Feminism

As it's International Women's Day today, I thought I'd do a post about why I identify as a feminist.

My mother is an inspirational woman. For over fifteen years now, she's been working for a Bristol charity that helps women who are in trouble, particularly those suffering from domestic violence. She's always taught me that women can do anything, and it's thanks to her that I've grown up with strong feminist beliefs (she actually reminded me about International Women's Day when we went to lunch last week). She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, and had to go through some pretty horrible treatments, but she's made a full recovery. I am inspired by her strength.

A lot of people, women included, don't like the word 'feminism'. This is for a number of reasons - the stereotypical angry feminist who eats testicles for breakfast, the mistaken belief that feminism is no longer relevant to our society, or just plain old fashioned sexism. Today, I'm giving the middle finger to those who would look down on me for calling myself a feminist. We don't hate men, and although some of us might be angry, can you blame us, with the way women's rights are slowly being chipped away? Some might say that feminism is more relevant now than ever.

As a woman, I know I'll be judged for a lot of things that a man in the same situation wouldn't be judged for. For example, I choose to be childfree. Motherhood doesn't appeal to me, and I don't think I'd be good at it. As a woman, I will always have to justify that choice. People will judge me, and brand me selfish for not wanting to reproduce. When was the last time you heard anyone criticise a man for not wanting to be a father? And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

For the last few weeks, I've been watching the US from afar, with a knot of fear in my stomach. All sorts of bills are being put forward that show how some American men (Republicans especially) see women as nothing more than incubators. One of the more worrying bills would have given the doctors the right to refuse treatment to a dying woman, if the treatment would harm her unborn foetus. Fortunately that bill was scrapped, but it still chills me to the core, knowing that some people think it's better for a woman and a foetus to die rather than just a foetus. How would they feel if it was their wife, or their daughter? Would they still stand idly by?

And that's why we still need feminism today. The fact that there are people in a supposedly civilised society like the US who view women's lives as disposable should set off alarm bells in the heads of every woman everywhere. We are not just incubators. We are not just mothers. We should have the freedom to be anything we choose to be, without people standing in our way. We deserve equal pay for equal work. We deserve bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. In short, we deserve more.

Women have been through a lot of shit over the centuries, but there have always been women willing to fight for their rights as autonomous human beings, and there always will be. So today, Shrove Tuesday and International Women's Day, raise a pancake to the inspirational women in your life.

Short Story - Chopsticks

Chopsticks

I remember the first time she tried to teach me how to use chopsticks. I never did get the hang of it.

We were at the Red Dragon, in Chinatown. I was new to London, and June, a Londoner since birth, wanted to introduce me to all of her favourite restaurants.

We had met two weeks previously, at the Fresher's Fair, and immediately became friends. There was something about June that told me I could trust her. I felt a pull towards her, and at the time I didn't realise exactly what that pull might mean. I just knew that I wanted to spend more time with this girl.

I had never tried dim sum before. Until now, my idea of Chinese food had been a cardboard box of chow mein in front of the TV on a Saturday night. But June knew better. The dim sum was delicious.

She chastised me for picking it up with a fork. "Sophia," she said sternly, but with a playful glint in her eye, "if you're going to eat out in Chinatown with me, then you're going to have to use these." She shoved the chopsticks towards me. "Just copy me ... hold them like this ..."

She made it look so effortless, balancing the two thin sticks in her slender fingers. Perhaps it was in her genes. When I tried to imitate her, I felt awkward and clumsy, and the chopsticks slipped out of my hand and clattered onto the plate.

"Dammit," I growled.

June laughed. "Remember, I've had a lot more practice at this than you have. Try again."

I tried again, and failed again. June laughed every time, her playful, child-like laugh.

"Here, I'll help you."

She got up from her chair and came round to my side of the table.

Sometimes a moment can change your life. A bomb goes off, or a vital organ stops working, or somebody special touches you for the first time. As June rearranged my fingers around the thin sticks of wood, I felt sparks between our hands, electricity that ran through my entire body. I hadn't expected this, and yet it seemed to have been a long time coming. It felt inevitable.

When June sat back down, she looked completely different. Her dark eyes shone brighter; her hair had turned into finely spun black silk; her smile almost made me cry.

"Try it now," she said.

