Why I'm not #BackinBelfast

The #BackinBelfast campaign launched in the wake of the devastating effect the loyalist flag protests were having on Belfast city centre. It started off as a relatively low key hashtag campaign on Twitter, and quickly erupted into a full blown, council and Executive backed campaign. Local newspapers are on board, with offers for various clubs, pubs and restaurants throughout the city being advertised daily in an attempt to revitalise the city centre and to increase the footfall that had been drastically affected in the wake of the seemingly never-ending loyalist protests.

The campaign launched at the end of January in a desperate attempt for the traders of the city to try to regain some of their lost revenue. Since the protests began in December, around 150 police officers have been injured, and the Confederation of British Industry have estimated that around £15 million has been lost in trade due to the protests. Pre-Christmas sales were badly affected, and the situation only seemed to go from bad to worse as time marched on. The cost of policing the protests is estimated to have exceeded £15 million. The Northern Irish Executive released a press statement at the end of January, declaring its support for the campaign, with Arlene Foster stating that it is essential for us to support our local businesses in what are very trying trading conditions.

So why am I not #BackinBelfast? I have a number of reasons. 

In typical Northern Irish fashion, we think that by throwing some money at the problem and having a colourful poster campaign, we actually solve what was wrong in the first place. We haven't. And no one is prepared to admit it. Whilst we have been holding hands with the 'other side' and proclaiming our love for our city centre, a 'unionist unity' candidate has been selected for the Mid-Ulster by-election, the Northern Irish Housing Executive is going to be abolished (with the possible loss of 400 public sector jobs, and hugely increased risk of privatisation), and two UUP MLAs have left the party in opposition to the recent actions undertaken by its leader, Mike Nesbitt.

The estimated amount that has gone into the campaign stands at around £1.5 million, with £400,000 directly from Belfast City Council and £600,000 from the Executive. The campaign has had great publicity, whilst the fact that countless death threats, bullets, and intimidation towards our elected representatives has pretty much been forgotten about in the past month or so. Some of those who were the targets of death threats may stand in polar opposition to what I stand for, but that doesn't mean I'll condone the threats to their families. 

The money that has been used to back the campaign could have, and should have, been used in any number of projects across the region that are crying out for funding. The media is bombarding us with deals and offers from pubs and restaurants around Belfast, at a time when wages for public sector workers have been frozen, the price of living is steadily increasing, and people are finding it exponentially difficult to get by day to day, without being shamed into spending what little money they have in restaurants and bars in the city. In addition to this, the workers in retail and hospitality industries have all but been left out in the cold by their employers- a lack of union presence means that all too often throughout the crisis, they were sent home from work and lost a significant amount of their earnings. Most have no union protection to ensure that they are paid irrespective of circumstance. In the bigger picture, this was seen in the south in January- music giant HMV announced it was going into administration and employees had to physically occupy the stores to ensure the company paid them the wages they were rightfully owed. 

But then we have another problem- the fact that many 'community' projects are fronted by paramilitaries who are kept quiet with the money dished out to them by the DUP/Sinn Fein coalition within the Executive. We need our elected representatives to take a stand on this- otherwise, it will keep going. On the ground, community workers see this day in and day out, and it appears to be one of the Executive's worst kept secrets. If everyone knows about it, why haven't we been lobbying the relevant Sinn Fein and DUP MLAs to stop this practise?! A similar situation was seen back in 2007, when then Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie received numerous death threats at her refusal to continue to fund UDA-backed community projects without evidence of decommissioning and reduced criminality. Behind closed doors, everyday DUP and Sinn Fein members could be pushing their MLAs to stop this practise, but they aren't- it suits both parties for the status quo to remain intact. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor does it explain as fully as I would like why I don't support the #BackinBelfast initiative. I find it rather insulting that my own students' union sabbatical officers are proudly enjoying their spot in the limelight as they publicly declare their support for the campaign, whilst simultaneously ignoring the fact that across the UK, there are campaigns far more worthy of their support- one only has to look at anti-fascist protests at Marine Le Pen's recent talk at Cambridge, and perhaps most importantly, recent occupations in the University of Sussex against further university privatisation to note that the de-politicisation of Queen's University Students' Union is hugely detrimental to the students and young people in Northern Ireland as a whole. 

