related activity'. The support group is for people who are less likely to be able to return to work in the near future. 

A few months ago, the Tories announced they were cutting the benefit for people in the WRAG group by around £30, to bring it in line with current rates of Job Seekers' Allowance. In April 2017 the rate for those in the WRAG will go from £102 to £73 a week. This will reduce the yearly income of a person in the work group from £5,000 to just £3,500. The government's reasoning is that the money given to someone in the WRAG isn't a good enough incentive to get back to work. Of course it has nothing to do with an overstretched NHS, local authorities being stripped of their funding, and mental health services under resourced about to collapse. Of course those things have nothing to do with why a disabled person may not be able to cope with employment.

If this wasn't bad enough, more shit has been announced in relation to Personal Independence Payments, which were brought in under the coalition government to gradually replace Disability Living Allowance. For more information on what that's been like, read this (by Liam, on what applying for benefits is really like), this (by Liam, what it's like dealing with ATOS) and this (by Becca, and what pushed me to write this post).

This post from Disability Rights is pretty informative - a judgement has recently been announced, meaning that if someone with severe psychological distress cannot leave the house or go somewhere unassisted (for instance, due to severe agoraphobia, or panic attacks), they'll no longer be eligible for the mobility component of PIP, which currently stands at £55 or so a week. 

So what's the point of this post?

Firstly, to give an explanation of (some aspects of) ESA, and an insight into how difficult it really is for people to survive on this benefit. Most people don't know the intricate details - and why would they? Unless they know someone who receives it, it isn't a great surprise.

And then there's the issue of stigma. 

Who would you tell that you're trying to live off less than £5,000 a year? You'll probably receive some housing benefit, but that won't be enough to cover your rent anyway, especially if you live in London. You might get DLA or PIP, but you live forever in fear of new reforms being announced and the small benefit you get (which, rather than being spent on the extra costs of being disabled is probably spent on heating your room and paying your water bill) being cut. If you've kids or people to care for, you probably worry about making sure you can feed them, too. If you don't have anyone to care for, like me, you're one of the luckier ones. 

When someone asks me what I do, I generally tell them the truth. Or a half truth. Partially because I think that I have a duty to, because it's so shameful. I need to make it less shameful. I need people to look me in the eye when I tell them I live off the state. And for the most part, they don't. They glance sideways, awkwardly, look down at their feet. They don't know what to say. And I try to continue the conversation as if nothing has happened. But it's hard. And it's exhausting when this happens frequently. And it does, because I try and do something social at least once a week, and that inevitably leads to meeting new people who ask what I do.  

What is most difficult about being in this situation, is how isolating it is - both on a personal and a national level. When tax credits were being cut, everyone was up in arms - including almost all of the media, which felt like a first. And I was glad, I really was. 

But when it comes to disability benefits being cut, we don't get much. We get a few Guardian articles, a few MPs ask questions on a Wednesday, but it doesn't go anywhere. It's accepted, passively. It's not worth the fight because we're not worth the fight. Our lives are not as valuable as the lives of people who can contribute to the economy, the people who pay taxes, the people who teach and educate and heal and work on our public transport and in our banks and in our shops and our taxis. Of course, the government is currently trying to dismantle the hard-won rights of those working in the public sector, but my point still stands.

We need you - the activists, the politicians, the councillors, the workers, the trade unionists - to fight for us, because so often we can't fight for ourselves. We want to, but we can't. So much of our energy is taken up just by trying to survive. And when it comes to the end of the day, we don't have much left to give to activism, even though our lives depend on it.

So please, in 2016 make the conscious decision to try and raise the profile of issues like ESA reforms and housing benefit cuts and PIP changes, and give us a platform when we have the energy to talk about it. Please make a commitment to fighting for the right of every disabled person in the UK to be able to live a life with access to healthcare, safety, and dignity. Because we can't do it alone, and as each day passes another disabled person loses their fight, and it feels like soon there will be none of us left.  

I am still trying to choose life, but it's hard.

CN suicide, eating disorders (specifically mentioning purging - but just a mention) 

It has been almost two years since I've written a post on this blog.

Tonight a status from a Facebook friend on university, isolation, loneliness and mental health made me think I should try and find some words to talk about what's going on with me right now.

