I’ve been thinking a lot about current affairs recently, and their effect on mental health. A couple of weeks ago I engaged in a Facebook post. I normally lurk. The algorithm mostly spits up posts from people who have retired early and are living their best lives. I think it’s trying to tell me something. But this post was different. Someone in my local community was asking to have an open conversation about the flags that are being put up everywhere.
A couple of days previously I went into town and the flags had appeared overnight. They had created an avenue along the road. England flags lining both sides, as though leading you to some significant national event, or an Olympic village, or jubilee celebration. I don’t hate the England flag. But by the time I reached the centre of town I was in tears.
They are putting the flags up as part of a campaign that has deep roots in the far right. It is sending a clear anti-immigration message. Giving confidence to racists to raise their voice and target migrants (and anyone from an ethnic minority). It is evil genius: daring to say you don’t like the flags brands you as un-patriotic. It is being presented as a celebration of being English, something to unite us. But the true message is: get out.
How would J have reacted? Everything has changed so much since his death. The world is in turmoil: Gaza, Ukraine, the cost of living crisis, climate change, Trump, Farage. I’ve already mentioned that he didn’t like living in the UK. He thought people weren’t accepting of the fact that he’d chosen to live a different type of life. The first thing they always asked him was: “What do you do?”
He hadn’t intended to settle here, but stayed for me and the kids. After his suicide, I felt enormous guilt about it. Should I have urged him to leave when his mental health started becoming unmanageable? Would going back to France or Australia have helped him? If I had told him to leave, wouldn’t that have made him worse?
At his funeral his family’s eulogies all spoke about him being a “free spirit.” They said he was born in the wrong time, was always on the move, travelling the world. All my emotions were in a jumble and far too close to the surface. I thought branding him a free spirit romanticised his death. It explained away his suicide too neatly, absolving anyone from having played a part in his troubles.
None of his family mentioned the fact that he had settled down and was now a step-dad to my two boys. We were erased from the romantic image of the wandering traveller. Putting down roots in one place – with a family no less – didn’t fit into the narrative.
But evident bitterness aside, he would have hated what the flags represent. The pockets of this country that he already disliked – narrow-mindedness, ignorance, hate – amplified. Would he have been better off anywhere else? It’s hard to say. The government have now announced that they will be introducing digital ID cards. The primary reason: to control immigration. Ironically the same right-leaning parties who say the flags are patriotic are saying it’s an infringement on our rights.
Back to the Facebook post, it didn’t change anything. The opinions were so fiercely opposing that nobody managed to change anyone else’s mind. It was black and white, with no grey area in-between. You either wholeheartedly agreed with the flags, or you didn’t. But I felt better afterwards. If nothing else, it was comforting to know that there were others who shared my views.
And there is another thing that brings me comfort. As much as I miss J and wish he was still here with us, I’m also relieved he was spared from all of this.
In November 2021, five months before his suicide, he’d written in his journal: “These Internet/Covid vaccine times are now to me, the beginning of the end.” The pandemic seems like a lifetime ago, but at the time it heightened his fear of the world closing in on him. To him it represented a loss of freedom. It impacted his mental health. And now things are much worse. So maybe I’m saying he was a free spirit after all. Maybe he wasn’t meant to settle in one place, to put down roots. And maybe it’s the right thing for him that he is finally at peace.
