#101.20 - Sunday #21: Easter - Testify
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| Boundaries |
With my freedom I led the life I could have led given the circumstances. I made my sons my priority and took care of them for the last twenty years. Everything I could have done, I gave up for them. I made them the centre of my world.
Then I worked in jobs I believed in. In community arts projects, in conservation. I worked in alternative education. I tried to have friends. I'm not very good at this.
I loved as much as I could, between bouts of anger and frustration. I did try my very best.
I fell in love many times. I never regretted each of these.
I was a feminist, have been one, since I was 19. I traveled the world. Just enough to know how to do it, to love it, and to learn to enjoy it independently. And also just enough to know that I do not have to visit every blerdy country to love the world.
I did not fear. I never feared.
Which is why it is awful now, this fear which has been imposed on me. It is like a smothering wet towel in the face. And it pisses me off that people have reacted with fear as the overriding fear. The world which is coming is the world that terrifies me. Where I will not be able to lead my quiet life of trying to do my best. Instead I will be forced into some fucking job to do the cronies bidding. We will have full blown neoliberal fascism. That is coming next and make no mistake it will consist of the wholesale destruction of the planet if they have anything to do about it.
THAT is what has made me so angry with this entire situation.
If it ever does come to that, what will I do? I will resist. I will do that. I would rather die than be forced into servitude. If it ever fucking comes to that. They will not break me, I will go down fighting.
That is my Easter promise. I hope it will never come to that but if we do not create a world in which everyone can live fully we are going to be a the deepest shit because they will be able to convince people to live degraded inhumane lives and I am not going to do that. I refuse to do it.
I have raised my sons.
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Just mended my running leggings. It is, I think... I think I bought it in 2003/4... which makes it about 17 years old, at least. I remember when I got it because I had started running in Belvoir Park Forest and it was coming into winter. I had never run in the winter and I wondered how did one run in the winter? You couldn't use shorts right? So I got these leggings and running tops and long sleeved fleeces - which I still wear. The shoes I have changed a few times, but maybe it is time to buy new gear when all this ends. I can't believe the quality of stuff. When you bought them in the past you bought them for life.
I got up at 5.15 am today and then came down, had my coffee and it felt like a weight had lifted. It felt like everything was better.
Since the start of this - I have painted birds, I have gardened. I have been feeling my way around this new world order and I now have the measure of it. I refused to give into the panic. I poked around. I asked questions. I pretended to blend in. And now I have enough answers to be satisfied. It really astonishes me how much people are not in control of their bodies. Of their minds. They are so helpless. And they need government even if government is so useless. So, now writing for the next hour or so, even if it kills me... then run... then piano.
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I have been so depressed really, and I didn't really know it. The struggle with the doublethink and the having to suddenly be stuck in this space really knocked me for six. I don't want to overegg the pudding and attach more significance than I need to to this, but I need to at least acknowledge it. I need to acknowledge that this has been a disorientating time and much of my tough talk has been bravado. As I painted and gardened, all good things, I also felt so angry than I had to look after this space for him as well. That he benefited from it, as usual.
But I now must let that go, because I must really start looking at the long term and what needs to be done, which was so clear when I was just about to go into lockdown. That clarity must return again. So, writing must begin once more. And once more, I am reborn anew. Now is never a better time.
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