I'm supposed to be finishing my master's degree in August. I moved to London for this. I uprooted my life and got on a plane to go and do a degree. But I had to defer every assignment last year. I haven't even started an essay that was due last week. I wanted to finish on time, but I don't know if I'll make it. At this point, I just want it over with. Depression sucks every little bit of joy from the things in life you care about. I don't want to write about feminism, and I don't want to write papers and go to classes and have debates and think about Life After University, again. Like with my undergraduate, I have few friends in university. The false sense of security and hope I began to accumulate last year has broken into pieces now. I feel like an outsider on my own campus. 

I am on a steady diet of painkillers, anti-depressants, mood stabilisers and benzodiazepines. I make myself get out of bed, at least three or four days a week, before 10am. I eat meals regularly, for the most part. I spend most of my time alone. I tell the voice in my head that there are no such things as safe foods and unsafe foods, that all bodies are good bodies, and that I will not put my fingers down the back of my throat even though it's all I can think of doing. I don't eat a varied diet, but at least I'm eating. Most of my meals are cereal or pasta and pesto. I spend too much money on food out.

The doctors tell me I am Coping Very Well. That there is nothing they could tell me to do that I don't do already. I take my medication, I eat, I sleep, I get out of bed, I shower, though not as much as I should. I see friends. I have a partner. I am close to my family. I have interests outside of my degree and I am about to start long-term individual psychotherapy. They are uncomfortable when I talk about the impact that being poor has on my mental health. My DLA plus my housing benefit does not even cover my rent. Over two thirds of my income goes on my rent. They do not like talking about money and they know very little about benefits. 

I continue to burst into tears at inappropriate moments. I've cried too many times to count in London Bridge station, when staff have been rude and dismissive and I'm in such agony that I can barely walk, never mind take the stairs. I've had panic attacks in bars full of people enjoying their Friday night, I've left events early because I'm suicidal and I've cursed the Jubilee line for being safe and having tube barriers at every platform. 

I am exhausted and I am anxious. I am in need of a higher dose of my sedative, but need to wait to see a psychiatrist. I keep committing to things, and then hiding in my room for a few days instead. I have started to avoid looking at my emails. I always have twenty tabs open, always have a list of things to do. 

I need people to be patient with me. I'm forever needing people to be patient with me, but I really mean it this time. Living with depression and anxiety is an experience common to many. But living with complex and severe mental illness, combined with a chronic pain and fatigue disorder, is different. 

My world has been grey for quite some time, and I don't know when the colour is going to come back into it. The cliched phrase 'you never know what someone is going through behind closed doors' comes to mind. 

I am still trying to choose life, but it's hard. I cannot see the end of the week, never mind the end of the year. When I turned 23 a few weeks ago, I sat awake in bed at midnight in disbelief. When I was 17 and returning to my A Levels after several months off, I told myself I would be dead by my own hand before 20. I simply did not want to be alive for much longer than that. And while I'm still trying to keep myself alive, I cannot express in words how difficult a task that is. 

Someone I follow on Twitter posted a graphic a few weeks ago, with the caption 'I imagine that this is what people who experience anxiety & depression must feel like'. I don't know this person, but they're a good few years older than me, at least. And I could not get my head around the fact that they had made it to that point in their life without experiencing any kind of depression. I cannot imagine a life like that. I daren't, because if I had lived a life without anxiety and depression, I cannot even begin to imagine the different place I would be in. 

Rather than ending, as so many posts like this do, by telling people who feel horrific what they should be doing, I'll give a few suggestions of what you could do to better support your chronically ill and depressed friends.

- Mental illness and ableism is part of a wider system of structural oppression in society. Do not forget this. Do not divorce this from your understanding of mental illness, stigma and treatment. There is a reason more black men are given medication rather than therapy, are sectioned at a much higher rate, and often given incorrect diagnoses of schizophrenia. White supremacy, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia play a massive part in why those who are unwell are prevented from getting better. The world is not built for people who are mentally ill, and it is doubly not built for those who are mentally ill and queer, mentally ill and black, etc. 

- Make it a regular part of your routine to tell the people in your life who you love that you love them. Normalise it. 
- Check in regularly with your depressed and disabled friends, and cut them some slack when they snap at you, or turn down your invitation out for the tenth time. Leaving the house is difficult.

