At some point, we’ve all felt like life is just too much. Too ruthless. Too busy. Like a carousel which started out full of laughter and light but is now a roundabout that’s going oh-too-fast. I can hear myself as a child, starting to cry, “Dan this is not really funny anymore please let me off Dan I’m gonna be sick…”
As adults, we have to learn to ride it out. When we realise
that the roundabout is going too fast, we console ourselves with the knowledge that
it has to slow down again. That it will eventually stop. We grit our teeth and
we ride it out. At least, most of us do. Some of us vomit, making a mess of
things again and again. Some of us just can’t wait, so we jump.
It’s hard to talk about mental health without examining the
society which has decayed it. We live in a social-media addicted, capitalist nightmare
fuelled by sugary drinks and casual sex. A society that was once spiritual and
(perhaps as a result?) community-centred has become strictly ‘smash and grab’.
I would say that ever since we had widespread access to the
internet, we have been presented with overwhelming choice – of information, of products,
even over our physical bodies. We get filler and dye our hair to look like
people who are digitally enhanced. People have come to believe that, just like
our old iPhones, people are disposable; that there will always be something
bigger and better on the horizon.
Moreover, jobs have disappeared and the housing market crashed
due to mistakes made by powerful people who have never even spoken to a homeless person… and very subtly, over the course of a lifetime (maybe
our parents’ lifetime?), we stopped caring. As long as we are lucky enough to
have what we want, those in poverty are not our problem. Worse – they are the problem. We began constructing a narrative in which people who are poor or
different are to blame for their own misfortune. We brand them ‘non-contributors’; druggies and drains on a system which, let’s be honest, is fucking you over as
well.
My brother earns a fair bit, over 4x my teaching salary, and
he’s worked damn hard to build a business from nothing. Still, the tax man
takes half of it. He is not truly benefitting from the system despite having
a 6-figure income. He grafts for his money. He is still sad a lot of the time.
You might think you have it good because you have a nice house
and a nice car and daytrips at weekends, but are you happy? Is it enough? I am
not sure. I have no time. I run around like an idiot, late to everything, working
2 jobs to try to buy my own home and feed myself. "Champagne problems," you might
say, but when did a safe place to call your own and healthy food become a luxury?
Is it any wonder society is sick? Sick of not being good enough compared with the Instagram famous, sick of struggling every day just to keep their head above water.
The other day, after a few bad things I don’t want to talk about, while I was driving 40 minutes to Nailsea after a day’s work to see my grandad who’s in a care home (a whole trauma in itself), I asked God to just let me die. I don’t have the bollocks, I said, so please can you do it? Just roll the car.
Moments later, I drove past
a bad accident and someone was being carried away from their (totalled) Vectra
on a stretcher, covered in blood. Are you sure? He said, and I wasn’t, so
here I still am.
Anyway, I am feeling better today. I realise that all I can do
is embody positivity and love in all that I do and believe that the universe
will reciprocate. I can only imagine what it must be like to feel as low as that constantly. If you feel shit all time time or even just today, please message. I might not be able to fix it, but I care and we can try.
Love, Char. x
