Unfinished Solidarities

N is a seemingly quiet, perceptive woman in her late 20s whose only caveat before she came in for her first therapy appointment was to ask that she be the last client of the evening. She didn’t fill her intake form which is a preliminary information gathering sheet that helps me get some basic medical and personal history of clients/patients before the appointment in order to better understand them.

A lot of clients either forget or need several reminders to fill it before an appointment. Nothing unusual there. N dropped me an email and asked me if it was ok for her to verbally give an intake when she came to the clinic. I agreed.

We began our session with a cup of tea; she seemed apprehensive, uncomfortable. Again, nothing unusual for first timers in therapy. I assumed it was the sudden exposure to the contemplative silence of a therapeutic setting. Suddenly she burst forth with a single, shaking sentence –“Ma’am, I have to tell you about my job.” My assumption was that she perhaps was unemployed and maybe needed pro bono help or wanted to inquire about sliding scale payments in which clients pay as per financial wherewithal per session. Before I could ask anything, she sighed – “I work as an escort. I am not sure if you counsel people like me. I am sorry if I am wasting your time.”

“People like me” is a phrase that can carry such translucent contradictions; evident yet indistinct. A person using it either feels mousetrapped, isolated in their identity or very sui generis. The only response that felt suitable in that moment was to sit back and listen rather than assume what was N’s story.

Over a period in time as I have gotten to know her, I reckon she is a rarity among those who use sex work in India as their main source of income. N works on her own, can exert some autonomy and makes choices based on her own discretion when it comes to her clientele. This has not come easy to her. She is a high-school dropout who was slung headfirst in Bombay’s chaotic riddle when she was barely 16. The map to her present has been involute. Over the years as she moved from being a dancer in one of Bombay’s infamous dance bars to her current profile of being what she calls a date-for-pay. She is incredibly smart and she has taken time and effort to educate herself on her rights even though the realistic expression of those rights is usually negligible and compromised in a country that pivots on patriarchal supremacy dehumanizing and delegitimizing the personhood of women.

Accessing mental health help is already a thorny path in most parts of the world. Common cultural stigmas, limited funding, poor practitioner-to-patient ratios, disorganized psychiatric epidemiology and a widespread inclination towards a pathologizing, purely bio-medical model that often doesn’t factor psychosocial causation for mental and emotional wellness all contribute to this quagmire. This is especially flagrant in the Global South where poverty, climate apocalypse and increasing ethno-fascist regimes have impaired an already derelict public health infrastructure, if at all one call it that.

“In South Asia, depressive disorders accounted for 9.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 6.8–13.2 million) or 577.8 (95% UI: 399.9–778.9) per 100,000 population in 2016. Of these, major depressive disorders (MDD) accounted for 7.8 million DALYs (95% UI: 5.3–10.5 million). India generated the largest numbers of DALYs due to depressive disorders and MDD, followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan.”

The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Ogbo, Mathsyaraja, Koti, Perez & Page)

The high prevalence of depression-spectrum conditions cause a massive overall health challenge to physical well being leading to increased co-morbidity for diabetes, coronary diseases, poor infant mortality rates and neo-natal health, increased self-harm and suicidal ideation as well as substance abuse. This complex weave is rendered more inelastic due to prolonged wait time for getting any reliable medical assistance and a general lack of affordability. This is exacerbated when you are positioned at the intersection of caste, gender, class and sexual orientation in such a way that disenfranchisement is means to keep an electoral imbalance for cheap political wins.

Sex work till date carries its own taboos irrespective of how progressive a society claims to be. While studying for a forensic course, I was always appalled by how victims of “serial offenders” especially murderers who started their trajectory by attacking sex workers were referred to as “high risk” as if the nature of their work was solely responsible for the inhumane treatment meted out to them, not the internalised misogyny of the those who committed the violence.

In a no-nonsense essay, “How being a sex worker affected my mental health”, British sex worker and activist who uses the pseudonym Mitzi Poesener wrote -

“However, contrary to popular view of sex work, it is not a one way ticket to a breakdown. The difference between us and workers in other industries is that when we seek help we are asked to look at the ways we’ve kept ourselves out of poverty as shameful.”