I had completely forgotten about the chopsticks in my hand. Careful to keep holding them in the correct position, I picked up a dumpling and popped it in my mouth. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

***

I didn't want June to know how I felt. So far, she was the only close friend I had in London, and I didn't want to risk frightening her away. June had never shown any indication that she might be interested in girls. She talked about boys sometimes, in that happy, giggly way of hers, and I felt a little sting every time she did so. She didn't have a boyfriend, but I was sure that she would, before long. Who could resist her?

I had to resist her. I had no choice.

One Saturday, I was lying on my single bed in my dorm room, looking up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that I should be studying, when my phone rang. Not my mobile - the white corded phone on my desk, connected to all the other rooms in the dorms. My heart jumped. Only one person ever called me on that phone. I leapt across to the desk, almost tripping over.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Sophia, it's only me."

Every time June called, I could physically feel all the tension drop out of me. Just hearing her voice could make my whole morning. She had no idea.

June invited me over to her room to watch DVDs, and get ready for the party that night. When I got there, she gave me a warm smile. I tried to return it.

"Are you okay, Sophia?" She asked me.

"I'm fine," I replied. "So, um, are you looking forward to tonight, then?"

"Yeah, it should be a laugh, I reckon. Apparently most people from our class are going." She opened the CD tray of the computer, and put in one of her favourite Japanese animations. They bored me to tears, although I would never tell her so. Then she asked me, "Can you help me do my hair?"

Of all the things I remember about the many afternoons spent in June's dorm room - the smell of her incense, the way she stacked the books on her shelves, the colour of her posters - the feeling of being close to her is the one sensation that stays with me. I could sit watching boring DVDs with her for hours on end, just being happy to breathe the same air, and occasionally brush against her arm. And now she wanted me to put her hair up.

I loved June's hair - I loved it for itself, not just because it was a part of her. It was long and black and soft, the kind of hair that I, with my mousy brown straw, had always coveted. I savoured the feel of it in my hands as I twisted it into a bun, and finished it off with a pair of flowered, decorative chopsticks.

As I stood back to admire my handiwork, my heart began to drop to my feet. June looked beautiful. And at the party that night, I was sure I wouldn't be the only one to notice how beautiful she was.

***

I thought I could keep my secret. In a few years' time, June and I would be graduating, so I would no longer face the problem of seeing her every day. Until then, I would just have to hold my tongue.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

As usual on a Saturday afternoon, I was in June's dorm room. She was reading, and I was making notes for an essay. Somehow my pen flew faster and the words flowed easier when June was around. I was in such a good mood that when June asked me "Do you have any tissues," I didn't think. I just nodded, and said, "There's a packet in my bag."

Almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realised my mistake. As I watched June root around in my handbag, I was filled with the sensation that creeps up from your stomach and makes you turn cold, makes your heart pound, the sensation that says you've just made a big mistake.

Maybe she won't notice, I tried to reassure myself. Maybe she'll just pull the tissues out of the bag and -

Too late. She had found them

"Sophia," June asked me, an amused expression on her face, "Why have you been carrying around a pair of old chopsticks from the Red Dragon?"

Energy

I don't have any.

Well, obviously I do have a little bit, otherwise I wouldn't be typing this. I don't have very much, though, and I'm starting to grow tired of being tired (see what I did there?).

It's hard to get on in life when you need more sleep than the average house cat. I find that, if I get out of bed before midday, I have to take a two hour nap in the afternoon just to face the evening. That's not normal, is it? And it disrupts my life. I'm not working right now, but when I do have a nine-to-five job, I feel like a zombie by about 11am, and go through the rest of the day on autopilot, boosted by frequent coffee breaks, until I get home in the evening and pass out. This is why I tend to go for jobs that don't require much thinking.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't always like this. My anti-depressants are the culprit. I started taking them at 17, and ever since then, my body doesn't work like it should do. I didn't do nearly as well in the exams I took at 18 as I did in the ones the previous year, because I was too tired to study properly. And I know I could have done better at uni, and probably not dropped out, if I had been able to get to my 9am tutorials without wanting to cry just from the effort of hauling myself out of bed.

For this reason, and a few others (notably, weight gain), I've recently been thinking about weaning myself off the medication. This is a terrifying prospect for me. I'm staring into the abyss. My psychiatrist originally suggested that I should take the anti-depressants for six months - instead, they've been propping me up for over eight years. I have no idea who I'd be without them. The reason I've put up with the tiredness and the weight gain and everything else for so long is that the medication makes me feel safe - it wraps a blanket around the darkness inside me, it keeps me sheltered. But I suppose I always knew I'd have to give it up some day.