- Ask what you can do in general to help someone. For instance, I rarely forget to take medication. But many people find taking medication difficult to remember to do, and so a daily text to remind someone to take their pills can be a massive help. 

- Be kinder to one another. So much recent unnecessary cruelty directed my way has had a much huger impact on my mental health than those responsible would imagine it would have. Next time you go to write that passive aggressive tweet, or that insulting Facebook comment, ask yourself if it's really necessary. 

- People with severe mental illness do not expect you to be able to make it better. Nor are you expected to understand. Personally, what I would like, is when I tell someone I'm incredibly anxious, that they do not leave me to it because they are scared of getting it wrong. Tell the person that you are there if they need anything, ask what you can do to help. You'll build up trust, slowly. If you're scared of trying to cope, imagine what they feel like.

On Irishness, white privilege, and Being Different.

I have thought about writing a post on this for a while. A long time, actually, but never knew how to approach it. I didn't know how to make sense of the mess of thoughts and feelings in my head, never mind how to articulate them. But then I read an incredible piece by a wonderful woman I know that was verbalising the essence of what I've been trying to verbalise for months. As it obviously related directly to her life experience it was different, but the idea behind it was the same. So I'm going to get out what I've been wanting to get out for a long time.

When I was little, I was so ashamed to be Irish. Mostly, my voice. My voice and my name. My voice and my accent and the accents of anyone from Northern Ireland on television, on the radio. It sounded so horrible. I spent all of my time playing games where I would adopt English or American accents, and I wouldn't have to be me, I was able to be someone else. On television, no one had Irish accents. The only time I heard them was on the news. Everyone else spoke so well, so beautifully, their voices didn't send pangs of shame and embarrassment up my spine. I longed for a name that people wouldn't ever have to ask how to pronounce, for a name that wouldn't make it so clear that I was Irish and therefore Different. I planned to change my name once I was old enough to. For my confirmation, I took the name Lucy, because I liked it and it was normal and no one ever had to ask how to pronounce Lucy. I thought that once I went to university, I might tell people my name was Lucy and finally carve out the identity I had always wanted for myself. 

I had a stutter as a child, and I still have it now. That probably didn't help much. I sang in school and in choirs, because when you sang you didn't stutter, and you could hide your accent enough to make it sound like you were English. Like you had a Nice Voice. The kind that people would enjoy listening to. You could hide a stutter and an Irish accent when you sang. 

Fast forward fifteen years. I started getting involved with NUS and visiting England relatively regularly. At one of my first conferences, we all had name badges, and a lot of people didn't know how to pronounce my name. When they asked, I told them. And that was usually the end of it. But then a woman told me that that wasn't how my name was pronounced. She laughed, like it was obvious to everyone but me. I told her that it was Irish, it was a different language. The language didn't operate by the same rules that English did. That was the reason it was pronounced the way it was. But she refused to accept it, and kept telling me I was wrong. That has stuck with me for a year, and it is something I often think about. I have never told the woman involved how hurtful it was. I was too scared to. But I suddenly became aware of how much I stuck out, the minute I opened my mouth. The Irish jokes came thick and fast throughout the conference. I smiled, but inside I wanted to cry. 

I got further involved with NUS, and was flying out to meetings or conferences every few weeks. I became so much more aware, again, of how different I was. I felt like I was six years old again. People constantly told me to slow down. People made jokes about Irish stereotypes and the food that we ate and how much alcohol we drank and thought it was the most original, hilarious thing ever. I smiled weakly, rarely having the courage to tell them to fuck off. But I found it hurtful and patronising and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. 

I did not speak about this with anyone for a long time. I did not know how to approach it. It wasn't racism, and it wasn't xenophobia. It was something inbetween. 

Let it be clear, I have white privilege. I am Very Very White. I carry with me every single privilege that comes with having white skin. I am not stopped and searched because I am white. Shop attendants do not follow me around thinking I might steal something. There are a magnitude of hair and beauty products in shops that are tailored to my skin tone and my hair. 107 of the 108 politicians sitting in Stormont reflect my skin colour. Northern Ireland is full of white people being represented on every possible platform, I see people who look like me on television and in plays and when I walk down the street. I have white privilege. I will be moving to England in a few months, and even there I will be the Good Kind of immigrant. Because I am white and educated and middle class and can pass for being heterosexual and don't have visible disabilities and have been socialised with many British cultural norms. I will blend in easily, because I look like everyone else and I am not Different. I will blend in easier than those from the south of Ireland, because of the magical world of borders and partition and jurisdictions. People will tell me that I am British, that I am Like Them, and will not accept it when I tell them I am not. 

