I'm going to write about trying to get help with my panic attacks through the NHS. It's partly a processing thing for me, and partly a record. I also think it can't hurt to have this stuff out there for anyone else in a similar situation. I have no idea how this will turn out, or if I will keep writing about it. Right now it feels like I need to. Like if I don't, it will disappear, or turn into something else in my head. I need to get it down while it's still fresh. Maybe someone else will find it useful. Or maybe not.
First steps
It took me a long time to get around to, both because I'm stupidly busy and because I kept hoping I would somehow magically fix myself without help. I didn't. I went to the doctor at work, and he gave me a prescription for Propanolol and Diazepam, which I filled immediately, before I could change my mind. Sometimes I take them, and sometimes they seem to help with the symptoms, but I haven't stopped having the attacks and that's what I'm aiming for, really. They're seriously hampering my ability to, well, live my life.
So I made an appointment with my GP and I gritted my teeth and I told her the truth - well, most of the truth. She said she would refer me to the mental health team, and that I should hear from them within 10 working days. It was Friday night, and this is the NHS, so when I got a call on Monday afternoon I was amazed and impressed. It was lucky I answered the call at all - the number came up as "Blocked" on my phone and normally I would have ignored it, but I was on my way to get a glass of water at work so answered it. I spoke briefly with a very nice man, who patiently tried to accomodate my unhelpfully packed schedule, and - incredibly - booked me in for a phone assessment at 1:45 on Saturday. I wasn't overjoyed - he had said the call would take 20-30 minutes, and I had a show at 2:30. But I was so glad that I wasn't going to have to wait weeks, like I thought I might, that I took it. Knowing myself pretty well, and anticipating that the call would upset me, I asked my closest friend at work to stand by so I could get a hug or a shoulder or a cup of tea when I was done.
The first call
The man I spoke to, whose name I can't remember, called me on the dot of 1:45, while I was anxiously pacing outside the stage door in the rain. He was kind and patient and cracked a few jokes. He told me what the assessment would consist of, and then he did it - asking me two lists of questions about my recent symptoms and life situation - and then he told me that I would receive a letter with the results, a copy of which would be sent to my GP. Practically, the call was good. But there was one thing that gave me a tinge of anticipatory fear. The nice man wasn't exactly taken aback when I told him I was trans - although he literally said "oh. I actually don't have a box for that" - but he was weird about it in that way that I have learnt to treat with caution. The word "brave" was used on more than one occasion. The word "interesting" also. I'm sure he meant well and was trying to put me at my ease and reassure me that he wasn't bothered, but, well - you know what the 'but' is. I told myself that this guy probably wouldn't be talking to me again. I would slide through his little bit of the system leaving nary a hint of my presence - perhaps a suggestion for a new box? - and our paths wouldn't cross again. His well-intentioned, jarring ignorance wouldn't be my problem. I just had to get to the next stage. The stage that would help.
The letter arrived the following Saturday, listing some incomprehensible numbers and letters - the results of my assessment - and requesting that I call between 9 and 4:30 to set up a more 'in-depth' assessment. I called the number and got an answering service informing me that their business hours were 9-5 Monday-Friday, which the letter had unhelpfully not specified. I googled the mysterious letters and numbers (PHQ9 and GAD7) and found out what they meant.
I called back on Monday morning, and was happy to encounter another friendly, helpful person, and to be told that I could have this assessment over the phone too. Good news for me, with my stupid schedule. She was just as accommodating about my schedule, finally booking me in for 1:30 on the approaching Thursday and telling me that the call would take 30-40 minutes. The number would come up as "Blocked" on my phone, but it would be "Jenny" on the other end. This information would have been helpful in advance of the first call, too.
The second call
Jenny rang promptly at 1:30. I was, yet again, anxiously pacing outside work. Different work. Same pacing. After introducing herself she immediately dropped her voice to a soothing murmur, and I had to interrupt her to ask her to speak up since I was outside. She obliged. We talked for forty minutes. She took me through the same sets of questions that I had been asked on the first call, explaining that this would happen each time I spoke to someone from the service, and that it was a way of gauging my recent mental health. When we had finished she told me what my numbers were and how they compared to my numbers from the previous phone call. Again, this is something I'd have liked to have been told earlier. Perhaps when they sent me a letter with some numbers next to some unexplained acronyms. Perhaps when they 'assessed' me the first time. But I didn't really mind - I appreciated how fast everything was happening and I understand that they must have to cut some corners to expedite these services.
But I was finding these calls upsetting. I knew I would and the first time I had been able to prepare some support for myself, in the event that I needed it. This time I couldn't do that. I was upset on the phone although I tried not to show it - tried not to feel it. I explained myself as best I could. Tried not to cry. Tried not to worry about my coworkers seeing me. Tried to concentrate on the matter at hand. Tried to hear Jenny over the traffic noise. Tried not to panic.
I have to say that it was nothing that Jenny said that I was finding upsetting, and nothing that the first guy had said either. They were both very gentle and professional. It's just that talking about the whole thing, out loud, is seemingly very difficult for me. I guess I don't like to think about it too much, or really admit it at all.
At the end of the call we talked about next steps, and Jenny told me that my treatment would probably consist of a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which could be taken over the phone. This was good news - I'd been worried about finding the time to attend regular medical appointments. Unfortunately the service was only available 9-5 Monday-Friday, all of which time I'm at work. Jenny asked if I didn't have a lunch break? I have a lunch break, I explained, but I don't have anywhere private to go during it - my building is full to capacity as it is. Could I sit in my car? I don't drive to work. Jenny was sympathetic but there aren't really any other options. Not Jenny's fault, of course, but I was getting more upset and she obviously needed to end the call. Addressing me by my legal name, she asked if I had any questions.
Yes, I said, barely coherent. Can you please not use that name any more? I know it's what you have for me, but can you use Ollie instead? Of course, she said, of course. I'm so sorry, I should have asked - No no, I reassured her, you didn't know, I haven't mentioned it, it's just, my legal name makes me really uncomfortable and I'm finding this quite hard and it somehow makes it worse when I hear that name. I understand, she said. I'll get it into your paperwork.
I don't remember what we said after that. I was desperate. We ended the call, and I hustled back into work, locked myself into a cubicle, sat on the floor and cried until my brain came back. It didn't take long to calm down - I didn't have long, I had to be back at my desk. I calmed myself down, waited for my face to feel normal, returned to work. Took two of the pills. Focused.
When "Blocked" came up on my phone 20 minutes later, I thought I had better answer it. I slipped out into the corridor and answered the call quietly. It was Jenny. Addressing me by my legal name, she told me that she was sorry but she'd forgotten to do the risk assessment. Did I have a couple of minutes? I stumbled over the answer. My throat had tightened and I was on the edge of tears. I told her I did, if it really was a couple of minutes - I was back at work. She asked me if I thought I might harm myself. I choked on no. She asked me what was stopping me from harming myself. I said what? She said, you know, family, friends, a parter - ? I sobbed no, no, no. Nothing's stopping me, I'm just - not. She apologised again for forgetting the risk assessment. She said goodbye. I hung up, went back to my cubicle floor, and succumbed to the panic attack that had been threatening since the first call. Luckily for me, nobody came into the bathroom. Then I went back to work.
Now
I'm not as optimistic as I was. I'm scared, actually. These calls upset me. I'm prepared for that, but I don't know if I'm prepared enough - I can't have the support I need around me 9-5, and that seems to be the only option. If I could have the calls in the evenings/weekends, when I'm usually at the other job or at home, it would be ok. Maybe the actual therapy won't be upsetting? But even if it's not, I don't have a quiet place to take the calls. I don't know how to get around that.
Less tangible is my worry about how these professionals are relating to my trans-ness. Nobody has been hateful or intolerant or transphobic. But my Spidey sense is tingling. Did he call me interesting and brave? Did he just refer to my transness as "that kind of thing"? Did she really just address me by the wrong name twenty minutes after I'd told her that it bothered me?
I laughed when the guy said he didn't have a box for that. But, now that I think about it, NHS, why don't you have a box for that? You asked me my damn sexuality and religion and ethnicity. Why isn't there a box for that?
And why didn't you notice that I was crying on the phone, the first time when I told you what I wanted to be called, and then when you phoned back to check I wasn't going to kill myself? Why didn't you notice?
I'm getting cross. I'm not cross, really. Mainly I'm worried. I need this help but I'm scared to get it: scared that it won't help, or that it will throw up the need for more help, or a different kind of help. Also scared of the dysphoria which I can barely keep at bay under normal circumstances, and which this process seems bound to disturb.
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Monday, 8 July 2013
Friday, 26 October 2012
Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
So I just saw this film, without knowing much about it except that it's about misfits and stars Ezra Miller and David Bowie's 'Heroes'. That was enough for me. And honestly, if that was all that was good about it, it would have been plenty. But man, does this film have more going for it than that. (Spoilers ahead.)
This isn't a perfect film. But what is? The best compliment I can give Perks is that it is complex enough that I'm willing to give it a bit of a pass on the places where it falls down. It has more than one gay character. It has two kisses between male characters; one of the kisses is between a straight character and a gay character, and the straight character doesn't freak out or question his sexuality or respond with violence or disgust or anger. It has a suicidal character who has more than one dimension. It has sexual abuse of a boy by a woman. It has complex family relationships, full of love and casual cruelty and support and abuse. It has friendships. Real, messy friendships. And real, messy sexuality.
And on top of all that, it has Ezra Miller as Dr. Frankenfurter. I actually squeaked in the cinema. That's two of my favourite turn-ons in one delicious parcel!
One of the things I didn't like as much is the treatment of women. Although there are some beautifully nuanced portrayals in this film (Emma Watson is really, really good) and a host of good female characters, some of the details were a bit frustrating. Sam, Emma Watson's character, suffers from standard girl trouble: she used to be a slutty slut. We don't get all the details, but basically she spent 'freshman year' not studying, getting drunk at parties, and sleeping around. She suffers from cripplingly low self esteem, which results in her dating people who "treat [her] like nothing". Charlie, our hero, is the only one who loves the real her, and we know that he'll treat her right. Charlie moons after her for the entire film, selflessly helps her with her studies, evil-eyes her boyfriend and complains to people that she isn't dating him, despite the fact that he's never asked her to. I call Nice Guy-ism.
Charlie's one-time girfriend, Mary-Elizabeth, has her own girl-problems. From being a snappy, bright, independent girl, she morphs into a jealous, possessive, nagging shrew the moment she starts dating Charlie - which happens after they've kissed once and Mary-Elizabeth announces that Charlie is her boyfriend. Their relationship ends when Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, and unthinkingly kisses Sam instead of Mary-Elizabeth. Patrick, Sam's step brother, tells Charlie that it would be best if he just stayed away from the group for a while, since there is "history" between Sam and Mary-Elizabeth - history that apparently involves guys liking Sam better than Mary-Elizabeth. Charlie, who has realised that one reason that he is currently fairly stable is that he has a good group of friends, suffers a rapid decline when he takes Patrick's advice and returns to being a loner.