N’s hesitation towards revealing her profession became more palpable when she described her attempts at visiting a psychiatrist while in the throes of a heavy depressive spiral brought about by her mother’s death a few years ago. She was both mentally and physically violated in a place designated to be refuge away from judgment. This had put her off from seeking any further help till, wait for it, a regular client of hers convinced her to try therapy again and passed her my details. Apparently, he had a significant social media presence and that’s how he’d chanced upon me. She researched me for days before she called my practice for an appointment.

The National Human Rights Commission of India has recently issued an advisory that now lists sex workers as informal workers in India. This move came in the wake of COVID 19 and also to take cognizance of the fact that a lot of sex workers in India are from marginalised sections of the society. The real-time impact of this declaration is something we can only wait and assess over time. A close friend who works towards providing affordable healthcare to sex workers in remote, often neglected red-light districts in two-tier and three-tier Indian cities is not as jubilant about this new development because they believe that systemic corruption coupled with a pervasive casteist, sexist bent of our society won’t let such proliferation make any real dents. Their pessimism has its own historicity.

There is also the more vicious and embittering side of this coin which involves human trafficking, sex tourism and forced prostitution that often sweeps up the most defenseless amongst us. Young girls, particularly from oppressed communities (e.g. lower castes in India or BIPOC and immigrants elsewhere) are often sold into flesh trade and these rackets stretch across a vast geopolitical radius. Socio-economic disparities are growing as capitalism fails to realise most of its promises. Once again, there is limited community-focused work on rehabilitation for those who have experienced these atrocities.

In a study titled “Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting”, the researchers drew a valid and significant conclusion –

Women in sex work faced disproportionate social and health inequities compared to the general population.

Evidence-informed interventions tailored to sex workers that address intersections between trauma and mental health should be further explored, alongside policies to foster access to safer workspaces and health services.

The key challenges to mental health help for sex workers can be listed as follows –

Compound Stigma– Even trained professionals often show stringent biases stiffened by inflexible echo chambers in which they exist. It is harrowing for someone to wade through all the aforementioned complexities that make mental health care usually unreachable to then face reproach or flippant remarks about the nature of their work or worse, character. Clients of mine have narrated abdominal experiences of dealing with GPs, psychiatrists and psychologists that bordered on uninformed, invasive and prejudiced/small-minded abuse. In a world that often invisibilizes people who engage in consensual sex work or, worse, makes them feel chronically unsafe, trusting a professional is an act of courage. This courage extinguishes itself when the professional is unable to remove themselves from a regressive and essentialist understanding of sex and sexuality. For example, a former sex worker and single mother who visited a local hospital for guidance about what she believed to be PTSD and vaginismus, she was repeatedly chided about her past just because she chose to be honest while providing her medical history.

Affordability & Access – Sex work– for a significant percentage of people who willingly engage in it– is still an unsteady source of regular income. If you are not covered by sufficient insurance which again is hard to access if you are primarily working as a freelancer within an irregular setup, being able to find a reliably inexpensive psychiatric or therapeutic intervention is often a pipe dream.

Individualizing of Harm – The most popular contemporary models for assessing mental health tends to lean heavily towards a biomedical model that has its uses but often doesn’t make enough space for psychosocial factors involved in a person’s suffering. One can’t deny that neurochemical and biological markers are relatively important when discussing mental health and illness but we need to be more receptive to the formulation around social inequities linked to race, class, caste, gender and sexuality based discriminations that dent people’s wellbeing on several levels. The DSM or the Diagnostic Statistic Manual which of often used by mental health practitioners to code and diagnose mental illness is a debated creed and for good reason but still it considers/includes both disorder/disease and distress models of mental health. Yet, there is a disproportionate attention paid to pathology where a person’s wellness or illness is often attributed to faulty wiring on an individual level v/s ecology where a person’s response to acute and persistent exposure to debilitating circumstances is relegated to the back-burner.

