Hope Still Springs Eternal

I know myself enough by now to recognise when I’m starting to spiral, when I’ve given so much of myself to sorting out everyone else’s problems that I’m practically an empty tank, still going for miles and miles but running mostly on fumes and a stubborn determination to not let the world get the best of me.

But sometimes it does.

And there’s no shame in it. There’s no shame in admitting that you’re not able to solve all of the world’s problems because a) you’re not supposed to and b) its probably healthier to admit defeat than to burn out completely.

Look, I get it. Life is hard. We do what we need to do to survive, and sometimes its harder for those of us who have chosen positions of leadership or power because it comes with an obligation to find solutions. And also, somehow that minute difference in pay grades puts a target on your back, and people think they have the right to come at you for every single thing.

You work 37.5 hours a day with this delusional mindset of world-saving that sometimes you forget that you are more than your job. You are not this stiff-upper-lip, uber-serious, managerial person who goes around with to-do-lists and QR codes and who spends what feels like their entire existence either looking at or analysing spreadsheets.

You’re also a reader, a writer, a dreamer, a hopeless romantic who cries over love stories, someone who doesn’t know East from West when trying to sort out directions on Google maps, and you’re someone who, even at 35, doesn’t quite have their shit together and probably never will. You will always be a bit of a mess.

I needed today to feel human again.

To feel like myself again. To not feel hopeless, like you’re only putting out fires long enough to get to the next safe space, so you can have at least 30 minutes of respite and breathing room, before the flames once again start battering through those fire doors.

There are days when I find it a little difficult just to find space to breathe.

There are days when I feel like I’m going through the motions, when I start feeling worn down by the sheer number of things I can’t fix, so I resign myself to just getting through the day, and its not really fulfilling. I don’t really feel like I’m making a difference. Sometimes I think by trying to make things better for someone, I end up making things worse for someone else.

I think this was the feeling that made me reach out to my old alma mater, practically begging for an opportunity to teach undergraduate nurses again even if I have to do it for free.

At the time, I was barely coping. I was seeing a therapist maybe twice a week for anxiety and excessive worry and I found myself writing and deleting a resignation letter every five minutes. I think working out with F45 was the only thing that got me through the day and even that wasn’t enough.

I needed the distraction, but more than that, I needed to remember what it felt like to make an impact, to make a difference.

Thankfully the Philippines will always be in need of nurses and Clinical Instructors, so with slight trepidation I agreed to take on a full Medical-Surgical Nursing course load.

For the past 5 weeks I’ve been using what little spare time I have in between a full time job and my extra curricular activities making notes and PowerPoint presentations and pre-recording lectures. I’ve been getting up at 3:30 am to have interactive sessions to discuss case studies, making questions for pre-tests and post-tests and long exams, answering multiple queries from students an entire continent away….and I’ve never felt happier.

I’ve forgotten how natural a fit being a teacher is for me, how at ease I am doing it, how much joy I derive from watching that light bulb moment reflected in another person’s eyes.

We find so few pockets of joy these days that I think we should hold on to the things that give us the same feeling as we did when we first discovered the taste of chocolate ice cream, or when we first heard our favourite song, or took our first steps in the city of our dreams.

I’ve forgotten how good it is to feel like you still have the rest of your life ahead of you, that you can still do some good, rather than feel like you’re failing all of the time.

So than you, Velez College, for the gift of my education, and for being my refuge against hopelessness, even after all these years.

Unpopular Opinion: Spare is Worth A Read

I’ve held off doing this review for as long as I could, in the hopes that when I finally post it, the dust would have settled enough for the general public to look at Spare in a fair and objective manner.

I can only imagine how hard it must be to live your life under such intense public scrutiny. I remember how humiliated I felt once when one of my classmates read out some poems I’d written about my best enemy who also happened to be my secret crush (he was the Arnold to my Helga, please don’t judge me, I was thirteen). In front of the whole class. Which just so happened to include Arnold.

I remember that sinking feeling in my gut when I was called to task in front of my family because my uncle had somehow discovered that I’d lied about a school trip, all so that I could go on holiday with my one great love (and no, I don’t think its a coincidence that a lot of my bad decisions seem to have involved guys).

There isn’t a single one of us who can claim that we didn’t make mistakes, who can say with all honesty that they hadn’t been involved in a youthful indiscretion or two. We’ve all had a forbidden sip of alcohol before we’d reached the legal drinking age, and I can name a number of my friends who’d smoked cigarettes as a giant middle finger against their parents or some other figure of authority.