There are other factors involved, of course, in Charlie's breakdown, but one thing this careful chronology encourages is the belief that these silly girls and their silly jealousy have contributed to Charlie's deteriorating mental health. I'd say that Charlie brings it on himself, by callously kissing one girl in front of the girl he's dating, but Patrick makes it clear that Charlie must exile himself not because his behaviour was insensitive and wrong, but because the girls are going to be unnecessarily dramatic about it.
I really don't have the energy to detail all the sexist tropes this film utilises to talk about women. For something that's otherwise so progressive in terms of gender and sexuality, it's a real disappointment. But there are other problems too.
1) I counted one person of colour who spoke during the entire film. I didn't even see any non-white people in crowd shots.
2) Everyone is thin and beautiful - not unexpected in a teen film (or, sadly, any film), but still disappointing.
3) Everyone is incredibly rich. The kids buy each other suits and typewriters for Christmas, and have free run of enormous mansions where no parents are seen. Nobody has a job, or talks of getting one. You know how ridiculously rich they all are, because nobody mentions money. There isn't even a token poor character to throw the others into relief. It's as if nobody even notices how ludicrously privileged these kids are - not the writers, directors, actors or characters. It's bizarre.
4) The bulimia joke. Early on, Sam tells Charlie that she's not a bulimic, she's a bulimist. What does that mean? "It means she believes in bulimia." She loves bulimia! That might be acceptable if the film went on to explore Sam dealing with bulimia, but it doesn't. It's never mentioned again. It's just a throwaway line, perhaps to show how quirky and cool they are, perhaps to show how screwed up Sam is. I think that's pretty screwed up in itself.
It's disappointing that the film falls down in so many ways, because in so many other ways, it is groundbreaking. The main character has dealt with death and suicide and sexual abuse by his aunt. Can we talk about how rare that is? I'm not sure I can remember another instance - in a teen film, no less - of a woman sexually abusing a little boy. Charlie's parents are appalled and disgusted and heartbroken, but there is no question that they believe him. I think, for this alone, I can forgive this film a multitude of sins.
And, on top of all this, it's a really moving film. The themes are complex and emotional and frightening, but there are moments of pure joy in the film, and moments of pure love. It's messy and grim and optimistic and terrifying. I'm no film critic, but I really enjoyed it and I think it's got some really important things to say.
I still wanted it to be better, though. One of the problems of engaging regularly with this kind of criticism is that I've been infected by more-ism. The status quo is not enough. Better than the status quo is not enough. I want more. I expect more.
This isn't a perfect film. But what is? The best compliment I can give Perks is that it is complex enough that I'm willing to give it a bit of a pass on the places where it falls down. It has more than one gay character. It has two kisses between male characters; one of the kisses is between a straight character and a gay character, and the straight character doesn't freak out or question his sexuality or respond with violence or disgust or anger. It has a suicidal character who has more than one dimension. It has sexual abuse of a boy by a woman. It has complex family relationships, full of love and casual cruelty and support and abuse. It has friendships. Real, messy friendships. And real, messy sexuality.
And on top of all that, it has Ezra Miller as Dr. Frankenfurter. I actually squeaked in the cinema. That's two of my favourite turn-ons in one delicious parcel!
One of the things I didn't like as much is the treatment of women. Although there are some beautifully nuanced portrayals in this film (Emma Watson is really, really good) and a host of good female characters, some of the details were a bit frustrating. Sam, Emma Watson's character, suffers from standard girl trouble: she used to be a slutty slut. We don't get all the details, but basically she spent 'freshman year' not studying, getting drunk at parties, and sleeping around. She suffers from cripplingly low self esteem, which results in her dating people who "treat [her] like nothing". Charlie, our hero, is the only one who loves the real her, and we know that he'll treat her right. Charlie moons after her for the entire film, selflessly helps her with her studies, evil-eyes her boyfriend and complains to people that she isn't dating him, despite the fact that he's never asked her to. I call Nice Guy-ism.
Charlie's one-time girfriend, Mary-Elizabeth, has her own girl-problems. From being a snappy, bright, independent girl, she morphs into a jealous, possessive, nagging shrew the moment she starts dating Charlie - which happens after they've kissed once and Mary-Elizabeth announces that Charlie is her boyfriend. Their relationship ends when Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, and unthinkingly kisses Sam instead of Mary-Elizabeth. Patrick, Sam's step brother, tells Charlie that it would be best if he just stayed away from the group for a while, since there is "history" between Sam and Mary-Elizabeth - history that apparently involves guys liking Sam better than Mary-Elizabeth. Charlie, who has realised that one reason that he is currently fairly stable is that he has a good group of friends, suffers a rapid decline when he takes Patrick's advice and returns to being a loner.
There are other factors involved, of course, in Charlie's breakdown, but one thing this careful chronology encourages is the belief that these silly girls and their silly jealousy have contributed to Charlie's deteriorating mental health. I'd say that Charlie brings it on himself, by callously kissing one girl in front of the girl he's dating, but Patrick makes it clear that Charlie must exile himself not because his behaviour was insensitive and wrong, but because the girls are going to be unnecessarily dramatic about it.
I really don't have the energy to detail all the sexist tropes this film utilises to talk about women. For something that's otherwise so progressive in terms of gender and sexuality, it's a real disappointment. But there are other problems too.
1) I counted one person of colour who spoke during the entire film. I didn't even see any non-white people in crowd shots.
2) Everyone is thin and beautiful - not unexpected in a teen film (or, sadly, any film), but still disappointing.
3) Everyone is incredibly rich. The kids buy each other suits and typewriters for Christmas, and have free run of enormous mansions where no parents are seen. Nobody has a job, or talks of getting one. You know how ridiculously rich they all are, because nobody mentions money. There isn't even a token poor character to throw the others into relief. It's as if nobody even notices how ludicrously privileged these kids are - not the writers, directors, actors or characters. It's bizarre.
4) The bulimia joke. Early on, Sam tells Charlie that she's not a bulimic, she's a bulimist. What does that mean? "It means she believes in bulimia." She loves bulimia! That might be acceptable if the film went on to explore Sam dealing with bulimia, but it doesn't. It's never mentioned again. It's just a throwaway line, perhaps to show how quirky and cool they are, perhaps to show how screwed up Sam is. I think that's pretty screwed up in itself.
It's disappointing that the film falls down in so many ways, because in so many other ways, it is groundbreaking. The main character has dealt with death and suicide and sexual abuse by his aunt. Can we talk about how rare that is? I'm not sure I can remember another instance - in a teen film, no less - of a woman sexually abusing a little boy. Charlie's parents are appalled and disgusted and heartbroken, but there is no question that they believe him. I think, for this alone, I can forgive this film a multitude of sins.
And, on top of all this, it's a really moving film. The themes are complex and emotional and frightening, but there are moments of pure joy in the film, and moments of pure love. It's messy and grim and optimistic and terrifying. I'm no film critic, but I really enjoyed it and I think it's got some really important things to say.
I still wanted it to be better, though. One of the problems of engaging regularly with this kind of criticism is that I've been infected by more-ism. The status quo is not enough. Better than the status quo is not enough. I want more. I expect more.
Monday, 24 September 2012
Studying Trauma
Reading this post from Chally over at Zero at the Bone made me think about some of my own harrowing university experiences. In the final year of my undergraduate degree I took a module called Holocaust Fiction. I don't know how anyone else in my class dealt with it - I was hardly in a place to make friends with them - but for me the module might as well have been called 'How to make yourself cry every day for 3 months'.
I am half Jewish on my dad's side, and my paternal grandparents are both Holocaust survivors. My grandma, who came to England from Vienna on one of the last Kindertransport missions in 1939, had died a few weeks before her 82nd birthday, two months before I began studying Holocaust fiction.
Now, you might think that I made a spectacularly bad decision in choosing to study Holocaust fiction at this time. And it was a spectacularly awful experience. But I had chosen my modules months before this point, and anyway, I was never interested in making life easy for myself. I knew Holocaust Fiction wouldn't be an easy module, emotionally, but I also already knew what makes me tick when it comes to literature. I chose my modules because I'm interested in grey areas, and in how history is made - how we create narratives of our pasts, both individual and collective. I adored Writing America in my second year, which focused on how writers play with America's various creation myths, exploring themes of identity, personhood, freedom, community and the 'American Dream'. Many of my second year modules and all of my third year modules (with the exception of Detective Fiction which I took for pure fun) explored similar themes, looking at ideas of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality and identity. Being part Jewish, and interested in the idea of Jewish identity itself, Holocaust Fiction seemed like an obvious choice for me.
So I spent the classes themselves in muscle-clenched, jaw-locked, tight-throated agony, and my individual study time in gasping, tear-drenched misery, trying to numb myself with whiskey and forcing myself to keep reading.
I think it's pretty clear that Holocaust Fiction came at exactly the wrong moment for me. It got tangled up in my grieving for my grandma, and it was unremittingly awful. I hated every second of it, and when I wasn't caught up in hating it, I was panicking over the knowledge that I was screwing up my final year of university. I suffered a punishing few months, berating myself constantly for my weakness whilst simultaneously hating myself for appropriating a trauma that I felt didn't belong to me. I couldn't properly articulate the cruel, nasty mixture of pains to anyone who asked me about it, or indeed myself. The module tutor tried to be kind when I went to him in desperation to ask what I should do. I couldn't complete the work; not even the reading, let alone the writing. When I did manage to write something it felt like it was being ripped out of my flesh word by word, letter by letter. I had no idea if it was any good or if it was even acceptable. I couldn't read it back to myself to check. I couldn't show it to anyone because I was so embarrassed. I threw myself into my other modules, obsessively drafting and redrafting my Detective Fiction work until it was perfect. I took it to a study advisor - something I had never done before and that I had no need of at that point - because I was so committed to dedicating all my time to that essay, mostly so that no part of my brain was ever free to drift to Holocaust Fiction and 'All Holocaust fiction revolves around issues of authority and entitlement. Discuss.'
That was my essay title, and in the end, it was one of the best things I had ever written, which seemed to surprise nobody but me. My personal tutor, a brilliant, terrifying woman, explained patiently to me how emotional investment in a topic can be a gift as often as it is a curse, forcing a deeper connection with and a more rigorous examination of the issues at hand. Of course that's not always fun. Even if your emotional investment isn't bound up in trauma, the thing about emotions is that there is always the potential for pain. Say you're deeply in love with the idea of family as it is portrayed in one novel, and while you research for your essay you discover that that notion of family is a really bad idea - or that you've misunderstood, and the portrayal is not what you thought it was. If you're truly invested in that notion of family, even in a 'happy' or positive way, there is potential for pain when rigorous academic study reveals some other ideas.
If your emotional investment in a topic is complicated and painful, particularly if it tugs at the strands of your own identity (which is very likely) the potential for pain is that much greater. You don't have the emotional distance to take a discovery 'academically' as it were: you can only receive it in your heart, and you've no defences against what that might do to you.