I want to be a teacher. That's my ambition in life. And teaching is tough. I've done a little TEFL teaching, which I loved, but it also taught me that being a teacher requires stamina - it requires energy. And if the medication is going to get in the way of my ambitions, then unfortunately, it's going to have to go.

I wish I weren't so scared.

Creative writing assignment

The Spies Lane Witch

It's Sunday afternoon. I'm on my way back home from my walk down Spies Lane, where the branches of the overhanging trees are like my fingers, old and gnarled and bent. My fingers, which are now stained scarlet with the juice of the berries I've been gathering. As I enter my cottage, I hear the children running down the lane, shrieking and laughing, reminding me of my own childhood days. Simpler days. As I rinse the last of the juice from my fingertips, there's a knock at the door.

I smile down at the small form on my doorstep. "Good afternoon, Gladys."

Young Gladys's cheeks are flushed from her exertions, and her eyes are bright and eager. Did my eyes ever look like that? The years have dulled their colour, and if they ever sparkled, I can't remember when.

"May I come in for tea?" Gladys asks, with a grin. I let her in, as I always do.

"Your kitchen is so pretty, Miss James," she says. She calls me 'Miss James', but I know that she and her little friends like to call me 'the witch' when they think I can't hear them. It makes me chuckle. Through the eyes of the young, any old woman living alone must be brewing up spells and potions in secret.

I set the tea on the table. "How is your family, dear?" I ask Gladys.

"They're well," she replies brightly. "Mother is having another baby, you know."

I smile at this news. "Oh, how lovely."

Gladys is looking at me intently. "Miss James, did you ever have a little boy or girl?" She asks me.

"No, I didn't," I reply. "I've always lived alone. I think I'm better off that way."

I glance to the armchair by the fire, where might have sat the husband I never had. The smile goes out of my eyes a little, but I don't let it drop from my face.

"I think my mother has too many children already," Gladys says. "Our house is far too crowded and noisy."

I picture the house, filled with babies' cries and children's laughter. A merry circus.

"You should be thankful for your family," I say.

Gladys sighs. "I suppose so."

She finishes her tea, and leaves. I watch her go skipping down the lane with a peculiar ache in my heart.

Night falls. They say that ghosts walk Spies Lane after dark, but I'm not afraid. If a little ghost girl came knocking on my door, I think I would invite her in for tea.

The Power of Twitter

The hashtag #whatstigma is currently trending on Twitter in the UK. It was started a few hours ago by someone aiming to remove the stigma from mental illness, and since then it has received hundreds of responses from people confessing their mental health difficulties. "Confessing" shouldn't be the word, but unfortunately, due to the above mentioned stigma, it is. Admitting you have a mental illness can be even more humiliating than admitting you have an STD.

I never tell people about my depression or anxiety unless I know them very well, and sometimes not even then. Whenever I start a new job, I keep it quiet. I did once admit to some colleagues that I was taking anti-depressants, but that was after I'd been working there for over a year. The subject never came up again.

Why do I keep it quiet? That's simple. I don't want people to think differently of me because I have a mental illness. I don't want to scare away potential new friends. I want people to know me for me, and not for my illness. It's a sad fact that people are judged when they suffer from mental illness, but it's true. You only have to glance at the tabloids or watch the TV to find that out. If someone suspected of a crime is revealed to have suffered from mental illness in the past, the media will latch on to that fact, and use it as 'proof' that the person should be locked up. The mentally ill are seen as dangerous, as undesirables.

A few years ago, I was watching an episode of the Ricky Gervais comedy Extras, which I normally enjoy. Ashley Jensen's character Maggie was trying to set up Ricky Gervais's character Andy with one of her friends, who "has trouble meeting men because she's clinically depressed". Andy refused, saying "I don't want to go out with a psychopath! Slashing herself when she forgets to take her lithium ...". I know that Extras is just a sitcom, and that Andy isn't supposed to be an entirely sympathetic character, but I worry that that exchange is a true reflection of people's attitudes. Watching it made me feel belittled, and it enforced the idea in my mind that I was destined to end up alone.

