I’ve just realised that my wanting to live, because I look forward to learning, isn’t a particularly noble, enlightened, wonderful, or superior dream. I’ve just realised that it is no different to wanting to live to own a Ferrari. It is just wanting something. Just because what I want isn’t as material as a Ferrari, doesn’t make my wanting to study a dream that is any superior or more worthwhile. Besides, what learning lacks in its own tangibility, that lack is certainly made up for in learning’s course fees.
This evening, the thought occurred to me, that Fashion is perhaps the ugliest industry. This thought came to me because I was thinking about the hardships suffered by those who worked to create the materials for Fashion in Engels’s ‘Condition of the Working Class in England’, and the realisation that even now, so many, around the world, suffer so much, to generate more clothes than anyone could ever need. All for the sake of vanity. And yet, my dream of learning, is no superior. I still want a thing. I still want to consume something, just like people want to be able to buy dresses. Wanting to live to learn is no better than wanting to live to buy dresses.
These days, as I’ve been putting so much effort into overcoming the obstacles of the every day, I keep reflecting on how hard my life has been: the dramas in the childhood home, going to horrible LSE, the lack of emotional support system following the accident, the years of depression and anxiety that’ve ensued, the feelings of guilt and fear that have dominated my mind in these most recent years of not supporting myself, as I increasingly wish and need to do so, yet continue to struggle with so much of the impact that all those traumatic years have had on me. And more, and more, it’s struck me, just how severely the accident traumatised me, how it has taken so long to make progress to get to where I am now, which isn’t even half of my old normal. And yet to many, they would look at my life and see someone lazy, or someone who makes excuses.
This week I started one part-time short evening course, in Philosophy, because of this need I have increasingly felt in recent months, to want to be around others and learn, something that is not easy for me to plan outside of a course, given my communication issues. I had taken this same course years and years ago, and the same teacher is teaching it. There is something so surreal, being in his class again, because both the world, and myself were in completely different states when I last took his course. Whilst my depression was in much more severe state at that point, I still look back on that time more fondly than the way I look at my present, because there had been more hope for me then. I had lost fewer years to this depression and anxiety, and my parents were both here, my mum in better health, so there was, to some extent, a stability, for some time.
When I’d taken the course all those years ago, I was in such a state of self-sabotage, and it was a real effort, getting myself to go out at all, including going to the class. I remembered I really appreciated the teacher’s teaching, because I could find it interesting, in spite of the numbness imposed on me by depression. I liked how his class encouraged me to challenge all I had assumed was normal and acceptable about the society that I know. Judging society more harshly helped me judge myself less harshly. This teacher encouraged me, be it with just one sentence or two, all those years ago, and those sentences have stuck with me, as that encouragement, it surprised me, at a time when I felt so completely empty of potential. So being in that class again, it makes me feel like I’m almost back in time, with all the opportunities that had yet been available to me when I first took the course, and it makes me feel better, to be around a teacher responsible for encouragement that meant so much to me, and it seems relevant, to go back to challenging my assumptions about society, with a philosophy course, after my recent reading of Engels’s ‘Condition of the Working Class’, and given how my increasing fears about my own future have been getting me to challenge my assumptions about society again.
Of course this part-time course experience has further fuelled my wish to learn.
And yet, I have just realised, that my wanting to do another course, is no different to someone else wanting another dress, in that, both things cost money.
And this makes me realise how empty of a dream it has been: to want to live, to learn.
It hit me yesterday, that when I first did the philosophy course, I would still wear a baseball cap, given that I wore baseball caps whenever I went out in the first years after my accident being so self-conscious about my appearance. I was only first able to go out without a baseball cap in late 2021, and then, only managed it a handful of times within that year. So, I couldn’t really leave my home for the first three years after my accident, I couldn’t sing again till four years after my accident, I couldn’t go out without a baseball cap for the first seven years after my accident. There are all sorts of figures like that that are upsetting for me to think about. I couldn’t touch music or video editing software for five years after my accident. I remember, in the first years after my accident, I couldn’t even let myself write anything down on paper, for fear it would be thrown away, as my mum had thrown out many of my papers when I was in hospital. I was in self-sabotage mode till 2018 I’d say, so four years. There was the first year, I could not even look in the mirror. I was then only able to look at one particular mirror in my home, to which I have grown accustomed what to expect regards lighting. Only in 2023, did I start letting myself squint a little in public mirrors, to see a vague image of myself in them. The list is endless. And now, all these anxiety issues I didn’t have before the accident have been paralysing my life in new ways.
It’s like all I did this almost-decade was survive, and I worked so hard at that, even when I was in self-sabotage mode. I have spent a near decade working so hard on just surviving. Imagine if the accident hadn’t happened and I had been able to put all that effort into music instead? What I would have accomplished?
Later today there will be a fire door safety check. I’ve been feeling so anxious about it. I can’t sleep tonight. There’s so much I’m anxious about. I even need to chase up pet insurance as the last time I spoke with them they had claimed Abu’s tracheal collapse could have been pre-existing, and so they had not paid off claims relating to this condition, including Abu’s bronchoscopy claim. Thankfully, I feel confident I have sufficient evidence to prove that Abu’s condition was not present when I joined this pet insurer, but I am still scared that they will try to find a loophole. I am so scared about so much. At this point in my life I should have had a decade of enjoying making music and building stability for myself. But in fact, now I am in fact more lacking in hope and potential than I was when I was a teenager. I have so many financial commitments, but am not yet supporting myself.
I wish I had received a proper education in something I cared about. Or I wish I had not had the accident.
I hope I can be brave for the fire door safety check later.
I had hoped to tidy the flat a bit ahead of it, but the anxiety of just having that check is too much, so I will just have them do the check even though the flat is cluttered. I do my best to keep it clean, it’s just cluttered.
Something got to me today. I’ve noticed that in the last two days, by coincidence – i.e. not because I was bringing up the subject – two lovely locals, well-meaning locals who I do not think any ill of, and who I am grateful to know – out of the blue, independently of one another, suggested I “make a plan for each day”. I’m confused. Do they not think I make a plan for each day? There were many years when that was indeed the case, that I could not plan for the day. But for at least the past two years, I feel I have been so busy, every day, trying, trying, trying, with each new challenge life throws at me. So many challenges keep popping up to the extent that it has been impossible for me to focus on my music making. But I have been trying so hard. It disheartened me, to realise that these locals assumed I go about my days mindlessly. Do I really appear so mindless to others?
I try so hard every day, and I have been doing this for some time now. I am busy, busy, busy. When I see these locals it will be when I am popping out for Abu to have a short walk or for me to have a short break. So I don’t know where they get the idea that I need to be told to plan my days. I will try not to ruminate on this. I know that these people are well-meaning and just want to be helpful. I am just disappointed to realise that I must come across to them as someone who is careless with their time.
I have been trying SO hard at life.
I suppose it doesn’t matter how people perceive me as long as I know I am trying.
But yes, I so often feel, that I have just been fighting for so long, not for joy, nor reward, but just to survive.
I hope there is hope this year. Even if most of what I’d like to do with that hope would be to learn.
LYNA GALLIARA 