Personally, I'm wondering whether an emotional investment can ever be truly uncomplicated; if it can ever be unpicked from your identity. Generally if I'm deeply invested in something, there are good reasons for it: I feel that it impacts on me in some way. As such, I'm far more likely to be deeply affected by criticism of / engagement with the issues, since they will be personal. If I read a book about queer identities, I am going to be more involved, more critical, more forgiving and more emotional than if I'm reading a book about 19c bridges. Bridges are interesting. But nothing I read about a bridge can make me question the core of myself. For some people, a bridge might make them question the core of themselves. Perhaps if their mother was the one who built the bridge. Or if that bridge leads to their home town. Maybe the bridge connects them with their lover. Any of those things could make you emotionally invested in bridges, and perhaps if you read a book about them and discovered something you didn't know, or something you did know but are in denial about, or simply found that other people see bridges totally differently from how you see bridges - see, there's the pain. Can you be simply, happily invested in something? I don't think so. You can enjoy something simply and happily. But investment is different. There can be joy in it, but the joy is tenuous. Ephemeral. Perilous.
You know how you can be flying high, loving everything in the world, enjoying the cracks in the pavement and the weeds and how the road stretches out tantalising before you, and then someone looks at you or says something or you see an advert or hear a line from a song, and everything tumbles down around you and you're just standing there bemused in the dark - that's emotional investment. You're invested in that moment - enjoying it, yes, but almost too much, almost like you're dependent on it - so when it is compromised it takes everything with it. The joy and the hope and the bright.
That's what it's like to study something you are invested in. It can be beautiful and validating and joyful, but there's always a lurking shadow that can tip you into the black before you know what's happened. In a way that experience is tremendously valuable, but it can also be painful and traumatic in its own right, perhaps adding to trauma you're already carrying. For myself, a lot of the pain came from a feeling of fraudulence: alongside feeling miserable about the issue itself, I was also feeling guilty about feeling miserable, which is down to the nebulous issues of Jewish identity and Holocaust guilt. This kind of double bind could just as easily be related to LGBT identity, racial identity, religious identity etc. It's rather like walking a tightrope, and the tightrope might be that much thinner if your connection to that part of your identity is unstable to start with. If you identify 100% as gay, for example, and you're happy and secure in that identity, then reading an argument that homosexuality is unnatural will almost certainly make you feel anger, sadness or despair. Or it could make you feel superiority to the person who espouses such antiquated, wrongheaded views. Or pity for them. Or a combination of the above. Your emotional reaction might be complicated, sure. But it probably won't be compromised by the little voice which asks you if you've any right to feel that way - if you're gay enough to feel legitimately insulted, if you're gay enough to feel angry about those opinions. I'm not saying that it's any easier to feel that way. Just that it's different, and having experienced both I can see the added layer of complexity that I personally struggle with when it's my ambiguous, unstable identity that is on the line.
I still wouldn't argue against pursuing studies of your personal trauma sites. For some people - for me, I think - it can be useful. Educational, enlightening, possibly even healing. It's an interesting thing to look back on. And despite the misery and the struggle, I'm not sure I would change my experience of it. But perhaps next time I will go into it with my eyes open. Perhaps next time it will be easier.
I am half Jewish on my dad's side, and my paternal grandparents are both Holocaust survivors. My grandma, who came to England from Vienna on one of the last Kindertransport missions in 1939, had died a few weeks before her 82nd birthday, two months before I began studying Holocaust fiction.
Now, you might think that I made a spectacularly bad decision in choosing to study Holocaust fiction at this time. And it was a spectacularly awful experience. But I had chosen my modules months before this point, and anyway, I was never interested in making life easy for myself. I knew Holocaust Fiction wouldn't be an easy module, emotionally, but I also already knew what makes me tick when it comes to literature. I chose my modules because I'm interested in grey areas, and in how history is made - how we create narratives of our pasts, both individual and collective. I adored Writing America in my second year, which focused on how writers play with America's various creation myths, exploring themes of identity, personhood, freedom, community and the 'American Dream'. Many of my second year modules and all of my third year modules (with the exception of Detective Fiction which I took for pure fun) explored similar themes, looking at ideas of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality and identity. Being part Jewish, and interested in the idea of Jewish identity itself, Holocaust Fiction seemed like an obvious choice for me.
So I spent the classes themselves in muscle-clenched, jaw-locked, tight-throated agony, and my individual study time in gasping, tear-drenched misery, trying to numb myself with whiskey and forcing myself to keep reading.
I think it's pretty clear that Holocaust Fiction came at exactly the wrong moment for me. It got tangled up in my grieving for my grandma, and it was unremittingly awful. I hated every second of it, and when I wasn't caught up in hating it, I was panicking over the knowledge that I was screwing up my final year of university. I suffered a punishing few months, berating myself constantly for my weakness whilst simultaneously hating myself for appropriating a trauma that I felt didn't belong to me. I couldn't properly articulate the cruel, nasty mixture of pains to anyone who asked me about it, or indeed myself. The module tutor tried to be kind when I went to him in desperation to ask what I should do. I couldn't complete the work; not even the reading, let alone the writing. When I did manage to write something it felt like it was being ripped out of my flesh word by word, letter by letter. I had no idea if it was any good or if it was even acceptable. I couldn't read it back to myself to check. I couldn't show it to anyone because I was so embarrassed. I threw myself into my other modules, obsessively drafting and redrafting my Detective Fiction work until it was perfect. I took it to a study advisor - something I had never done before and that I had no need of at that point - because I was so committed to dedicating all my time to that essay, mostly so that no part of my brain was ever free to drift to Holocaust Fiction and 'All Holocaust fiction revolves around issues of authority and entitlement. Discuss.'
That was my essay title, and in the end, it was one of the best things I had ever written, which seemed to surprise nobody but me. My personal tutor, a brilliant, terrifying woman, explained patiently to me how emotional investment in a topic can be a gift as often as it is a curse, forcing a deeper connection with and a more rigorous examination of the issues at hand. Of course that's not always fun. Even if your emotional investment isn't bound up in trauma, the thing about emotions is that there is always the potential for pain. Say you're deeply in love with the idea of family as it is portrayed in one novel, and while you research for your essay you discover that that notion of family is a really bad idea - or that you've misunderstood, and the portrayal is not what you thought it was. If you're truly invested in that notion of family, even in a 'happy' or positive way, there is potential for pain when rigorous academic study reveals some other ideas.
If your emotional investment in a topic is complicated and painful, particularly if it tugs at the strands of your own identity (which is very likely) the potential for pain is that much greater. You don't have the emotional distance to take a discovery 'academically' as it were: you can only receive it in your heart, and you've no defences against what that might do to you.
Personally, I'm wondering whether an emotional investment can ever be truly uncomplicated; if it can ever be unpicked from your identity. Generally if I'm deeply invested in something, there are good reasons for it: I feel that it impacts on me in some way. As such, I'm far more likely to be deeply affected by criticism of / engagement with the issues, since they will be personal. If I read a book about queer identities, I am going to be more involved, more critical, more forgiving and more emotional than if I'm reading a book about 19c bridges. Bridges are interesting. But nothing I read about a bridge can make me question the core of myself. For some people, a bridge might make them question the core of themselves. Perhaps if their mother was the one who built the bridge. Or if that bridge leads to their home town. Maybe the bridge connects them with their lover. Any of those things could make you emotionally invested in bridges, and perhaps if you read a book about them and discovered something you didn't know, or something you did know but are in denial about, or simply found that other people see bridges totally differently from how you see bridges - see, there's the pain. Can you be simply, happily invested in something? I don't think so. You can enjoy something simply and happily. But investment is different. There can be joy in it, but the joy is tenuous. Ephemeral. Perilous.
You know how you can be flying high, loving everything in the world, enjoying the cracks in the pavement and the weeds and how the road stretches out tantalising before you, and then someone looks at you or says something or you see an advert or hear a line from a song, and everything tumbles down around you and you're just standing there bemused in the dark - that's emotional investment. You're invested in that moment - enjoying it, yes, but almost too much, almost like you're dependent on it - so when it is compromised it takes everything with it. The joy and the hope and the bright.
That's what it's like to study something you are invested in. It can be beautiful and validating and joyful, but there's always a lurking shadow that can tip you into the black before you know what's happened. In a way that experience is tremendously valuable, but it can also be painful and traumatic in its own right, perhaps adding to trauma you're already carrying. For myself, a lot of the pain came from a feeling of fraudulence: alongside feeling miserable about the issue itself, I was also feeling guilty about feeling miserable, which is down to the nebulous issues of Jewish identity and Holocaust guilt. This kind of double bind could just as easily be related to LGBT identity, racial identity, religious identity etc. It's rather like walking a tightrope, and the tightrope might be that much thinner if your connection to that part of your identity is unstable to start with. If you identify 100% as gay, for example, and you're happy and secure in that identity, then reading an argument that homosexuality is unnatural will almost certainly make you feel anger, sadness or despair. Or it could make you feel superiority to the person who espouses such antiquated, wrongheaded views. Or pity for them. Or a combination of the above. Your emotional reaction might be complicated, sure. But it probably won't be compromised by the little voice which asks you if you've any right to feel that way - if you're gay enough to feel legitimately insulted, if you're gay enough to feel angry about those opinions. I'm not saying that it's any easier to feel that way. Just that it's different, and having experienced both I can see the added layer of complexity that I personally struggle with when it's my ambiguous, unstable identity that is on the line.
I still wouldn't argue against pursuing studies of your personal trauma sites. For some people - for me, I think - it can be useful. Educational, enlightening, possibly even healing. It's an interesting thing to look back on. And despite the misery and the struggle, I'm not sure I would change my experience of it. But perhaps next time I will go into it with my eyes open. Perhaps next time it will be easier.
Sunday, 9 September 2012
The Perils of Shopping
How To Have A Not-Totally-Hateful Shopping Trip
1) Wear the right clothes. Do not wear anything that's even a little bit uncomfortable or 'unflattering' (whatever that means for you). Wear clothes that are comfortable, that fit you in whatever way you like best, and that are easy to take off and put on quickly. You do not want to be in a changing room, having just taken off whatever displeasing item you brought in with you, having to put on something that you don't like the look of yourself in. When you look in the mirror before you leave, you don't want to hate the sight of yourself.
2) Choose your company wisely. If what you're in need of is someone to say "wow, that looks great on you! It would be a crime not to buy it", then find that person (your mum, your partner, your best mate). If what you need is some honesty, no matter how cruel - "don't even think about it, your knees look terrible in that" - then find that person (your mum, your partner, your best mate). Do you need your most confident, outrageous friend to persuade you to try on the spangly playsuit? Or do you need your sensible sister to ask you whether you've got anything that goes with those trousers? Do you want someone to try on all the nail polishes in the shop, or someone who'd rather spin through the whole mall in 20 minutes and drag you away from the jewellery stand? Both of these are valid shopping partners, and confusing the two will probably result in a failure to get what you want or need.
3) Know your purpose. Do you want an afternoon of meandering around shops, trying anything that catches your eye? Or do want a quick trip to get a pair of jeans and some new socks? Do not confuse these two shopping trips. I guarantee this is a recipe for disaster, particularly if your shopping trip is for an event that is looming all-too-close on the horizon, and you waste your one free afternoon trying on bikinis and maxi dresses when what you really need is some shoes to go with your wedding outfit.
