The Inbetweeners

* Polite Notice: I promise neither Marx nor Engels will be "intensified", only slightly highlighted. I also understand that this is a sensitive topic, so I have tried to address it as such. If you feel I haven't, please leave a respectful comment below. I am open to dialogue and growth.* In light of the Covid-19 pandemic (I would have to reference this at least once in this blog), class divides are becoming increasingly apparent as income streams dry up and wealth is redistributed. Many, literally millions, around the world are struggling to survive  because they have either; Lost their primary source of income or; Seen a drastic decrease in the value of that source or; Are forced to enter hazardous work environments in order to receive that income or; They have no savings to rely upon (and we high key live in an economic system that ties your ability to survive to your wage - oops 🤷, I tried to keep Marx out). Yet, and somehow concurrently, the rich are getting richer...

Hello, First, I'm not quite sure what to call you, so I hope it's okay if, for the duration of this letter, I refer to you as HH. I would like to start by saying "thank you." I am who I am because of your Academies. When I was 10, I came back to my home country and immediately felt isolated from everyone around me. While they had stayed the same; I had not, in ways I could not hide. But the Academy gave me a home. The Academy gave me a place where I could be myself, and explore what that means. The Academy taught me to question what I was told and encouraged my innate curiosity. The Academy taught me to value others based on their  core  humanity, not on what they could contribute. At the Academy, I fell in love, I got hurt, I got in trouble, I cried; and despite it all, I  held  the place in a special part in my soul. This is not to say everything was perfect, but that it worked. I am a life-long learner because the Academy taught me how to harness this. I write thi...

I don't think of myself as an "angry person."  I can barely remember instances of pure unadulterated anger at a situation or a person. I struggle to maintain anger as an emotion - as it often turns into sadness. I set the threshold for my anger far too high (i.e. anger is only acceptable if someone I care about is hurt, or dies etc.) Above all else, I have never, ever, felt that I was allowed to be angry .  When my dad died, my anger was chastised and excised out of me, and replaced with fantastic petulance. When I was wronged, I was always reminded to be more empathetic and reserve judgement until I could speak to the other person. When I saw individuals using their class or race privilege in Africa, I was simply told it's not worth it. You could look at these anecdotes and think that the people around me were trying to teach me to let go of my anger and empathise with the recipient of that anger (an oft-ignored aspect of criminal justice, in my opinion). I don'...

July 25th As I write this, I am trying hard not to panic about my day ahead or, failing that, trying not to succumb to the panic and spend all day in bed. I am anxious because I have no plan, nor do I have the balls to do the difficult work of trying to make a plan. This is not to say that I don't know what I want out of life (which is another issue altogether), but rather that I don't know how to get there. A part of me hopes that this is a part of life and that not all who wander are lost, but I am a person that likes knowing what is next. I've always taken the next step, k nowing that there is a step to be taken.  Now, I can't see the step and I have no idea where I am going.  I know I want success, but I don't know why I want it for myself because every time I do well in something, I immediately feel like I don't deserve it or like a mistake was made. I know I want to be strong, determined and tenacious. I know I want to be assertive and I know that I need t...

I can't remember what it feels like to imagine. I am not sure I have ever had an imaginary friend, nor have I ever attempted to picture or dream something (or someone) outside the realm of what actually exists (put simply, whatever I can imagine now generally obeys the laws of nature). I don't know when that happened, but I am sure that I struggle with imagination. Now, this is not to say that I have aphantasia, the inability to conjure up a mental image, because I can, when asked, basically  picture an orange or a rainbow. Remember, my imagination obeys the rules of nature, so I have  But rather that, I struggle with the more creative, aspirational or abstract elements of the imaginative practice. I think I struggle with it because I lack faith in my own visions. In a "Tinkerbell-ian" sense - i.e. I do not believe and, therefore, I cannot fly. At some point, I adopted a mindset inclined to value what I could assert what was real to others, not what could be real for...

The concept of innocence is an interesting one; legally and socially speaking. For the latter, it is in the eye of the beholder and, as a result, it is malleable in light of demographic data (race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability) and unconscious bias. Think about how members of marginalised communities are more likely to be seen as guilty than as innocent ( Gross, Possley and Stephens, 2017 ) ( Driscol, 2018 ) As a result, there is a feeling that "societal" innocence must be earned;  like you would earn a treat for a job well done or like a slice of cake your cheat day.  Conversely, legal innocence functions as a pre-existing right. - i.e. it is  not earned. Innocence is, without getting into too many details, generally presumptive (i.e. innocent until proven guilty ) and extensive (i.e. it will always be, legally speaking, presumed).  Despite their differences both types of innocence concern themselves with the same question, in theory - who is to blam...

Hello! I'm back and this time, I will attempt to be less melodramatic and more reflective (or in the very least, inject melodrama into my reflections or vice verse).  Clearly, when I, last, wrote about my failures, I was hurting. Truth be told, I've never been rejected from anything before. Like Ariana Grande, "I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it." Not because I was spoiled though. Some of it was sheer dumb luck. Some of it was using my belief that if someone told me why they said no, we could work on the objections together to propel me towards the eventual 'yes'. But, truthfully, most of it was cowardice. I never asked for anything or tried anything that even hinted at failure. As such, I never learned how to believe in myself, never learned to back myself and, relevantly here, never learned how to pick myself back up. A perfect example of this would be my past romantic entanglements; I never, explicitly , showed interest in a potential partne...