I have spent most of my life on this planet aspiring to contrariety. Sometimes it has served me well, at other times, maybe not so much. I dropped out of college after two years, not because I struggled academically, but because I was so incredibly tired of living up to everyone else’s’ expectations of me, and I was suffering from education exhaustion. I’m lucky, academics came easy to me, I didn’t really have to study much in most of my subjects, although I did enjoy doing so, I don’t think that makes me particularly intelligent, it just means I had a good memory and a good sense of logic. Because I did well at school, it was expected that I went on to do well career wise. I should have been a lawyer (I’m argumentative enough) or an accountant (I’m good with numbers) or even a teacher (maths teacher according to my high school maths and science teacher, who spent quite a few years bemoaning the fact I didn’t go down that path), but the fact of the matter is that whilst I would have been probably quite decent at all of the above, I didn’t want to do any of it, I had no passion for it, and I didn’t want to be one of the hundreds of thousands of people that worked just to live, getting no joy or fulfilment from it.
Continue reading “Desperately Seeking Fulfilment”Back in the USSR
One of my overriding memories of the 1990s is seeing the devastation of the wars in the Balkans on the news. I was 5 in 1991, and I understood and remember very little of the first few years of the conflict, my most protruding memories being of the war in Kosovo from 95 onwards as well as the latter years of the war in Bosnia. I remember the children more than anything, dirty and bloody. Those are the memories that flicker in my brain whenever someone brings up the Balkan wars. Being a child myself, I didn’t understand the politics behind what was going on, not like I can now as an adult looking back, the only thing I understood that my life, as hard as I thought it was at the time, was nothing compared to the babies and children losing their parents, their homes and their lives. It felt so close to home then, although as a child you do not understand the vastness of the world. When you are so small yourself, everything seems so much greater than you are, and when your overriding knowledge of what Europe is comes from being made to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, knowing that those countries are in Europe makes it seem as if war might come knocking on your door next.
Back then of course, the threat of war to the rest of Europe was relatively minute, the reasons for those conflicts were confided to those countries, and once it was over, the idea of another war in Europe seemed ridiculous, after all, what did we have to fight over?
We aren’t at war at the moment. But we should be.
Continue reading “Back in the USSR”Meghan Markle – Judging a Book by its Cover
Firstly, I will state that I am not a monarchist by any stretch of the word, however I am also not vehemently against the idea of monarchs. I think that as with any person in any position of power, albeit with many modern monarchs that power is in name more so than actual legally applied legislation, you get good ones, and you get bad ones.
The British monarchy differs from a lot of the other European royal families in that they have not evolved quite as much and become quite as modern as the times have moved on. They continue to be a symbol of the long-gone times of the British Empire, the Queen remaining the named head of state of several of the previous (mainly) colonies within the Commonwealth of Nations. I use the word colony rather than territory here as I think the choice made to use the latter is an attempt at downplaying what happened as the British expanded their empire to include countries throughout the world. Countries were colonised and used to further the riches of an empire, not treated as if the countries and their people were equal to the white Englishmen that invaded.
Continue reading “Meghan Markle – Judging a Book by its Cover”Practicing what you Preach
I have always been an extremely vocal person regarding mental health and the importance of talking about “it”. Over the last couple of months, I have become a bit of a hypocrite. My mental health has become increasingly worse over the last 3 or 4 months, and rather than just struggling with my anxiety I have felt myself slipping further into depression as I have found it increasingly difficult to juggle my life alongside actually taking care of myself and ensuring my own happiness is also a priority.
The way in which my depression takes over is not as simple as I become more down, sad or filled with negativity. Like a lot of people struggling with their mental health, I will shut other people out, but I perhaps take it to an extreme. I will go out of my way to be cold to people because I want them to have a reason not to want to speak to me. Not only does this mean there are less people in my life that I need to interact with, and such pretend to be OK around, but it justifies the notion in my head that I’m not worth making an effort with. People I care for deeply, of which there are very few, I can be downright mean or unkind to, in order to push them away, not just because I don’t want my mental health problems to be a burden to someone else, but because it is a lot harder to keep up a façade with people that know me well and recognise when I am not being my “normal” self.
Continue reading “Practicing what you Preach”Baby Boomers and Equality for Women
The International Women’s Day has always been a day that has been of importance to me, already as a child I was aware of the differences in how boys and girls were treated, and as I grew older I saw how that difference was apparent both in the work place as well as in social situations. It’s now an important day for me, not just because I am a woman, but because I am raising a young woman myself, and because I am raising a son whom I want to see women as his equal, and treat them as such.
I have on previous occasions blogged for this day, amongst other things about how much more important gender equality has become to me since having children, about the fact that the notion that inequality does not exist is ridiculous and also about how women themselves get in the way of their own equality. This year however I wanted to do something a bit different. Now, I want to start off by saying that I am extremely grateful for previous generations of women (and men) who have fought for equality between the genders to have come as far as it has now. Every single generation of the last 200 years have had women in it who have recognised that they are not, and should not be, subservient to men, and that they deserve to be treated better than just being trophies and baby making machines. Those same generations have had women in them who have not wanted to change the status quo, not wanted to ruffle any feathers and have been happy being in a position whereby they have not had to make the decisions or be left with responsibilities beyond raising their children. In my generation those women are the ones that think that gender equality is a myth and that feminism is a dirty word used to describe man hating lesbians or straight women who cannot get a man.
Continue reading “Baby Boomers and Equality for Women”Mental Health and the Media
– A Relationship Fraught with Irony
I have never been a huge fan of the British media, as far as I can tell (in my 16 years of living in Britain) there are very few publications in the United Kingdom that has much of an interest in actually presenting news to the public in a non-biased and professional manner. Rather everything from magazines to daily news papers tend to be filled with celebrity gossip, shocking or offensive “real-life” stories and political propaganda aimed at one party or another, rather than actual good reporting.
It has been just over a week since the news broke that TV presenter Caroline Flack had been found dead after a suspected suicide, the cause of death having since been confirmed as suicide by hanging by an inquest. The absolute unashamed love and praise written about Ms Flack from publications whose irresponsible reporting and hounding of her no doubt played a part in her struggles with mental health, has left no uncertainty in regards to the absolute lack of responsibility and remorse shown by the British media.
Continue reading “Mental Health and the Media”Tranquillity
She stood staring out of the window, watching the snow falling serenely in the glow from the streetlights. She felt a kind of peace inside, the kind of peace she hadn’t felt in a very long time. She let her gaze stroll across the street to the parked car. His parked car. She felt no fear anymore, just tranquillity and as she saw his car door open and him emerging, she calmly walked to her front door and unlocked it, before turning her back on it and walking upstairs to the freshly drawn bath that was waiting for her.
*
It started with one word. Slut. He had looked up at her as she came into the living room, asking him whether he thought she looked nice for their night out with his friends. “I’m sorry?” She almost stuttered as she thought she had heard him wrong, he had never called her a slut, or anything else derogatory for the two months she had known him, and she couldn’t believe he would now.
Continue reading “Tranquillity”