4) Don't wear make-up. There's nothing worse than pulling tops over your head and worrying about getting lipstick on them! There's also nothing worse than trying on something gorgeous and seeing someone else's foundation smeared over the collar. Do you want to be the person who put it there? Gross.
5) Know yourself. This is key. I was going to title this bit "Don't go shopping (unless you absolutely have to) if you're already feeling a bit bad about yourself."And then I stopped, and I thought "Come on, not everyone is going to be as delicate a flower as you are. Some people will be able to feel bad about themselves and still have a successful, enjoyable shopping trip. Hell, some people might not even feel bad about themselves at all! They might have a healthy, happy relationship with their bodies and their minds, and each shopping trip might not be fraught with fat hatred and insecurity and fear of even taking that dress into the changing room, in case another customer or the attendent sees you and sneers mentally at your audacity. Don't they know what they look like?!" Those people probably don't need this post. But it's here for them if they do, and also for those of us who sometimes suffer agonies of insecurity and self hatred at the very thought of trying on shiny new clothes. Know yourself. If you're that person, and you're having that day when things seem impossible, and you wonder why you ever thought that inflicting your body on the world was acceptable behaviour, DO NOT GO SHOPPING. (Unless you know yourself really well, and you know that trying on shiny new clothes will make you feel better, and you want to feel better, and you can afford it, and etc etc etc.) I know myself well enough to know that shopping will not make me feel good about myself if I don't already feel at least ok about myself. If I do feel good about myself, shopping can be amazing. I can strike poses in changing rooms and pout at mirrors and feel like the living embodiment of beauty and sexiness, womanly curves and boyish lines, strong shoulders and beautiful calves and the hippiest hips you ever did see. If I feel good about myself, I might take advantage of that feeling to go shopping, even if I don't intend to buy a thing. I go just to extend that feeling of power and joy, of rightness in my body, of my place in the world. And if I don't feel good? I stay home, or I go to the cinema, or to the library to get on with my work. I meet friends or I curl up with a book, I cook something delicious or buy myself some McCoys or tomatoes or almonds or a KitKat Chunky. I do not go shopping. I wait until the sun comes out in my mind, and I catch a glimpse of my toes and catch myself thinking "you know what? Those toes would look great in a brand new pair of flip-flops!"
And then I go shopping.
1) Wear the right clothes. Do not wear anything that's even a little bit uncomfortable or 'unflattering' (whatever that means for you). Wear clothes that are comfortable, that fit you in whatever way you like best, and that are easy to take off and put on quickly. You do not want to be in a changing room, having just taken off whatever displeasing item you brought in with you, having to put on something that you don't like the look of yourself in. When you look in the mirror before you leave, you don't want to hate the sight of yourself.
2) Choose your company wisely. If what you're in need of is someone to say "wow, that looks great on you! It would be a crime not to buy it", then find that person (your mum, your partner, your best mate). If what you need is some honesty, no matter how cruel - "don't even think about it, your knees look terrible in that" - then find that person (your mum, your partner, your best mate). Do you need your most confident, outrageous friend to persuade you to try on the spangly playsuit? Or do you need your sensible sister to ask you whether you've got anything that goes with those trousers? Do you want someone to try on all the nail polishes in the shop, or someone who'd rather spin through the whole mall in 20 minutes and drag you away from the jewellery stand? Both of these are valid shopping partners, and confusing the two will probably result in a failure to get what you want or need.
3) Know your purpose. Do you want an afternoon of meandering around shops, trying anything that catches your eye? Or do want a quick trip to get a pair of jeans and some new socks? Do not confuse these two shopping trips. I guarantee this is a recipe for disaster, particularly if your shopping trip is for an event that is looming all-too-close on the horizon, and you waste your one free afternoon trying on bikinis and maxi dresses when what you really need is some shoes to go with your wedding outfit.
4) Don't wear make-up. There's nothing worse than pulling tops over your head and worrying about getting lipstick on them! There's also nothing worse than trying on something gorgeous and seeing someone else's foundation smeared over the collar. Do you want to be the person who put it there? Gross.
5) Know yourself. This is key. I was going to title this bit "Don't go shopping (unless you absolutely have to) if you're already feeling a bit bad about yourself."And then I stopped, and I thought "Come on, not everyone is going to be as delicate a flower as you are. Some people will be able to feel bad about themselves and still have a successful, enjoyable shopping trip. Hell, some people might not even feel bad about themselves at all! They might have a healthy, happy relationship with their bodies and their minds, and each shopping trip might not be fraught with fat hatred and insecurity and fear of even taking that dress into the changing room, in case another customer or the attendent sees you and sneers mentally at your audacity. Don't they know what they look like?!" Those people probably don't need this post. But it's here for them if they do, and also for those of us who sometimes suffer agonies of insecurity and self hatred at the very thought of trying on shiny new clothes. Know yourself. If you're that person, and you're having that day when things seem impossible, and you wonder why you ever thought that inflicting your body on the world was acceptable behaviour, DO NOT GO SHOPPING. (Unless you know yourself really well, and you know that trying on shiny new clothes will make you feel better, and you want to feel better, and you can afford it, and etc etc etc.) I know myself well enough to know that shopping will not make me feel good about myself if I don't already feel at least ok about myself. If I do feel good about myself, shopping can be amazing. I can strike poses in changing rooms and pout at mirrors and feel like the living embodiment of beauty and sexiness, womanly curves and boyish lines, strong shoulders and beautiful calves and the hippiest hips you ever did see. If I feel good about myself, I might take advantage of that feeling to go shopping, even if I don't intend to buy a thing. I go just to extend that feeling of power and joy, of rightness in my body, of my place in the world. And if I don't feel good? I stay home, or I go to the cinema, or to the library to get on with my work. I meet friends or I curl up with a book, I cook something delicious or buy myself some McCoys or tomatoes or almonds or a KitKat Chunky. I do not go shopping. I wait until the sun comes out in my mind, and I catch a glimpse of my toes and catch myself thinking "you know what? Those toes would look great in a brand new pair of flip-flops!"
And then I go shopping.
Sunday, 2 September 2012
Anticipating Panto
For some reason, these last couple of weeks my mind has been turning frequently to panto. It's not quite like the season is almost upon us; when I actually think about it, I don't start this year for another three months. But I guess it's nearly autumn term, and once term has started the weeks will start to speed by faster and faster until before I know it, I'm heading home for five weeks of early mornings and late nights, scraping ice off the car twice a day, obsessive Neros visits, getting dreadful songs stuck in my head (and accidentally learning the dance moves), competitively climbing ladders, pulling ropes, choosing drill bits, taking all morning to construct an effect only to denounce it as not-good-enough, pulling it apart and starting again, spending fourteen hours at work followed by three hours at the pub and five hours in bed before it starts all over again in the morning.
It's my favourite time of year, despite how exhausting and all-consuming it is. Actually, it's because of those things. I love my friends there, both the new ones (cast and creative team) and the old ones, the crew who are usually there every year and who have at their core the same five of us who have met like this since we were teenagers, to live in each other's pockets for five weeks before we return to our normal lives for the rest of the year, occasionally managing to meet up for a meal or a show maybe once in between pantos. It's an odd kind of friendship in that way: we don't make much effort to see each other during the year, and normally that might suggest that we're not that close. But I don't see it that way, and I'm pretty sure my colleagues don't either. It's more that we are satisfied with the pattern of our closeness: we enjoy each other fully, to the exclusion of all other things, for a short, intense period over Christmas - and then we disperse, and move on, and remember other friends and other activities, and are content not to interact much over the interim. We even become somewhat emotionally dependant on each other - I hope not in an unhealthy way, but it's true that there is always a general atmosphere, and one person's grumpiness or sadness can affect the whole team. It's why we make sure there's always plenty of food available: hungry crew are grumpy crew! It's perhaps pretty weird, but panto is by its very nature pretty weird, and for better or worse, I have fallen for it hard in all its bizarre glory.
One of the things I am less keen on, however, is the proliferation of young girl dancers. We get a troop in from a local dance school, and they're always a mixed bag, because what group of humans isn't a mixed bag? But these are teen and pre-teen girls, aged from 4-18, and seriously, that comes with a whole heap of problems. Of course it is difficult, integrating a bunch of kids with a bunch of adults in a working environment. Of course we get issues every year, some serious (a group of girls bullying one rejected girl), some not so serious (overexcited children in the wings, giggling and getting in the way). Of course there are tensions sometimes with the older girls, who think they are too cool to be chaperoned around the building like the law requires that they are, and who want to hang around with the cast and crew, testing boundaries and stretching their new freedom. But there are genuine joys in working with kids as well. The littlest ones can be delightful - often we have a couple of brand new dancers, and watching a 4-year-old perform for the first time in front of a packed auditorium could warm the hardest of hearts. Seeing how dedicated some of the girls are to the art of dance itself is inspiring (although tempered by the sulky ambivalence of some of the others, inevitably). But the biggest joy, and naturally the biggest problem, is getting a glimpse into the lives of a group of girls in the wild, as it were.
Although the girls are deliberately kept as separate as possible from the adult staff (for legal reasons, the girls stay in their dressing rooms unless they are required on stage, at which point they are escorted to the stage where chaperones wait in each wing, watching until the girls are finished and they can be escorted back to the dressing rooms), there is inevitably a lot of crossover, and sometimes you can't avoid bearing witness to their behaviour. I'm not really talking here about the smaller girls, who generally are sweet and silly and annoying and obnoxious as young kids are. It's the slightly older girls who can be really concerning. That age seems like a long time ago now, but I definitely recognise a lot of the dynamics from my own adolescence. They are the ones who are keenest to dodge the chaperones, the ones who want to go out in between shows to buy chips instead of staying in the dressing room with the younger kids, the ones who are most obviously divided between dedicated dancers and those who are only in it because it's more fun than school. You can see the difference in rehearsals, where some are actually rehearsing, and some are skulking on the sidelines, giggling behind their hands and eyeing up the male dancers. Often the adolescent girls are the ones who most often have to be told "face forward! put some effort into it! for god's sake smile!"
And this attitude bleeds into the wings. It's not quite that cut and dried. I'm not saying the dedicated dancers are angels, either in behaviour or attitude, or that the girls who aren't quite as into the actual work are badly behaved. But I do see a lot of unprofessionalism from the dancers - unsurprisingly since they're not, y'know, professionals yet. However the difference is often between those who are aspring to professionalism (in behaviour if not actual career) and those who couldn't care less. And in some of those kids there is some seriously unpleasant behaviour.
A few years ago, I yelled at one of the girls for calling one of the other girls frigid. Both girls were thirteen. I can't even remember what I said, but I was absolutely enraged, and whilst it was totally not my place to get involved - we try to stay as separate as possible from the girls - I couldn't help myself. It was a year where the infighting amongst the girls was high: they were cruel to each other, they moved in packs where one false word seemed to mean instant expulsion, and the expelled girls would shuffle about awkwardly in the wings, red with misery and shame and frustration. One girl was so badly bullied that year that she hasn't been back since. And then I heard one girl accuse another of being frigid, and I lost it.
