All ye who indulge in schadenfreude, gather round.
It’s not mental health awareness week/month/whatever, but alas, not everything is restricted to a particular time of year. I talk about this now because, as a third year student, the pressure when you have looming deadlines and a dissertation that will basically determine whether or not you just wasted £27,000, is crippling. In addition to everything that crippled you before university.
So understandably, a lot of us are faltering in the mental health department. I’m not saying that a lot of us suffer from mental illness, because a lot of us don’t. I have already spoken about how too many people claim ‘depression’ or ‘bipolar’ when they don’t actually suffer from these illnesses, but that doesn’t mean our mental health doesn’t suffer. Much like physical issues, our brain sometimes suffers
It often comes in many contradicting forms. Maybe you stay up until dawn, downing red bull and coffee for hours until you’re seeing shapes dancing around in front of you, telling you it’s time to go to bed or you’ll collapse. Maybe it’s rejecting all invitations to go out, go shopping, relax, because you have too much to do and you couldn’t possibly deal with the guilt you’ll feel when you get a horrible grade, because it’s obviously due to that one day you took off. Maybe you consistently study because it’s the only thing to distract your mind but at the same time it’s burning you out. Maybe it’s the tendency to sleep all day and all night because you have so much work to do that your brain and body just can’t deal. Maybe it’s going out all day everyday just to avoid the 5 deadlines you have next week. Maybe it’s people telling you you look sallow and tired and that you’re working too hard. Maybe it’s the fact that you can’t remember a time where you had the energy to be genuinely happy about life because life itself is begging to leave you.
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Tag: school
Bullying
So I only just heard about the Bradford kid who committed suicide, and it’s pushed me to talk. I feel like I’m desensitised to all the upsetting things I see on the news; when I hear of a death it rarely moves me, but this one did. Before this, I was writing a post on the Kim Kardashian incident, but after I read about this I realised I didn’t care. Who knows, maybe I’ll get back to it one day when I’m bored.
Right now I’m here to talk about a real life, normal boy who killed himself because of real life, normal bullying.
This is a child. An 11 year old boy who committed suicide. An 11 year old Asian boy. An 11 year old Asian, Muslim boy. According to that information, this community would have thought that suicide would be unthinkable for him. That’s why it struck me so hard.
I instantly put myself in this kids place and it made me think of something that’s wrong with older generations. Thick skin is something that non-white folk especially are often forced to have, and it’s something that is drilled into the minds of innocent kids. ‘We came here, we built a life, we evolved into something tough, don’t fuck it up by being soft.’
Asian families in particular have this thing, this idea that the kids need to be toughened up from birth. It’s something that we’re so proud of, but it has me wondering – at what cost?
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Arts
Today I finished a gruelling essay that, although made me want to die, I really enjoyed writing. The subject I wrote it on is something I am extremely passionate about and the only reason I regret not starting it weeks ago is because if I did, I would have had more time to to completely destroy whoever is marking my work (unless they’re voting Britain First…in which case they’ll fail me instantly). But I’m lazy, and that took control of me. So I have a bone to pick with those people who talk shit about those of us who study arts subjects at university. You know – literature, philosophy, religion, theatre, music, photography, social sciences etc.
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