Stepping Backwards - Mini Rant

Over the centuries wars have been fought, campaigns have been launched and banners have been waved; all in the name of our rights.

Our right to be free, the women's right to vote; freedom of speech; decriminalisation of homosexuality; the woman's rights to her own body; the list is endless.  Although some issues are still being argued and there are rights that are still to be won, we have been taking steps in the right direction over recent decades.

 

I look around now though in 2012 and in some areas, we seem to be taking steps back.  The Big Brother society that George Orwell wrote about in 1984 is not a merely a figment of imagination, it is in some respects, peeking around the corner. 

Freedom of speech for example, which day by day seems to turning into freedom of speech, but only for nice people, or people who agree with your point of view.  But then, we are plebs aren't we?  What do we know?

Then we have religion and it's interference with the State.  I don't dispute anyone's right to have religious beliefs, but I would argue against any one religion having influence over the running of the country.  Although I'm an atheist, I'm sure that Muslims, Sikhs etc would also wholly disagree with the Church having any influence or capacity over laws and how the country is run. 

I saw the story of a 10 year old boy recently who, 10 months after joining, was removed from the Scouts on the basis that he wouldn't swear the Scout Promise of "doing their duty by God".  It seems that in order to learn to tie knots that you need religion.

Be who you want to be and say what you think is slowly but surely turning into "Say the right thing, have the right opinion, know your position as a pleb and be religious or else".

Personally, I say what I think and if "they" don't like it, they can shove it.  If that makes me guilty of hate crime, well then so be it.

 

 

I Do Believe in Fairies!

Without wishing to sound about a hundred years old (I’m 33); my childhood was in the time before computers and IPhones, before the X-Box and Nintendo DS.  My childhood was made up of story books and playing in the garden, of making up stories and watching Peter Pan.  I was convinced that fairies were real and that if I believed hard enough, they would magically appear. 

I’m not sure if I ever really believed in Father Christmas or anything along those lines (baby atheist in the making?) but I wholehearted believed that magic was real, if I could only find it. 

You are allowed to think like that when you are a young child.  I wish we still did.  I miss that feeling of absolute certainty in my heart that anything was possible, if you only believed it, even fairies.

Something happened this weekend that took me right back to my old five year old self, and it was nothing short of magical.  I went to the park this weekend with my dogs and whilst walking along a leaf covered pathway, with trees on each side of me I suddenly stopped.  Right in front of my eyes was a leaf, immobile in mid air, floating as if by magic.

Although my logical brain soon explained it as hanging from an unseen spider thread, for those fifteen seconds before I just gazed upon that leaf in total wonderment and happiness.  The five year old little girl that was once me was shouting inside me “It’s real, it’s real!” and jumping up and down. 

When I realised that it must be hanging from a spider’s threat a small part of me was gutted.  I didn’t want the logical explanation.  That tiny part of me that believed in fairies at five years old wanted it to be real.  But, of course, it wasn’t.

Now at 33 of course I don’t still believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden or that leaves can magically float in the air.  I’m far too cynical.  But you know what?  Part of me wishes I still did.  Life was far less complicated then.

So, just this once, as a salute to the five year old me,

 

There, that feels much better.

Prison Break

I read a post the other day by The Bloggess entitled "Sometimes Prisons can be Beautiful".

I have been reading her blog for about a year now.  The recommendation I was given was "She's funny, a bit "off" but in a wonderful way and has her own mental issues, a bit like you, but different ones".  I HAD to take a look.

Her blog was the first I had ever read.  I had already started my own, but I was at that time coming from an angle of just loving to write, and was writing purely about things that interested.  It never occurred to me to write about the personal stuff that you "shouldn't" talk about.  The fact that sometimes, I can be a little "off".  That I had issues.  All the things that you are supposed to keep hidden.

This particular post got me to thinking about how in some ways, we all create our own type of prisons.  Not the type with brick walls and bars at the windows, but ones that we have created in our minds, where the rules can be just as restrictive.  Where you are both the prison guard and also the person in the cell.

These type of prisons are more complicated than the physical kind.  To break out of them you don't need to scale a wall or bribe a prison guard.  The rules are of your own making, and the walls shift.

I've always known that I had a wall up.  What I realise now is that it wasn't just a wall.  It was a prison of my own construction which surrounded me, with it's own rules, all of which was constructed not because I was bad, but to protect me.  A cocoon.  

The thing about a cocoon is that at first, you feel safe in it, but eventually it becomes stifling and too close for comfort.  I was being smothered in a prison of my own making.

Compared to others, my journey is easy.  I created the walls around me, I drew up the rules, I can destroy them.

I don't suffer from depression or anxiety.  I thankfully don't have that daily battle sometimes just to get outside of your own front door, or have the need to hide in the bathroom when in the presence of others.  But reading the blogs of the people that do has gives me inspiration to improve my own life because if they can do it, I damn sure can too.

Ladies of the blogging world, from one bat shit crazy woman to another, I salute you.  You inspire me.