The Fear of Insanity

I am someone who enjoys listening in on random conversations in a café setting. Very often, the conversation will reach a point when one person declares, “it’s crazy!” about something they have evoked. I do believe we each have a fearful side of ourselves that is always censoring our public discourse with in/sanity in mind. I used to know someone who didn’t want to write down their thoughts in the medium of long-form email, because they didn’t want to unintentionally write something that seemed crazy. They preferred to get constant feedback on their conversation in person.  What to do with a society which collectively fears having thoughts so outside the norm that they are stigmatised?

Sometimes I think the only difference between those locked up in psychiatric wards and the those who are not is their ability to signal sanity. To participate in modern Australian society is to continually affirm the righteousness of your worldview, and to exclude those that don’t play along.

Sometimes I am scared to think in certain ways. How much of society’s norms can I challenge without being seen as a lost cause? Do I have the energy to question everything? “Question everything” may be a good motto, especially when you’re a teenager or in your early twenties, and that questioning is foundational, but what happens when you wake up to a new reality where you have to choose a few norms to conform to for the sake of navigating the world in a simple and/or safe manner?

I mourn my lost explorer, my Alternative Reality Generating Mindset, my ‘question everything’ mode. I’m not sure what I have gained is ethically sound from the most radical of perspectives. (Perspectives I still have affinity with.) But I will keep modifying myself in relation to my environment. I will strike the balance necessary to remain safe in this world, with all the compromise that it involves. Perhaps kind and revolutionary souls will build on my work in the present and future, as I have noticed them doing in the past.

The Climate Change Refugee That Can’t Be

The trend for Australians to move to the colder climates of countries such as New Zealand, Northern Europe, Canada and possibly Japan seems weak as yet. I found what the ABC described as ‘anecdotal evidence’ that people are moving to Hobart and Tasmania from places like Queensland, Melbourne and Sydney. But how long before we reach a tipping point of climate change immigrants flowing out of this country, into ones better able to handle the pressure?

HSBC (and possibly others) recently ranked the OECD countries accordng to how vulnerable they were to climate change, and how prepared they were to deal with the consequences. The five countries with the best scores were Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia and New Zealand. The US and Australia were two of the worst performing rich countries. 

Now, I am not in a position to relocate. I dont have the financial power to pack up and leave my parents home, and they havent identified global warming as the threat that it is. But I can gather information and be ready to act when the opportunity finally comes around. I just hope that immigration laws wont work against me. Which is why I’m anxiously identifying the trends that shape them.

Things I like about myself

1. I have a more or less healthy body. I can walk, I can talk, I can laugh, I can see, I can feel. I can even dance!

2. I am often in touch with my innermost feelings and thoughts. While I cannot always honour the deepest parts of myself, striving to do so means that I’m often there.

3. I have confidence in my own perception.

4. I have chosen a partner who treats me with the dignity I deserve.

5. Poetry comes easy.

6. I have a keen sense of anti-discrimination activism.

7. I have a strongly developed sense of aesthetics. This comes out in everything from what I wear, o the photography I make, to the formations I make with my body.

8. I believe in building women and non-binary people up.

9. I have a can-do attitude and moral fortitude. 

Pushing through

It's been refreshing to note the 2019 Oscars Best Picture race was chock-a-block full of queers and POC (sometimes at the same time). It makes me feel like things have been shaken up to some extent, even if the faux-camp veneer of the sociopath running America is still intact. (Honestly, I get so tired of people in Sydney walking around mimicking the foul tyrant's facial expressions.)

Here is Oz, too, I'm witnessing a flourishing of queer and POC culture. The 'Feminist Shorts' of the Mardi Gras Film Festival all forefronted brown or black women - a bold celebration of how people from the margins can rise up and dazzle all with their perspectives. 

I am thinking, too, of Laurie Penny's tweet about more and more women refusing to take part in heterosexual partnerships, in which they are almost always worse off in some way, while the man benefits at their expense. This is not news to me: I have been excluding cis men from my pool of potential partners for at least four years.