We’ve had our share of heartaches and heartbreaks. We’ve lost relatives, mourned loved ones, and either directly or indirectly have even come face to face with our own mortality,

The difference between us and Prince Harry is that during those times when we fucked up, it was not a matter of national interest.

It would not have made any difference to the Houses of Parliament if I stopped talking to my sister because she was being a bitch (which is every other day most weeks, and every day at certain times of the month, sorry Arlene).

And yet, when it became general knowledge that Harry and William had come to blows over their wives and royal duties (or was it the size of their royal apartments?), the world seemed to judge Harry for being so open about how he felt about it.

I read a lot of the reviews and write-ups that were published when Spare first came out. A lot of them, even the more sympathetic and impartial ones, seemed to say the same thing: check your privilege, Harry.

It’s like we’re saying he’s not allowed to talk about the things he’s been through because of his wealth and status.

I’m not gonna lie. I was one of those people who rolled my eyes when the Oprah interview came out, with Harry and Meghan insinuating that the senior members of the British Royal Family were racist. I mean, they probably were, but I was like: cry me a river.

At the time the nurses were fighting for fair pay and yet this whole “reveal” was front page news. It was all the morning shows could talk about. The fact that Meghan had difficulty getting a tiara for her wedding, and that she had an argument over some flower girl dress with the then Duchess of Cambridge, was somehow more important than the fact that the NHS was on its last legs.

I was livid.

However, the more I read Spare the more I realised how much of a double standard we have against celebrities and public figures, especially the Royal Family. After all, they don’t really serve a purpose. Some would even argue that they are outdated, a drain on our resources, a waste of taxpayer’s money (although they do wonders for the tourism industry).

So it’s almost like we’re saying we have the right to know every aspect of their lives as recompense for all that we give them. They have to justify their existence by giving us daily insight into their gilded lives, plus points if it happens to involve salacious gossip like infidelity and sibling rivalry,.

And when someone actually has the balls to call us out on our behaviour, we call foul.

Harry has chosen to tell his story the way he sees it.

As a writer, and a lover of stories, I find it difficult to condemn someone for wanting to tell his. Even if a part of me doubts his version of events, even if I find him, at times, incredibly repetitious and whiny, I still think he has the right to tell it, just like everybody else.

After all, what is truth anyway? Who is right, who is wrong? Isn’t history just a version of events as told from the point of view of the victor?

I am as surprised as anybody to find myself saying that my final verdict on this book is that its worth a read. Harry is a far more nuanced person than I ever could have imagined, and in 80% of the book (mostly before Meghan came into the picture) he came across sympathetic, likeable, and relatable.

Either that or the part of me that grew up on a steady diet of Disney movies is just naturally predisposed to forgive Prince Charming anything.

Finally though, I would just like to say that there is a family at the heart of this book, and this is what makes it almost unbearably intrusive. The systematic destruction of what was once a really close relationship, one that fell apart because of an accident of birth, was more painful to read about than Meghan Markle’s supposed struggles against the institution.

Primogeniture: it sucks.

Even as I write this, I am aware of my sister in the room next to me, practising her Japanese on Duolingo in preparation for our trip to Japan in April. It’s not every day that I thank my lucky stars that our relationship has evolved from the days when I wanted to kill her for taping over my Spice World album to what we have today, when sometimes hers is the only company I could bear to keep because everyone else is just so stupid.

In saying that, as the elder of the two, I’m probably William in this scenario. Who knows what secret resentment my sister could be harbouring against me?

I suppose I should just find solace in the fact that Arlene could not care less about going public and writing a memoir. The woman could hardly bring herself to post on social media.

I think I’ll be alright.

Chasing A Feeling

I read on the news yesterday that scientists have found a way to reverse ageing in mice.

I’ve just spent the last 5 minutes reading that sentence over and over again and my brain still can’t grasp the implications and what if’s that come with this breakthrough.

From the time I reached my 30s, a significant portion of my waking hours (and a considerable amount of my sleeping hours for that matter) is taken up by thoughts of getting old, and the fear that the best years of my life are behind me. I think a lot about how I may not have enough time to do all the things I want to do before my body tells me its time to stop, and before the pressure to settle down and start a family finally wears my resistance down.

My friends often ask me what drives me to do the things I do. Someone said I must be the busiest person in the world, to be able to hold a full time job, do some freelancing, go to the gym regularly, read books, write a blog, and do adult stuff like the never ending pile of laundry that I can’t seem to ever get rid of.

To paraphrase Lin Manuel Miranda’s version of Alexander Hamilton, I live, laugh, and love as if I’m always running out of time.