I wonder if I'm doing these girls a disservice by suggesting that they don't know how dangerous and damaging a word like "frigid" is? In a way, I hope that they don't. I know they've picked up from somewhere that it's an insult, that to be frigid is to be wrong in some way. I'm not naive enough to say that these girls can't know what sexuality even is yet - they are thirteen, and have probably been learning about sex in one form or another (and one form in particular) for some years. They're almost certainly old enough to have begun exploring their own sexuality, or at least to have begun thinking about it - as these girls obviously had. I'm willing to bet that while their knowledge may not be particularly honed or nuanced yet, certainly it's honed enough to know that being sexual is good and being frigid is bad. Certainly it's nuanced enough to perceive that there is no better way to bring down a peer than to go after their sexuality. I wonder if they've learnt yet that boxing other people into corners and holes only deepens their own isolation, even whilst they put themselves firmly on the side of the ones who are cool and knowledgeable and fun and sexy - the ones who are doing it right. Can any of those girls truly confide in each other? Did someone else - not the target of the hateful word, but one of the ubiquitous bystanders - overhear that and laugh along, all the while worrying that they themselves might be frigid, and knowing now even more than before that they could never tell their friends?
It's said that girls and women police gendered behaviour (in girls and women) more forcefully than men and boys do, because they are more aware of what's at stake for the transgressors. Those girls are learning that early, too. They are learning what's acceptable, and what isn't, and who they can be honest with, and who they can't. They learnt not to say that stuff in front of me, but I doubt my little rant had any effect on their behaviour away from me. They laughed at me, as teenage girls will do, and rolled their eyes. No doubt they made judgements about my appearance, my sexuality, my life. I can't say it bothered me too much, to be sneered at by a group of thirteen-year-olds. But those thirteen-year-olds will be around seventeen now, and who knows what toxic beliefs they are carrying into adulthood? Who knows what dangerous knowledge and anti-knowledge they are taking away to university and drama school and first jobs? Who knows how many other, similarly isolated girls and women they will find, and bond with, and discover the same things over and over again with until it's fixed so deep that it can't be purged?
This is all a lot of handwringing and think of the children!-ing, I know. It's rather predictable, and very boring. But I can't help but feel its importance, as I look ahead to another year of panto, another year of cute children and awkward teenagers and all the things in between, another year of cliques and friends and excitement, of learning and policing, honing the edges, knocking each other into shape with each word, each look. The thing that I love about panto, that feeling of closeness and community, of living in each other's pockets for a month before returning to regular life, will be if anything more intense for the younger members of that community, with all the positives and negatives that that intensity entails. Highs will be higher, lows will be lower, cliques will be cliquier and the girls who are rejected will be rejected totally, with no time to heal the wounds and allow other potential friends to come out of the woodwork to show that yes, there are other people, it's not the end of the world. I remember that very well from school, that feeling of devastation and desperation when it was my turn to be left out in the cold by a group of friends who had decided that, this week, I wasn't good enough. Next week it was ok, I was back in, and somebody else was out, or I had found somebody else to share my lunchtimes and conspiratorial looks. That freedom of time just isn't there in the condensed world of pro-panto, and for adolescent girls I imagine it's something like all the emotion and intensity of senior school packed into five weeks. Don't get me wrong, it can be a wonderful experience, and for adult me, it has been. But I don't think teenage me would have enjoyed it. And I just hope that those teenagers aren't learning all the wrong lessons.
It's my favourite time of year, despite how exhausting and all-consuming it is. Actually, it's because of those things. I love my friends there, both the new ones (cast and creative team) and the old ones, the crew who are usually there every year and who have at their core the same five of us who have met like this since we were teenagers, to live in each other's pockets for five weeks before we return to our normal lives for the rest of the year, occasionally managing to meet up for a meal or a show maybe once in between pantos. It's an odd kind of friendship in that way: we don't make much effort to see each other during the year, and normally that might suggest that we're not that close. But I don't see it that way, and I'm pretty sure my colleagues don't either. It's more that we are satisfied with the pattern of our closeness: we enjoy each other fully, to the exclusion of all other things, for a short, intense period over Christmas - and then we disperse, and move on, and remember other friends and other activities, and are content not to interact much over the interim. We even become somewhat emotionally dependant on each other - I hope not in an unhealthy way, but it's true that there is always a general atmosphere, and one person's grumpiness or sadness can affect the whole team. It's why we make sure there's always plenty of food available: hungry crew are grumpy crew! It's perhaps pretty weird, but panto is by its very nature pretty weird, and for better or worse, I have fallen for it hard in all its bizarre glory.
One of the things I am less keen on, however, is the proliferation of young girl dancers. We get a troop in from a local dance school, and they're always a mixed bag, because what group of humans isn't a mixed bag? But these are teen and pre-teen girls, aged from 4-18, and seriously, that comes with a whole heap of problems. Of course it is difficult, integrating a bunch of kids with a bunch of adults in a working environment. Of course we get issues every year, some serious (a group of girls bullying one rejected girl), some not so serious (overexcited children in the wings, giggling and getting in the way). Of course there are tensions sometimes with the older girls, who think they are too cool to be chaperoned around the building like the law requires that they are, and who want to hang around with the cast and crew, testing boundaries and stretching their new freedom. But there are genuine joys in working with kids as well. The littlest ones can be delightful - often we have a couple of brand new dancers, and watching a 4-year-old perform for the first time in front of a packed auditorium could warm the hardest of hearts. Seeing how dedicated some of the girls are to the art of dance itself is inspiring (although tempered by the sulky ambivalence of some of the others, inevitably). But the biggest joy, and naturally the biggest problem, is getting a glimpse into the lives of a group of girls in the wild, as it were.
Although the girls are deliberately kept as separate as possible from the adult staff (for legal reasons, the girls stay in their dressing rooms unless they are required on stage, at which point they are escorted to the stage where chaperones wait in each wing, watching until the girls are finished and they can be escorted back to the dressing rooms), there is inevitably a lot of crossover, and sometimes you can't avoid bearing witness to their behaviour. I'm not really talking here about the smaller girls, who generally are sweet and silly and annoying and obnoxious as young kids are. It's the slightly older girls who can be really concerning. That age seems like a long time ago now, but I definitely recognise a lot of the dynamics from my own adolescence. They are the ones who are keenest to dodge the chaperones, the ones who want to go out in between shows to buy chips instead of staying in the dressing room with the younger kids, the ones who are most obviously divided between dedicated dancers and those who are only in it because it's more fun than school. You can see the difference in rehearsals, where some are actually rehearsing, and some are skulking on the sidelines, giggling behind their hands and eyeing up the male dancers. Often the adolescent girls are the ones who most often have to be told "face forward! put some effort into it! for god's sake smile!"
And this attitude bleeds into the wings. It's not quite that cut and dried. I'm not saying the dedicated dancers are angels, either in behaviour or attitude, or that the girls who aren't quite as into the actual work are badly behaved. But I do see a lot of unprofessionalism from the dancers - unsurprisingly since they're not, y'know, professionals yet. However the difference is often between those who are aspring to professionalism (in behaviour if not actual career) and those who couldn't care less. And in some of those kids there is some seriously unpleasant behaviour.
A few years ago, I yelled at one of the girls for calling one of the other girls frigid. Both girls were thirteen. I can't even remember what I said, but I was absolutely enraged, and whilst it was totally not my place to get involved - we try to stay as separate as possible from the girls - I couldn't help myself. It was a year where the infighting amongst the girls was high: they were cruel to each other, they moved in packs where one false word seemed to mean instant expulsion, and the expelled girls would shuffle about awkwardly in the wings, red with misery and shame and frustration. One girl was so badly bullied that year that she hasn't been back since. And then I heard one girl accuse another of being frigid, and I lost it.
I wonder if I'm doing these girls a disservice by suggesting that they don't know how dangerous and damaging a word like "frigid" is? In a way, I hope that they don't. I know they've picked up from somewhere that it's an insult, that to be frigid is to be wrong in some way. I'm not naive enough to say that these girls can't know what sexuality even is yet - they are thirteen, and have probably been learning about sex in one form or another (and one form in particular) for some years. They're almost certainly old enough to have begun exploring their own sexuality, or at least to have begun thinking about it - as these girls obviously had. I'm willing to bet that while their knowledge may not be particularly honed or nuanced yet, certainly it's honed enough to know that being sexual is good and being frigid is bad. Certainly it's nuanced enough to perceive that there is no better way to bring down a peer than to go after their sexuality. I wonder if they've learnt yet that boxing other people into corners and holes only deepens their own isolation, even whilst they put themselves firmly on the side of the ones who are cool and knowledgeable and fun and sexy - the ones who are doing it right. Can any of those girls truly confide in each other? Did someone else - not the target of the hateful word, but one of the ubiquitous bystanders - overhear that and laugh along, all the while worrying that they themselves might be frigid, and knowing now even more than before that they could never tell their friends?
It's said that girls and women police gendered behaviour (in girls and women) more forcefully than men and boys do, because they are more aware of what's at stake for the transgressors. Those girls are learning that early, too. They are learning what's acceptable, and what isn't, and who they can be honest with, and who they can't. They learnt not to say that stuff in front of me, but I doubt my little rant had any effect on their behaviour away from me. They laughed at me, as teenage girls will do, and rolled their eyes. No doubt they made judgements about my appearance, my sexuality, my life. I can't say it bothered me too much, to be sneered at by a group of thirteen-year-olds. But those thirteen-year-olds will be around seventeen now, and who knows what toxic beliefs they are carrying into adulthood? Who knows what dangerous knowledge and anti-knowledge they are taking away to university and drama school and first jobs? Who knows how many other, similarly isolated girls and women they will find, and bond with, and discover the same things over and over again with until it's fixed so deep that it can't be purged?
This is all a lot of handwringing and think of the children!-ing, I know. It's rather predictable, and very boring. But I can't help but feel its importance, as I look ahead to another year of panto, another year of cute children and awkward teenagers and all the things in between, another year of cliques and friends and excitement, of learning and policing, honing the edges, knocking each other into shape with each word, each look. The thing that I love about panto, that feeling of closeness and community, of living in each other's pockets for a month before returning to regular life, will be if anything more intense for the younger members of that community, with all the positives and negatives that that intensity entails. Highs will be higher, lows will be lower, cliques will be cliquier and the girls who are rejected will be rejected totally, with no time to heal the wounds and allow other potential friends to come out of the woodwork to show that yes, there are other people, it's not the end of the world. I remember that very well from school, that feeling of devastation and desperation when it was my turn to be left out in the cold by a group of friends who had decided that, this week, I wasn't good enough. Next week it was ok, I was back in, and somebody else was out, or I had found somebody else to share my lunchtimes and conspiratorial looks. That freedom of time just isn't there in the condensed world of pro-panto, and for adolescent girls I imagine it's something like all the emotion and intensity of senior school packed into five weeks. Don't get me wrong, it can be a wonderful experience, and for adult me, it has been. But I don't think teenage me would have enjoyed it. And I just hope that those teenagers aren't learning all the wrong lessons.