Eventually, I pluck up the courage to talk about this with a few excellent women I know. Who gave me the courage to announce to my committee at the training event that I was at that I was sick of jokes and comments and laughter and piss-taking of the fact I am Irish, and didn't want it anymore. And so I did, and some friends apologised for their part in it. It helped.

I have tried to be proud. I have tried to be proud of my culture and my heritage, and I am. I am thankful both my forename and surname reflect my background, even though inevitably it shows that it is clear I am a Catholic, went to Catholic schools, and probably define as an Irish nationalist. I am angry at what has happened to my ancestors at the hands of the British state. I am sick of having to defend this anger to people who think that because they were not directly involved, I should be polite and respectful to them while they disrespect and desecrate the memory of my family and the people who fought in defence of my country, labelling them as scumbag terrorists who deserve everything they got. I am Irish and I am working on trying to stop letting the rest of the world make me ashamed to be so. 

I don't quite know the point of this post, or what I am hoping to get out of it. It is the first time I have written about this, and the first time I will ever open up to a relatively large audience about this aspect of my identity and its influence on my life. It feels strange. 

Young Labour National Conference

Below is a copy of the email I sent to every member of the Young Labour Committee. I pretty much talk about what went wrong last weekend at the conference, and figured rather than writing a separate post, it would be just as easy to post a copy of the email for anyone who was interested in finding out what problems I had with it. TW for discussion of panic attacks & mental health.

Hi all,

My name is Aisling Gallagher, and last weekend I was one of the Northern Ireland CLP delegates to the Young Labour Conference. It was my first conference, and the first conference of the other delegates from my CLP. I'd mentioned to a few committee members that I was planning to email you all to talk about how last weekend went, and I thought I should email the entire committee rather than just a few people. I'd rather have the issues I'm bringing up brought up to everyone so it's as open and transparent as possible. 

No one needs me to tell them that there were a lot of problems with the way last weekend went. I think it's easiest/most accessible if I set it all out in a list rather than a massive block of text.

1. Access in the venue. The main room had chairs packed quite closely together, and as the weekend went on the room got progressively more inaccessible, with stuff lying around and chairs moved around, particularly for anyone who might need to use mobility equipment to help them get around. As Simon mentioned in one of the caucuses, it was also an incredibly difficult room to chair in. 

2. Arrangements before the conference. Not being told where the venue was or being sent the agenda far enough in advance is incredibly bad for access (anxiety issues, people who need to plan far in advance schedules, etc.), and where possible should be sent out at least a fortnight before the conference. 

3. As a general rule it's a good idea to have a quick ten minutes on accessibility at the start of a conference. I got involved in YL through being involved with NUS, and it's done at the beginning of every NUS event. It sets out clearly what accessibility is (because i don't expect everyone to come to a conference knowing liberation inside out and I'm sure none of you do, either), what behaviours are and are not acceptable, and provides a point of contact and a safeguarding number in case anyone needs it (for instance; no whooping, no clapping while someone is speaking, that kind of thing- understandably members can be confused over this because at Labour Conference we're encouraged to clap while people speak, at NUS events we only clap once people are finished speaking, and at other groups and meetings sometimes the only clapping done is the sign language gesture for it, so it's good to have a general rule and stick to it). 

It means that everyone in the room is at least on the same page to some degree when it comes to how to conduct themselves at the conference. It doesn't solve every problem but it is generally a good thing to programme in. It also usually informs people where the safe space room is. The fact there was no safe space room and no safe guarding number is nothing short of a disgrace. I don't know who's to blame for it, but there was a safe space room at Labour Students (as far as I'm aware?), and so the excuse that I've heard ('there wasn't an available room for it') really doesn't stand up to much. I sincerely hope this won't be repeated at any future YL event, and unfortunately what happened last weekend showed how necessary these things are to have in place for every single event.

