A vote in or out OR a vote for change?

I have written a couple of stories on Medium over the last few months but haven’t published any of them. I always said I would get around to editing them and publishing them soon but work or research seemed to get in the way. But today I am publishing a story that I think needs to be shared.

I was born in London to first-generation immigrant parents from India. I have been educated and spent most of my entire life in the UK. On Thursday night I stayed up and watched my country vote to leave the European Union. But as the unexpected votes for leave tallied up I was not surprised. I was shocked and saddened but not surprised. I had voted to remain as I understood the economic ramifications for leaving but I also understood why people were voting to leave. I believe they were voting for change rather than specifically to leave the EU. I believe they wanted their frustration, their emotions and their views to be heard and they saw voting leave as the only way that could happen. However, I don’t know if that has actually happened.

Since the result there has been a barrage of hate on social media towards those individuals who voted to leave from those who voted to remain and also from those young people that haven’t reached the legal age to have a right to vote. But I think it is important people try and understand what it may be like in someone else’s shoes.

If you have lived and worked in a part of the country that you feel has been ignored by the government, or you have lost your job or livelihood recently and want someone to blame, or you have seen immigrants receive what appears to you like special treatment and you get given a chance to vote on something you want the world to hear you because you feel it has been ignoring you for so long, you want to protest against what you are experiencing because you believe it is unfair and the only way you know how is to vote against what you feel is the establishment so you end up voting to leave the EU.

I am not saying that this is the right way to vent your frustrations but I understand why it has happened. I am also not saying that there weren’t people who voted to leave purely because they are xenophobic or those that voted leave because they were ignorant of the ramifications. I don’t think there is a single unified reason why people voted leave. I am saying that there are some very unhappy people in pain who are struggling in the UK who feel like the only way their voice would be heard was to vote leave. Ironically, their voices have not been heard and their reasons for voting leave have been overshadowed by the wide reaching and considerable impact of the UK leaving the EU.

People see the world from their own viewpoint and I think the fact that Leave won shows that a lot of people are very unhappy in the UK. I know many that voted remain are upset about the UK leaving Europe and I am too but I am also upset knowing that a fair few million people in the UK are so unhappy, dejected, frustrated, bitter, distraught, bewildered and desperate for change that they voted for the unknown. Individuals are naturally resistant to change so it must have been something incredibly powerful that lead to so many people in the UK to vote leave, please try to think about the pain people might be feeling and why that lead them to vote the way they did.

I am not say what they did was right and I am also not saying it wasn’t incredibly selfish but I think they did it more as a protest for themselves. I honestly believe they didn’t think their vote would matter because they feel like they haven’t mattered. They didn’t believe that so many people would vote to leave. They were just voting leave to make themselves feel better and hoping someone somewhere would take notice.

These views are just my own and may be they are driven by the fact that I saw “The Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time” on Wednesday evening the night before the referendum. For those that haven’t seen it or read the book it is a story about a boy who sees the world differently from other people. The play unequivocally showed me how varied people’s experiences are of the world even when we might be looking at the same thing. And may be that is why I have tried to think about how people who voted to leave may be experiencing their lives in the UK.

This isn’t a story about politics and I am not trying to share my opinion on politics. However, I do believe that are a number of people in the UK who voted yes for change by voting for leave. I believe many were not voting to leave but were voting for a voice, for someone to hear their pain, for something to change because they feel they are already at rock bottom so some sort of change must be better.