Going for a Burton (original) (raw)
Modern Languages student at the University of Oxford who ISN'T going anywhere on her compulsory year abroad.
16th Jun 2014 | 5 notes
Happy Father’s Day
For the past few weeks I have been grimacing every time I have walked into a building that sells things, because, as I have discovered through this near-constant clenching of my face, they have all been cashing in on Father’s Day.
This feeling of general face-tightening-ness has been exacerbated by the fact that we are currently moving off the boat, so my life has been a whirlwind of boxing up and moving my possessions. This has, by extension, meant that dark storage corners of the boat that have not been properly excavated in years have been emptied. A whole new myriad of keepsakes and memories that had been carefully packed away are now out in the open; this includes three or four crates of photographs.
It’s strange looking at photographs of yourself that you haven’t seen or thought about in years; not going left instead of right on the first profile picture on your Facebook years, but “shit I am now 20 years older than when that was taken” years. The little blonde head of curls that smiles at me out of a photograph seems a completely different person to 2014 me holding a frozen moment of her past in her hands. As I sift through the envelopes and wallets and photo albums, I smile back at her, but there is a certain bittersweet ache to it, mainly because in a lot of the photos I stare at, I find not only some former child version of myself staring back at me, but also my Dad.
9th Apr 2014 | 9 notes
A while back I found my diary from when I was fifteen and as I turned the pages of biro scribblings of a teenager in the late noughties, I felt strangely detached. Even though it was physically me that wrote the words on those pages, it didn’t feel like me. The ‘me’ that was reading was five years older than the ‘me’ that wrote, the ‘me’ that read could remember the feelings that had been poured into that exercise book but ultimately they had been felt, the events and people described in those pages had mostly passed and were unlikely to happen again whereas the ‘me’ that wrote was caught in the turbulence of the present.
I began to flick through this blog earlier, partly because I had thought to myself that it had been eight months since I first rusticated and started writing and I couldn’t really believe it and partly because I was curious. Whilst I obviously feel a lot closer to the ‘Lauren’ that wrote and uploaded the first blog post than to the fifteen year old ‘Lauren’ who was still struggling with applying liquid eyeliner and liked to glue in the horoscopes out of such wonderful teenage publications as Sugar and Bliss and look back to see if they were accurate, I still felt that same weird detachment. The ‘Lauren’ that wrote that first blog post was caught up in the horrible distress of taking time away from university and trying to put a vaguely humorous brave face on things. Today’s ‘Lauren’ has the benefit of eight months’ worth of retrospection and her brave face is firmly fixed in place.
26th Feb 2014 | 8 notes
ON DISABLED STUDENT STATUS
In my current role of outspoken mental health destigmatiser I would like to apologise and I would also like to uncomfortably admit that there have been times when I have been part of the problem. Like the fact that I am a feminist but have had Blurred Lines, despite how much I vocally despise it, stuck in my head and have listened to it on repeat to try and oust it from my brain on numerous occasions, thus increasing the number of Youtube hits it had bla bla bla.
I am, for the most part, (I mean look at this blog for goodness’ sake) open about mental health and my issues therewith. I often feel ashamed about it but not to the point where I will try and hide it at all costs from the people around me. As much as I hate my self-harm scars, in the summer I will wander round in a t-shirt and shorts rather than cover up in a long-sleeved top and jeans and overheat. As much as I hate having to say I’ve been ill to explain missing a deadline, at university I will send an e-mail outlining the fact that I have struggled to get out of bed or read or concentrate and I will get the essay done when I’m better rather than turn in a passable half-arsed piece of work written underneath my duvet and not really learn anything. I don’t wander round purposefully making people uncomfortable; if they’re uncomfortable, that’s my problem, not theirs.
Actually, sometimes I do abuse the fact that I know I can very easily make people uncomfortable – there have been numerous occasions when I’ve been creeped on in nightclubs and all I’ve had to do is brandish my arms and divulge my scary-sounding diagnosis and then stand back and watch the creeper disappear. (NB this doesn’t always work, once the creeper retorted that he had been hospitalised once and that we had so much in common and I had to bolt after shouting “JUST BECAUSE WE BOTH HAVE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES DOESN’T GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO TOUCH ME”.)