Laurie and her followers have highlighted many facets of the sacrifice women make when they partner up with the oppressor class. There's the emotional labour you are expected to do endlessly, and for free. The domestic labour you are expected to do endlessly, and for free. There's the discrepancy between the male supremacy's comfort with rampant inequality and the utterly inadequate counter-actions men can be mobilised into enduring. It just doesn't sit right. 

I don't loathe myself adequately to take my chance on cis men. This polyamorous, gender non-conforming person can be found cuddling up to the finest of the non-binary and cis/trans women folk... even if right now what I have looks very much like a monogamous relationship. My polyamory isn't much advertised, just something I list on my dating profile, and hope potential lovelies can puzzle out the nuances of my desires.

Being single turned out not to be an ongoing phenomenon once I redirected myself towards people who hold me in higher esteem. Queerness now soothes more than startles.  

Self-Compassion

This is where it gets interesting

This is where opportunities lie in wait

This is where old mes shatter

And they have truly been aching to break

Looking to my strategy for self-acceptance

Comfort mingled with acute sadness

It’s okay to feel it all

Let the facade shatter

Speaking the truth

Gets me in trouble

Sullenly mulling over

The texture of truth

Reclaiming it now

Or trying to cope

A once luxurious connection

Exposed as bare bones

Longing for safety

It is the latter half of 2016 and I'm on my way to my partner's birthday party. Instead of my usual high-necked T-shirt I am wearing a low-cut, bright pink top, and feeling ashamed. It's been so long since I stopped dressing in low-cut tops that even my staunchly feminist conditioning can't prevent me from manifesting anxiety. I'm worried about how I could potentially be read, even as I know that this uniform (a cut so popular that it's from Kmart) is the swathe of choice of an expansive army of women at any one time.

I get on the train, making sure it's the carriage with the train conductor aboard. The blue light is my beacon. There's no-one else on the upper floor for a while, but eventually a couple enters from the other side.

The man looks at me from the back, and makes a short, disrespectful vocal summary of me, into which I read that he is angrily eyeing a woman who exhibits sexual impropriety. His travelling companion, a woman, follows up: "What's that, a slut? A whore?"

I try to see the light-hearted humour in the situation as I rise from my seat and walk (playfully, disjointedly) across the aisle, still not facing them. The woman snarls at my rebellion, and I duck my head - but only so I can see my feet on the stairs, past my stomach. I walk into a different carriage and release some adrenaline.

I feel like there's a heavy cloud hanging over my day, yet I nag at myself to cease ruminating. I call my girlfriend when I arrive at Central, describing the events, minimising the intensity of my emotions. Whatever her response, it doesn't soothe me.

My partner's girlfriend echoes what I told my partner about 'that [random abuse] has nothing to do with you.' But it doesn't sink in. I feel turbulent.

I end up waiting for people to arrive in Newtown, where I duck into Tree of Life - the visual stimulation of the Asian-themed garments and items insufficient distraction from the noise in my head. I try to reach out again. "I was just called a whore on the train!" I exclaim to a shop assistant. She expresses shock and mirrors my half-hearted righteousness, but it's not enough. Some part of my fighting spirit has died. Or is it a lack of self-compassion?

It's 2019, and I make self-compassion my project.

*

Back in late 2018, I am catching the train to meet a new psychologist in the city. The petite Asian girl in front of me has earphones on and is carrying on a conversation on her mobile. I find her incessant chatter slightly annoying, because it pulls me out of my inner monologue.

A man twice her size in a gray suit sits down right next to her, although vacant seats remain on the train, his thin lips a fraudulent smile as he turns to face her.

I wonder how long she's going to sit there. Not long! A minute or so later she stands, erect to her full height, and non-verbally demands that he let her pass. I will later see her continuing her conversation in the standing area right before we both leave the carriage. The man's head lowers as she leaves the seat behind.

I think about invasive bodies for the rest of the trip.