I think its because from the moment you fully understand that nothing lasts forever and your time on earth is finite, there’s a sense of urgency that accompanies everything that you do. On my best days I have the tendency to worry and obsess unnecessarily about anything and everything anyway so I might feel this more acutely than others.

As an adult, there’s a bittersweet sense that accompanies even the most joyous of occasions. You feel selfish about every moment you spend doing something because you have to do it, not because you want to do it. My friends and I talk on an almost daily basis about taking a career break, because we’re fast approaching that point in our personal and professional lives where, if we don’t do it now, we’re never going to do it.

Time is a thief you wish you can stop, and on some days (birthdays, New Year’s, anytime you look at the mirror and see a grey hair popping up) its like you can actually feel the minute-hand moving closer to midnight and you just want it to stop. I often joke about how we should subtract the 2 years of our lives that we lost to the pandemic, because what a fucking waste that was.

I don’t always allow myself to imagine the things I could have done, the people I could have met, and the experiences that are now lost to me all because someone somewhere decided it was a good idea to have live bats for Sunday brunch, because it will only drive me crazy. It is what it is and we are where we are, BUT I reserve the right to have a good rant about it every now and then.

All of this is really just to say that I have a fear of growing old. I’ve just read through the many many journal entries I’ve written about it because I wanted to capture the fleeting moments of clarity that is mixed in with my ramblings and moanings about being in my mid 30s.

It’s not so much the growing old bit that scares me. I don’t really want to live forever. I don’t even want to reverse ageing, or turn back time so that I relive my college years, because you could not pay me to be 18 again.

It’s just that being an adult comes with this knowledge and certainty that life will disappoint you in many ways, and you just have to deal with it.

Sometimes shit will just hit the fan in the most spectacular way, and you’ll get a Jackson Pollock painting of stress, grief, and anger. There’s less scope for blind faith and trust once you’ve gone through things like that, when you’ve accumulated enough life experiences to know that things don’t always turn out right.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what I really miss is that sense of anticipation that comes with the unknown. When you’re younger and you feel like you still have the best years of your life ahead of you, you don’t know what’s going to happen so you believe anything can still happen. Something extraordinary could still be waiting just around the corner.

That is the feeling I constantly look back on, and the feeling that I am constantly chasing. If scientists can find a way to bottle that up for mass distribution I feel like we could achieve world peace.

An Ode to Uncomplicated Friendships – Book Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

By the time I reached the peak of my adolescence, I had already consumed enough teen series and rom coms to know that my life only needed two things to be absolutely perfect: a guy best friend, and for me to fall in love with said guy best friend. 

And for him to fall in love with me right back, obviously. 

These were the angst-filled days of Dawson’s Creek Season 1 and 2, when Monday nights were devoted solely to watching Joey agonise over a pre-crying meme Dawson and his inability to see that the perfect girl he’s been looking for has been standing right in front of him this whole time, waiting for him to open his eyes and really see her.

I just wrote that entire paragraph in about five seconds by the way. It’s almost as if I was a subject matter expert on unrequited love and the hazards of being trapped in the notorious friend zone. 

Yes, yes, we already know this story. It’s a tale as old as time itself. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a single guy and girl can never be just friends. One or both of them will inevitably develop pesky non-platonic feelings after which drama and a whole lot of crying yourself to sleep while your sister (who also happens to be your roommate) pretends not to hear you ensues. 

This isn’t going to be a post about that, Thank God.

I have already exhausted this subject and written enough about it to fill up a novel of War and Peace proportions. Instead, I’d like to focus on the first part of my adolescent dream, the having a guy best friend bit that I’ve forgotten in my foolish desire to write, direct, and star in my own teen drama series. 

I have said it before and I will say it again: in this world where Hallmark reigns supreme and people make millions out of romance and sex, the value of friendship, true friendship, is vastly underrated. 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is about a lot of things. It’s a throwback to the pre-social-media- 90s and early 2000s, that’s currently being idealised (or sanitised, depending on your viewpoint) as that wondrous, magical time when we had what we need without the excess and extra that clutters up our lives these days. 

It’s a book about the magic of possibilities which, if you’ve read enough of my blogs, you would know I’m obsessed about. There’s a wonderful quote from the main character Sam early on in the book, which kept me from brushing this off as just another John Green rip-off. It was when he was in a rut, struggling with moments of indecision while trying to create something extraordinary, and he thought to himself:

The best part about this moment is that anything is still possible.

I love that. I have always loved the idea of having miracles for breakfast, of something wonderful waiting for me just around the corner, and of finding that ever-elusive indefinable something that, in some ways, I’ve been unconsciously searching for my whole life.

