8 minute read
Whelmed 36 Puzzles
Whelmed
by Rachael Elliott Panic Stations Dave Snell (He/Him)
The smarter you are the more likely you are to struggle with your mental health. I dunno whether that makes y’all more or less likely to hit the skids to be honest. You did make it into uni, but then you actually chose to come here when higher education is the biggest money-making scam the boomers managed since the housing crisis so… Jury’s out. Recent stats from the NZ Health survey reported that women aged 15-24 were experiencing anxiety and depression at double the rate of men the same age, and Māori youth are 1.5 times more likely to have a diagnosis of anxiety disorder than non-Māori. Our trans, non-binary, gender queer, and takatāpui whānau are even more marginalised, so they’re even deeper in the hole. So don’t try and tell me that there isn’t a societally constructed, gender specific, kyriarchal component to our mental health crisis. The effect of gender-roles and the negative experiences of these throughout your life, often starting before you even realise what is happening, is a very large and specific risk factor for mental illness. Not to mention the fact that we’re usually left literally holding the baby (or the sibling, or parent or grandparent). Despite being the gold fucking standard of humanity, wom*n (yes, all wom*n, inclusive) are being thrown under the fucking bus. In every country from which data is available, in every racial, ethnic, and age group, from every historical period: we have lower arrest rates than men for all crime categories except prostitution (which shouldn’t be a crime, sex work is work). Several peerreviewed studies over the last few decades have shown that wom*n outperform men in many of the key areas that make for good leadership: self-awareness, kindness, self-control, humility, social skills, and moral sensitivity. While men outperform us in unprovoked aggression, psychopathy, narcissism, greed, and the kinds of Machiavellian tendencies that create things like white collar crime, mishandling of a global pandemic and the need for the #metoo movement. And yet they’re still in charge. And you still ask us why we need feminism. Anyway, I digress. Why are wom*n more likely to struggle with their mental health than men? MaYBE iT’s ThEiR HoRMoNEs? Are wom*n more likely to be anxious and depressed because we do all the emotional labour or because men aren’t allowed to have feelings? Either way you can thank the patriarchy, and the solution is feminism. Perhaps we’re anxious and depressed
because we’ve been sexualised since we Anxiety comes in a lot of forms and people experience it differently. were children? Nothing like never being We also tend to call it different names. For me, I call it Panic. Panic sure if you can trust a person to keep you first appeared in my life when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s when on your toes. I was 15. It starts with a thought. Back then it was a fairly typical thought that a lot of people with disabilities think - “Why me?”. As Perhaps it’s because we still get paid less I’ve gotten older, it's morphed into “What am I going to do?”. When than men for doing the same work. Nothing I was a teenager, the why would get louder in my head. With the like feeling unappreciated to make you want noise in my head building, I’d curl up into a ball in the foetal position. to stay in bed all day. Then I’d start yelling it at the top of my lungs. My arms would be up over my head like I was protecting my face. My parents would Maybe it’s because we’ve been taught 10 understandably not know what to do. They’d try to pull my arms different ways not to be raped but boys still down or try to talk me down, but at the end of the day it just needed haven’t been told not to rape us? That deep to calm down itself. The only thing that would work would be playing down, some men think they’re entitled to music to calm me down. I used to go to sleep to Metallica’s Nothing our smiles, our time, and our bodies, even Else Matters on repeat. Nowadays it comes as a “What am I going to do?”. My thoughts start racing about how all these treatments I do for my Crohn’s are just holding back the flood gates. My brain tells me that one day those flood gates are going to burst and it’ll be over. I won’t be able to work, won’t be able to feed my family, I’ll have to sell all my collections of stuff, and then what? I shut down. I can’t share what I’m thinking with anyone. I lay on my side on the couch, and when we say no. try to wait till it passes. Sometimes, if I can get angry, that can help. Anger is a bit of a misunderstood emotion. I find it motivating. Maybe we’re all fucked up because we’re Jumpdafuckup by Soulfly is particularly motivating for me. If I can’t more likely to experience mental and get angry, I just have to wait till it passes, and try to distract my mind physical violence and abuse than men, and by watching something on TV. The Panic mostly comes at night, trauma is directly linked to the development mostly. Often when I’m trying to sleep. Luckily, I have a very floofy of anxiety, depression, and a host of other mental illnesses. Maybe, until we sort that out, wom*n are going to struggle more with their mental health than men.
cat called Presley who has slept on me for the past seven years. Patting her gives me something else to focus on until it passes. Why am I telling you this? Catharsis? Maybe I can rationalise it by saying that if you experience it too, you’re not alone. Also, because when it comes to some of this stuff, it's not healthy for me to shut down. Knowing it will pass is useful, because I know that I’m not actually having a heart attack. But not sharing what I’m experiencing with others can mean I seem withdrawn or angry. Me talking about it in this column is helpful, and let’s be honest, all columnists are pretty self-serving and just want to appear all knowing or heal their own shit, right?
Saying that the world is getting more stressful and you just need to get over it isn’t helpful. Talking about it more is. You’re not abnormal and you’re not alone. If you’re able to reach out, well done, because that will help you recognise this, I hope. At the very least, you share something with a selfish columnist in the Waikato. Take care.
Soapbox
by Lara Dashfield Inflation has me Deflated
Katrina Jones (She/Her)
Prior to moving out of home and being cut off from the bank of mum and dad, if you’d ask me about inflation, I probably would have assumed that you were talking about the child infested, bacteria hoarding and hell sent Inflatable World or a pool floatie. However, now that I have to pay my own bills and thankfully never have to go to Inflatable World ever again, I understand inflation (just a little bit).
Quite simply, inflation is the rising cost of things. With Aotearoa’s inflation rate hitting a 30 year high of 6.9%, and the rising cost of living, most of us can no longer afford to even get 6.9% high. Now they say that the constant rise of inflation is due to the postpandemic world and the ongoing war in Ukraine. But I honestly couldn’t give a flying fuck about the pandemic anymore, and I would like to tell inflation to take a test and isolate for 7 days so I can afford a block of goddamn cheese. And don’t get me started on Putin - I feel as though I need to watch what I say here as you never know how many Russian spies are among us.
It's hard to understand the whole inflation rate at 6.9% thing, but the easiest way to describe it is: remember when Pizza Hut value pizzas were all actually five dollars? Now it’s $6.50 for a classic cheese pizza. It’s literally cheese, tomato, flour, yeast & water, and yet it costs more than ¼ of the hourly minimum wage (as an ex-
Dominos employee ik the secret formula). I remember when petrol was $1.80 per litre sometime last year - it’s almost double that now, and it literally costs an arm and leg to fill up your tank. On the plus side, it’s forcing me to walk more because I am literally too poor to drive everywhere.
Now it’s no longer poor uni students who are experiencing life below the poverty line, it’s half of the fucking country. Now, the Government tried to help by doing things like raising the minimum wage, which I personally believe has made things worse (controversial ik) as businesses need to raise prices in order to afford to pay their employees a higher wage and a lot of employees who are earning above minimum will not see a pay increase, but they will still see an increase in living costs.
Stupid inflation has made small businesses, cafes and even retailers have to raise their costs, making it harder for me and many basic bitches to afford our weekly trip to Glassons, Starbucks and nail appointments. It’s also made basic necessities such as toilet paper, bread, eggs, cheese, and milk become so expensive that families cannot afford them.
We live in a first world country for Christ sakes, necessities shouldn’t be unattainable. The only people truly benefiting off inflation are the rich, Putin (maybe?) and landlords (because they’ve always been greedy fucks). While ordinary people are left to suffer, inflation makes me want to deflate.
