My body hates me and the feeling is mutual. It makes me sad and exhausted to know that for the rest of my life, the health goal I'll be aiming for is "alright" and "able to function." I mourn the days before I had to wonder if/when I'll need surgery, how long it'll be before my meds stop working due to antibodies, what scary symptoms await me in the future, and whether I'll ultimately be able to live the life I'd pictured. It's been an adjustment, and some days I'm not adjusting too well.
After two trips to the hospital for dangerously high blood pressure, each time resolving on its own too quickly to have any organic cause (or treatment), I'm feeling a little at the end of my rope. In the past I'd usually only fall into panic spirals at moments when I had a discernible reason, but this is a new beast all together. How do you calm yourself down when you thought you were calm already? I have no control over the feeling that my heart is trying to squeeze itself out the front of my chest. There's no reason to it. Just a splitting headache and a deep fear. In some ways, these meds have been a godsend, but the common side effects of sleeplessness and agitation are not sitting well with my already tightly wound brain. Steroid treatment sucks.
Every second of every day I'm tired. The drugs make me feel sick and sad and broken. This disease and all its associated treatments make me feel utterly useless. I just want to study for the most important exam of my life. Is that too much to ask?
Police have arrested Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old student, charging him with six counts of murder and five of attempted murder. By noon Monday, some media were reporting he had recently adopted xenophobic and anti-refugee views. Reuters reported that a U.S. government source said security experts in that country were leaning to the view that the attack was motivated by a hatred of Muslims.
Investigations can and must take time. Right now we donât know for certain what motivated the shootings. But we do know that racism, sexism, xenophobia and hate are alive in our land.
Canada may not âdoâ mass shootings, but we are no strangers to racial and religious hate. Intolerance is woven into the fabric of our nation. We built our cities on the bodies of French, English, American and Indigenous people. We burned the White House. We hung Louis Riel. We spent generations disenfranchising and marginalizing Aboriginal Canadians on reserves and in residential schools. We imprisoned thousands of innocent Japanese-Canadians in internment camps and blamed the fog of war. We have, at times, resisted the right of women to vote, and for gay couples to marry.
More recently, we have seen politicians pushing policies that many decried as hostile to Muslims. In 2013, Pauline Marois, then premier of Quebec, was trying to push through a charter of values that would âuniteâ the province by erasing the cultural identity of middle-eastern Quebecers, among others.
Two years later, then prime minister Stephen Harper and former citizenship minister Jason Kenney were trying prevent Muslim women from wearing the niqab during citizenship ceremonies. Kellie Leitch, then a cabinet minister, now a Conservative leadership candidate, was smiling as she announced a âBarbaric Practices Tiplineâ for Canadians to anonymously report their neighbourâs behaviour.
Canadians decisively tossed all them out of office. But the anger and resentment they rode to power didnât disappear.
Politicians like Kenney and Leitch are back riding populist waves of resentment, fear and anger in the hopes of landing right in the halls of power once more. Against all sense, they might end up there.
We cannot wait around and watch that happen. Not this time.
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