I know I may be in a way contributing to the problem by deliberately playing on people’s assumptions and prejudices to get them to go away, but when you’re drunk and in a small, dark sweaty hellhole, going into the finer points of feminism and why it isn’t OK for you to be hounded because x y z isn’t really an option. I’d rather go for the shock tactic. I’m not apologising for that.
What I would like to apologise for is this. Last year I was the Disabilities Rep for my college Equal Opps committee, and multiple times when somebody I didn’t really know asked me what rep I was I’d tell them and then catch them giving me a quick once over. I could pretty much guess their reaction “BUT, BUT, BUT YOU DON’T SEEM TO HAVE A PHYSICAL DISABILITY” and I’d have to look uncomfortable and they’d look uncomfortable and that would be the end of that. Or, I have told people and then said “Well I’m a disabled student” and then they said “What?” and I’d say “Yeah well I kind of erm struggle with erm depression and erm I’m eligible for disabled erm student erm status so I thought I’d just erm apply you know?” and then I looked uncomfortable and they looked uncomfortable and that would be the end of that. Or they’d say “Well you’re not really disabled are you? Like you’re not ‘can’t walk’ disabled” and I’d say “Yeah I know I just get sad now and then haha you know” and that would be the end of that.
What I would like to say to “Well you’re not really disabled are you? Like you’re not ‘can’t walk’ disabled” (this is an actual quote I haven’t made this up) is this:
1) Well observed. No I do not have any problems with my mobility.
2) Disability and being disabled is not a term restricted to those who have mobility impairment.
3) I struggle with a long-term mental health problem that can negatively affect my life and my capacity to function. Whilst I do not have the struggles that, for the sake of argument, somebody with mobility issues might have, I do have my own struggles that set me back in comparison to my non-disabled student peers.
4) Disabled student status means that people have to legally acknowledge my illness and can’t be dickish about it. It also means I get access to therapy when I’m at university that helps me to learn to manage my problems and gives me support. This makes people treat me equally to and means I can function on the same level as my peers.
5) This is why I have disabled student status
Now I feel less guilty for all the times I haven’t said this. As you were.
6th Feb 2014 | 8 notes
JOINING THE RANKS OF THE UNEMPLOYED
This morning, I woke up in a bad way. It happens. Anybody who has suffered from depression will know what I am talking about; you wake up one morning and getting out of bed is akin to the most terrifying thing you can think of. For me this morning, I would rather have had five octopuses put on my inert duvet-hidden figure than get out of bed. And I have an irrational fear of octopuses. I was nearly sick when I saw one on the TV last night. I really hate octopuses.
Anyway, octopuses aside, unfortunately, I was supposed to be in work at eleven o’clock and because at about ten to eleven I was still in bed sobbing hysterically because I hadn’t slept much and I felt like I was going to die and telling my mother I would get up for work, I really would, I just needed a second, my mother bit the bullet and rang up work for me and told them I wouldn’t be able to come in because I was in such a state. She said they were really understanding and she told them that I suffered from depression and mental health issues and she’d get me to ring them when I’d calmed down to tell them whether I’d be well enough to come in for the shift I was supposed to do this evening. She said they were really understanding and not to worry and to calm down.
12th Jan 2014 | 3 notes
AU REVOIR PARIS
I think I held off from posting on this blog for a few weeks because in my head I was going to reappear in January, having changed the name to “Going for a Baguette” or “Going for a Beret” or “Going for <insert stereotypical French object beginning with ‘b’ here>”. However this is not the case and as blogging requires, I am going to post about it.
For those who don’t know, I managed to avoid the official status of “suspended studies” by deciding that I was going to take a few months off and resume year abroading by taking up my Erasmus place in Paris for the second semester. It was, in a way, my way of saying to myself “Look, I’m not really that ill; I’m just a bit off BUT I WILL BE BACK” and to be fair, it could have worked. Unfortunately, planned recovery doesn’t always go as planned and whilst it’s very tempting and easy to tell yourself that you’ll have kicked your problems to the curb by a certain date, it doesn’t always happen.