Marginalisation – Queer and trans folks are further penalised for engaging in sex work and often experience the most dreadful consequence – an ever looming threat to their lives. Fighting for a dignified acceptance of identity is compounded by limited vocational options that respect the whole human being. In a report published by National Center for Transgender Equality, it was noted that in the US nearly 40% of the respondents were denied shelter when homeless and almost 60% reported that they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives. In India, the presence of caste further stigmatizes a transgender person’s right to safety and acceptance. This often enables hyper-sexualization of transgender identities by cisfolks to devastating consequences. Till date, there is little to no inclusion about trans rights in most mental health syllabi used in colleges in India. Queer theorists and academics are working to change this but it is slow. Most research around their health and wellbeing is often carried under a cis gaze as well.

The sizable role played by law enforcement’s frequent viciousness against those in sex work is also undeniable. Most sex workers report frequently barbaric encounters with members of the police force. There have been various news stories and investigative journalism pieces that refer to collusion by members of such agencies in sex trafficking rings.

Sex work is a complex conversation that can’t take place if we begin viewing its entire existence with a jaundiced eye. It involves precarity for those who participate in it. There are evident dangers to mental health and wellness for sex workers but let us also understand and pay attention to how much of that is caused by social prejudice against sex and sexuality. On the one hand, independent sex workers who engage is mutually consented activities are pathologized, limited rehabilitation is available for those women/persons who have been rescued from illegal sex trade that festers across the landscape of the Global South.

Mental health practitioners need to educate themselves and be open to learning as they go. Accessibility for on-time healthcare is a matter of human rights. Antipathy cloaked in “traditionalism” is an offshoot of social conditioning and it needs to be disassembled. This has to be a process that rests on unconditional compassion, not a one-time event hinged on dubious charity. Challenging our own programming as therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, our implicit scripts built on vague morality and questioning the lack of support for folks merely on account of their profession is only the entry point of this change. Centering the needs of our clients in therapy is the first rule of therapy. This shouldn’t be forgotten or compromised.

Citations:

The burden of depressive disorders in South Asia, 1990–2016: findings from the global burden of disease study (Felix Akpojene Ogbo, Sruthi Mathsyaraja, Rajeendra Kashyap Koti, Janette Perz & Andrew Page) https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-018-1918-1

How being a sex worker affected my mental health (Mitzi Poesener, Dazed Digital)

https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/35938/1/how-being-a-sex-worker-affected-my-mental-health

Criminalisation of clients: reproducing vulnerabilities for violence and poor health among street-based sex workers in Canada—a qualitative study (A Krüsi, K Pacey, L Bird, C Taylor1, J Chettiar, S Allan, D Bennett, J S Montaner, T Kerr, K Shannon)

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/6/e005191.full

Psychiatric morbidity among female commercial sex workers (Marboh Goretti Iaisuklang and Arif Ali) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5806326/

Burden and correlates of mental health diagnoses among sex workers in an urban setting (Nitasha Puri, Kate Shannon, Paul Nguyen & Shira M. Goldenberg) https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-017-0491-y

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Scherezade Siobhan is an award-winning psychologist, writer, educator and a community catalyst who founded and runs The Talking Compass — a therapeutic space dedicated to providing mental counseling services and decolonizing mental health care. Her work is published or forthcoming in Medium, Berfrois, Quint, Vice, HuffPost, Feministing, Jubilat, The London Magazine among others. She is the author of “Bone Tongue” (Thought Catalog Books, 2015), “Father, Husband” (Salopress, 2016) and “The Bluest Kali” ( Lithic Press, 2018). Find her @zaharaesque on twitter. Send her chocolate and puppies — nihilistwaffles@gmail.com. Tweet at her @zaharaesque.

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"Girls her age, usually do these things when they are seeking attention" the words coming out of the doctor's lips as my mom stood by my hospital bed gripping my hand worried. 

It was another day, another set of …. attacks? I didn’t know what was wrong with me, the doctor couldn’t be bothered to figure out what was wrong, coughing it up to being a cry for attention. My parents were worried out of their minds, as to why on some days they couldn’t wake me up for school. Why would I lose consciousness and wake up feeling like I ran 2 consecutive 10K marathons? Did I die? Was I dying? So many unanswered questions. 