I love the idea of infinite chances, that tomorrow is another day to do better. As one of my favourite characters in the book puts it:

“…what is a game? It’s tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Its the possibility of infinite rebirth and infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

Remembering that quote has gotten me through some tough times in recent weeks.

But really, beyond all of that, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is an ode to uncomplicated friendships. 

It’s an ode to the kind of friendship that gives without taking, because you know the other person needs it more, and because you know that they would do the same for you in a heartbeat. In the author’s own words, its kinda like when you’re taking care of a Tamagotchi: you feed it, entertain it, put it to bed, and look after it when it’s sick. 

It’s a tribute to the kind of friendship you fight for, and fight to keep, even when it’s been so damaged by words and actions that the other person thinks its irreparable and just wants to be rid of you. You hound them, chase them, and spend approximately 120 minutes on the phone with them to talk out your issues, and it does get resolved eventually, even with the crappy Sun Cellular mobile network interrupting you every half hour.

It’s a love letter to the kind of friendship where you’re not afraid to let the other person know everything about you, even and perhaps especially, your faults and imperfections, because you know it’s not going to make a damn difference, they will accept you and love you anyway. 

Mostly, this book is a hope fulfilled that no matter what, you’re not going to be alone, even if you stay single for the rest of your life, because your best friend will be there, reserving a space in his attic for you and your cats.

They say that life has a funny way of not giving you the things you ask for because it gives you the things you never knew you needed instead, the things you never even think to ask for. 

I once thought there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to fall in love with my best friend and for him to love me back. 

Now I think about my best friend, the guy who’s seen the world (or at least Europe) with me, who makes me laugh when I’m down, who listens to my misadventures and cheers me on as I pursue one crazy thing after another, who opens his home and his family to me when I’m feeling stressed, whose wife takes care of me as if I was also her best friend, whose child I love like my own. 

I think about how simple and uncomplicated our friendship is, to the point where I once lost power on my mobile phone while shopping with him at Marks and Spencer’s and decided to just leave him behind, only to find out later that he also decided to do the same thing when he couldn’t reach me, and we just laughed about it afterwards. 

No drama. No hassle. 

I think about the past ten years of shared moments that I take for granted because I know it’s always going to be there, an anchor in the ocean, one of the few constants I can count on even if the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. 

It’s not every day that I thank God that he’s chosen to give me what I needed instead of what I asked for, but I think about it every now and then, and I smile, knowing all is as it should be. 

The Approximation of Meaning: Book Review – Babel by R.F. Kuang

I’ve been sitting at my desk for half an hour, staring at a blank Word page, surrounded by bits of scratch paper that contain hastily scribbled, half-formed thoughts; wracking my brain, typing and deleting in quick succession, attempting to figure out how on earth I was going to write this review.

I want to write it in a way that will do it justice, because I think this is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read. 

I first bought Babel because, ever since I started studying Mandarin a year ago, I have been obsessed with authors and stories that give voice to the history, culture, and experiences of the Chinese people. When I learned that Babel’s author and its’ main character were Chinese, I immediately made my way to the nearest Waterstones to buy a special edition of the book, with its spray-painted edges and beautifully made cover. 

I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into. The blurb was quite vague and didn’t give a lot of information about the plot, apart from the fact that the story was set in Oxford and is a reimagined history of the British Empire, with hints of magical realism involved. I was half afraid it was going to be another dark academia novel that was overly long and exceedingly pretentious (I’m looking at you Atlas Six), with entitled, self-involved characters that half the readers wouldn’t be able to relate to. 

The truth is probably quite the opposite. Babel is fundamentally a story about people who struggle with their place in this world, whose lives are driven by a desperate wish to be recognised as people, rather than as objects. It is without a doubt a commentary on the impact of colonialism, and the problematic issues of class and racial divide that comes along with it. 

I would love to be able to discuss these very important matters, especially in light of the current geopolitical climate, where countries are being affected by the actions of a mad tyrant, and where the world and its leaders are increasingly focused on what divides, rather than on what unites. However, I don’t feel like I can broach these subjects with any kind of credibility. I can’t even articulate my political views to myself, let alone to the 360-odd followers of this blog (only 5% of whom will actually read this post).

My book reviews have always been personal, and I always talk about the things that really resonated with me. And there is a specific moment in Babel that turned this from just another book that I would have forgotten about in a week, to a book that will stay with me for a long, long time.

Pages: 1 2 3

Learning Mandarin: A Journey of Language and Learning and Finding Myself

Part 1: Self-Image: 我是张丽安. My name is Angela.