4. *That* debate. Since conference I've spoken to more people and found out more about the way Young Labour operates. I still can't really get my head around the fact that there isn't a constitution or a set of standing orders. This was talked about in a caucus, and whilst it seems whoever were the main organisers wanted the atmosphere to be a little more relaxed and informal seeing as there weren't elections (bar women's officer), this entirely backfired. You will never have an accessible debate if there are no rules governing how the debate is conducted. 

At the time I didn't know there were no standing orders, and so my anxiety/panic attack was probably brought on by the fact I just thought people were being purposely obtuse, but now I know it wasn't as simple as that. I'm not defending the actions of people (on all sides of the debate, not that it matters), but I do have some sympathy with the view that they felt there was no option but to heckle because they weren't being listened to, felt completely powerless, and the chair had complete power over how the debate was conducted. I don't know what people think about this, but I (and many others I spoke to at the conference, particularly first time delegates) think it is crucial YL write up some standing orders for how debates are conducted. It isn't an unreasonable request, and I still don't understand how YL has managed to get by for so long without any. There are plenty of hacks, both within and outside the committee, who I'm sure would be more than willing to help draw up a draft standing orders document. 

That space on Saturday was the most toxic environment I have ever been in, caused the first panic attack I'd had in months, and many disabled people including myself then had to run and hide in disabled bathrooms afterwards because there wasn't a safe space room. I left conference soon after, and didn't come back until the next day. The only reason I came back was because I wanted to go to disabled members' caucus, and my CLP had spent a considerable amount of money sending me over, but I do know of many people who left and didn't come back. I'm only sending this email now because I've been almost bedbound all week, in all likelihood as the effect the weekend has taken on my mental health. I don't believe the debate would've gotten as out of hand as it did if there were rules governing how it was to be conducted, with proper processes in place (like having the ability to challenge the chair, or propose a motion to vote in secret ballot or whatever). 

I don't believe this was the intention of anyone on the committee or anyone who organised it all, but this is the reality that these situations bring. Putting 200 Labour Party members into a room and asking them to debate a contentious topic with no rules governing how it's to be done is a recipe for disaster. Access isn't a buzzword and it isn't something I throw about lightly. I don't care how you voted and I don't care if you're a Blairite or a Bennite or you're a trot or a closet Tory; this isn't about the topic of the debate or factionalism or any of that bullshit. I haven't been involved for very long and I'm on no 'side'. But I do believe our political spaces must be as accessible as possible if they are to be inclusive, and it would worry me if the committee did not share this belief.  

5. The factional in-fighting and arguing all over the internet after the aforementioned debate didn't help either, but I also know it's not something anyone can individually tackle. But I was really disappointed to see so many people, on both sides and of all political persuasions, throwing about access as a political tool and/or as a piss-take of its importance. Ditto people speaking over/ignoring women when they were chairing, or people generally just disrespecting them in a way that definitely would not have happened if they were men. Again, not anything you can do, but if people could take this back to their relevant "camps" that would be appreciated. Because, unsurprisingly, I know they won't listen to me if I tell them this because I am just some mouthy Irish woman with a lot to say (any time I tried to bring up anything about access or anything even remotely related, it was largely ignored). If men want to be good allies to feminism, never mind wanting to call yourself feminists, then please get your houses in order. 

6. I also can't get my head around the fact out of an entire weekend there were only two hours dedicated to debating policy. The requirement of ten signatories to submit a motion isn't great either, but it isn't anywhere near as bad as the fact you can only put your name to one motion. I understand it stops factionalising as much, but it makes it significantly harder for people in less well known areas or those who don't have connections to submit policy. 

7. No one has really taken responsibility for the agenda, either. Every committee member I've spoken to so far has said they didn't see it before it was published. That doesn't seem to make sense either. It'd be good to know who was responsible for setting out the agenda, because there were a number of problems with it and I would like to have a commitment that there will be an effort to ensure this doesn't happen again.  

This email is long, and I'm not really sorry, because all of these things need to be said, and I'm sure a lot of people who feel the same are very burnt out now and so probably haven't gotten round to emailing in feedback on how it went. On a positive note, the fact every chair always went out of their way to see if women wanted to speak in plenary sessions/debates/etc was very very welcome, and I definitely haven't seen it done to the extent it was done at the weekend before. 