Well, 6 doctors later, a misdiagnosis, multiple google searches, a series of tests, and a few bruises, we finally gave the culprit a name… Epilepsy. 

Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder caused by irregular brain activity, the hallmark of which is recurrent, unprovoked seizures. A seizure is characterized as being unprovoked when it is a result of an unknown or irreversible medical condition. The seizures in epilepsy may be related to a brain injury or a family tendency, but often the cause is completely unknown. The word “epilepsy" does not indicate anything about the cause of the person's seizures or their severity. Many people with epilepsy have more than one type of seizure and may have other symptoms of neurological problems as well. 

Although the symptoms of a seizure may affect any part of the body, the electrical events that produce the symptoms occur in the brain. The location of that event, how it spreads, how much of the brain is affected, and how long it lasts all have profound effects. These factors determine the character of a seizure and its impact on the individual. Having seizures and epilepsy can affect one’s safety relationships, work, and other daily activities. However, public perception and treatment of people with epilepsy are often bigger problems than actual seizures.

Persons who suffer from recurrent seizures have long been misunderstood and given false reputations. Many countries still believe that it’s a sign of demon possession and mental instability. The negative connotation associated with the illness causes more harm than the illness itself. Many persons are made to feel that they cannot be a contributing member of society. This is a huge misconception as, like other chronic illnesses, Epilepsy can be treated. 

November is Epilepsy Awareness month and like every other horrible disease, the goal is to raise awareness, find funding for research, and provide resources. However, due to the negativity and ignorance that surrounds it; Epilepsy warriors are fighting to End the Stigma. 

End the stigma that says 

“Because you have epilepsy you cannot go to school”

“Because you have epilepsy you cannot manage responsibility” 

“Because you have epilepsy you cannot work”

I spent years not only dealing with the personal struggle that the illness causes, but also unkind treatment from society.  As an Epilepsy fighter my goal is to educate, to prevent another teenage girl to be bombarded with comments plagued by ignorance; for the families whose dynamic has shifted; for the strangers on the street to be aware of first aid. 1 in 26 people will be diagnosed with epilepsy and there are 65 million persons currently living with the disease. It is not a rare condition.

I get it, the unknown is scary. But join in the fight to end the stigma. We aren’t insane, incapable, or weak….. We are strong, worthy, and valid. #EndtheStigma

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Ashleigh is a recent graduate of the University of the West Indies with a degree in Political Science. She suffers from Epilepsy and as such she has become an advocate for the cause. She is extremely passionate about workplace equity for all and spends her free time relating to her peers on issues of sexism, racism and ageism. She currently works as a digital marketer and uses her platform to create content that spreads awareness of various issues. You can check out more from her at Instagram @ashlerenaee.

Raffela Mancuso on the Body Revolution & Passing the Mic

“When it comes to intersectionality, it is also important to remember that body positivity is for marginalized groups. ”

Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and talk. First, let’s talk about you! 

I am a 24-year-old Psychology student in Alberta. I am a mental health advocate, although I’ve also been called a social media disruptor, and I used to consider myself a body positivity advocate but I don’t associate with that title anymore. I was only diagnosed five years ago [in regards to mental health] even though I have lived with it my entire life, and I decided to start using social media for advocacy two years ago after being turned away from mental health services on campus. I started speaking about mental health on social media, which turned into body image, because everything is so connected.

What are you proud of in your contributions to this movement so far, and how did you decide to make them? 

I would say sharing my own lived experience because talking about mental health is so heavily stigmatized. I am not the only one thinking these things but everyone is so afraid to speak up because of the backlash we will receive. It keeps me going when people message me and tell me they’ve felt the same way or experienced the same things, but never had the courage to say them until now. I don’t want to center myself within the body positivity movement because of the privileges that I do experience. 

