I’ve been finding out, in recent years, that more and more things break as time goes on in one’s life, and more and more things break at an ever increasing rate. The thing is, the idea is, that by this point, this middle-ish point, you should have got to a place of some stability and security, that would help you deal with all that breakage. But I’m realising more and more, that my life has been a reversion, a regression, that I’ve become less and less capable, that I started off with potential and health and joy and hope, and have been left increasingly paralysed by anxiety and depression. That every year I lose more. I feel constantly busy, trying to keep up with trying to fix the last thing I am aware of to’ve gone wrong, but I’ve been failing to keep up with it all.
I have become genuinely crippled by this anxiety. I can’t even ask for help because I couldn’t read the replies. Besides, the past two years, and reading Engels recently, has confirmed to me, that no one who could actually help, that is, no one with the resources to help, would help me, it is my fellow working class people that have said or made the most meaningful efforts, with words or small gestures, they would be the ones to help, and I can’t expect them to help, not now when it is so difficult for anyone in that category. In fact, amongst those working class, I have come to appreciate just how special those are who want to help, as one person, to whom I was mentioning my worries, who I hadn’t even asked for help from, responded with: “I’m sorry there’s nothing I could do to help”, and that hurt me so much, to hear him actively distance himself like that, to come face to face with the emptiness of this person who had always feigned to care about my wellbeing. I also met with a group of well-meaning people who seemed like they wanted to help, but the most they did was buy me beer, and criticise my opinion that everyone should have a right to a home and an education.
On the other hand, I was fortunate enough to meet some exceptional humans this year, two people in particular: Anista and T. Again, my communication with them has not been consistent, and what of it there has been has only been there because they have been found at the same places easily, without my needing to communicate by phone or text or emails. They have never bore a grudge over my communication issues. So many have bore a grudge. People tend to assume it is personal. Or that I am being lazy. Or making excuses. They can’t understand how frightening of a place life has become for me since my dad died. It was already scary before. But now, the aloneness, the fear for my survival, it is terrifying. The helplessness. The hope of better times being all I have. I have related to so much of what Engels has written about in his ‘Condition of the Working Class’.
I used to say farewell to each year with sadness for leaving it behind, gratitude to it for what memories I had made with it, and excitement for the year ahead, before the accident. Then, in the first few years after the accident, each New Year felt a failure, as I felt it was a year I should not see, and I remember how much dread would fill me on the approach of a New Year, and the pain of those first Christmases and New Years, being aware of all the magic I was missing out on, by no longer being the person I used to be before my accident. I suppose there came some hope then, in 2020, when I started to make lots of music again, but then in 2021 had a horrible end of year, the family drama, seeing my parents ill, feeling alone and abandoned by the friends I thought I’d made that year, getting so anxiety-ridden that I collapsed and fractured my skull on the day I had been adamant I would return to my music. Then, the first half of 2022, with Abu’s eye accident, then dad passed away, and I coped by letting myself study music, despite having less certainty about the future than ever before. I wanted to study all that my dad had told me was a waste of time to study. Learning made me feel I was growing. It gave me hope. Then all the realities hit me again, and I realised how helpless I was. Had to ask for help from the big sister for a month, had to cancel the therapy I had started, felt like everything was cancelled. Abu’s cough and his investigations. That approach of his bronchoscopy feeling like another countdown that filled me with dread. Fears about my mum’s health when I couldn’t get in touch with her pushing my anxiety to all new highs, and a lasting inability to use my mobile for fear of receiving bad news. Ending the year now, grateful mum and Abu are with me, but also so scared about the future.
I want to learn still. That is what I look forward to. Learning.
But this short-found semblance of stability I’ve been surviving on for some months won’t last. What am I going to do? Even when I was at my strongest, before my accident, it was a challenge to “make it” as a content creator. How is me, the person I have become, the diminished person I have become, going to “make it”, and even, “make it”, in time? Yes, I have the projects I made in 2020 and 2021 that I feel are strong. But I should’ve posted them then. As time goes on, the haystack in which these needles could be found gets ever greater. I don’t know. I wish I had worked with Steve Glashier on the video I’d wanted to make for ‘Toes’. Or even, go back further and work with him on ‘Life’s Shit’, though, if I could, I would just go back to before the accident, because at least by that point I had made other projects I was super proud of. I wish I could go back.
How is there hope?
I have less hope than at any previous time in my life.
I am more crippled than ever by anxiety. Things are breaking at an ever increasing rate, that I’ve been failing to stay on top of. My mum and dog aren’t in great health, and they are my last sources of comfort, and my last sources of reasons to go on. I am no longer prodigy enough for me to give music as my reason, though I had once been, and at that time music had been enough of a reason, for that very reason. Back then, every hurt I suffered felt like a hurt Music itself suffered, we were once so much the same thing.
I could have done literally nothing before in my life and still had been in a better position than I am now. I would at least have had a home had I never moved out of the family home. But that place was full of drama, and I had no space, and could not focus on my music there. I had to move out, to the point that I lost years of my life to the cause of moving out. I have had to endure the commitment of moving out, long before I have been able to afford it in a steady way. It has been torture. If only each adult had a right to a home, if only I had a home to start with, how life would have been different. Or even, if only I had felt the family home, was somewhere I could be. And yet somehow, with superhuman strength, I accomplished so much before my accident. I overcame so much. But then it was as though all that strength was shattered in an instant, and there was nothing left to protect me from the hurt there has so long been in my life, that that superhuman strength had till then, done so well to protect me from.
And now I am too busy to even hurt, in that, just trying to keep up with what I can of life maintenance, trying to fix things that are breaking. Now life is even emptier, it is just treading water, just trying to exist, not even existing just to hurt, as it had been for years, not that I would choose that latter option again, but now that I am more helpless, I see how much of a luxury it had once been to’ve even been able to choose to hurt.
I am so scared. How can I save myself in 2024? I have music. But will that be enough? Especially when there is no shortage of outstanding content online now, there are so many fascinating channels on Youtube now, of such high quality.
I should have got those projects online in 2021, when there would’ve been more of a chance. And even if I could get somewhere with it now, how much would that somewhere grant me, in that, would that somewhere be enough to cover my bills?
My life situation now is not too dissimilar to that it would be in, had I yesterday been thrown into this world with nothing. An adult, with commitments, and no stability, and no occupation. I wish my parents had cared more about life being fulfilling as we were growing up, instead of joy always being a thing that would happen in the distant future. But I did get joy, when I was making my music, before my accident. I had finally found joy then. But it was so short-lived because of the accident. And now I have been back to waiting, and waiting has now defined most of my life, waiting for joy, waiting to live.
I wish someone would help me. Some fellow working class people have helped with what gestures they can, discounts on what they sell for example, but I can’t ask them for more. I wish a “bourgeois” would help, to use Engels’s term! But Engels knew too well, that neither a bourgeois nor an aristocrat will help me.
Somehow, because we live in a world where a home is not a right, I will have to remain terrified.
I hope I can somehow “make it” next year, and that I can learn, and that I can look after my mum and my Abu.
LYNA GALLIARA 