This time two years ago- give or take a week or two- I couldn’t take it anymore. I gave up. I phoned in sick, went to the doctor, and left with a diagnosis of depression and anxiety, a prescription, and a note saying I’d be unable to work for a while.
I’ve had better days.
It was, hands-down, one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. I had no idea how I’d pay the rent. I felt like a fraud, a whiny-ass white girl with a couple of college degrees who couldn’t cope with a perfectly acceptable life. When I walked into that doctor’s office, I knew that he’d tell me to suck it up and deal. When that didn’t happen.. well, I had some feelings about that.
It occurs to me that I’ve been here a whole week and I haven’t FTBullied anyone. I mean, ever since I got here I’ve been talking about Serious Dead Granny Feelings, showing off awesome Irish trans people, and being justifiably annoyed about people being terrible to women athletes.
If I keep on like this, you lot are going to get the impression that I’m.. nice.
I play roller derby. Wait- let me say that properly: I skate motherfuckin’ ROLLER DERBY, beaaaatches. That’s more like it. Y’see, roller derby isn’t something I can talk about neutrally. This is a game where “derby saved my (metaphorical) soul” has gone from a common statement to a boring-ass cliché. Practically everyone I know who plays this game says it’s changed her life. It’s helped her find her confidence and her grit. It’s shown her how to love the body she has and appreciate it for what it can do, not how conventionally attractive it is. It’s given her a community, friends and role models. It’s taught her how to (literally) get beaten down and (literally) get back up again. In this game I’ve gotten bruises and sprains. I’ve seen people break bones more times than I care to remember. Far more important than that, though? They get those bones healed and put their skates back on. I see us getting knocked over and getting up again and knocked down again until our muscles will barely obey us when we stand again, and I see us doing it again and again until finally, somehow, we break through. And in between all of that, I see the hours we put in, every single week. Spending our evenings and weekends, every week, training in any hall that’ll take us. Spending their days off organising, promoting, planning, coaching and paperwork. And more training. Always, more training. And what do people say about us? Catfights and punches- both of which will, by the way, get you expelled, and have never happened at any game I’ve been to or played in. Booty shorts. Girls in fishnets hitting each other. Short skirts and tight tops.
But this isn’t about roller derby. This is about rugby.
I love this new video from TENI (the Transgender Equality Network Ireland). And not just ’cause I know almost all of the awesomers in it (although yes, it’s partially that). I love that everyone on the video’s story is so different. From the person who always knew, to the person who rejected people’s attempts to force him into another gendered box.
I hesitate to describe any one moment as the worst. Grief is always different, and to say this one is the worst feels like a denial of all the rest of it. Like it implies that I loved the others less.
When my gran- my maternal grandmother- died, the loss was profound but we knew it was going to happen. Dementia is almost incomprehensibly cruel, but the one thing it does give you is a long time to say goodbye. A decade of being present as this woman I loved changed into someone I loved no less fiercely, but differently, time and again. And a few days I’ll be grateful for forever, when we knew this was the end, we gathered together, sat vigil by her side and said goodbye over and over. And when she was gone we all piled onto her bed and hugged her goodbye and talked for hours and slept and ate apple cake and made horrible jokes. And she stayed in her front room for the rest of the week while hundreds of people came to say goodbye. We ate more apple cake and my cousin said a mass in the kitchen and the Catholics passed around communion wine while the assorted nonbelievers sat on the floor behind the counter drinking Coronas.
I first started blogging way back in 2010. Faffing about wondering what on earth to do with all the white space in front of me, I came up with this:
“Tabularasaphobia: Fear of the blank slate. Fear of committing something, taking one path at the expense of others. The belief that the perfect nothing is better than the imperfect something. That sort of thing.”
And now here I am, four-and-a-bit years later with a whole new blank space and a new bunch of people to say hello to. Only this time? There’s probably one or two of you reading who aren’t my immediate friends or family, and I’m in the fairly impressive company of a couple of handfuls of writers I’m a massive fan of. And somehow I get to do it all in my PJs. Whew. Oh myyy.
Just do what it says on the helmet. credit: fabphotography.ie
Game face on.
I’m Aoife (think Eva with an F, but only if you’re pronouncing Eva to rhyme with TREE-vah). If you’re looking for descriptors, I’m a queer Irish feminist with a social science background and a bucketload of opinions. This year I founded the Bi+ Ireland Network, and I ain’t kidding when I say it’s the thing that I’m proudest of. I’ll write about all of those things, but- being honest, since we’re friends here- I’ll mostly be thinking about roller derby. Sometimes you’ve just gotta strap on a pair of skates and hit some people, y’know?
You probably want to know about the writing though, don’t you?
You ain’t here for me to talk about myself, though. You’re here for the goods, right? Here’s a few things I’ve written over the past few years to get you started and give you a taste of what I’m about: Should “potential fathers” have any say in abortion? (spoilers: no)
It’s not tough, really, to put yourself in the shoes of someone in this situation, even if it’s something you haven’t experienced. You want to be a parent- you long to be a parent. Hearing that your partner is pregnant, you’re overjoyed… And then? Your partner says that it’s not going to happen. And you? You’re expected to hold their goddamn hand through it all, and it hurts.
Yeah. I can imagine that hurting. I can imagine that tearing me apart. I can imagine it being genuinely, honest-to-goodness traumatic.
But a thing hurting our feelings- even in a way that tears us apart and leaves us traumatised and scarred- doesn’t mean that we have the right to infringe on someone else’s bodily autonomy.
And there, you see, is the problem. It’s one thing to tell people that they should, if it’s at all feasible, come out. It’s another thing entirely to do that when research shows clearly that the very communities that give lesbian and gay people a place to come out to and the support they need? Not only don’t do that for bi people- but can actively marginalise them. Speaking as someone who has been openly bi for half my life, and who has been facilitating bi safer spaces for several years now? The story I hear time and again- one of the many stories that breaks my heart every time I hear it, over and over again- is from people who, despite being part of queer communities, never had a space where they felt safe being themselves.
I’m writing this from a cafe in Glasgow. Tomorrow morning I’ll fly home to Ireland. The flight over here took about 40 minutes. Forty short minutes that are the difference between life and death. If Savita had walked into a hospital here she would still be alive. Because she was a few hundred kilometers southwest, she died. I don’t want to say that we must all be Savita. We’re not. We’re alive and she’s dead. But it’s about time that every single one of us became her friend. Became her family. Stood in solidarity and grief beside those who loved her. Beside her husband and her family and everyone who loved her and now has to wake every day knowing that, in the name of life, we took hers away. It’s high time we make sure that every one of our voices is heard and that what is heard is NO. We will not stand idly by while this happens. We will notallow our politicians to hide and put off legislation for decades while women die. We need to take back the moral high ground.
And finally, have a thing I drew. I think it’s pretty cool.
