It's some months since my last post mostly because I have been distracted by life - much of that good, some not so much. Beef stew in cooking in the oven awaiting suet dumplings. Vegan spice lentil soup is slow cooking and beets are boiling on the stove before peeling. The house is clean, the washing is done thanks to my husband, as is the way of the world in 2016. Well my world at least.
The country south of here may soon elect a despot who has on his list of crazy that he will appoint judges who likely will overturn laws that say men and women are equal. Let me say that slowly "women will have less rights than men". This is not about equal pay this is about equal rights. It's hurting my head because I cannot understand how anyone can believe people aren't equal. How dare anyone believe that they are a better human than me. It's like all of us outside that country just discovered the land that time forgot. I feel betrayed and lied to. I was sold a higher moral power; a benevolent democracy built on equality. I watched it for year have great TV shows and cool candy; fight bad guys; liberate people from despotism; beautiful strong people who come together in a crisis. What went wrong? I come from a European community that has put people first for decades. Yes that's in free fall but I don't recall anyone amidst Brexit say "Boys are better than girls.
So that's a shadow that has hovered over my life for months now. Folks say "but you don't live south of here, what's it got to do with us?" and that makes my stomach knot up. I go to work in that country every day, all be it via technology. The time, before planes and phones, when people could live as one country are long over. The world changed exponentially over the last 10 years - we are all on one blue ball floating in space. We are not North Korea who froze time and locked the doors. I have no answers"...if I had faith I'd be praying right now. I believe in humanity - and that good will win over evil. I guess that counts as a faith. I'll focus on that as I go to work in that country each day, all be vicariously.
Friends and colleagues joke that they will move up here - to a land where just this morning the PM went on social media to celebrate Diwali and say how our diversity is our gift to the world. I don't know if they will be let in - I know I am struggling with the process to stay. A lawyer told me this week that I have "less chance than a Chinese restaurant worker who speaks no English". He wasn't being racist - he was simply describing the immigration law changes that in his words are "a screw up" and have inadvertently disadvantaged people in professional roles. No idea what the way ahead is from here - but we are trying to put a positive head on. I don't want to move to an England that isn't European. I don't know that place. We may end up in Scotland in the land of my ancestors...who knows. Ironically I have the papers to move to the land south of here but that's not appealing clearly.
So if you add all of that together you see that we cant make any financial plans - we are in limbo between worlds. Whilst we just carry on with life, looking for chinks of light that will move us forward I do find my self in tears most days - exhausted by all of the thinking. Headed into winter already in a funk...my focus now being me, my health first and formost. Because I don't live in that 1950's world where men work and woman sew...I win bread and to do that I need to stay well.
Namaste
