Hey all, Happy Halloween if you are out getting spooked this weekend, otherwise, just happy Sunday. It is unseasonably warm in my neck of the woods, which I know is an illustration of current and incoming climate devastation, but it is, however, great for getting out the house on an afternoon walk and a chance to wear my ever growing gilet collection.
This month’s letter is somewhat heavy on suicide, both my own ideation, the state of suicide discourse online and the presence of it in literature, take this as a content warning if that isn’t something you wish to read about today.
READING // LONG FORM
October has been a satisfying reading month. I have ploughed through plenty of good books, and found a good rhythm with daily reading habits. This week I have been switching between the audio book and hardback edition of Michael Pedersen’s Boy Friends. Pedersen is a poet by trade and this memoir moves between profoundly lyrical and gut punching reality. It is a story of an enduring friendship with Scott Hutchinson, the man who illustrated his work, travelled with him on book tours, and found ways to cause or be indicted into, well meaning mischief.
Their joint anecdotes are what I would call jammy, men who fly by the seat of their pants but get away with it because of charm, good smiles (and likely some privilege too).Coincidentally, Hutchinson was also the singer in the 00’s indie band, Frightened Rabbit. Pedersen wrote most of this book in the year following Hutchinson’s suicide, it is dripping in raw grief, reflections on the sanctity of life and pages that pour with love for platonic relationships.
There is so much joy from the stories Pedersen recalls from their friendship, but there is so much sadness too. Many passages are written in the second person, addressing Hutchinson, how much he is missed, how much Michael wanted him to see. There is gluttony and extravagance, procured through those aforementioned jammy flukes, an obsession for South African wine and a love for fresh seafood. The food writing here is sparse but hearty when it appears.
Alongside his most notable friendship, Pedersen also traces relationships from his university and early adult years that haven’t survived. Men who he loved platonically that were only meant for him for a season, a period, a time of his life. He writes of male friendship without apology or explanation. And perhaps that is what makes this book quietly radical. It does not lean on stats or behavioural patterns, it does not seek to prove men as worthy of deep bonds to other men, it stands on its own two feet using Pedersen’s life so far alone as illustration of the reality of deep, solid, beautiful, male friendship.
There are of course moments you could read as ‘patriarchy at play’, or ‘typically masculine’, particularly in Pedersen’s youth, but for that I say, give him a chance. He has after all, been raised like everyone else, in a system of gendered hierarchy and citizenship. Taking his words in the spirit I feel he intended, left me teary eyed for the love he has of the other men he knows.
On seeking similar souls Pedersen writes: ““I always found friends who wanted to love too much, who collided rather than simply met.” and that is the thesis for his work, a demonstration of unrestrained, unabashed love for the people in one’s life, gender aside.
READING // SHORT FORM
Dr Kehinde Andrews, After 35 years, Britain has forgotten how Black History Month came about in the first place, for The I. Dr Andrews admits his cynicism over the current capitalistic embodiment of Black History Month in the UK. If you have spent any time critically engaging with an online space with any social justice bent, whether that is literature, feminism or something else, you might also agree “Black History Month has become so entrenched that even the criticisms are well rehearsed at this point, it has become taken for granted.” However, instead of lamenting further on the failures of awareness and/ or respectability politics, Dr Andrews educates the reader on the roots of the movement, which provided much more than catchy tag lines and reading lists, or calls to ‘do things all year’.
Maximalism is a manifestation of a desire for a different world, Samuel Johnson Schlee for Dezeen. Read this as a precursor to Johnson Schlee’s debut essay, Living Rooms, releasing with Press Peninsula in November. Here he infuses the often high brow world of interior trends with much needed political prowess and thoughtful ideas about the places we all spend so much of our time. In another life, I worked in Interiors, the high brow snooty kind, and Johnson Schlee’s take on the maximalism trend (A style I definitely incorporate into my own home) is brilliantly thought out, addressing layman's thinking about home whilst gloriously intellectualising the mundane.
My Eight Deranged Days on the Gone Girl Cruise. By the time I found Gillian Flynn, I had lost my mind. Imogen West-Knights for Slate. West Knights’ writing is always cutting, and this piece of a frankly deranged new form of tourism, a themed literary cruise, was truly a ride. It almost, and I say almost, made me want to book it myself, just to psycho analyse the other people who were attending for real.