*

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. I could write for days and not transcribe all the patriarchy-related injustices that inform my present-day anger, fear and sadness.

I don't want to get on a Sydney train again. Hell, I don't want to walk down a Sydney street again. Patriarchy oozes out of 50% of the population as they regard this body of mine. Without the drugs I'd be tense and frenzied; how I am currently is dissatisfyingly numb. But I know the danger is real, even though the emotional repercussions don't catch up with me.

I'm relying on my parents to eventually relocate to another country. A country that makes me feel less like prey.

How long will I wait?

*

Safe Space

Staying up allows me to find a floating expanse of fresh air in an otherwise polluted suburbia. Noise pollution is the worst. The hours between 1am and 4-6am are my respite from traffic, children, babies, blaring hip hop, and the all-too-dynamic population that makes up this neighbourhood.

Dad goes to bed after Mum, but he's the strong, silent type, and I can read alongside him on the couch horseshoe without too much distraction.

I've read four books since the start of the year. Ben Nash's 'Get Unstuck: How to live a life unlimited by money' confused me then, and it confuses me to date. It's not that I don't understand the concepts - it's that I don't know how to divide my savings up into the two or three goals I've identified as worth pursuing.

Long-time readers of ~Epiphanie Bloom~ will know [redacted for confidentiality purposes] I am shaping whatever future I will end up having right now!

Then there was 'The Year of Living Danishly' - a blast for the most part, with frequent passages of the unputdownable variety. I learned more about Danish culture than I was expecting, especially since Copenhagen was but a weekend trip's worth of stories, while rural Jutland was the locus from which all things originated. Would I move to Denmark myself? Oh yeah. Just because it's unlikely to eventuate, doesn't mean I can't dream...

It's sweet that the emotional state of cows upon first reuniting with grassy plains after a long, snowy winter, is something that Jutlanders value. I can only imagine how much Australian workplaces would improve if communal singing took place in the office at regular intervals. Affordable daycare is rightly something the politicians cared about and got integrated into the system... however if I want to read a book about the lessons Bulgarian-Australians can learn from Nordic feminism, I'm going to have to write it myself: Helen Russell wasn't one to dwell on my favourite topic.

In addition to these (rather different) books was 'Rest: Why you get more done when you work less' by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. It may have been written more for professionals with conventionally high-flying career trajectories (esp if male), but valuable lessons for the likes of me were in abundance too. Approaching the concept of rest from a number of complementary angles, I'll try to integrate more walks along the beach into my schedule, sleep longer, and maybe someday experiment with naps (I'm afraid of napping and crying), just to name a few of the methods explored.

I was surprised to read an article by the author over at TED.com which explained that, scientifically speaking, you will benefit more from travel if you take one week off every three months, instead of waiting for that one-off four-week period. That was a cool way to discover the book.

So 'Rest' had a conspicuous dearth of female influence. It seemed like 93% of the famous or noteworthy figures whose relationship with work and rest Alex examined were cis men, and there were no two ways about it. If a writer wants to include women significantly, they will find a way to do so.

Finally we have 'Finding Sisu: In search of courage, strength and happiness the Finnish way', my liking of which was more subdued than the previously listed titles, but eh, they can't all get five stars. Katja Pantzar aims to make the most out of relocating to Helsinki by embracing the concept of sisu, which it turns out has very practical implications. With an emphasis on physical activity that makes the most of the beautiful Nordic environment, Katja discovers the benefits of bathing in icy water and cycling through green spaces, to name a few. While the theme is sisu, this journey is also about cultivating wellbeing in the face of depressive tendencies. I feel the focus could have been enhanced to incorporate the "messiness" of one human being searching for zest in a world that frequently gets her down, with sisu perhaps part of a trifecta, but not the unifying theme.

This post is already longer than usual, so I won't try to make many links between the books, except to say that each has allowed me to explore new avenues of thinking, and has been rewarding in its own way.

Onward to the next! (Reading is life.)