I wanted my contribution to be about changing the way we think. Being part of a community feels good and everyone wants the sense of belonging, so I completely understand why people may get upset when I talk about redirecting body positivity back to its original origins…but what people are missing is that you can still love yourself while simultaneously acknowledging this term [body positivity] that we have stolen. We don’t need to steal another thing – we can use another term! A lot of people feel hurt that they can’t ‘join the club’…but you can still go through your own acceptance process and acknowledge what other people are experiencing. Your own self-acceptance journey should not erase more marginalized people in the process. 

Let’s talk more about the body positivity movement and why it is important to acknowledge its origins.

Many people think that being a body positivity advocate is synonymous with self-love or with plus size people in general. It’s important to realize that the body positivity movement was created for more marginalized bodies – especially fat people of color, Black women, queer people, trans people, and people with disabilities. Today the movement is all about self-love and being positive about your body, but originally it was intentioned for equal rights and marginalization. It’s critical to de-center the self when it comes to the body positivity movement and picking another term to incorporate your personal self-love and body acceptance journey. It definitely doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of the movement either – it’s not an ‘or’ situation, it’s an ‘and’ situation! You may face certain challenges and still benefit from other privileges in society that other people do not receive due to their bodies. 

You recently sparked a viral conversation on Instagram by identifying influencers and ‘body positivity’ leaders who are white and thin (or thin-passing) for taking up a lot of space in the body positivity movement. In your words, it was a call in, not a call out, and created powerful conversation with some of the subjects of the call-ins, such as Sarah Nicole Landry (@thebirdspapaya). However, not all high-profile individuals responded. What do we do when this happens? How do we continue supporting these women when it feels like they are ignoring this topic?

I feel like a lot of people feel powerless in this. Something we do not realize is how much power we have in who we follow. By following someone, you are amplifying their voice even more. My biggest thing is if you’re looking at an account and it doesn’t make you feel good about yourself, your morals, your values…unfollow. If you follow someone and you really like their content but maybe they haven’t spoken out on important issues…don’t be complicit. You’re still giving that person power. Vote with your support. These are people’s lifestyles…you’re just encouraging their behavior in that way.

Jameela Jamil is one of the specific high-profile individuals who has yet to respond. What conversation would you like to see from her? 

Honestly, I just wanted to work with her! I wanted a conversation with her to help amplify my own voice because I felt like I wasn’t being heard. We’re in a small corner of the Internet and she has the reach. Let’s get this out into society and make this a conversation that everyone is having. She has said herself that she doesn’t belong to body positivity and body liberation. Maybe we can still get her…

Passing the mic to amplify the voices of women who are not being heard as strongly, especially Black women and women who experience higher levels of discrimination, is an important initiative in this movement. How can people accomplish this?

There is a difference when it comes to people that have a massive platform, but people who don’t still play a huge role. When people are asking me what they can do, and how to pass the mic, asking the question alone is a great start. I comprised a list of people I admired and shared that as a start. Find these accounts and look through to see who you connect with. Don’t just blindly follow. Then share their content and make them visible. Your ideas can be great but someone else may be seeing them and they may have the actual lived experience. 

People who are successful from having ‘digestible’ and ‘palatable’ content –and people who fit into those categories – need to speak up for the people who won’t be listened to. Give THEM the platform, have them do a story takeover, share their posts directly…de-center yourself, and make it about them. A lot of people are concerned about aesthetic because they think that’s what Instagram is all about – everyone is trying to follow the same path – and while it’s been awesome to see people sharing content, it’s important to know that it’s on the backs of Black people, especially Black women. 

There is a constant spew of hate from online trolls and uneducated people who are OK with continuing a hurtful and harmful narrative. How do you manage this? How do we respond to this while simultaneously not becoming overwhelmed by all of the disgusting negativity? 

I’ve cried. There were some massive fitness accounts who posted about me and their followers came for me…at first, I tried to rationalize and have conversations, knowing these are humans, but now I have less patience if people come in with their claws out and I just block and delete.

It really depends on my mental capacity. I had someone who was really upset about my post who struggled with ED. I sent them a voice memo and acknowledged their experience and explained my point further…and that person listened. They came at me with so much hurt, and upon hearing that I recognized them, we started talking and realized that we had the same values…it created something really beautiful.