I am not #BackinBelfast- I can't afford to. Neither can most students. Whilst students were not the main focus of this article, I'll stick to what I know best- students are struggling to get by as it is, and with £9k fees for GB students in Queen's University, halls that are more expensive than the basic loan, and a severe lack of part-time jobs (and those employed taken advantage of horrendously by their employers), students shouldn't be shamed into spending more money than they can afford. Luckily, it is often argued, we live in a world of (for the most part) interest-free overdrafts and the knowledge that it can be pushed to the back of our minds as a problem for 'future me' (the cost of living for students is something I'll get into another day- by no means take this as me declaring that we are in a comfortable position, when the reality is anything but). Most people living in Belfast don't have that luxury, most people couldn't afford to go to Deane's before the recession, never mind now. Maybe if our politicians start addressing the underlying problems- our innate sectarianism, the complete absence of any credible CSI document, inequalities in education, the strength of paramilitary control in many working class areas- I'll lend them my support in the future.

Blogs, by their very nature, are self-indulgent. I discussed this with my friend a few days ago (who I know will not read this because she makes a conscious effort not to read blogs for that very reason), and we both agreed. I mean, they are. Regardless of what you write about (with possibly a few exceptions), most blogs are rather self-indulgent. But that doesn't always mean it's a bad thing.

I'm exhausted. This week I've spent more time meeting with university and disability services staff than I have in class. Granted, I'm not in for very long every week, but that's still a lot of meetings. For someone who has spent the last three months depressed, anxious, suicidal, and keeping herself out of hospital, it has been hard to try to get back into the routine of university. It's only Week 3 and I already feel like I could keel over and sleep for a year. It's the kind of exhaustion that I can feel in my legs, the kind that stops me from making meals and having showers, and the kind that doesn't care about making meals and having showers. I am just too tired. I don't know if it's exhaustion or depression, but I also don't have the energy to care which it is.

We keep talking about self care. We keep talking about taking time out for ourselves whenever we need it, making sure that we are healthy and reasonably happy, in order to best do our jobs and best represent the students we've been elected to work for. But when we do just that, I can't help but feel there is always someone rolling their eyes behind your back. There is always someone quick to point out what you're doing wrong, and whilst I know that is part and parcel of the job (and I fully accept and think it is right that people criticise us- I mean, we need to be held to account), at times when I am not 100% it is difficult to deal with. And unfortunately, I'm rarely at 100%. I haven't been 'at 100%' for the duration of my degree, so far. And I wasn't well during my A Levels. Or my GCSEs.. so the problem is, where is the line? Where does self care begin and end? Should I even be doing what I'm doing in the first place? 

I didn't get accepted for a programme I applied for this summer (I'm on the reserve list, but people rarely drop out), and whilst I was initially disappointed, I couldn't help but notice the little thought inside my head that told me, realistically, it would be worse to have been accepted and then not to have been able to take up my place- the regulations note that you have to be 'healthy enough to travel', and considering the programme, it isn't unreasonable. And now I (though it would more likely be my parents) won't be forced into making the choice as to whether I'm 'well' enough to go away for ten weeks. 

But I'm still left with what is my life here. I study full time and essentially work part time in three different jobs. Luckily only one has contracted hours (the paid one), but even at that, the one shift I do will wear me out for the rest of the day. The good thing about the student newspaper and, to a lesser extent NUS-USI, is that I work from home and when I can, so I don't notice a 'set' amount of hours, but even things like spending an afternoon trying to catch up on emails or write reports for committees or try in vain to contact the different unions I represent can knock me out entirely. 

So what do I do? It is a question I am struggling with a lot. I have decided to spread my third year in university out into three terms- nothing is finalised but I'm hoping that will take off some of the pressure uni-wise, even though it means I won't graduate with my year and I probably will have another year of student loans to take out. I still have to be re-elected as Women's Officer for next year, and next year will be my last. Someone else will take over as News Editor for The Gown come June. But is it enough? Really, is it enough? Or will I have to accept the fact that this is a chronic condition and doesn't appear to be going away any time soon, and try to make the best out of a bad situation? I am doing what I can but I know it is not enough- it isn't up to my standards of what a News Editor or a Women's Officer or full-time student should be doing. Maybe I am spreading myself too thin, and maybe I need to remember occasionally that I came here a year and a half ago to try to do a degree, something I am reminded of every time I have to miss classes to go to conferences or London or when I can't get out of bed in the morning. 

