I am breaking my silence
Why I have to express my feelings on the emotional struggle that is Brexit
I am sorry – I am reneging – I am sorry for going back but not for how I feel. It has become personal for some and it isn’t my intention. I am not pointing a single finger, I’m looking at 17,410,742 people and asking WTF?
I had no idea how bad this would be, how bad I would feel or how frustrated I’d feel. I have spent too much of my life not being engaged, sweeping things under for the convenience of others or trying to save face. South Africans and Swedes alike are often known to speak their mind. As someone who is half of each, I’m claiming that birthright.
I have just come back from a summit in Scotland where some really bright people in the finance industry participated in the Brexit discussions. We explored the implications of this new Brexit world. These discussions were deep, emotional and considered. Sadly however, to me, it did not seem like people felt there a light anywhere near this tunnel – even the Leavers. Rather it seemed that for more than a few the future was risky, dark, unknown and uncontrolled.
Adding everything up so far this is, to me a sadly beautiful example of a clusterfuk (def’n: Derivative from the term “Fuck up” / A term used when something / someone behaves less than satisfactory / a plan goes wrong etc).
In my taxi back to Edinburgh airport after the summit the driver said he voted to leave because Britain was at its best when it was out. The problem is that he then went on to quote the series of examples he relied on to make his decision, most of them were either historically inaccurate (I googled a lot of them) or actually referred back to Britain as a modern day Viking flying the banner of colonialism (i.e the time they invented concentration camps and put women and children in them) – like that’s something to be proud of?
Even the people who have well researched reasons for leaving seem to have found flaws in their own justification or are desperately trying to reassure us (themselves?) that it was the right decision. I just don’t buy it from either side.
I thought I would be over it and that it would die down. Rather than a gale force storm, it seems like this is a whole new type of weather system, and the forecasters were either lost at a picnic in North Korea or were sitting drunk at the bottom of the barrel because they didn’t see this coming.
And, yes, I get it is a democratic vote in an oversized opinion poll but it was not an overwhelming win and I do believe it has created great social, political and economic rifts.
On Sunday I was trying to write a blog post on why I was being so expressive and why I wasn’t being out of character. This is because a number of people had expressed their disappointment in my comments and feelings after the results. Some people unfriended me on Facebook, some asked me to chill out and some have tried to argue with me. So to rely on the now aptly named Little Britain, “Yeah, but, no, but…” keeping calm and carrying on isn’t working for me.
I am a very feeling person and I am feeling very deeply at the moment. If I am at any point going to “get stuck in and make good of this mess” of the crap I feel we have landed in, I have to have been through it, felt it, understood it and processed it. I’ve been told that I’m needed more now than ever as someone who helps and heals… but people my expression is part of me, part of how I process and how I feel. It is not personally directed but it is personal. It impacts me deeply as a father, husband, colleague, individual and as an immigrant.
It was a great blog that prompted me to come out and re-open this topic. It is as a wound that feels like it has been stitched up badly and with stuff still left inside. The blog is eloquent in a way that I am not, it is outright in a way that I haven’t been and it is by a British native which I’m not. You can read the whole blog here and I think it is excellent but these two paragraphs really spoke for me:
“…to the people who are saying we are now able to govern ourselves and we are free of the unelected shackles of Brussels dictating to us. Farage is unelected. Gove/Boris or whoever takes over from Cameron will be unelected. The House of Lords is unelected. The queen, who keeps being wheeled out as a symbol of our great democracy for reasons I cannot understand, is unelected. You are being taken into the future by largely unelected fuckwits who have already lied to you and broken every promise you gave them power for. Do not talk to me about the shackles of Brussels.”
And
“…I am watching, over the last few days, in absolute horror as the far right start to move out of the shadows and back into centre stage again. My time line has been pinging with people reporting hate crime. There’s even a Twitter feed for it where they are gathering information in order to report it. It’s appearing in reports on my community Facebook page. It’s in my daughter’s school. It’s like someone took the lid off Pandora’s Box. Don’t tell me I’m exaggerating. Don’t tell me that reports can be twisted. Maybe they can, but it’s being taken seriously enough by everyone that matters and it is tabled for discussion in the House of Commons this week. It’s not as if they haven’t got other things to talk about. It’s happening and I’m appalled but sadly, not surprised. Apropos of this, please do not tell me: ‘I’m not a racist’ if you voted leave. I get that, but I said that it would open the door to the far right, and it has and to pretend it hasn’t, and to not look or think. about it is cowardly. And to say ‘I’m not a racist,’ is to imply that I’m making all this about you. I’m not, but I have a right to get angry and upset about the consequences of a decision you were a part of, however noble your intentions.
I grew up in South Africa at the end of the apartheid era. There were a lot of very difficult and polarising conversations then, even between us teenagers in high school. I have seen how people can be completely opposed to each other’s politics and want to argue and fight. I was part of it, wrongly accused of being a racist simply because I was the son of an Afrikaner. I have seen how politics can tear a country up. But, I have also seen how talking can heal, how venting can help and how truth and reconciliation is made up of expressing and releasing before any forgiveness can transform hurt into healing. This is only my truth and my reconciliation can only happen when I’ve got to a point that I’ve got no more bitterness to feel.