A Sin to Eat: The Untold Story of Anorexia as Religion, Emma Madden, Jezebel. By now we have established my fascination with modern religious doctrine, high demand religious groups and to be honest, anything to do with the big man in the sky. Madden’s historical dive into the way anorexia has proliferated through religion, as well as commentary on the current Y2K revival impacting a new generation of wannabe skinny kids, is a great read. She looks at the studies of eating disorders in the past, their relationship to organised religion to draw comparisons to modern day spirituality that is taking over many people’s minds as a religion of their own - Manifesting a flat tum anyone?
LIVING THROUGH //
suicide and chronic illness and pissing the bed
I watched on in horror, frozen with tears as a woman on twitter announced her husband left her in the middle of the night. He said she is too sick for him now. She lives with severe M.E, and is entirely bedbound. She called the ambulance but they didn't even empty the bowl by the side of her bed he left for her to piss in. Hours later, she tweeted she is giving up, does that mean suicide?
I blocked a lot of words from my twitter space, M.E / PEM / Long Covid. Not because I do not want to see them, I am as much a part of the sickness communities as the next, but I couldn't face being bombarded with such heartbreak every day. Stories of teenagers trapped in hospitals, women being sectioned by their families, those who want so desperately to find a cure they talk treatment protocols and doctors in far away countries, decode medical studies and make guesswork of their blood tests. It is overwhelming to be surrounded by sickness, when they are just reflections of your own reality too.
Those who congregate in twitter spaces for illnesses like mine, tend to be very unwell. House or bed bound, struggling to maintain a semblance of a life worth living. They meet to exchange horrors, in a way that I hope comforts them. There is, from my own observations and occasional inclinations, a desire to let all know how bad it can really get. Shame or jealousy or more likely a lot of medical related trauma leaves people wanting to warn others; ‘don’t push it or you’ll end up like me’. Online communion makes sense for so many who feel marooned by sickness.
The last few years and even the present continue to show us what little care there is for those living with things that won’t get better. I hesitate slightly to say that of M.E, as I am of the belief that with the right science, and funding (and political will), there are tangible solutions. If not cures then medicines and management strategies that would improve our lives ten fold. What we have now cannot be called treatment, it is only about gritting your teeth and bearing it; shrinking your world to a size that you are able to inhabit, whether that is the kilometre of your local town, your garden or your bed.
A few months ago I saw a spate of suicide notes on my timeline, people announcing they were going and then threads of people in replies trying to find their location, their friends and family, their nearest helpline. Some ended in tragedy, others were saved in the nick of time. Each time I passively watched on, late into the night. By the time the cries had reached my internet ether, there were far too many people already offering platitudes and tangible help. The five or six people I witnessed were all quite random, a much beloved socialist political commentator, a musician, a woman surviving domestic violence, a person fed up with being sick.
Amsterdam, August 22
It cannot be good for us to watch, even passively through an Iphone screen, people choosing to end their life. The internet feels like an alternative universe sometimes, people like to separate what happens online to ‘real life’, but it is all a version of reality. Many create a persona online that is more impressive or palatable than their existence in their physical bodies, others use spaces like twitter to exist as the truest forms of selves, including their desire to not exist at all.
When it comes to the collision of sickness and mental illness, I feel in some ways like I must witness the pain, the anguish. I must acknowledge the inner turmoil of others who are struggling, because if I cannot face it in others, how can I look at it in myself?I don’t think I will/ would? tweet my suicide notes, it maybe increases the chances of you being found before its too late but then you must return to the timeline to tell everyone you are grateful to still be alive and to be honest that likely is a lie. I understand (at least from afar) the desire to provide warning, or explanation. It gives people a chance to be saved, and so many people who think about taking their own life do not want a permanent end, they want change, transformation, another body, an alternative reality of their own.
When I think about my own desire to end it all, it is not about reaching a tipping point, it is more so the idea that to continue existing in this body seems too tiresome, too exhausting, too much of a struggle. It does not matter to me the amount of times someone I love says they love me back. The joy I get from work successes or finishing a good book. The love I have for moments of life does not compare to the exhaustion of sickness. Of the overwhelming thoughts of what I could become if I were not in this body and mind that do not work.
Someone who I love dearly, said to me last week, of their own ideation: “I desperately want to live, and I think that is what is so painful - [living] feels too hard”. That hasn’t left my mind since, I do want to live too.
Finland, August 22
That is all for this month friends,
Catch you on another side of the internet,
Hannah x