I learned how to read and write my name in Chinese 张丽安 (zhāng lì ān) even before I learned how to write it in English.

The very first sentence I ever learned in any language is 我是中国人. 

This literally translates to I (我 wǒ) + am (是 shì) + China (中国 zhōng guó) + person (人 rén).

I find it somewhat ironic that pretty much as soon as I learned to speak I was using Chinese to reaffirm my identity as Chinese, even though I am technically Filipino (菲利宾人) and these days I mostly read, speak and process thoughts in English.

Chinese is the story of my childhood, it’s as much a part of my history as the scars on my legs (because I used to attract mosquitoes like honey to the bees), the lumps on my fingers (from a lifetime of gripping my pens too hard) and my craving for sweets whenever I’m stressed. 

I have a very complicated relationship with Chinese – the language, the culture, and that part of me that is undeniably 中国人. I can’t help but associate it with the feeling of being boxed in, with that constant pressure to conform to certain societal and cultural standards. 

As I saw it, to be Chinese (and to be Filipino on top of that) required adherance to long-standing traditions: the subservient role of the woman, the obligation to prioritise managing a home over having a career, and the expectation that certain milestones – like marriage and giving birth – has to occur by a certain age. Anyone who knows me can see why this would chafe. 

I went through a period of my life where I was determined to make everyone, including myself, forget that I was Filipino-Chinese. I’m not really sure if this was a conscious decision, if it was a direct result of me wanting to rebel against expectations, or if there were other mental calisthenics involved.

But for the first few years of my life in London I was on a mission to be more British than even the British. More European than the Europeans. The most Westernised non-Westerner you will ever meet. Anything apart from Asian.  

I embraced all the opportunities and freedom that my adoptive home had to offer, wide-eyed and dreamy, like Rapunzel stepping out of the tower for the first time. I tried my hardest to make friends with non-Asians, to be invited to Friday nights at the local pub, to learn to love Sunday roasts, and to go to house parties where no one served adobo.

I tried to enrich my mind with the right kind of books and television shows so that I can be conversant in the sort of topics that my non-Asian colleagues talk about, to like art and history, and pretend to know the rules of rugby (I really DON’T) – all whilst revelling, with embarrassing superiority, in my “excellent” grasp of the English language (spoken with an American accent of course, but some things can’t be helped).

But I guess once you reach a certain age, you suddenly realise how exhausting it is to wake up every morning feeling like you always have something to prove, and to constantly have to put on a mask that hurts your face because the dimensions don’t fit.  You get to a point where you realise that you have the right to breathe, and to just be, same as everybody else.  

So, you take what feels like the first gulp of air after years of drowning, and then you begin the long process of taking a long hard look at and reconciling all the parts that make you uniquely you. 

It feels a little awkward and scary at first, like putting a t-shirt on for the first time after a long hard winter of wearing jumpers. It feels like you have to have some kind of jacket, some kind armour, because you don’t know if you can bear to be so exposed. But then you walk out the door and you realise your skin is made of much tougher stuff than you thought it was.

There’s a tiny spring in your step that gets bigger the further you go, when you suddenly realise that you’re going to be okay. 

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Book Review: Into the Danmei Rabbit Hole

I was passing by Waterstones the other day and was reminded by the window display that June was actually Pride month, and as a proud ally I always post a book review to commemorate the fact that love is always love, no matter what form or shape it takes.

This year I thought I’d do a review on a couple of book series that my friend Nina recommended, which are classified under danmei, the Chinese equivalent of the popular Japanese BL (boy’s love lol) genre. These two serialisations have experienced a surge in popularity recently due to the release of a Netflix adaptation called The Untamed in 2019.

I was pretty skeptical about reading these at first, mostly because I’ve always judged my sister and cousin for being so obsessed about manga that they could talk about it for an entire dinner conversation, whilst I twirled my chopsticks and imagined poking my eye out with it just to relieve my boredom. Lol

But actually, as an avid reader and a lover of books, I should have realised sooner that a good story is a good story regardless of packaging. And once I started reading these…well, hooked doesn’t even begin to describe it. I have gone down a rabbit hole that has no end in sight and I am enjoying every second of the fall.

Both Heaven Official’s Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation are fantasy novels; there’s a lot of magic and spells and gods and monsters involved. You also learn a lot about Chinese culture, traditions, and beliefs. More importantly, the fact that they even exist in a country where everything goes through extreme censorship, and where being gay is still largely unacceptable, is a damn miracle.

