I have never done this before but I am clean out of options.
I am an Iranian trans immigrant in Europe. On top of having basically no contact with family back home while they are getting bombed 24/7, my family in fascist Europe is facing legal problems with immigration; My mother has been put on leave without pay since January, while also having to pay exorbitant lawyer’s fees. Last week, the bank locked up her account without notice, cutting access to the last of her savings. The stress has been making her sick and I am left financially responsible for her, myself, and my two younger siblings for the near future. I am a full time student, and again we are unable to contact any family for help as the Iranian government has cut all internet and phone access. If you can spare anything or just share it would go a really long way. our prayers and blessings with you forever <33
to think i used to spend so much of my time on here as a teenager. now i open this blog from time to time and i have no idea how i used to navigate online spaces and make so many friends. i can hardly wrap my mind around how quickly things have changed. i went so far away, to build a beautiful life that no one can see. i take up space and i fill it up with all my things. sometimes i sit still and all i feel is the impossible weight of all the attachments i've created. what have i learned about laying roots all these years.
“As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death.”
— Eugene O'Neill, from Complete Plays 1932-1943 ; “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,”
"Before we can throw bricks through windows, we need to be able to get out of bed." Mikkel Krause Frantzen on the politics of depression.
“The claim: Depression makes manifest the contemporary subject’s alienation, in its most extreme and pathological form. As such, the psychopathology needs to be related to a world of capitalist realism, where there really is no alternative, as Thatcher triumphantly declared, and the future seems frozen once and for all. The crisis embodied by depression thus becomes a symptom of a historical and capitalist crisis of futurity. It is a kind of structure of feeling, as Raymond Williams would say. Consequently, any cure to the problem of depression must take a collective, political form; instead of individualizing the problem of mental illness, it is imperative to start problematizing the individualization of mental illness. The call is for the left, for these specific reasons, to take seriously the question of illness and mental disorders. Dealing with depression — and other forms of psychopathology — is not only part of, but a condition of possibility for an emancipatory project today. Before we can throw bricks through windows, we need to be able to get out of bed.”
“Capitalism, in other words, inflicts a double injury on depressed people. First, it causes, or contributes to, the state of depression. Second, it erases any form of causality and individualizes the illness, so that it appears as if the depression in question is a personal problem (or property). In some cases, it appears to be your own fault. If you had just lived a better and more active life, made other choices, had a more positive mindset, et cetera, then you would not be depressed. This is the song sung by psychologists, coaches, and therapists around the world: happiness is your choice, your responsibility. The same goes for unhappiness and depression. Capitalism makes us feel bad and then, to add insult to injury, makes us feel bad about feeling bad.”
“Maybe a good place to start, then, with regards to the politics of depression, is to collectivize suffering, externalize blame, communize care. At this point, the question of responsibility returns in all its force. The neoliberal responsibilization of the depressed subject must be rejected, and, also, replaced by an idea of collective responsibility. The same goes for any kind of therapeutic project, and Italian thinker Franco “Bifo” Berardi — who is, admittedly, a bit loose and careless when it comes to precision in the clinical vocabulary — may be right when he asserts that “in the days to come, politics and therapy will be one and the same.” Therapy as resistance, not as reactionary obedience to the given order. Therapy as a collective project, not an individual one. Therapy as the overcoming of alienation.”