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
The Happiness Project
I have been absent from this blog for a long while, for a variety of reasons practical, emotional, temporal and financial. In plain English, I've been busy, distracted, and miserable. But no more! Here I am today to lay out my plan to be happy both now and in the future. This is only a starting point - it will probably expand and evolve as I go along.
1) Set targets. Reasonable, visible, achievable targets are crucial to step one of my plan. I try not to berate myself for my inability to 'live spontaneously' as the trite expression goes. I like plans, I like goals, and if I don't have them I incline towards lethargy both spiritual and physical, which leads to boredom and is a recipe for frustration and misery. This is just one of many vicious circles that my happiness project intends to negotiate.
2) Make lists. This is obviously related to the above: lists are a way of visualising my targets, whether they are lifelong lists of goals or daily lists of chores. It's so well documented as to be a cliche, but there's nothing more satisfying than a meaty list of tasks that can be regularly whittled down. Lists also remind me that my life is varied, if in a seemingly trivial way: my daily list might include doing some laundry, reading a chapter of something for my PhD, preparing meals to take to work, painting my toenails, texting a friend to suggest a catch-up, and checking my tax documents. Inconsequential things, perhaps, but by documenting the trivial I find it easier to keep my life in perspective, remember 'the big picture' and more successfully circumnavigate the bleakness of the endlessly-trivial.
3) Work hard. Self-explanatory? Perhaps it ought to be, but by writing it down (typing it down? this post is alarmingly meta) I can, again, remind myself of its importance. Every single time I emerge from my pit of despair I see that the pit has produced no work of any kind, except the work of making myself feel like arse for days/weeks/months on end. How to avoid the pit of despair? Work hard. Although I sometimes dread my work - I'm talking specifically about my academic pursuits here, although this is really applicable to any endeavour I undertake - the more I do of it, the better I feel about it, regardless of the success / quality of what I produce. Not working hard is likely to lead to the pit of despair, in which I do no work at all, then castigate myself when I emerge for the failure to achieve anything. Another vicious circle, and one which I need to break if I'm ever to achieve anything at all, let alone anything worthwhile!
4) Get exercise. This is for both physical and mental health. I intend to return to regular judo training, partly because I love and miss judo, partly because I want some frequent and structured exercise and judo seems like an 'easy' option since I have a decade of it under my belt already (albeit with a decade of gap in between then and now!). I'd like to identify and work on a physical skill, not urgently but slowly and methodically, starting from a position of enthusiasm and commitment and seeing where it takes me. This has the double advantage of being good for my body (physical exercise makes me feel strong, healthy and capable, helps me sleep better, increases my enjoyment of food, and improves my performance at my physically demanding jobs) and good for my mind (rightly or wrongly I feel morally 'good' when I exercise; more importantly, I theorise that a commitment to development of a skill will make me feel good about myself, both in and of itself and by giving me a focus for growth discrete from my academic pursuits and my employed life).
5) Be discriminately sociable. This starts with recognising what kinds of sociality are mentally good for me, and which are not. I have a crude idea of this, which begins with the notion that small-scale socialising (one-to-one coffee dates, intimate-ish dinner arrangements with friends etc) is more enjoyable for me than big group outings or parties. There are exceptions, of course, and there is also plenty of potential to integrate the two, by which I mean incorporate the former into the latter. A group outing which includes one or two close friends can be enjoyable: a group outing of mostly acquaintances and casual friends (people I would hesitate to confide in) is very bad for me. This is in no way a criticism of those people or those events. Those people are not inadequate and I have not deemed them unworthy of my oh-so-worthwhile confidences. Those events are not superficial and I don't think that every occasion requires the potential for confidence-exchange. The important part for me, I think, is that there is someone there with whom I can exchange/have exchanged confidences. It's something of a security blanket I guess: even if I am highly unlikely to bear my soul at a work bowling trip, the presence of someone with whom I would feel comfortable doing that if the need were to arise is crucial.
6) Practice radical caring. I want to avoid engaging in forms of socialising that are harmful to me, but I also want to be an active friend to those who desire it. This is not really radical at all, but I use the word radical to highlight the purpose behind the notion: radical as opposed to casual or passive caring. I don't want to be the person that someone asks - or doesn't ask - for friendship. I want to be available for that, and I don't want to push my friendship or caring on someone who doesn't want it, but I also want to actively participate in a friendship, which to me means simply keeping in touch. This is flexible depending on the people and the dynamic involved, of course. In some cases it may mean checking in by text once a month, in others it may mean a bi-weekly dinner or drink. Some might require structure, some may be more freely arranged. Some friendships mean "how are you feeling today?" texts, some mean "fancy a drink after work?", some mean long email exchanges or skype chats with little physical contact, and most involve a combination of these and other interactions. All I mean by this little point is that I love my friends and they are important to me, and I want to invest our relationships with the time and care that they deserve.
7) Be diverse. To finish up today, I am going to explicitly highlight the importance of variety. I find it all too easy to focus my negative energy on one aspect of my life, which ends up feeling like the end of the world, and then negatively impacts on the other aspects of my life, until everything is infected with despondency and misery. One way to combat this is, I think, to expand the parameters of my life. It will be easier, I hope, to keep in perspective the not-so-greatness of one aspect of my life if I have plenty of other aspects which are great, or pretty positive, or plodding along tolerably. This blog can be one of those things! It hasn't escaped my notice that, when things started to go downhill, I stopped working on my blog completely. Although there was nothing wrong with my writings here, and they often made me feel good about myself, they were infected in my mind by negativity from other parts of my life and I simply stopped engaging. I think it may be more helpful to me to continue engaging if I possibly can, because one thing I know about myself is that I am always more miserable about what I don't do than about what I do do. The more things I have going on in my life, no matter how small or trivial, the less likely I am to fall at the hurdle of an obstacle in only one thing.
1) Set targets. Reasonable, visible, achievable targets are crucial to step one of my plan. I try not to berate myself for my inability to 'live spontaneously' as the trite expression goes. I like plans, I like goals, and if I don't have them I incline towards lethargy both spiritual and physical, which leads to boredom and is a recipe for frustration and misery. This is just one of many vicious circles that my happiness project intends to negotiate.
2) Make lists. This is obviously related to the above: lists are a way of visualising my targets, whether they are lifelong lists of goals or daily lists of chores. It's so well documented as to be a cliche, but there's nothing more satisfying than a meaty list of tasks that can be regularly whittled down. Lists also remind me that my life is varied, if in a seemingly trivial way: my daily list might include doing some laundry, reading a chapter of something for my PhD, preparing meals to take to work, painting my toenails, texting a friend to suggest a catch-up, and checking my tax documents. Inconsequential things, perhaps, but by documenting the trivial I find it easier to keep my life in perspective, remember 'the big picture' and more successfully circumnavigate the bleakness of the endlessly-trivial.
3) Work hard. Self-explanatory? Perhaps it ought to be, but by writing it down (typing it down? this post is alarmingly meta) I can, again, remind myself of its importance. Every single time I emerge from my pit of despair I see that the pit has produced no work of any kind, except the work of making myself feel like arse for days/weeks/months on end. How to avoid the pit of despair? Work hard. Although I sometimes dread my work - I'm talking specifically about my academic pursuits here, although this is really applicable to any endeavour I undertake - the more I do of it, the better I feel about it, regardless of the success / quality of what I produce. Not working hard is likely to lead to the pit of despair, in which I do no work at all, then castigate myself when I emerge for the failure to achieve anything. Another vicious circle, and one which I need to break if I'm ever to achieve anything at all, let alone anything worthwhile!
4) Get exercise. This is for both physical and mental health. I intend to return to regular judo training, partly because I love and miss judo, partly because I want some frequent and structured exercise and judo seems like an 'easy' option since I have a decade of it under my belt already (albeit with a decade of gap in between then and now!). I'd like to identify and work on a physical skill, not urgently but slowly and methodically, starting from a position of enthusiasm and commitment and seeing where it takes me. This has the double advantage of being good for my body (physical exercise makes me feel strong, healthy and capable, helps me sleep better, increases my enjoyment of food, and improves my performance at my physically demanding jobs) and good for my mind (rightly or wrongly I feel morally 'good' when I exercise; more importantly, I theorise that a commitment to development of a skill will make me feel good about myself, both in and of itself and by giving me a focus for growth discrete from my academic pursuits and my employed life).
5) Be discriminately sociable. This starts with recognising what kinds of sociality are mentally good for me, and which are not. I have a crude idea of this, which begins with the notion that small-scale socialising (one-to-one coffee dates, intimate-ish dinner arrangements with friends etc) is more enjoyable for me than big group outings or parties. There are exceptions, of course, and there is also plenty of potential to integrate the two, by which I mean incorporate the former into the latter. A group outing which includes one or two close friends can be enjoyable: a group outing of mostly acquaintances and casual friends (people I would hesitate to confide in) is very bad for me. This is in no way a criticism of those people or those events. Those people are not inadequate and I have not deemed them unworthy of my oh-so-worthwhile confidences. Those events are not superficial and I don't think that every occasion requires the potential for confidence-exchange. The important part for me, I think, is that there is someone there with whom I can exchange/have exchanged confidences. It's something of a security blanket I guess: even if I am highly unlikely to bear my soul at a work bowling trip, the presence of someone with whom I would feel comfortable doing that if the need were to arise is crucial.
6) Practice radical caring. I want to avoid engaging in forms of socialising that are harmful to me, but I also want to be an active friend to those who desire it. This is not really radical at all, but I use the word radical to highlight the purpose behind the notion: radical as opposed to casual or passive caring. I don't want to be the person that someone asks - or doesn't ask - for friendship. I want to be available for that, and I don't want to push my friendship or caring on someone who doesn't want it, but I also want to actively participate in a friendship, which to me means simply keeping in touch. This is flexible depending on the people and the dynamic involved, of course. In some cases it may mean checking in by text once a month, in others it may mean a bi-weekly dinner or drink. Some might require structure, some may be more freely arranged. Some friendships mean "how are you feeling today?" texts, some mean "fancy a drink after work?", some mean long email exchanges or skype chats with little physical contact, and most involve a combination of these and other interactions. All I mean by this little point is that I love my friends and they are important to me, and I want to invest our relationships with the time and care that they deserve.
7) Be diverse. To finish up today, I am going to explicitly highlight the importance of variety. I find it all too easy to focus my negative energy on one aspect of my life, which ends up feeling like the end of the world, and then negatively impacts on the other aspects of my life, until everything is infected with despondency and misery. One way to combat this is, I think, to expand the parameters of my life. It will be easier, I hope, to keep in perspective the not-so-greatness of one aspect of my life if I have plenty of other aspects which are great, or pretty positive, or plodding along tolerably. This blog can be one of those things! It hasn't escaped my notice that, when things started to go downhill, I stopped working on my blog completely. Although there was nothing wrong with my writings here, and they often made me feel good about myself, they were infected in my mind by negativity from other parts of my life and I simply stopped engaging. I think it may be more helpful to me to continue engaging if I possibly can, because one thing I know about myself is that I am always more miserable about what I don't do than about what I do do. The more things I have going on in my life, no matter how small or trivial, the less likely I am to fall at the hurdle of an obstacle in only one thing.