Living in London, I take it for granted sometimes that there are still countries where people are not free to be who they are and to love who they love. I mean, progress: China no longer imprisons anyone for being gay as far as I know; but they’re not exactly advocating for gay rights, equality, and freedom either.

Take The Untamed for example, which is the Netflix adaptation of one of these novels (and my current obsession, don’t judge me). They had to take out any hint of romantic love between the two male leads just so the series would pass censorship and be allowed to even air.

The writers and producers had to go through extreme lengths to satisfy fans of the novel and to convey to discerning viewers that Wei Wu Xian and Lan Zhan are more than just soul brothers, or whatever lame-ass term they came up with. Because the truth is, these guys are actually partners who are in a committed relationship.

The microscopic hints of love between the two characters on screen, the ones that actually passed censorship, are made more special because of the need to be covert and creative. This is also a running theme in the books, where love is not explicit, and its not something you can shout about from the rooftops.

Instead, its expressed in the most infinitesimal of gestures, in the smallest lift of the lips into a secret smile, in the things one does for another regardless of the personal cost. Its not so much the words you say, as much as it is the spaces between the words, in the moments of silence where words need not be said. I don’t know about you, but I find this kind of purity very beautiful. Realistic, maybe not so much.

Still, I grew up in a typical Chinese family where we are not as effusive and demonstrative about our feelings as families in the Western world. I used to look at my parents and think, wow, this isn’t exactly the kind of stuff they write romance novels about, is it?

But actually, isn’t there romance in staying together even when there’s an option to leave, in fighting battles side by side, in being there for the person through sickness and health, and in the warm nights spent watching TV, comfortable in each other’s company, knowing you’ll never have to go through life alone?

I think that Western culture places a lot of emphasis in showing and proving your love, in saying the words “I love you” and needing to hear it said back. And that’s important. We need to be able to say and hear those things. But there is also a place for the spaces between words and the silence between actions.

In addition, in reading these books I am reminded that there are still places where people cannot afford to be demonstrative, where things need to go unsaid, where they have to rely on the weight of every subtle gesture to express how they feel.

I think Pride month is a good time to reflect on how far we’ve come and how much further we still need to go so that everyone, including and especially people who’ve always felt different, will realise that there’s also a place in the world for them and the ones they love.

I’m really glad I gave these books a go, and I can’t wait for the rest of the English translations.

Happy Pride, Everyone!

Book Review: Unwell Women and The Slow Decline Back To The Middle Ages

I wasn’t intending for this to be the topic of my first foray back into blogging (after about two months of the worst case of writer’s block I have ever experienced), but sometimes life happens and you just have to roll with the punches.

Writing has always been my preferred way of making sense of what’s happening in this increasingly confusing and bewildering world we live in, and a way to articulate how I feel about it.

This weekend, the American Supreme Court made a landmark ruling which overturned its previous 1943 ruling on Roe vs Wade, which had given women in America the freedom to decide whether or not they wanted to carry a baby to full term, essentially protecting a woman’s right to have an abortion.

I couldn’t stop thinking about all of this over the weekend, and I just happened to have a lot of time on my hands to think about it. I pored through the many articles, editorials, opinion polls, and celebrity tweets whilst on a 7-hour coach journey to the coast of Cornwall, because of course my holiday happened to fall on the week of the railway company strikes.

(Note: I didn’t have the option of driving because I’m in a state of perpetual procrastination about taking my theory test which would have enabled me to have a UK driver’s license. Ugh. I should really get on that).

The whole issue around Roe vs. Wade made me think about this book called Unwell Women, which I bought and read ages ago but never got around to reviewing for some reason. At the time of purchase, I was going through a phase where I was buying every book about women’s rights and gender equality that Waterstones had on their shelves, all to process my own thoughts and feelings about the prospect of living a life that most people I know would call non-traditional.

Unwell Women gave me a lot of insight into how women have been treated, mistreated, and been failed by medicine since time immemorial.

There was a time when a woman was defined by her uterus, when the most intelligent and enlightened minds of the time believed that the cause of any female illness was the migration of the womb to other parts of the body, which then caused a disturbance in the force (sorry, Star Wars reference).

Ever notice that the word hysteria and hysterectomy share the same prefix?

Yeah, they both originate from ‘hystero’ , the latin word for uterus, and no, a coincidence that is not.

The cure for any female malady was, of course, to get married, have sex and give birth to a number of babies – in that order, as each were seen as mutually exclusive of the other during the dark ages.

