I looked at my blog today and discovered I haven’t written anything for almost two years. I have also been experiencing anxiety. Doing my checklist of what might be wrong, I went through work, relationships, health, the climate crisis and hitting fifty. It turns out I haven’t expressed myself in a coherent manner. Expressing myself, in this context, means I haven’t written my way to understanding something or at the very least a better understanding.
This break from writing is largely the result of three momentous events. I began therapy which was focused on childhood trauma, I returned to college and I became a politician (temporarily). These pursuits mitigated against writing. My childhood emotional trauma cannot be explored in this medium until some key players have died. All I will say is that if you have experienced a trauma, a life altering or life limiting trauma, read The Body Keeps The Score, by Bessel van der Kolk, then find you a therapist who specialises in trauma.
While I still experience some anxiety and procrastination, I now have the wherewithal to work out what is going on and take the appropriate steps. The anxiety, while uncomfortable, does not keep me up at night; it doesn’t prevent me from achieving goals, and it does not cause debilitating knots in my belly or chest. In the last two years, I earned a Batchelor’s Degree and a Postgraduate Diploma. Both with distinctions. I have also been accepted into Trinity’s Social Policy Master’s programme.
I turned fifty a few months ago and while I found it uncomfortable and had a little wobble with my self-confidence, I did not experience the existential dread my untreated trauma was preparing for me.. And I was a politician for a time.
In retrospect, it was being a politician that had the most profound impact on my writing. Social media being what it now is, anything I said or wrote may have been used against me. Now, the chances of that happening were tiny. I was in a race for last place, running somewhere I was not from, where even the other candidates did not know my name. In the end, I came second last on the first count but dead last after all the votes were distributed. It was enjoyable and stressful, but mostly it was educational. As a political activist, it was the opportunity of a lifetime to learn more about campaigning. I will never run again, but my support for other candidates or causes will be more informed.
While I was conscious of not creating issues for myself through my writing, I was more concerned about causing hassle for the party or other candidates. While I am not a party loyalist, I greatly respect anyone who runs for the Green Party at this juncture. I would never forgive myself if I added undue pressure to their campaigns just because I have to puzzle things out through blogging.
However, as we are between campaigns, I can try to get to grips with where the party is at the moment. No, get to grips with where I am with the party now. I joined the Green Party as no other party takes the climate crisis and pending ecological collapse as seriously as the Green Party. While socially progressive it was prepared to coalesce with the two most conservative parties in the state to get elements of its environmental agenda implemented. I support this 100%.
It was a cynical decision, electorally damaging, and we will not know if it was the correct move until 2030 at the earliest. Since the election, we have chosen a new leader, Roderic O’Gorman. It appears he hopes to move the party towards dealing with social issues. As a socially progressive party, no one should complain about that, yet it makes me uneasy.
I operate as a Green Party activist, with the very real prospect of a civilisational collapse due to climatic and ecological calamity happening within my lifetime. I feel that nothing else matters. But I also know that feeling can only exist within me due to the privileges I have been bestowed with. I have a pensionable job in a strongly regulated and unionised industry. I am half way to paying my very manageable mortgage. I am reasonably healthy and have private health insurance, which is another way of saying I am not experiencing poverty. And I am straight, cis and white. The only discrimination I have to contend with is turning fifty. And that is notional at worst. I can afford to regard focus on social issues as a distraction.
One of the main reasons I will not run again as a candidate is that I struggle to empathise with people who are not as scared as I am about the climate crisis. It was unsettling how few conversations I got to have about the climate during my campaign. As a politician, it was my job to meet people where they were and seek to understand their concerns. Then offer to carry their concerns with me into office. My overriding emotionh, however, was one of frustration with them for not being as scared as me. I am a dreadful politician.
I do, however, firmly believe that I cannot expect empathy for my fears from a voter who is struggling with paying their rent. A voter with cancer trying to get a medical card. A voter whose children cannot buy a house. A voter who has to commute hours to and from work. A voter who has been bombarded with social media messages claiming the climate crisis is a hoax. A voter who has heated their home for decades with turf and for reasons they cannot comprehend is being told they cannot do that anymore.
Stepping back, in many ways, the Green Party has succeeded in shifting the country towards meeting the threat of climate change. Yet it is difficult to look at the climate crisis and not see the dirty fingerprints of capitalism all over it. Ultimately, there will need to be an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the rich of this world, be they individuals, corporations or nations, to the less well off. The comforts and conveniences we have become accustomed to will take a hit. Capitalism will need to serve us or disappear. But it is my belief that people are more likely to accept a cataclysm than live within the means of the planet to support us.
I don’t know if focusing on the housing crisis will move the country closer to dealing with the environmental catastrophes we have been diligently creating, which is an annoying sentence to write so far into this blog post because that is what I am trying to decide. Perhaps as a general election heaves into view, the party must look for a strategy to avoid being wiped out. As Sinn Féin tacks right and the left remains riven with factionalism, there are votes to be picked up by reminding people we are actually nice. I don’t know. My instincts are telling me we should double down and double again on the climate. Go down with all guns firing and hope we have left behind enough legislation, schemes and commitments that the next government cannot unpick them in time to halt their impact.
I really don’t know. I haven’t even mentioned the rise of fascism in Ireland. Of all the things I thought might go wrong in this country, I didn’t predict fascism.
I don’t know where I am exactly with our Party’s new leader, but my unease is more apparent now. And I am also reminded of so many other issues I must try to understand through this blogging process.
