THE END OF AUGUST
Every year I fear the end of August. It’s not the slow end of summer I fear but rather my state of mind. It’s a difficult time and it never fails to trip me up. The worst that could happen to me happened late August many years ago. Every August since has enclosed me like a thick fog.
Living with trauma is complex. There’s constant stress and destabilisation. It hinders relationships, work and just about everything else. It compounds and when one thing goes wrong so will the next. It’s a life I never asked for.
What I did ask for is help.
Across three countries and many more places I’ve had caseworkers, a guardian, psychologists, social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, whoever else. Countless hours and who knows just how much money went into it.
The countries I’ve lived in all have well-established and accessible healthcare systems. Yet even within those structures there is a frequent failure to support those whose stories and identities are neither linear nor easy to define. I am one of those people.
August never became breezy for me.
Over the years I have always blamed myself and to some extent I still do. If it doesn’t work with person A, person B and not person C through Z, surely it can’t be the mistake of all of them? The error has to be mine.
I’m not easy, life has hardened me and I’m well aware I can be a bit of a handful. I’ve gone to war with countless people. I refuse to just go along.
But I am also a person of colour in a largely white society. I am a queer person measured on both a binary and heteronormative scale. I am neurodivergent in a neurotypical environment. I am an atheist having to manoeuvre (pseudo-)christian values.
I am someone who can’t stand injustice in a world that revolves around it.
I am somebody whose body and mind have experienced that much violence; most of what others take for granted will always be alien to me.
Just about everything I am is something most others are not, no matter how human I am too. This is not a choice I made.
Few people seem capable of understanding this and there are even fewer systems that can accommodate it.
Is this my mistake?
I still struggle to acknowledge it might not be. I have always been told I am the problem and, frankly, sometimes I am. I have caused trouble and shown my frustration. I’ve never been aggressive but I’ve sure been angry. It takes a lot for my stoic self to act out in any way but if you ignore my reality long enough it might just happen. Fear and despair bring out the worst in me.
Fear and despair left unheard will also make me doubt myself, again and again.
Others ignore what is most important to me. The things that could make a difference. It is just not recognised. Initially the ignorance isn’t even deliberate. We can’t all connect with everything. We don’t all live in the same world. Some people, however, you would expect to recognise it, to anticipate an unexpected story. To step outside their own bubble. Their failure to understand comes with consequences beyond a torturous dynamic.
If I don’t push back hard I am made irrelevant in my own life.
My refusal to accept this makes me the problem.
Others can’t solve everything. They can’t take away the scars or change laws which cause harm. They can’t hand out a do-over or find a better pair of parents. They can’t fix the whole of society and they certainly can’t make things magically ‘better’.
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing they could do either.
Instead, the system designed to help actively causes harm. It refuses to listen, to learn and to readjust to the individual. To the convenience of the many it ignores that we all live in a world which impacts some of us far greater than it does others.
It’s all too easy to become a redundancy to society.
Right now there is no one. Over the years I’ve found my own coping mechanisms, to carve out something resembling a life. A simulacrum, perhaps, but at least there’s a vague sense of agency now.
For some the harm of support is far greater than its benefit.
The end of August is near.
LIEVEN // PAPER // MASTODON // CC BY-NC-SA