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Claiming Identity
When it comes to who I am and what that means, one of the things I struggle most with is the idea of legitimacy.
Claiming an identity can be very important within marginalised communities - it gives individuals and groups something to rally around, something to take strength and comfort from, something to claim for their own in a world which often doesn't allow them very much. It can be an extremely empowering, life-affirming thing - maybe even in some cases literally life-saving. The discovery of a community of people, no matter how loose - a local meeting, an internet group, a social event - can make all the difference between feelings of isolation, freakishness, and despondency and those of strength, belonging and hope. Sometimes all it takes is a word, discovered by mistake or by desperate search, a word which you feel describes you, something you maybe didn't know was even possible.
I know for myself how important this process can be, and how much of a difference it can make to one's sense of self. I'd go as far as to say it is crucial. Obviously I can't speak for people other than myself, but that's been my impression within marginalised communities. I also know how damaging it is when people falsely claim a marginalised identity. The man who posed as a lesbian in order to run a lesbian news site, for example, and who hosted the man who posed as a young lesbian kidnapped by Syrian security forces. That incident blew a hole in the credibility of blogging as a whole, which is as nothing to the betrayal felt by the people who these men purported to represent. There is something disgusting about members of a privileged community posing as members of a non-privileged community, whatever the reasons behind it. It is hurtful to all manner of political causes, social entities, support communities and individuals whether involved with these things or not.
So where does that leave someone who hovers on the borders of identity? I am personally invested in a number of marginalised identities, and I have often found solace in identifying with these labels, engaging with the work of others who share them, and attending events where I know people who claim a particular identity will be welcome and sometimes even make up the majority. I find this a huge comfort in times of stress and pain. But I can't help feeling guilty about it at the same time, particularly when my identity is in flux.
For example, I no longer feel comfortable in woman-only spaces, where once I might have sought solidarity. I feel uncomfortable in LGBT spaces, where I am frequently read as something that I'm not. I feel desperately uncomfortable in Jewish spaces and in spaces where I engage in discussion about mental health, as in these places I feel more than anywhere else that I am claiming something that is not mine to claim.
I worry about the implications of claiming any identity for myself. I feel like I need something, because I am so clearly not the default setting for human being - straight, cis, male - and something in me needs to acknowledge that, and acknowledge it robustly. But I can't let that acknowledgement destabilise pre-existing communities that are based on shared identities that I don't necessarily share. I feel a kinship with some of these communities, an affinity, but do they feel it with me? There is, as I said previously, something disgusting about members of a privileged community claiming the identity of a non-privileged community, and as someone who routinely passes as cisgender, straight, monogamous, non-Jewish and mentally healthy, I feel like some of that disgust would legitimately fall on my shoulders if I claimed otherwise.
On the other hand, I wouldn't apply these strictures to other people. If someone tells me they belong in a certain space, then they belong in that space, no questions asked. I wouldn't delegitimise them, although I would myself, in the same way that I would never shame anyone else for not having the 'right' body shape, whilst I frequently shame myself. I subscribe totally to the idea of self-identification. If you say you are a woman, you are a woman, no matter how others read you or what your biology is. If you say you are bisexual, you are bisexual, no matter how many people of any gender you have had sex with, or how many people tell you it doesn't exist. But there is something holding me back from allowing myself the same flexibility.
There is a part of me that suspects that it is my wavering mental stability which stops me from claiming whatever identity I want to claim. Perhaps my sense of self worth is not high enough to legitimise my wholehearted embracing of a marginalised identity - which is damaging enough for me, with my supportive loving family and supportive loving friends. I wonder how many other people are out there, people with far less privilege and a much more fragile support network, if any - I wonder how many of these people are denying themselves community and warmth out of some sense of illegitimacy. I wonder if we're thoughtlessly excluding these people by the very words that we use for ourselves, the very identities that we construct and rally around. What is strength and hope for us is, by one more turn of the screw, isolation and devastation for others.
Claiming an identity can be very important within marginalised communities - it gives individuals and groups something to rally around, something to take strength and comfort from, something to claim for their own in a world which often doesn't allow them very much. It can be an extremely empowering, life-affirming thing - maybe even in some cases literally life-saving. The discovery of a community of people, no matter how loose - a local meeting, an internet group, a social event - can make all the difference between feelings of isolation, freakishness, and despondency and those of strength, belonging and hope. Sometimes all it takes is a word, discovered by mistake or by desperate search, a word which you feel describes you, something you maybe didn't know was even possible.
I know for myself how important this process can be, and how much of a difference it can make to one's sense of self. I'd go as far as to say it is crucial. Obviously I can't speak for people other than myself, but that's been my impression within marginalised communities. I also know how damaging it is when people falsely claim a marginalised identity. The man who posed as a lesbian in order to run a lesbian news site, for example, and who hosted the man who posed as a young lesbian kidnapped by Syrian security forces. That incident blew a hole in the credibility of blogging as a whole, which is as nothing to the betrayal felt by the people who these men purported to represent. There is something disgusting about members of a privileged community posing as members of a non-privileged community, whatever the reasons behind it. It is hurtful to all manner of political causes, social entities, support communities and individuals whether involved with these things or not.
So where does that leave someone who hovers on the borders of identity? I am personally invested in a number of marginalised identities, and I have often found solace in identifying with these labels, engaging with the work of others who share them, and attending events where I know people who claim a particular identity will be welcome and sometimes even make up the majority. I find this a huge comfort in times of stress and pain. But I can't help feeling guilty about it at the same time, particularly when my identity is in flux.
For example, I no longer feel comfortable in woman-only spaces, where once I might have sought solidarity. I feel uncomfortable in LGBT spaces, where I am frequently read as something that I'm not. I feel desperately uncomfortable in Jewish spaces and in spaces where I engage in discussion about mental health, as in these places I feel more than anywhere else that I am claiming something that is not mine to claim.
I worry about the implications of claiming any identity for myself. I feel like I need something, because I am so clearly not the default setting for human being - straight, cis, male - and something in me needs to acknowledge that, and acknowledge it robustly. But I can't let that acknowledgement destabilise pre-existing communities that are based on shared identities that I don't necessarily share. I feel a kinship with some of these communities, an affinity, but do they feel it with me? There is, as I said previously, something disgusting about members of a privileged community claiming the identity of a non-privileged community, and as someone who routinely passes as cisgender, straight, monogamous, non-Jewish and mentally healthy, I feel like some of that disgust would legitimately fall on my shoulders if I claimed otherwise.
On the other hand, I wouldn't apply these strictures to other people. If someone tells me they belong in a certain space, then they belong in that space, no questions asked. I wouldn't delegitimise them, although I would myself, in the same way that I would never shame anyone else for not having the 'right' body shape, whilst I frequently shame myself. I subscribe totally to the idea of self-identification. If you say you are a woman, you are a woman, no matter how others read you or what your biology is. If you say you are bisexual, you are bisexual, no matter how many people of any gender you have had sex with, or how many people tell you it doesn't exist. But there is something holding me back from allowing myself the same flexibility.
There is a part of me that suspects that it is my wavering mental stability which stops me from claiming whatever identity I want to claim. Perhaps my sense of self worth is not high enough to legitimise my wholehearted embracing of a marginalised identity - which is damaging enough for me, with my supportive loving family and supportive loving friends. I wonder how many other people are out there, people with far less privilege and a much more fragile support network, if any - I wonder how many of these people are denying themselves community and warmth out of some sense of illegitimacy. I wonder if we're thoughtlessly excluding these people by the very words that we use for ourselves, the very identities that we construct and rally around. What is strength and hope for us is, by one more turn of the screw, isolation and devastation for others.
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Why Aren't You Fixed Yet?
Earlier this year, I attended as many free counselling sessions as my university can provide, which is six. My counsellor was very clever and very nice, and I found the sessions always interesting, if not always helpful. When we came to the end of the programme, she told me that I could always re-refer myself to the counselling service, but that it was generally considered best to leave it a while before I did so, if I did so at all. This made sense to me, in so far as I rationally believed what she told me, even if I didn't quite trust it in my heart. She had done her best to instill in me the knowledge that these six sessions would not be a magic cure-all for the problems I had been experiencing, and that there would not be an instant change in my feelings. She told me that what I could do to start with was try to recognise the instances when a particular feeling arose - not necessarily to do anything about it, but simply to recognise it when it was there. She told me that this would be the beginning of 'getting over it'.
It's been a month since my last session. I'm not impatient, and I'm not expecting a miracle. I know that I can't hope to change in so short a time. I did, however, have hopes that I'd at least feel different about it. Since that session I have felt the worst feeling on a number of occasions, and I have tried to accept it and not let it overwhelm me. I have been sensible (for the most part) and done practical things when I can, and accepted the times when I couldn't. I have been more honest with more people about these times, and I have tried to let them help me by being there (or not being there). I feel like I am following my counsellor's advice as best I can. I want to feel better about it.
In fact, I feel worse about it. I don't feel that I've helped myself, or that the times when I feel bad are more bearable because I have some idea where they're coming from. They feel less bearable, because I am now able to be meaner to myself about them surely if you know where they're coming from, you can do something about them, you useless waster?. Now in addition to feeling the worst feeling, I get to beat myself up with admonishments about the worst feeling why haven't you fixed it yet?. And it's not like I didn't admonish myself before you lazy fuck. But now I have a concrete thing to fix on, it's somehow worse. I don't just feel guilty for feeling the feeling, I feel guilty for not succeeding in 'getting over it', even with the help of a trained counsellor. Why did you even bother?
Six hours. Six hours, over six weeks, and I feel I achieved less in that time and its aftermath than I would have done if I'd just sat at home and felt terrible about myself. Someone else, who could have actually used some counselling, would have had my slot. I wouldn't feel as bad about myself as I do now, and they might feel better.
It's like a drug, this feeling of doing something about it. It's sustaining. I did feel better during those six weeks. Even when I felt the worst feeling, I felt slightly detached, like I was documenting my emotion. I felt purposeful. When it descended I felt like there was some merit in simply sinking into it and seeing where it led. It didn't lead anywhere good, but I didn't feel so guilty about it. Now when it happens, I feel guilty and powerless and desperate. I don't have time for this! Fix it! Pull yourself together, for fucks sake.
The thing is, I don't feel able to contact the counselling service a second time. She said I could self-refer again, but that I should leave it a while why aren't you fixed yet?. I know how stretched the service is already, and I don't feel right in taking another six hours of their time why aren't you fixed yet?. I don't deserve those six hours, which could go to someone who truly needs them why aren't you fixed yet?. I could try asking my doctor to refer me for NHS counselling, although I hear from friends that it's close to impossible to get this why aren't you fixed yet?. So that leaves professional - ie. paid-for counselling, which I can in no way afford why aren't you fixed yet?.
That's right, that's the bottom line. I can't justify spending any money on my emotional well-being, because on some level I don't believe that I'm worth it. I won't spend money on feeling better, because I don't deserve to feel better why the hell aren't you better?