When it comes to this kind of content, it’s important to ask, “What is your mental capacity at?” If I’m drained, it is so harmful. It really needs to be a matter of what you’re capable of engaging with.

Some people may have a hard time balancing advocacy for the body positivity movement while simultaneously wanting to change their bodies, such as wanting to lose weight or undergoing cosmetic procedures. How should they approach this dichotomy?

That’s in the gray area. I’ve had people say that they would never judge someone in a bigger body but yet recognize their own fatphobia. I still have a lot of days where I feel negativity towards my body but then other days where I don’t. We can start by acknowledging that we’re not perfect and continue learning – especially the more we listen to other’s experiences. This is not a me problem, it’s a societal problem. I’m not alone. If someone is in the self-love realm but still has issues with themselves, start with, “Who profits off of these thoughts and feelings?” If you want weight loss, who profits? Diet culture companies, gyms…there is so much profit off of physical insecurities. 

What do you think is the most important thing for individuals to understand when it comes to intersectionality and its importance within body positivity?

I think people need to learn to sit in their discomfort a little bit. They’re being challenged. Things can be in the gray. You can love your body, you can struggle with your body, and at the same time another person can be harmed because of their own. Someone with thin privilege might experience body shaming and yet they can always fit in an airplane seat comfortably. Your struggles are valid but acknowledge the differences when it comes to actual systemic oppression. There are layers to discrimination and oppression. Thin, white women – ask yourself, who is not being listened to? Remind yourself that your experience is not the only one out there. This is not about shutting down or shutting people up – it’s about bringing more people to be the table. The body positivity movement is currently so filled with white people, and unless they step aside, it won’t benefit those who really need change. 

I had a highlight [on Instagram] called health journey, I thought I was trying to be ‘healthy’. People messaged me and brought it to my attention how harmful this could be, and I deleted it so it didn’t trigger someone else. I sat with the embarrassment and that period in my life and then reflected and committed to learning and moving on and doing better. Having the intention to change is so important. It’s the intention that begins change. 

When it comes to intersectionality, it is also important to remember that body positivity is for marginalized groups. For everyone else, there’s so many other terms to use – body confidence, body acceptance, body neutrality…there’s options!

What are the main problematic assumptions surrounding fatphobia that people can actively start to address? 

I think most importantly, body size does not determine health, and health does not determine worth. A thinner body does not mean better. You are just treated better by society, but it does not mean worth.  Identify where these messages of worth tied to our bodies are coming from, and who profits off of them. Body image is engrained. People need to sit in their discomfort and that will not kill them. 

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Anna Luo is an American traveler/writer currently teaching English in Europe. Her writing portfolio can be found here. She am fairly new to freelance writing and am most passionate about writing on feminism, reproductive health care access, vulnerable feelings, and environmental responsibility. Her Instagram can be found here.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

I was going to write a quick post about my feminist rage against the double standard that still governs female sexuality and sensuality, but let's save that for a time that isn't right now. I want to do a quick mental health check, because it's alarming how quickly, and how devastatingly we went from things maybe getting better to things being worse than before.

I've been checking in with friends over the last couple of weeks and it seems like we've all collectively hit a second wave of anxiety, depression, and even feelings of despair, but this time we don't have the emotional reserves to deal with it.

Briefly, I think a lot of this has to do with how we felt five months ago, when the news was starting to report about a mysterious virus that was slowly making its way across the globe. We were scared, but we laughed it off and shook our heads at the people hoarding toilet paper. We were told (most of us) that if we sheltered in place, we could collectively make this go away, or at least prevent it from scaling up into a true global disaster.

But american exceptionalism does not like to be told no, and so while some of us worked from home and stopped seeing friends, while some cities became ghost towns and restaurants and bars stood empty, in other places life carried on as it always had, and in some cases with even more stubborn ardor and determination than before. We watched as people ignored the collective good in favor of individual satisfaction, with willful ignorance or a broad refusal to see the potential community consequences of their actions. As other countries suffered and buckled, we had protesters who demanded salons reopen so they could have their haircuts, or their favorite bars once again pour them a cold one, because hey, it's our right as americans.