Feel free to get back to me individually or however you wish to if you want to talk about this further, with the understanding that it might take me a while to respond because I'm dealing with bad health at the minute along with NUS conference season and a dissertation. At times during the weekend I swore to myself that I wasn't going to come back or get involved again, so I'm sending this because I do believe YL can and should be doing better, and I want to help make sure this happens, particularly because I'll be moving to England in a few months and want to take a more active role in the party. But we need to get our shit together if we want people to want​ to come back and get involved.

Cheers,

Aisling

Poppygate, and why students' unions should follow ULU's example.

Last year, Dan Cooper, vice-president of the University of London Union, declined to lay a wreath at ULU's remembrance Sunday service, and this quickly resulted in a Tory-led campaign to oust him from his post. Of course the whole episode became known as Poppygate. 

Unsurprisingly, the same thing has happened this year.

The Senate of ULU has passed a motion stating that "ULU's elected representatives have the liberty to choose" whether to go to this year's service in a personal capacity, but that they cannot go in their ULU capacity. Essentially, this means they can't go and claim to represent the 120,000 students who make up ULU, but that they are perfectly entitled to go on their own behalf. President of ULU, Michael Chessum, then made it clear that he wasn't planning to attend, and that choosing to attend or not is in itself a political statement. Cue Poppygate 2.0.

I'm going to talk about why I think it is a good thing ULU have adopted this position, and why I fully support my friends and activist colleagues in their decision- not least because Michael's already been subject to a load of abusive emails because he had the audacity to call out the farce that is the state's hijacking of remembrance day. 

I'm Irish. I live in Belfast and have lived here for my entire life. I'm not religious at all, but culturally I am a Catholic. Essentially, that means I tick 'member of the Roman Catholic community' on equality monitoring forms, because I come from a Catholic background. My mum comes from West Belfast, and my dad comes from Omagh. I was born in 1992, so I'm part of the generation who have grown up post-Troubles (or rather, post-what-people-say-is-the-end-of-the-Troubles-but-it's-actually-a-lot-more-complicated-than-that, but that is a topic for a different blog post), the Good Friday Agreement wasn't signed until I was 6 years old, but naturally I don't really remember much of the political world around me when I was that age.

I've gone to Catholic schools my entire life. And I love history- my entire family loves history. But I didn't get to learn about Irish history until I chose the subject for GCSE, and then learnt about it in further depth when I studied it for A Level. People can deny it all they want, but the reality is that British state played a massive role in exacerbating the conflict here, killed plenty of innocent people, and is still trying to worm its way out of taking much responsibility for the generations worth of devastation they've left behind. And for a lot of this, they used the military.

A few years ago, I worked in IKEA. And a lot of the security guards there (who I spent most of my days in relatively close contact with) were ex-military. I would talk for hours with them about Northern Ireland and the Troubles, and they helped make what was a menial and often frustrating accessibility-wise job a lot more interesting, and they were wonderful people.

But they didn't get to choose to do what they had to do. That was their job as soldiers.

The British state wrecked havoc in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles, from internment to state collusion with loyalist paramilitaries; and to this day both they and many politicians in Northern Ireland refuse to own up to the part that the state played in the conflict here. Unfortunately, the army plays to the tune of the state. What the state wants, the army does. Just a few weeks ago, the current government was getting ready to send the military to Syria. The people fighting wars they don't understand and dying for causes they can't quite justify aren't those making the decision to send daughters, husbands, sons, parents, brothers, friends, colleagues to their death. They're ordinary people, doing the state's bidding.

Like it or not, poppies no longer represent what they initially were created for. Every year we have remembrance services where those in power in the state talk about our military and giving thanks to their courage, whilst handily forgetting that when current soldiers often come back from tours of Afghanistan, it's up to charities to mend what's been broken. The state absolves all responsibility, or at least most of it. Many charities end up picking up the pieces of soldiers who have come home and been abandoned by those who sent them out to fight in the first place. The army are there when the state and those in power want a good few photo ops, whenever they want to use these men and women as political footballs in their petty little game, but whenever it comes to providing affordable housing, a decent standard of education, accessible mental and physical health services, and leveling the playing field in terms of equality of opportunity for these people and their families, the state hangs them out to dry. Nationalism and patriotism can result in a dangerous ability to overlook the things, or lack of, that your state is providing for you in the name of service to your country.