19th Oct 2013 | 27 notes
THE DOS AND DON'TS OF SEEING SCARS
One thing I am enjoying about Burton upon Trent is the weather. It is now usually cold and wet every day and this pleases me because a) Whenever I have a glass of water out of the tap it is always ice cold because the water tank on the boat is outside b) I can justify owning (and buying) a huge amount of Giles Brandreth-esque jumpers because “It’s cold out” and I don’t look like such a pseudo-indie twat and c) I can go outside with only my face and hands uncovered and it suits the weather conditions.
When I was studying for my first year exams, a heat-wave struck just in the week that I really had to start revising. This irritated me, for a multitude of reasons, mainly because the Bodleian in the heat is pretty much how I imagine the depths of hell. One afternoon I found myself in the Upper Reading Room (for those of you that haven’t been (un)fortunate enough to be inside the Bodleian, imagine a series of long rooms going round in a square with overly squeaky lino floors, lots of books that few people will ever read, a multitude of desks populated by people who seem intent on breathing out of their mouths and cracking their fingers and typing loudly, and hundreds of portraits of rich white middle class men from times gone by staring dourly down at you). I had spent most of the afternoon wandering round like a lost soul trying to find somewhere that didn’t make me feel like I was about to drown in my own sweat instead of learning the finer details of German commas or whatever. I was mainly at fault for this, because unlike the rest of my scantily clad library co-visitors, I was wearing a long-sleeved cardigan and would not take it off. Eventually, after sitting slipping in and out of heat-induced delirium for twenty minutes, I gave up and rid myself of the cardigan. As I shuffled about, the girl next to me looked up and greeted me with a stare of discomfort and slight shock. However, rather than pulling the cardigan on, grabbing my stuff and bolting (which is what I really wanted to do), I glared right back at her before picking up my pen and self-righteously turning to my work.
30th Sep 2013 | 3 notes
UPDATE ON THE TOTALLY COOL EXCITING THINGS I’VE BEEN DOING
I started this blog with the intention of writing something at least once a week. However in order to write a blog in the style of my peers on their years abroad I feel that I have to write about something vaguely interesting or new or entertaining or imaginative to justify the fact that I have chosen to write it down and share it on the Internet.
The hiccup here is that recently I have not been doing anything vaguely interesting or new partly because I have been more depressed than usual, partly because I don’t know many people in Burton who aren’t at uni and also partly because Burton is a boring shithole that I try and avoid at all costs. So I haven’t really been having a fantastic time.
16th Sep 2013 | 23 notes
What not to say to the mentally ill
Before writing what is to follow I have already: deleted what I had previously written ten times, rolled three cigarettes and smoked two, actually got myself out of bed and had a shower and suddenly had the urge to open my German grammar book and learn all of the obscure nuances of the German language (which incidentally, I have been avoiding doing since June).
The reason for this stalling, aside from the fact that I am a chronic procrastinator, is because even though people always tell you to write about what you know, the thought of actually following this simple rule terrifies me. This is mainly because I have shared this blog on Facebook, and will share this post, so I’m assuming some curious/bored/equally procrastinatory people will read it. And, in my mind at least, the thought of openly sharing something about being mentally ill or about mental illness to people that I might see when I go to the pub or to the shop, is equivalent to standing on a soapbox and shouting “HEY EVERYBODY, I AM ABSOLUTELY BAT-SHIT CRAZY AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS”, wearing clothes smeared in my own faeces and biting the heads off babies.
4th Sep 2013 | 4 notes
HI GUYZ
These days anybody who goes travelling for an extended period has a blog. I’ve seen it happen, they appear on my news feed, usually with a little self-deprecating note saying “Oh hey guys! Look at me! I’m going abroad for the year! Guess I’d better follow the trend and write a blog! Not like you’re going to read it or anything LOL!”
I call bullshit.