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.

Blue Monday.

Every Sunday, along with millions of others around the world, I check the PostSecret website. I save every postcard on my laptop, and I usually post a few ones on my tumblr, too. And today this one made me think. So I thought I'd write. It's the back of a card, so if you don't know what I'm talking about it might be best to visit the PostSecret website first to see the other side of the card.

With every medication, there are side effects. And the strong the drug, the stronger the side effects (well, for some people, anyway). I've been on quite a few different drugs and had a number of unpleasant side effects, so much so that in the past I've contemplated coming off medication altogether.

I think I was about 17. I'd been on medication for a few years at that point. I remember being in CAMHS, anyway. I don't know what I was talking about, why I wanted to come off it in the first place, but I was depressed and saw the drugs as making what was a cognitive problem worse. Then I wanted to come off them again, last year. I remember Sylvia's reply, it went something like, "So you're depressed and frustrated and you want to come off the anti-depressants because you feel like that will help? In what world would coming off the anti-depressants make sense?" I was 19 and stressed and depressed and constantly terrified and didn't want to have to deal with these horrible problems in front of me. I was sick of the fact that no one around me was going through it, I was sick of the fact that my peers' biggest worries were essay deadlines and making it in to class when I was trying to unblock my head, figure out why I was making myself depressed and try not to top myself in the process.      

Today is 'Blue Monday'. I'd never heard of this before, but apparently it's the most depressing day of the year. So far today I have managed to wake up, showered, handed in two essays, made birthday presents/jewellery, and watched a lot of 24. This is considered a very successful day for me. 

So what I wanted to say, or rather, ask- was it worth it? Are the side effects worth it? Are the hours (and money) spent in therapy worth it? Is it worth losing what feels like a huge part of myself, my identity, to try and keep myself safe?  

Every single damn tear and word needs to be worth it, because we are living in a world that does not care, a world that will let us fall and ignore our screams for help. It needs to be worth it because we need to change this world, change it for the better, change it to make it worth trying to survive. 

The last few weeks have shown me more than ever that we are at a critical time in the fight for the rights of disabled people in the UK and Ireland, one of a thousand problems I could easily list. We need to mobilise students to fight for the rights of those who are deliberately silenced and deliberately ignored. We need to use all the tools at our disposal, whatever they might be, to make sure that this fight does not go unheard and unnoticed. I am a disabled woman student and I am being let down, every single day, by the voices in Stormont, Westminster; even in places as close as my students' union and university. Where the hell has the compassion gone? Where is the anger? No one is going to start the argument for us- we need to do it ourselves.

Monday.

It's currently exam season. The library is filled with people. There are empty Boojum bags all over the cafe. Coffee sales are at an all time high. Facebook is covered in worried/angsty/stopped-giving-a-fuck-just-let-them-end statuses. 

Usually I'd be freaking out along with everyone else. I've never taken exam stress well. Well, at least I don't think I have. I tend to perform well in exams, and even though right now I'd say that I don't think exams stress me out BECAUSE I perform better in them.. I remember having a conversation with my mum about this a few months ago and she stared back at me with disbelief- I'd clearly forgotten how ill I'd been as a result of the pressure last year, and that doesn't surprise me. Your mind blocks things out, at least mine does. It blocks out painful memories, and as cliched as it sounds, it's true. Because I came out of last year with a 2.1, I seemed to have forgotten how bad I was around exam time. This is the same thing that happened with my GCSEs and my A Levels. And of course, I promptly forgot how ill I was during those exams too, because I came out each time with good grades. 

Things were so bad last year I considered dropping out of university entirely. Then I told myself to wise up, because it wasn't like I had a part time job or anything I could do for a while.. I'd literally be going from university to nothing- which is what is definitely needed in some cases, but I didn't think I was ill enough to have the only thing I 'do' be therapy. I'm used to being busy all of the time. I just know I wouldn't have been able to do it- although saying that, I do think I should have maybe taken a few gap years before coming to university in the first place.

Because of the new medication and the short term medication I'm on at the minute, my memory is fucked. Short term memory, that is. So I wouldn't be able to revise (psychiatrist's words, not mine- I actually initially thought they helped me revise, just because they cleared my head). So then I decided to try to do essays instead of exams. And for once in their lives, my school were actually relatively good about it all (my school in the university- ever since I've arrived at university I've had to constantly jump through hoops in order to get what I need disability wise, in terms of provisions etc., it's been an absolute fucking joke) and it got sorted pretty quickly. Instead of three exams, I'm writing three essays. 

The first two are done, and I've just begun working on the third. I had roughly a week to do each of them, which factored in time for bad days etc., and I knew I'd be alright. And so far, I have been. This is the least stressed-out I've been around exam time, ever. Even though I can't remember specific details of exam times in the past, I know that much. I've so far stayed on schedule, and gotten the first two essays done within the first fortnight, leaving me a week for the third. So technically, everything should be grand. 

I'll give you another account of the last three weeks. Whilst everything has stayed on track (to a degree) in terms of my university work, my health is all over the place. I've lost weight, because I keep forgetting to eat- which then makes me scared I'll revert back into old unhealthy habits in regards to food, just because I've remembered what it's like to lose weight. I either sleep little or too much. When I started my newest medication, I couldn't even pour a cup of tea without spilling hot water everywhere, my coordination was so bad. Sometimes I've lay in bed for fourteen hours because I don't have the energy to pull myself up. I've ran back, literally and metaphorically, to ex-boyfriends, because whenever I get lonely and depressed I try to remember where I ever found any source of comfort or affection and try desperately to cling back at it. Each day I've spent in the library, I've had to take some form of tablet to help me concentrate enough to do work, and then worry about the stares I get when I lift out said tablet to take it. Then it makes me sleepy, so I have to have caffeine to make myself wake up. It's a vicious cycle- especially because amidst this, I've forgotten to eat a meal, so my energy levels aren't what they should be. I come home to an empty house (my house mate has caught the horrible virus thing that's going around and now that her exams are over it's understandable she'd rather be at home), turn on the heating, and sit in bed freezing for a few hours before I take more medication and send myself off to sleep. I keep looking down at my hands in disbelief, I just can't see them as my hands any more and I don't know why. And whilst trying to manage this, I'm also trying to do three essays, do what I can for NUSUSI, and battle with my university and students' union in regards to provisions for disabled students amongst other things.

It is exhausting. 

But it's half past midnight, and I'm not exhausted, even though I had to get up early today for an appointment, because I think I remembered to have breakfast but I don't think I managed lunch or dinner, and there comes a point where a lack of food gives you an odd manic energy that you can't quite explain. I've told my doctors about this, I'm doing all that I can university wise, and I was a little worried they would try to admit me this morning at my psychiatrist appointment, so the fact that I'm writing this is in itself a good thing- what an odd thing to be proud of on a Monday night. 

But it's Monday, and it's over and I should take my tablets soon so that I don't sleep for the entire day tomorrow. I wasn't admitted and I can't make a meeting I really wanted to go to tomorrow morning, but I suppose I can live with that. I have to, I don't have another option.