I'm not a pacifist anymore, because I know holding that belief is a luxury afforded to those who have never had to fight for anything. But I also don't support the British state, and by extension, the British military. I don't support what they did in Northern Ireland in the last fifty years, and I don't support the war they've raged on Irish people and my ancestors for centuries. This blog post has barely scratched the surface. Of course I do not think those who choose to wear poppies are all British imperialists, held bent on oppressing Ireland- but I also think that these conversations are too important to ignore, and unfortunately in Northern Ireland, we keep pushing these conversations away. If we are to have a truly integrated shared future, it is time to ask the difficult questions and provide the difficult answers- how can the state expect ex-paramilitaries to do this when they won't lead by example? 

Unfortunately, this is probably too contentious a thing for many people who are in the public eye to come out and say, and I have the luxury of not being in that position. But if my own students' union can't come out and take a strong anti-war and anti-imperialist position, I'm glad a students' union across the water can. 

A letter to my 16-year-old self.

Trigger; suicide, depression, sexual harassment, panic attacks, eating disorders

You do go back to school. You spend ten days in Italy doing nothing but reading books and it reminds you why you don't want to stop learning. You decide that school is the best option, for now.

But you leave, again. The frequent absences add up until you've left for (what seems like) good. You spend months at home with your mum caring for you. You are too scared to leave the house. You don't want people to see what you have become. School becomes a distant memory. You come back for a day in May and have a panic attack in a room full of the girls in your year.

You come back for your last year. And you work harder than you've ever worked before to make up for lost time, you do it because the thought of having to spend more than another year in that hell hole is the only thought worse than going back to the black depression. 

You fall in love. You realise you've become one of those people who falls in love after a few weeks. And you don't care.

You don't get into the university you dreamed of. You cry. A lot. You don't really get over it. But you know if you'd ended up there it would be doing the wrong degree, and you probably wouldn't have made it through first year. You'd probably be dead, realistically. You stop caring that people get awkward whenever you talk so openly about your mental health. You didn't care that much to begin with, but you really don't care now. Fuck them.

You give in and go to a private therapist. You won't let your parents make you go for weeks because you don't want to sacrifice the principles your family holds so close to their heart. But you go, because it's a choice between going or dying. And you want to want to do the former.

You break someone's heart. You think that it's the worst thing you can ever feel.

You move out. Away from the eyes of your parents, you stop eating completely. You start your path down the slippery slope you always thought you could avoid.

But then you meet someone. And you tell them you're falling in love with them in a smoking area of a club, and they tell you the same, and things seem like they could be okay for once. You take a chance and book flights. You start to live spontaneously. You think you might be happy, for once.

But things aren't good, and things aren't happy, and you try to kill yourself again, and then you have your heart broken, and you don't think you'll ever recover. 

But you do. 

Sort of. 

Life is liveable. Even though you're on your own.

You realise things about yourself. You grow. You are an adult. You are Queer. You breathe a sigh of relief when you discover that you are not Wrong. You are just different. But you are harassed, you are assaulted, you become used to carrying your keys in your fists when you walk home at night.

But the black doesn't stop because of your new found identities, and the depression doesn't leave just because you think you can live your life alone, and you ink the words of a poem on your arm in an attempt to keep yourself alive, in an attempt to try to make yourself want to stay alive.

And then suddenly you are twenty years old, and sitting in your bedroom alone; and you've had to take a valium to make sure you can sleep because you've spent the day receiving abuse and people telling you to kill yourself on the internet because you spoke on the radio about abortion.

Suddenly your life begins to have some sort of meaning, some meaning bigger than yourself, something concerned with thousands of faceless women who travel to the UK every year to have an abortion, and suddenly you realise that you can't leave, just yet. 

You try to sleep, and hope that tomorrow will be better. You are tired of waiting for tomorrow. But there is nothing else you can do.

On activism.

Trigger warning for discussion of suicide, depression, eating disorders, fascism, racism, the police, medication, self harm


We're exhausted. We've either just finished a fifty-hour work week with a conference and a night of drinking at the weekend, or we're struggling to cope with the effect our clinical depression is having on our assignments and attendance at uni, or we're trying to do all of these things at once. We are planning the next protest, the next demo, the next conference, but forget to plan in a meal. We try to take care of one another but never take care of ourselves. We haven't slept properly in months.