And then the real protests began. Not ones that whined about having to do the hard thing and stay home, but brave ones that spoke out about the systemic injustice and racial violence that has existed in our country from its inception. In many ways it was painful and horrifying, as we saw peaceful people protesting police violence being met with exaggerated and extreme police violence. The cameras are on, the fingers were on record. For weeks, there were daily protests in nearly every state, and the movement was carried and echoed abroad, where millions protested in what is now being considered the greatest civil rights movement in the history of humankind.

We are here to witness it, we were lucky enough to be here to participate in it, to contribute to it. And we did, in as safe of ways as possible; with many protesters carrying extra masks, hand sanitizer, or anti-bacterial wipes for anyone who needed them. Of course it took a couple of weeks, but as the numbers started rolling in, very few new coronavirus cases were actually a result of participating in the protests. Mainly, frustratingly, the new case loads are overwhelmingly younger people who broke social distancing to see each other at house parties or in newly reopened bars.

And that brings us to where we are now. Like I said before, I wanted to write an article about the double standard of sexual liberation that still plagues women, and I will, a different day. Right now what is important is acknowledging that the exhaustion is really kicking in, that the anxiety we felt in March may not be anything compared to this.

We thought this would take six months to get over. Or we watched other countries that had their shit together reopen and now approach something that seems almost normal. Mental anguish and stress is easier to take when we can envision an end in sight. But now, in July, we are forced to reexamine that belief, and realize that it may not just take months, but it may take years before we see an end to this, least of all because we all think we're the special ones, and that one BBQ can't hurt us all, can it? Many countries have closed their borders to us though, and our president is still rarely seen with a mask on. We haven't hit the second wave yet, because we aren't even done with our first one.

And for many of us, Black Lives Matter is something we could ignore. We could go to brunch, we could go play ball in the park. We could go camping or say "I would love to march but my girlfriend's parents are visiting that weekend." Before, we could choose to look away but we can never again say that we didn't know. We are joining a fight that has been going on for hundreds of years, and we are very, very late to the party.

It is exhausting, to battle two pandemics at once. It is exhausting to realize that the first one will not end as quickly as we thought it would, and to learn what Black people already knew, is that the pandemic they've been fighting their whole lives, well, we're only just getting into the ring.

This is a broad mental adjustment from being comfortable to being uncomfortable. To being scared and exhausted and stretched thin. This is not the time to tap out yet, because we haven't even started fighting. I've hit many breaking points over the last couple of weeks, which is why I stepped away from writing for a little bit. I needed to focus on how to rebuild my mental energy and emotional stores, how to create more sustainable patterns and how to plug in in ways that are long-term.

I sheltered in place until I could feel myself breaking, and then I became vulnerable. I reached out to the people I loved and told them about my fragile bits. I was honest about the space I was in, and the affirmation and care I needed. In doing so, I was also able to reach out to them and give them the care that they needed to. Emergent strategy, and movement building is successful when there is mutual care and accountability, and by taking care of others, I was able to find the care for myself, a symbiotic love that I had forgotten I could lean on.

Do you feel like you have those relationships in your life? Part of the isolation of Covid, at least for me, was realizing that some people I was close to were, at best, only superficial in their care for me. It made me feel worse at the beginning, that I was unloveable or unworthy of care in the moments when I needed it most, but now I feel like my community and network are super strong. When they are made up ONLY of the people I trust with my life, so much worry I was carrying in me disappeared.

Please make sure you are checking in on yourself and on other people. It is not enough to watch their instagram stories or like their tweets or facebook posts. Make sure you are asking meaningful questions, and letting yourself be vulnerable as well. Take note of your feelings, of your energy levels and emotional stability, and do the work to detail what you need to replenish. Take some time to take care of yourself, because this is where the real fight begins.

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Note: A small correction was made to this post to capitalize the word “black” when referring to Black people.