a intro of sorts...

When I started this blog, I did not do it with the intention of being seen or viewed as a victim, or as someone to feel sorry for; when I posted that blog yesterday, it was simply with the intention of turning a statistic into a human being. I am the 1 in 10 people who have a mental illness.

Recently there has been a campaign running to make the General Public (whoever this abstract group is supposed to be) more aware of mental health issues. However, having a mental health problem is, I have discovered, quite like being in the closet. You have a feeling that if you tell people, they will treat you differently. How, you're unsure, but you know it's true.

I have had first hand experience of this; how ignorance can change peoples' view of you. Someone at work now treats me as I'm going to snap and kill everyone at any given moment, simply because I am wired to be more anxious than others. (And trust me, I have no desire to go on a killing spree.)

You are also not sure whether people will accept you or shun you because of something you cannot help. As someone who identifies herself as bisexual (although I personally despise the phrase) I can see the parallels.

So there we go. No-one needs to tip-toe around me, or treat me as though I might shatter. I won't, trust me. I'm a strong person. I just happen to have a few wrongly wired bits in my bonce.

It did occur to me with the little reactions I have had to the blog that I have not duly explained in any way any kind of background that may give this blog a context.

So here we go, a short (for me) introduction.

Sup. I was born in 1986 into a military family. That makes me 23, those of you who are bad at maths (or just lazy.). I grew up between England and Germany, with the one stint in Scotland. In my short life I have met literally thousands of people, most of whom I wouldn't recognise if they passed me in the street.

At a very young age it became extremely apparent I had absolutely no respect for any idea of social hierarchy. Even at kindergarten I refused to stay in the class I was told. I had no interest in learning what people told me I should know, so I'd walk out and go to another.
I remember once I was playing in a playpark in the Officer's Quarters when my dad was a sergeant; her father demanded I leave because he outranked mine. My response was "no, you should leave. You're too old to be here. This is a playpark, for kids. And besides, my dad says officers are wankers."

I announced my vegetarianism at the table at Christmas dinner at the age of 7. I distributed anti-McDonalds (because of deforestation, desecration of native resources, undermining local communities and rendering large areas of previous rainforest land barren) and anti-vivisection leaflets. I once refused to enter my school building for over a week because they didn't have vegetarian meals. I was vocal about global warming and other environmental causes, and kept in constant contact with groups of similar stances. I became a member of Greenpeace at the tender age of 9, and an active member at that. I was a member of many other groups as well.

I was mostly about the environment and animal rights for most of my childhood; it was only when I was about 10 and in my dad's hangar, where he was fixing fighter aircraft and I nearly sat on a warhead when I realised. These things...they kill people. I don't believe my dad is a bad person, I love my father. I loved and respected the people around me, but I struggled with the idea that they were somehow contributing to peoples' deaths. As I was growing up, bases I lived near were continually attacked by the IRA. People died out on missions. People came back were different, marked, damaged.

I saw wars destroying families. I saw people driven mad by actions forced upon them by a government of people whose names I had not heard of. People I did not know sat somewhere comfortably and made choices that caused rifts and problems.

So basically, I hated wars. I hated deaths caused by stupid, stupid "reasons". As I grew more aware and matured, this anger and rage stayed with me. Whether it's Iraq or Gaza or Sudan or Zimbabwe or any other conflicted place on the planet, I stand by the voiceless because we had no voice and no choice. I stand up for those who are silenced because when I was young I was treated with utter contempt for asking why. To question, back then, was seen as to betray; now I know that to question is the right thing to do.

So, I question everything. What I eat, what I wear, who makes what I wear, why I wear what I wear, what newspapers say, why they say it, what they are trying to achieve, digging into issues and trying to find out the reasons and what I can do. This is why I believe what I believe and I continue to strive for change; because I owe it to those who were affected and those who continue to be affected by things that you can help change if you only open your mouth and start to give a shit.

And that, my friends, is why I am a political being.

I know this blog has thus far often read as though I'm naïve, but trust me, when you grow up in the world I did, you are anything but naïve. I haven't been writing much for the last year; you would never believe that Confessions... used to exist somewhere else, would you?

Anyway, I think that's pretty good introduction. Questions? Refutes? Rebuttals? I'm open to hearing it all.

E x