At the time, no one could even conceive of such a thing as endometriosis, now a well-researched and well-recognised medical condition deserving of proper treatment. No one knew what PCOS was, neither did anyone do a study on the effects of mental health on the physical body, or any other explanation that had nothing to do with a Wandering Womb.

All practising physicians were men who had absolutely no idea what it was like to have human beings and other things come out of their vagina. It seemed to me like the diagnoses and subsequent treatment for women’s illness were based on two things: the whims of the male imagination and the all-consuming agenda to keep women in their rightful place: at home, cooking dinner and taking care of the fruits of their loins.

Let’s have all women procreate, it will solve everything. This was basically the tagline of medical institutions, from Ancient Greece to the 19th century. It feels relevant to bring all this up now to highlight how far we’ve come in terms of medicine and gender equality, and how much further we have to go, especially when we keep re-treading the same steps and having the same old arguments.

There was a time when women didn’t have any say over their bodies and for America it seems like that time has come again.

Like I said, I’ve been turning this over and over in my head trying to decide how I feel about it, and what to write about it. I grew up in a very religious country, and I have lived with consequences of internalised Catholicism for most of my adult life. I am still, for the most part, a practising Catholic, and in my hearts of hearts I am probably pro-life…but I am also pro-choice.

I feel very passionately about a person’s fundamental right to live their life on their own terms and not by how other people think they should live it, especially because I have often been of judgement in my own pursuit of independence. I have been the object of concern which is really nothing more than thinly-veiled pity, and the recipient of rude, intrusive questions about why I am still single at a time when most women my age have children in grade school.

I spent all of my late 20s and most of my early 30s swiping left and right on various dating apps, and going through an endless, repetitious (wasteful) cycle of swipe, text, meet, drink, ghost, repeat….and for what? For the dubious pleasure of having met societal and familial expectations? To force myself into a box labelled ‘in a relationship’ when I knew that none of the guys I met online were right or worth giving up my freedom for?

No, thank you.

I’m going to try and make myself and my position clear before I come to the end of this very long (and probably incoherent) blog post.

I am not an advocate of abortion, the thought absolutely pains me.

I am not against traditional relationships with the right partner, at the right place, at the right time and under the right circumstances.

I have every respect for mothers and housewives and those that have chosen to devote their life to their children. In fact, I am in awe of them.

I am a Christian through and through.

But I also don’t see the point of cramming morality down other people’s throats or preaching proverbs from the Bible to teenagers who are victims of rape and incest. It won’t help them. At least, not until they get proper medical care.

The overturning of Roe vs Wade has made it difficult for them and women like them, who are also a victim of unwanted circumstances, to get access to that. The Supreme Course has instead put them in a position where they are staring down the barrel of a future they never wanted or asked for.

I am, above anything else, an advocate of women’s choices. I believe they are more than qualified to make them, and therefore those choices should be heard, validated, honoured and respected.

Oh that’s right. I’m meant to be doing a book review. Suffice to say that Unwell Woman is an incredible book which charts the history of women’s eternal struggle for equality as told from the perspective of medicine and health care. From wandering wombs to witch hunts, from birth control pills to abortion, its all there, and its never been more relevant as it is now.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom. The world turns on a series of checks and balances, but those checks and balances should rightfully remain in the hands of the individual, not other people, and certainly not the government. The only person who will live through the consequences of your choices is YOU after all. Its only common sense that you get first say on what those choices ought to be.

Book Review: Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus

Its often hard to objectively review the quality of a book when its subject matter resonates with you so much.

Fortunately for me, I don’t have to do that with Lessons in Chemistry because its one of those rare unicorns that appear every once in a while: a book with a story worth telling that also happens to be incredibly well-written.

There are so many things I want to say about this book, so many threads to pull, that I hardly know where to start. I think I should just start with the main character: Elizabeth Zott.

Elizabeth strives first and foremost to be herself, in all things. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a character who is so uncompromising in her principles and beliefs (sometimes to the point of lunacy, depending on who you ask). She will make her own way in the world and refuses to use her relationships with others to get ahead. She will raise her kid her own way, do sports in her own way, and dammit, she will cook in her own way – using chemistry apparatus and processes should she so desire if only because it brings her the most joy and pleasure to do it that way.

I think it’s the hardest thing to do, to accept who you are and not be afraid to show it to the world. The world can be such a harsh and judgmental place. Who amongst us can say that we are immune to other people’s opinions about us? We all want to be liked and accepted and to be considered normal, so we tend to hide away little pieces of who we are, and adopt other people’s beliefs and wants as our own, in order to fit in.