It's been a month since my last session. I'm not impatient, and I'm not expecting a miracle. I know that I can't hope to change in so short a time. I did, however, have hopes that I'd at least feel different about it. Since that session I have felt the worst feeling on a number of occasions, and I have tried to accept it and not let it overwhelm me. I have been sensible (for the most part) and done practical things when I can, and accepted the times when I couldn't. I have been more honest with more people about these times, and I have tried to let them help me by being there (or not being there). I feel like I am following my counsellor's advice as best I can. I want to feel better about it.
In fact, I feel worse about it. I don't feel that I've helped myself, or that the times when I feel bad are more bearable because I have some idea where they're coming from. They feel less bearable, because I am now able to be meaner to myself about them surely if you know where they're coming from, you can do something about them, you useless waster?. Now in addition to feeling the worst feeling, I get to beat myself up with admonishments about the worst feeling why haven't you fixed it yet?. And it's not like I didn't admonish myself before you lazy fuck. But now I have a concrete thing to fix on, it's somehow worse. I don't just feel guilty for feeling the feeling, I feel guilty for not succeeding in 'getting over it', even with the help of a trained counsellor. Why did you even bother?
Six hours. Six hours, over six weeks, and I feel I achieved less in that time and its aftermath than I would have done if I'd just sat at home and felt terrible about myself. Someone else, who could have actually used some counselling, would have had my slot. I wouldn't feel as bad about myself as I do now, and they might feel better.
It's like a drug, this feeling of doing something about it. It's sustaining. I did feel better during those six weeks. Even when I felt the worst feeling, I felt slightly detached, like I was documenting my emotion. I felt purposeful. When it descended I felt like there was some merit in simply sinking into it and seeing where it led. It didn't lead anywhere good, but I didn't feel so guilty about it. Now when it happens, I feel guilty and powerless and desperate. I don't have time for this! Fix it! Pull yourself together, for fucks sake.
The thing is, I don't feel able to contact the counselling service a second time. She said I could self-refer again, but that I should leave it a while why aren't you fixed yet?. I know how stretched the service is already, and I don't feel right in taking another six hours of their time why aren't you fixed yet?. I don't deserve those six hours, which could go to someone who truly needs them why aren't you fixed yet?. I could try asking my doctor to refer me for NHS counselling, although I hear from friends that it's close to impossible to get this why aren't you fixed yet?. So that leaves professional - ie. paid-for counselling, which I can in no way afford why aren't you fixed yet?.
That's right, that's the bottom line. I can't justify spending any money on my emotional well-being, because on some level I don't believe that I'm worth it. I won't spend money on feeling better, because I don't deserve to feel better why the hell aren't you better?
Friday, 27 January 2012
Sadness
Today I am feeling sad. The only thing I have done is been on a date, and although the date was good, I came home feeling deflated and helpless. So I think maybe the time has come to scribble down some thoughts on sadness. My own sadness, not sadness in general. This will be a bit unstructured, I imagine, but then it's not like any of my posts are shining examples of structuredness.
I was sort of hoping I wouldn't get sad this term. I blamed the overarching sadness of last term on my living situation - I was working almost full time, including 5 evenings a week, and C was working 3 days a week. C would leave the flat at about 7am, and I wouldn't get back until 11:30pm, so we saw very little of each other. I had only just started my PhD, and occasionally I met with my supervisor or attended a session at the Graduate Training School. I went to the library, and once a week I saw a student I was (am) mentoring for an hour. That seems like plenty to be getting on with. But somehow I was in the flat, on my own, all the time.
It's not like I didn't have things to do at home. There were household tasks to be completed, for a start, and let's not forget the fact that I was supposed to be making a start on my PhD. Instead, what I did at home was sit in my chair, with my laptop on my lap, and do nothing. Well, not nothing. I read blogs, and refreshed Facebook, and had fitful, mundane conversations with people on Skype. I ate, compulsively, constantly. I wasn't hungry once last term - I didn't have the chance to be. I didn't even try to work - when I looked at my neat pile of books I felt plenty of things, but motivation wasn't one of them. I felt fear and hatred and desperation and fraudulence. I left for work at 4, and sat on the train with my teeth clenched, gouging holes in my forearms with my nails. I tried not to cry as I walked from the tube station to work. Most days I succeeded.
Eventually I stopped staying at home during the day. I arranged to meet friends before work, and stretched the getting-ready period so it filled the time before I had to leave the flat. When I didn't have time to do any work on my PhD, I felt better. I felt like I could mention the fact that I was doing one to people who asked, and then make a wry face and say something conventional about how busy life was, and how hard it was to find time to do paid work and academic work. People were sympathetic, and sometimes impressed.
I retreated further. I waited impatiently, desperately, for the time when I would see C. I asked hir to meet me at the train station and walk me home. Ecstatic to see hir, I would cling to hir all the way home, and then struggle to find anything to say when we arrived. That was ok, though, because it was always late and we were always tired, and that's a good excuse not to talk. We emailed all day while C was at work, so it looked like we talked plenty. It's frighteningly easy to talk about nothing via email. On the days when C wasn't at work, ze sat at the table and worked while I sat on my chair, with my laptop on my lap, and did nothing. C was quite happy to join me in not working - we ate lunch and played Scrabble, and ze was sympathetic and supportive when I said I wasn't getting anywhere with my work. I felt like a liar.
Then I went home for December, and decided in advance that I wasn't going to do any PhD work until I was back in Reading. My December job was right next door to the local library, so I visited there and read random works of fiction instead of anything remotely resembling my so-called studies. I went out after work a lot, and in the mornings I slept in and watched recorded TV. When people asked me what I did the rest of the year, I told them I was studying for a PhD but was taking a break for Christmas, and would get stuck in when I returned to Reading in January.
I did. Apart from a week away to do a different job, I have been back here since January 3rd, and I have done some work. I have spent most of my days sitting in my chair, reading and taking notes. I have written the beginnings of some promising work. I have seen my supervisor and been inspired, and I have attended seminars and been motivated. I have looked forward to the time when C will arrive home from work, and we can cook supper while we catch up with each other, and then eat at our little table or in front of a film. I have felt happier. I have felt happy.
So I'm not entirely sure what has gone wrong today. I haven't spent the whole day at home, which I think was definitely a contributing factor to my sadness last term. I did some PhD-related reading on the train on the way to my date, so it's probably not PhD-related guilt. I had a lovely time with a lovely person while I was in London, and was honest about myself, so I doubt it's the 'loneliness' which I felt so often last term, while I was trekking back and forth between being alone and being surrounded by people, and not feeling like there was any difference between the two. I don't know what it is. But I know that, for a while, I was back to the desperation, and the hopelessness, and the treacle-like thickness of my own mind.
However. The glimmer of an idea that I had before I began writing this - the idea that writing this might help - seems now to have some truth in it. I am, in fact, feeling a little less lethargic. A bit full, perhaps (I have eaten an entire packet of tomatoes and a bag of cashew nuts), but definitely less hopeless. A bit like I might get up and tidy the flat, or take the recycling out, or put some music on. Who knows - I might even do some work.
I was sort of hoping I wouldn't get sad this term. I blamed the overarching sadness of last term on my living situation - I was working almost full time, including 5 evenings a week, and C was working 3 days a week. C would leave the flat at about 7am, and I wouldn't get back until 11:30pm, so we saw very little of each other. I had only just started my PhD, and occasionally I met with my supervisor or attended a session at the Graduate Training School. I went to the library, and once a week I saw a student I was (am) mentoring for an hour. That seems like plenty to be getting on with. But somehow I was in the flat, on my own, all the time.
It's not like I didn't have things to do at home. There were household tasks to be completed, for a start, and let's not forget the fact that I was supposed to be making a start on my PhD. Instead, what I did at home was sit in my chair, with my laptop on my lap, and do nothing. Well, not nothing. I read blogs, and refreshed Facebook, and had fitful, mundane conversations with people on Skype. I ate, compulsively, constantly. I wasn't hungry once last term - I didn't have the chance to be. I didn't even try to work - when I looked at my neat pile of books I felt plenty of things, but motivation wasn't one of them. I felt fear and hatred and desperation and fraudulence. I left for work at 4, and sat on the train with my teeth clenched, gouging holes in my forearms with my nails. I tried not to cry as I walked from the tube station to work. Most days I succeeded.
Eventually I stopped staying at home during the day. I arranged to meet friends before work, and stretched the getting-ready period so it filled the time before I had to leave the flat. When I didn't have time to do any work on my PhD, I felt better. I felt like I could mention the fact that I was doing one to people who asked, and then make a wry face and say something conventional about how busy life was, and how hard it was to find time to do paid work and academic work. People were sympathetic, and sometimes impressed.
I retreated further. I waited impatiently, desperately, for the time when I would see C. I asked hir to meet me at the train station and walk me home. Ecstatic to see hir, I would cling to hir all the way home, and then struggle to find anything to say when we arrived. That was ok, though, because it was always late and we were always tired, and that's a good excuse not to talk. We emailed all day while C was at work, so it looked like we talked plenty. It's frighteningly easy to talk about nothing via email. On the days when C wasn't at work, ze sat at the table and worked while I sat on my chair, with my laptop on my lap, and did nothing. C was quite happy to join me in not working - we ate lunch and played Scrabble, and ze was sympathetic and supportive when I said I wasn't getting anywhere with my work. I felt like a liar.
Then I went home for December, and decided in advance that I wasn't going to do any PhD work until I was back in Reading. My December job was right next door to the local library, so I visited there and read random works of fiction instead of anything remotely resembling my so-called studies. I went out after work a lot, and in the mornings I slept in and watched recorded TV. When people asked me what I did the rest of the year, I told them I was studying for a PhD but was taking a break for Christmas, and would get stuck in when I returned to Reading in January.
I did. Apart from a week away to do a different job, I have been back here since January 3rd, and I have done some work. I have spent most of my days sitting in my chair, reading and taking notes. I have written the beginnings of some promising work. I have seen my supervisor and been inspired, and I have attended seminars and been motivated. I have looked forward to the time when C will arrive home from work, and we can cook supper while we catch up with each other, and then eat at our little table or in front of a film. I have felt happier. I have felt happy.
So I'm not entirely sure what has gone wrong today. I haven't spent the whole day at home, which I think was definitely a contributing factor to my sadness last term. I did some PhD-related reading on the train on the way to my date, so it's probably not PhD-related guilt. I had a lovely time with a lovely person while I was in London, and was honest about myself, so I doubt it's the 'loneliness' which I felt so often last term, while I was trekking back and forth between being alone and being surrounded by people, and not feeling like there was any difference between the two. I don't know what it is. But I know that, for a while, I was back to the desperation, and the hopelessness, and the treacle-like thickness of my own mind.
However. The glimmer of an idea that I had before I began writing this - the idea that writing this might help - seems now to have some truth in it. I am, in fact, feeling a little less lethargic. A bit full, perhaps (I have eaten an entire packet of tomatoes and a bag of cashew nuts), but definitely less hopeless. A bit like I might get up and tidy the flat, or take the recycling out, or put some music on. Who knows - I might even do some work.
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