This blog is self-indulgent. It is a way in which, as strange as this seems, my best friends, who I don't get to see very often (a mix of oceans between us/everyone has jobs and university and a million other commitments) can sometimes check in with how things are. Because I don't have the energy to contact them and make plans every week, I don't have the energy to reply to Facebook messages and talk about how things have been. I don't know why I decided to start documenting these kinds of things again, but I did, and so I need to try to stick at it. Even if it is self-indulgent. I don't have a therapist anymore and so these things, for the most part, go unsaid. I need to put it somewhere. I need to get it out of my head. 

Q is for Queer.

"Not queer like gay. Queer like, escaping definition. Queer like some sort of fluidity and limitlessness at once. Queer like a freedom too strange to be conquered. Queer like the fearlessness to imagine what love can look like... and pursue it." (Brandon Wint) 

Taken from a Facebook post by the wonderful Maryam, I don't think I've ever found something that I feel explains my sexuality better than this quote. 

So maybe this means I am "coming out", as it were, as Queer. I have struggled with identifying my sexuality for a long time. I don't feel I am straight. I don't feel I am bisexual. So I didn't know what I was, I didn't know what 'group' I fitted into, I didn't know what box I should tick when filling out equality of opportunity forms. And so I didn't really do much about it.

But since becoming increasingly active in the student movement, I've found myself questioning it more and more. Surely, there has to be some other people who find the same problem in identifying as one or the other, surely I couldn't be the only one.. and now I know that I'm not. I now know a fair few people who identify as Queer. And I've had problems trying to explain what exactly 'Queer' is to people who aren't familiar with the concept of anything but LGBT. 

So I don't really know where I go from here. I have talked about this to one or two close friends, but for the most part, haven't really talked about it at all. So maybe now, now that I've found something that I feel I fit the description of perfectly, maybe now I will feel comfortable in finally 'identifying' myself as something. 

Maybe.

When I was seventeen, my original plan was to go to university and then go to drama school afterwards. I had a life planned out for myself. I knew the barriers I would face, financially, in terms of trying to get through drama school, I knew the bursaries and scholarships I could apply for, I knew the cost of living in London, I had everything sorted. And then things changed.

I left school for a few months, and came back in the middle of May a different person. I had spent the previous few months in a permanent state of depression, effectively left school and decided that everything had changed. And then things changed again.

I decided I wasn't going to go back to school after only being able to sit one of my exams. I had researched my college course and I had secured my audition. I knew what I had to do and although things had changed, I had adapted.

And somehow, whilst on holiday in a small house with my family in the Tuscan hills I remembered how much I loved learning and how I wasn't ready to give it up quite yet. I remembered that nothing was better to me than a book, and that if I felt like that it made sense to go back and fit it into one year. So that's what I did.

I applied for university in September. English or English and Drama were my choices. And then things changed again.

Come May, I decided I wanted to do Politics instead. So I rang the university I'm currently at, and asked them if I could change my course. And they said yes. And then I ended up here.

I did one play at the beginning of first year. I did love it, despite the time commitments while everyone around me in halls could go out every night etc., it didn't matter because I knew I was doing what I wanted to do.

And things changed again. I was ill again and subsequently have missed more university that I can bear thinking about. And somewhere, somehow, I ended up getting involved in my students' union. And in NUSUSI and NUS. I don't quite know how I ended up here, but I did.

I've been thinking a lot about my old 'dreams', or possibly it would be more appropriate to call them 'life plans'. At one point I wanted to be a doctor, at one point a mental health nurse. I wanted to go to art college. I wanted to go to film school I wanted to do everything and even now, I can see myself, as if I was watching some sort of screen, playing out my life in each of those scenarios. I can see every one of them. And it feels strange.

Early morning.

Tonight is one of the fleeting kinds of nights that I have that I remind myself that I am so glad that I am filled with love, and not hate.

I am so glad that I keep looking for the best in people, despite how many times they fuck me over.

I am so glad that I fall in love again and again and again, no matter how many times my heart shatters.

I am so glad that no matter how terrible I am feeling, to a degree, I can almost always understand, or at the very least sympathise, with whatever someone else is going through.

I am so, so, so glad, that I have come home at 2.30am on a Monday morning, not crying tears of sadness, but tears of sympathy. 

You will get better, I will get better. Eventually this will all be a bad dream. You deserve to be loved, and so do I. I cannot be that for you and you cannot be that for me, but one day, it will happen. 

There are brighter things in this world than empty tunnels, and there are happier things in this life than meaningless days after days. People are what matter and people are what make it worth it. 

"The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet." (Nikos Kazantzakis)

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.