recovery and resistance

The election result was, for me, a bit of a shock. I’d felt if we could persuade Labour to centre their program on saving the NHS, no one in their right mind would forfeit the NHS for Brexit, given that Brexit is such a stupid idea anyway. So, the failure to smash through the tabloids’ smokescreens for the oligarchs is why we woke up to Labour strongholds toppling to Leavers, and by the time we vote next Johnson’s crew will have stitched up the right to peaceful assembly and protest, online fact checking etc etc.

It felt devastating. If I hadn’t just started a new relationship I’m not sure I would have been able to come up with a survival strategy. I’m always at my best when thinking fast how to save someone else from despair, and the combination of my PIP assessment on the following Monday, the feeling of my disbelieving anger and grief at England’s [and to some extent Wales’s] stupidity and then fear for the beloved made me make a paradigm shift.

So, my plan, formed in a flash, but now honed by a fortnight of thought, research, consultation is that we will move to Scotland, and hopefully make a safer home there. We will use our existing connections to make a home that hopefully will feel full of possibility rather than an exile. We will build a network of support for those still in far right England, lobby the Scottish Assembly to support the abandoned and vulnerable people of the ever growing underclass, host visitors and people on retreat, have fundraisers and other solidarity and awareness raising events.

During that fortnight, Johnson has announced cutting support for the disabled, a ‘crackdown’ on the Roma and other travellers, parts of the NHS being sold off. The chronically ill, the disabled, LGBTQ, people from minority ethnic groups are all expendable, as are refugees, migrants and people from the EU who never experienced the hostility well known to the Windrush generation, the Bengalis who came across from Uganda, anyone from Pakistan… During that fortnight newspapers have published articles of advice for people rendered suicidal by the election result – does that not point to how dangerous the decisions are? Like the Jews after Kristalnacht, I feel the writing is on the wall, and I can read it. I am also in a position to respond, we are agreed on the need to respond, to recover and resist, once we are in a place of safety.

 

It will take at least 6 months to prepare, not least because the beloved is waiting [again] to hear when her gender confirmation surgery operation will take place. She has been struggling with increasing dysphoria as years of waiting have built up, and one of her worst fears is that with the hostile environment confirmed for another election term, and the NHS to be privatised, the operation will be held up again, or worse cancelled. Most transgender people experience extreme stress via the gatekeepering the Gender Clinics impose, and at first I felt that the system was just poorly organised, but lately it really does seem to take little account of how desperate people become – pre-op suicide rates are high, post-op suicide rates very low, the surgery helps enormously with everyday dysphoria [and it is everyday, every visit to the toilet, bathroom, shower, every time someone stares, shouts, harasses. Sometimes during what should be happy times…

 

The time of preparation for her operation and recuperation are also a time for building the plan, making links, building connections, winding down commitments here and clutterclearing. Once upon a time I could boast that all my possessions went in the back of a hatchback car, with a friend driving and a cat in her carrier on my knee in the front. Now… now, I have a crowded one bedroom flat to reduce to the needed, useful and beautiful. I’ve done it before, it can actually be very pleasing to release unused and ignored items to new lives with other people, and I’ve started with the easiest – books 🙂 Once I have the new camera/ memory card reader/ new laptop set up sorted I can photograph fabrics for ebay, which is a handy way of fundraising too. As the Chinese saying has it, Great enterprises begin with small steps.

To everyone on the Gregorian calendar, Happy New Year! May 2020 bring better vision, a better idea of where to look for inspiration as we lick our wounds, better dreams and plans.