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Release your anger
Release your mind
Release your job, release the time
Release your trade, release the stress
Release the love, forget the rest
~ Big Freedia
It’s the first day of summer and there’s a feeling of euphoria. Sunshine is exploding out of my fingertips and it’s magnetic, connected, radical. Strikes, summer solstice AND a new Beyoncé song that screams GAY that is telling us to release the trade? During Pride month? I know that’s right!
A general strike is looming and it’s about time. The small inconveniences we’ll face are nothing when the alternative is complacency that will lead to our deaths. How long can we let millionaire governments tell us to tighten our belts while they get richer? (to quote Secretary-General of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), Mick Lynch on the news yesterday). NHS workers and teachers are up next! We can’t really be afraid of system collapse when it was designed to let us literally die. Lights out with no electricity, freezing cold winters coming up when heating can no longer be afforded, na fuck this, riding it out is making it worse. I read today that £17m in public funds have been used to subsidise MPs meals - MPs, who are in the top 5% of earners, receiving around £84k a year? That’s just one fact out of 100 infuriating ones. Yeah, strikes are very warranted.
No coincidence, is it, that our rights to protest have been severely limited this year. Methods of peaceful protest that cause disruption can now earn you prison time (thanks to Priti Patel’s anti-protest public order bill which passed just this spring. Ah Priti Patel, the best example that it isn’t just representation that matters!) If a protest isn’t disruptive, it’s not a fucking protest, is it? They know that. They also know the fear they installed in us with the nationality and borders bill and their explanation of ‘deprivation of citizenship’, which also passed this year, which basically means they can strip you of your citizenship and leave you stateless without telling you (highly controversial and complex example but please see: groomed child Shamima Begum). Whilst it’s said its reserved for extreme cases of terrorism, this isn’t the case. In April, a non-verbal 17-year-old experiencing mental health issues was arrested by the transport police for alleged fare evasion on a train and was sent to a deportation centre near Gatwick, despite being a British born citizen who had never left the country - why? Literally because he was Black. He was gonna be deported. To WHERE??
Empire was evil and Empire is not history, it’s here now, and it can’t be hidden under a faux mask of civility, freedom of speech, vague and meaningless ‘British values’ or the monarchy or crumpets and tea and cute accents. We’re suffering. We’re suffering. We’re suffering. There still hasn’t been justice for Grenfell half a decade on and Iraqi, Afghan and Syrian refugees were put on an aircraft to Rwanda while Ukrainian refugees were offered homes and we know, we just know that there is only one reason for the stark difference in treatment there. All I’m saying is why isn’t there the option to welcome them all into our homes.
We’re on the road to utter totalitarianism but somehow I do feel euphoric for the first time this year. I don’t know why. Maybe because there’s no fear in it all burning down anymore. The worst is already happening, and the luxury of complacency isn’t one we have. I’m (almost, I have my days) past the feeling of needing to prove I’m a ‘good citizen’ who just deserves equality, head bowed with my hands out. I’m over having to say the obvious, that just because there are real valid and terrifying issues that deserve to be vocalised, screamed about, actually - that it would somehow mean I don’t feel British over anything else. I don’t think I should have to reiterate that every time in fear of the potential defensiveness of others who take it as personal criticism because they’re comfortable enough to not feel the same hurt, the same rage. The time for meekness is over. It’s gonna be a gay summer, a loud summer, a disruptive summer, a summer that could be the start of real liberation. I feel it in my fingertips.
*
There has to be liberation in our personal commitment to joy and a real strength in letting ourselves remain vulnerable in such a harsh climate. Vulnerability has been my number one word in therapy of late - contending with it, hating it and finally surrendering to it. Inner city living doesn’t make it easy to be soft in any capacity, but as I approach my seventh month of pregnancy (wut?), I’m accepting that surrender is the key. Again, for me at least, complacency is a luxury of the past and bottled up anger was just making me unwell.
In the last half of the previous decade I found that when I didn’t feel in control of much, when I didn’t feel like I had much power, I could find both of those things in my body. Mobility, endurance, stamina, the ability to sprint and contort myself in yoga gave me something. In pregnancy I lost it all (and gained) - the swollen feet, the absolute lack of mobility, the disorientating shift in my centre of gravity, my core strength fading as I felt my abdominal muscles split in two and my linea nigra darkened and my ribs painfully expanded. Pelvic pain, horrific nerve pain, the shock of the first time I peed when I sneezed, the breathlessness from the anemia… Oh yeah, it’s very humbling. It’s like the death of yourself, but nobody notices while you wait for your own reincarnation, and nobody else but you is grieving you, because they don’t know you’ve died. Contenting with loneliness on another level. With none of the usual vices to turn to for escapism at my disposal anymore and my body becoming absolutely foreign, all that was left was for me to grapple with controlling my mind, the voice inside my head. So little else can be controlled. That can be applied to the bigger picture though, can’t it? Everyday we live under an illusion of stability. So when that’s taken from under your feet, when there’s nothing left, the idea of it all crumbling isn’t so scary. Demolishing it and rebuilding it from scratch seems like the only option. Referring to my mind, my body, and the system, tbf.
Summer always feels like a rebirth. June 21 has always felt like a very special day, a personal day, dare I say a sacred one? A day to celebrate the joy of basking in the light. A day of pure energy that can inspire dreams of real change. Food always tastes better - watermelon and mangos, exotic fruits bloom. Summer always brings good music, good art. A G-A-Y banger from Beyoncé, a dance album from Drake for the girlies, a Renaissance, a revival of the feel-good era of 90s bops is here. As I push myself to change, my mind clings onto the joy of nostalgia, and so I’m all for the 90s revival of music. It was a good time, wasn’t it? At least that’s how I remember it.
Oddly, as my finish line to motherhood gets closer and closer, I feel more and more childlike. I remember the most random things - recording your favourite song on the radio, the landline, sitting at the back of the car, the first one2one mobile phone, the Spice Girls, B*Witched, TLC before Left Eye died and Oasis when they were good. Tupac’s bandana and Aaliyah’s side fringe, and copying both of these things. The Batchelors Pasta’n’Sauce mac n cheese that I’d make when I got home from school. The horrendous screech of dial-up internet. Going to high school at the dawn of the millennium and getting tooth gems done at the nail shop for £3, diamond tights, wearing dummies in our hair that was slicked with too much gel and layering Argos necklaces with clown and teddy pendants that had moveable limbs and coloured faux gemstones for eyes. Maybe that’s it, maybe that’s what causes the euphoria - because summer symbolises youth, it signifies energy. The long days of light remind me of something immortal, it reminds me that joy is possible, even when you know in your heart that it will always be fleeting, you also know that it will always return.
There’s a different tone to this piece and I’m LIVING for it!
Bring on the summer!!! 🌞 Great read Maz 🎉 and also congratulations, not long left 🥰💞