Stream of consciousness post
Missing the person I used to be again. She was everything and I am nothing. She could do anything and I can do nothing. There’s no one to help me with my nothing. She used to feel rich for all her dreams. Now it’s progress to see one possible future in a degree. Yet there’s no clear way I will get to do it. Will they grant me admission? Will I be able to relearn my A-levels? Will anyone help me fund it? If the old me had wanted this she would’ve found ways to do all these things. She was strong. These days I need help with everything. But I don’t see anyone helping me do my degree.
The best thing about the person I used to be was my mind. I saw so much reason and beauty in the world. Everything connected up and I was fascinated by it. Days were special, the numbers in dates were special, every day was so rare because it would not come by again. I felt so grateful to be alive when I was and to be who I was. I loved dreaming, I loved planning, things I rarely do now, as it seems too much like asking God for trouble.
The antibiotics I’ve been on the last few nights, I think may have lessened my cough, but this could be coincidence. But now every time I swallow my left ear makes a clicking sound. Might be that my ear is fucked from all the coughing. Thanks to the doctors who did nothing for too long.
In previous years of depression, I could at least at times, feel anger. I was alive. Sometimes, very rarely, I can feel that anger again. But it’s so rare. At least when you feel angry, you know things matter to you.
I’m quite alone in this mess. There are people who I’d like to think of as more than people I’ve just paid for help with services: a hairdresser, a dog sitter, and a few more service providers, who I believe to be very good people, who I consider to be the closest things I have to friends. But I’m not their friend. I’m their client. Phil is a friend. Though I feel I have used his ear too much over the years, and that in truth, I’m more a burden than a friend to him.
Very recently, I said a sort of virtual hello to two YouTubers whose videos have been providing me with helpful distraction from my cough. They both seem such sweet, genuine warm, good people. One even offered me more support, even as a total stranger, than most people have in real life. She encouraged me to drop her an email any time I needed to talk. The other recently rescued a dog from abroad. These people are such wonderful souls. I feel glad to have briefly interacted with them. But again, I’m so shut off from everything. I’ve noticed my anxiety is so bad that now I even hesitate to check emails from people who I think warmly of, as I worry that I’ll mess up what good of a connection we once had.
I’ve been thinking about how massively important music had been to me, all my life before my accident, not just mine but that of others. It’s like that relationship has been stolen from me, by the mind-numbing that’s resulted from depression.
Anyway. I just don’t know how anything will get better.
I keep thinking about how it was normal to be able to sleep eight hours a night, how I’d have to set an alarm not to oversleep. I keep thinking about how my mind was occupied by what was going on in my music making, not by my health.
I remember that when it was quiet at night, that time felt even more precious, as it was better for mixing my music in. Time felt so precious. I’d feel so guilty those times I didn’t feel I was using my time well.
Yesterday my parents were talking about things that would be cheaper than doing the degree I want to do. It was a shock for me to realise that they still have a lot of the same mentality they did all those years ago when they forced me to complete my degree at LSE, so as to not waste money. i.e. money being valued over wellbeing. I don’t seem to have the kind of parents who could massively help me with my degree or my flat even if they wanted to anyway. I don’t know where I’ll get this help. If I was myself, I wouldn’t depend on anyone, or at least, I would’ve planned how to do these things without relying on others. I’d’ve long been independent by now.
Time used to be precious. The world used to be fascinating. Food used to be tasty. The future used to be exciting. I would take photos of myself. I used to feel beautiful.
Every day I feel deader.
Today I was thinking how, according to society, I would be considered a villain, purely because I need help, purely because I’m not wealthy. If I was myself, I would be independent by now, I’d even registered a record label at the start of 2014, before my accident.
I was so excited about life and music and I was going to bring that excitement into other people’s lives. I was doing something so important. Not only in my music but in the way that I lived.
If I was myself I wouldn’t be waiting for something to save me. I would be strong and building my own ship to sail me out of the storm, and I’d be finding it immensely rewarding and I’d be growing from it.
I was so prolific. I worked harder than anyone else and I had the songs to show for it. I didn’t set out to work harder, or brag about doing so either for that matter. Music demanded I work harder, for all the music it would constantly send me. My music making was a sacred duty, not some shallow scheme to get onto some Rich List. Getting rich seemed an easy thing to accomplish in life, a cop-out, to the person I used to be back then at least. I wanted to do something more than that. I wanted to serve Music. I wanted to repay it for all it had given me.
I see all the new opportunities for people of my ethnic origin in the film industry and I think about how much the old me would’ve enjoyed such activities, if I could’ve spared a little time, music would’ve always ruled my life of course.
Having said this, I still consider positive discrimination to be discrimination and so a very messed up thing. So perhaps it’s for the best I’m not exploiting it for my benefit via all the BAME casting going on. I’d never thought much about my race or sex when it came to music making at least. I knew the music was the most important thing, that it was so unifying, that it made these other distinctions seem so petty. Yet now I’m in a world which thinks we ought to feel proud about our race and proud about our sex. Proud about our sex to the point where we feel less when others identify as our sex.
Doug Stanhope once said something about how, if you feel most proud over those things you have no say in being, be it the colour of your skin, your sex, or your sexual identity, you really have nothing to be proud about. Couldn’t agree more. It’s all about as ludicrous as feeling proud of your height.
I understand the safety concerns women have regarding people claiming women-ship, I understand the concerns over letting children make permanent changes to their bodies, without giving them the time they need to discuss and contemplate their predicament first, but these are other subjects entirely. My point is, I don’t feel threatened or less of a woman when someone else says they are a woman.
However, I go a step further and say, I wouldn’t even feel threatened, or less, if someone claimed to be of my ethnic origin, despite not biologically being so. Yet the world has taken deep offence at the few examples of people who’ve tried to live their lives as people of different ethnicity to that which they were born. People glorify suffering and act as though it’s a prize to belong to a demographic that’s tended to own more of it in its past. Well, if we’re gonna play that game, can we at least play it right, and criticise those born into wealth who claim to be able to comprehend the reality of the working class person?
Something I’m grateful for: sweet virtual strangers like Ashli.
LYNA GALLIARA 