We're fed up. We're fed up of explaining to our family why you can't separate the politics from the person. Fed up of being told we should respect members of a party who are literally taking money from those who need it to survive and killing them, fed up of being told to shut up and listen to someone who thinks we shouldn't have the right to control our own bodies, fed up of racist immigration controls and fascists given airtime and just about every decision made at the top, with no thought of those at the bottom. We are angry, so angry, that we don't know what to do with it. Sometimes we collapse, exhausted, in floods of tears, because we cannot for the life of us understand why anyone could do this to another human being. We cry on one another, we support one another, we give one another hope that tomorrow can be better. We miss the release of the razor. 

We've been arrested recently, we've been manhandled by the police, thrown mercilessly to the ground by several officers, and peers have the audacity to claim that this was somehow justifiable. We've been banned from protesting on our own campuses. We've been left in a cell mid-panic attack, and released 48 hours later. We're sick of people telling us that there's nothing wrong with the police, and we're sick of the state letting fascists march down our roads. We drag ourselves out of bed and stand as a blockade, trying to deal with the police and the fascists and the voice in our head telling us to kill ourselves. We have a panic attack in the kettle, and the police won't let us out. We go home and sleep for twenty hours.

We're counting the pennies to have enough to buy our medication in England, or we're sitting in Scotland and Northern Ireland feeling sorry for those who don't get them for free. We're hopelessly waiting for the next psychiatrist appointment, we're still at the bottom of the CBT waiting list, we don't know how to explain why we can't eat or sleep and we don't know what to say to our friends who are feeling like this too. We have enough scars between us to tell a hundred stories. We have to leave our medication on the kitchen table or we won't remember to take it, or the thoughts will come back again. Our interactions with people take place via the internet.

We spend weeks looking forward to seeing one another, to spend time with those we love, those who understand. But then we spend too much time awake wanting to die. Or rather, something triggers it, and then suddenly we've spent the cost of two return trips to the UK on a flight home from London because we didn't trust ourselves to be alone in a place with tubes and not try to commit suicide again, all the valium in the world would not shut up the voices inside our heads, and the only way we feel like we can talk about these experiences is through writing a blog on a Sunday night. Or maybe that's just me. And we worry that writing about this will make people concerned. But we don't know what else to do.

We have dysfunctional relationships within our activist circles, mostly because they're our friendship circles too, and our room mates, and half the time we work with one another, too. We have issues with attachment, we have issues with self-worth, we have a fucked up head and we don't know what to do with it, so we hurt one another. Our relationships are unstable, like our health. We can't be there for one another, because it's happening to everyone. We cry alone in our rooms because we don't want to be a burden. 

We can't reconcile our feminism with our own bodies. We can't stop ourselves developing eating disorders, but we curse ourselves for not being able to fight it. We restrict, we binge, we purge, but most importantly, we keep it a secret. We all have problems and we don't want to look like we're asking for sympathy, even when we're in tears each night because we had the audacity to allow our bodies to consume food. We can't look at ourselves in the mirror without our lip shaking. We preach body positivity, we deplore body shaming, and we berate ourselves for wishing we were thinner.

We can't escape. We can't escape because even when we have left the demo, even when we have stopped talking about welfare reforms, when we have stopped arguing with Tories, we are left in this world we live in. We are left in this place that condemns us for being ill, that hates us because we are women, that will leave us to die because we are disabled. To separate the politics from the person we recognise that one must be privileged enough to remain unaffected by the politics. We spend every single fucking minute living in this hell of a patriarchal capitalist shit hole that has dragged each and every one of us to the bottom, and is determined to keep us there, no matter how much our arms flail and our hearts ache from the pain of it all. It wants to kill us and it will not stop until we are dead.

We try to keep telling ourselves that we need to be the living breathing reminder for others that there is good in the world, that there is hope, that there is pain but that there is also art, but eventually we break. Eventually, we stop telling ourselves that, and we stop being that person for other people. We want to cling to hope, to live by Andrea Gibson's words that all they knew of hate was that it couldn't beat the love out of me, but one day we stop. We can't do it anymore. We can't keep pretending that we're winning this fight, because we aren't. We're losing. We're broken. They've broken us. All that is left to do is write.