My one serious relationship before K broke up because of my mental health difficulties. M said that he was constantly afraid for me, and that he didn't want to be in a relationship based on fear. Looking back, I can see that his attitude was cowardly, and that if he really loved me he would have tried to help me through my struggles with depression instead of just running away. But at the time, it made me feel like I didn't deserve love. That I was 'less than'.

I refuse to feel that way any more.

The #whatstigma hashtag has made me feel hopeful. Many, many people are sharing their experiences, coming out from hiding, saying to the world that they are mentally ill. I know it's only a drop in the ocean (a 'teaspoon', as they would say at Shakesville), but maybe it will cause some people to stop and think, and that's a start.

I started this blog because I wanted to be open and frank about my mental illness, for once. And now I know I'm not alone.

Depression

I want to cover this topic first, because it's been a part of my life for so many years, and yet I still don't fully understand my disease. It's time to organise my thoughts about my mental illness.

January is a hard time of year for me. The weather is miserable, it gets dark early, and I end up getting all nostalgic, which in my case is usually a bad thing - it means I torture myself by going over and over past mistakes, parts of my life I wish I could just blot out with Tippex. Unfortunately, Tippex isn't magic.

At the moment my mind keeps returning to my mid-to-late teens. That was a bad time in my life, for me and the people around me. At that time, my mental illness was undiagnosed and unmedicated, and it was horrible. I was horrible. A lot of people got hurt - people who meant the world to me, people who will probably never understand how truly sorry I am for how I treated them back then. My mind was a scary place, and I wasn't myself, but I should have sought help much sooner. It's only in the last few years that I've come to realise the true value of love and friendship, and the significance of my actions when I was a monstrous teen. It's in the past, but it will always be with me.

Moving on to my early twenties, my depression was medicated, but it still affected my life, if in a different way. The meds made me tired and lethargic all the time, and that was 90% of the reason why I flunked out of uni (the other 10% of the blame lies at the feet of one Mr Murray, a slacker who dragged me down with him). No matter how long I live, or how many degrees I manage to rack up during my life, I will always be ashamed of dropping out of that Japanese course. It's not what my parents wanted for me, and it's not what I wanted for myself. But my brain at that time was stuck in a kind of pattern whereby I couldn't get the energy, physical or emotional, to do what I needed to do. Some people glide through life - at that point, I was like a stalled car. For a number of years, I felt completely pointless. The medication was supposed to calm my depressive feelings - which it did - but I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to shut me down altogether.

Then, in 2007, I met a wonderful man, K, and fell in love. To say that he changed my life for the better would not be to give him enough credit. He brought something out of me that had been lying dormant for years - he actually made me feel like I was a good person. I started to like myself again. My relationship with my parents improved dramatically, I started to make more friends, and I went back to my studies - I qualified as a TEFL teacher, and now I'm doing a degree through the Open University with a view to becoming a secondary school teacher one day. Four years ago, I wouldn't have believed that any of this was possible. The thing that changed was my mindset. Thanks to K, I stopped thinking of myself as a horrible person, and started to rise above the mental illness. I started to get better.

That's not to say that the depression has gone away. Far from it. My life is a long way from perfect right now. I think I'm in another 'stalled car' phase - having trouble getting out of bed before midday, struggling with job applications, barely even having the energy to get dressed some days. Some people don't understand that depression can be clinical, thinking that it must be linked to past tragedies - and for a lot of people, it is. I empathise with them. But in my case, the depression is almost entirely chemical, and when my brain isn't working right, there's very little I can do about it. At times like this, when I struggle to leave the house (even to do things I really want to do, like meeting friends), I have to remind myself that I've managed to overcome it in the past, and I can do it again.

But I really need the people who love me.

Welcome

I set up this blog ages ago, but I haven't written in it yet. No time like the present!

Anyway, this blog will mostly consist of my thoughts concerning depression, anxiety, bisexuality, writing, feminism, and anything else that comes into my mind. I'll also be posting some of my creative writing pieces, and occasionally recipes.


Why 'Purple Thoughts'?

A few reasons:

1. Purple is my favourite colour, and it's the colour of the blog (duh).

2. Depressed people are often described as 'feeling blue', but I think depression is more complex than that. Purple is a better colour for it.

3. This is the bisexual pride flag:

I hope you enjoy my blog. Call me Sashimi.