We don’t even see the danger of doing that until it’s too late and we’ve lost all sense of who we are and we wake up one morning and we realise we don’t even know how we really want our breakfast eggs to be cooked (thank you Julia Roberts for the analogy, I’ve always preferred sunny-side up).

Elizabeth doesn’t do that, or at least she doesn’t do it to the extent of what I would do when faced with the pressures of society. The further I travel down this unconventional path that I find myself in – single, reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent, childless, career-driven, alone but not lonely, finding fulfilment outside of romantic relationships – the more I need heroes like her to tell me that it doesn’t matter so much what the world thinks of me as long as I can still look at the mirror and like what I see.

After all, Erasmus once said: it is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.

I don’t want this to be post to get too political because my book reviews are really all about me (if anyone has a problem with that, its my blog, so whatever). I don’t really consider myself a feminist mostly because I think the word has become overly used and abused by the woke generation that I fear it has lost its meaning, but also because calling myself one makes me feel like a fraud. I don’t think I can live up to those ideals, and I don’t feel qualified to comment on issues such as equality and fair wages.

I will say, however, that I am grateful to, and will support in my own way, all the women who have fought the battles that needed to be fought so that I can live in a world where I can be whoever I want to be. Even if it’s just by reading, reviewing and highlighting important messages in books like Lessons in Chemistry.

These women have paved the way, so that its now normal that I work in a speciality that used to be male-dominated, and I am able to make opinions and decisions within that speciality that matter and make a difference.

I’m grateful that because of those women I have a voice that’s heard (perhaps too much and too loudly at times) on a regular basis, and that I can be sure that a male colleague on the same Agenda for Change pay scale as I do receives the same amount of wages, and that this isn’t determined by the fact that he has a penis and I have ovaries.

And that’s all I will have to say about that. Back to the book review.

Its tempting to think of this book as a rom-com. It started out as one, and maybe that’s why even as I neared the end I was still hoping for a love story, for Elizabeth to have her happy ending.

Now, how bloody hypocritical and reductive is that sentence?

I, of all people, should know better. I should know more than anyone that your life and happiness isn’t defined by the relationships you have with other people. Haven’t I struggled and spoke out against people who choose to diminish (even if unintentional) what I have done with my life purely because I remain unmarried at 34?

Elizabeth did have her love story. She had a love story with the women whose lives she touched through what other people (men, mostly) thought was just another cooking show. She inspired them to learn, and showed them that they can and should expect more of themselves, and that includes learning chemistry if they want it.

It was a love story with the men and women she formed genuine friendships with, who eventually became part of her unconventional family.

It was a love story with a dog named six-thirty and a little girl named Mad, who are both too intelligent for their own good.

And it was a love story with herself, that starred herself and the dreams that she never gave up on, no matter how hard things got at some point.

In the end, just like Nigella Lawson said in the blurb, I am totally devastated to have finished this. It was such a fun book to read, importing just the right amount of gravitas when it comes to things that matter while still being able to have a laugh and not take itself too seriously.

There should be more books like this, written by women, for women, celebrating women. It’s a privilege to have read it, just like it’s a privilege to be a woman fighting to prove that I have a place in this world.

Men, set the table, the women far too busy putting our own stamp on the world to bother with dinner. Lol

The Spinning Monkey

“Intelligence subsumed by the need to please…”

The curtains draw
the lights come on,
he takes centre stage.

With bated breath,
spectators watch,
prepared to be amazed.

For a second,
he tilts, he teeters
he looks uncertain.

But there’s wheels to spin
a show to do
no matter what the burden.

Lightly furred,
his tiny legs
push pedal to the metal.

The audience claps,
He hears them gasp,
reactions monumental.

The audience shouts:
go faster, spin backwards,
sing a song while you do it.

Turn this way,
circle that way,
there’s really nothing to it.

A break in stride
he spreads his arms,
it looks like he might fall.

So quickly he recovers,
blink and you’d miss
seeing it at all.

The cheering soars
too far away
to see brows dot with sweat.

A single drop
Upon his tunic
he makes himself forget.

Forget the aches,
Forget the pains,
the heaviness in his bones.

Forget his dreams
Forget his wish
for a life to call his own.

For if he stops
and if he rests
they will forget his name.

Always another
waiting their turn,
they’re all one and the same.

What is life without this?
the laughter, the cheers,
the applause.

it fills a void
almost enough
to be worth the flaws.

Maybe someday
the curtain will fall
and he can finally stop.

Earn the right
to live, to just be,
to finally be enough.

Until then,
spin on, little monkey,
until there’s nothing left.

Sing and dance,
little monkey,
spin on until the end.