My Angry Brain (in a rambling post)

I tend to go through fits and starts with my relationship with the world at large – often this has a huge correlation to how much media I am allowing access to my brain at any given time. Obviously when I am suffering from problems with my bipolar then there is a whole different spectrum of how I view the goings on around me, but for this piece I am writing please take it as given it is all coming from when I am ‘sound of mind’ (now that is a phrase we could debate over for some time right?!)

There are moments, although they tend to be brief and are certainly becoming few and far between, where I almost hit Pollyanna mode in my being. The world is beautiful, everything glistens, STOP – look at that bird tweeting and that puppy frolicking. I see the good in everything and I have hope for humanity, remembering there is more good people out there than bad. I remember after the Boston bombing being so upset by the devastation and somebody saying to me that when such an event happens, yes, you will look on the one or two people who have carried out such an atrocity, but you need to focus on all of the other people who are running into danger to help others, all the good souls raising their hands to help. So the Pollyanna times are excellent times, happy Dan floating about in her bubble, then I’ll go ahead and do something stupid like turning on Question Time…

Question Time, well, that tends to bring about a mood all of its own making, I don’t know of many things that make me feel the way Question Time can. It is like a cocktail of emotions, rage, laughter, despair, frustration, endless question over Dimbleby’s inability to rain some voices in and of course – each week – who will be sitting in the c*nts chair this time? (WHAT?? It’s Nigel Farage again you say? Never! That would be cynical tactics for viewing figures and they wouldn’t do that) It seems sad that one program can have such an immediate effect on my feelings on the world at large but there we go, it can do. I have now taken to avoiding it most weeks, why self-harm?

There has been a lot of research carried out regarding how desensitised we have now become as an audience to world news/violence/shocking events. In the past the banner appearing on your TV screen with ‘BREAKING NEWS – school shooting’ would have stopped all in their tracks, although we still pause to read the headline and think how awful the situation is, it is often followed along with the thought of ‘oh, another one’. I would like a button to control some of my own emotions, I am one of those annoying people who seem to *feel* everything, I can’t cut off very well. Your friends sisters aunty has just recently lost her dog? My gut will wrench with sadness and I will go to bed that night upset and worried about how she is feeling. Due to this I sometimes avoid the news, it’s a lot to go through and there seems to be periods when it is like a relentless storm, one awful story raining down on us after the other. I will then go to the other end of the scale from my Pollyanna mode, I see no hope for the world, I don’t know why people bother trying as everything is clearly going to the dogs. I see apathy everywhere when I want to see people up in arms fighting against – well, what do I even pick at the moment, the government has provided a long, long list of topics for us all to be mad about.

This is how I started turning apathetic myself, it was a slippery slope, until recently a new feeling has been rising within me. ANGER. Real, burning anger. The kind that will have me awake until 3 a.m. having imaginary arguments in my head with people I have never even met. Anger that has had me getting kicked out of a taxi because I couldn’t let an ignorant comment lie. Anger that will have me lecturing friends about the inequalities I see around me.

I had a conversation today with a friend that has led me to writing this. Luckily no lecture was given, I was not climbing onto my high horse, it was a discussion over mutually held beliefs. There are many things making me angry at the moment, I won’t go into them all, hey, we can save that for another entertaining read right? But here is what is making me boil over at the moment, here is what is making me want to stop strangers in the street and ask ‘have you been thinking about this?’

Violence towards women. HAVE you thought about it lately? You know what, a lot of you may well have done because there is a huge, huge chance a reader will have suffered from it. You might not have thought about it but you might have took preventative measures because of it, how many women leave their friends of an evening with a parting ‘text me when you get home please’ and then make the journey with their keys clutched between their fists just in case they need the self-defence. How many times have we watched a report on the news about another woman being attacked, and while the attacker remains at large women are advised to remain in doors on an evening for their safety. HEY – how about asking men to remain in doors for once and work harder on making the outside world a safe place for both of the sexes?

At least two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner, this amounts to a third of all female homicides in a year. One in every 4 women will suffer from domestic abuse, one in every 6 women will be raped. When you truly think about these figures they are beyond shocking, every person in this country will have come into contact, work with, have a friend or family member who has been abused or raped. You will often hear people complain that these women didn’t ask for help, that they stayed with these people – well yes, that is all part of the abuse, that doesn’t mean we stop trying to do anything about this. And yes, there will be the argument out there of ‘not all men..’ to dismiss this, but my god, it is a LOT of men going out there and committing these crimes. Sometimes given in response is the point ‘these things happen to men too’, yes, they do, that doesn’t make the above ok. The men who this happens to should be given help and be supported also, but there is no denying that this is, by a large margin, an act of male violence against women. Just look at the recent statistics given on female genital mutilation, over the last couple of months it has become practice to record cases of FGM in hospitals. Every month for the last three months over 500 young women have suffered from this barbaric tradition.

This violence is out there and happening every single day, and it makes me boil when I hear people say how we are there now with equality, how women have took it too far and we have it peachy. REALLY?? Because to me, when half the population have a one in six chance of being sexually assaulted by a member of the other half, it is not equality as I know it. When one in four women will go home, the place we are meant to feel safe, and be beaten and psychologically abused, when each week two of those women will be killed, tell me then how we have no further to go with women’s rights.

Something has gone horribly wrong out there, and I don’t claim to be an expert by any long shot of the imagination, I don’t have the answers, I just think that surely instead of just trying to mend the broken bones, catch the abuser and stop the torment, we need to look at the root of the problem. We need to educate, we need to find out how to stop this being a problem we almost seem to accept as having to live with, we need women to get ANGRY and demand their right to live free from fear.