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. 

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.  

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