50 Blog posts: from the microcosm to the..er...microcosm

I have now written 50 blog posts! Happy milestone anniversary to me!

I started writing this blog two years ago, I can’t remember why - probably something to do with being advised to have an online presence, if you were serious about being a writer. I didn’t have a remit. My first post was about the rather mundane, yet painful experience of going to the dental hygienist. I knew that some people treated blogs like diaries and I didn’t want mine to be quite like that - not a ticker tape of revelations and emotional outpourings. After all, who would want to read that?

Also, wasn’t there something rather shameful about writing about and sharing your feelings? We were all supposed to present a serene face to the world, crack the odd joke and keep calm and grind our teeth to a fine powder, weren’t we? And sneer at those attention-seeking Facebook posters who shouted all over social media ‘Could my life get any worse!’. That was the equivalent of mooning your teacher, wasn’t it? Tempting as it was to try and garner a bit of sympathy and attempt to grate away at the isolation that modern life created, it was seen (in my circles, or maybe it was just the nagging voice of the inner critic) as deeply vulgar and exhibitionist to shout about your problems. So I wrote about diverse things; there wasn’t really a unifying thread. I wrote about films and books and music. I touched on feminism and gender politics. I didn’t write particularly frequently and I didn’t have a particularly large readership (unlike the legions of followers that I have now).

That all changed when I wrote a piece about depression: when I wrote about that, I crossed over the invisible line that I’d set. I’d never written about it before and hadn’t talked about it very much, especially not in recent years when it hadn’t really been an issue. It was the most honest and revelatory thing I’d ever written but straight after I posted it, I thought - Fuck! Why the hell did I do that? I felt hideously, horrendously exposed. This was not how I wanted to be viewed, and for me, who considers myself to be a *private person, I felt that I’d left myself intensely vulnerable. However, that post had the most views I'd ever had and it had the greatest response because the thing is, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues are extremely common; the majority of people will experience them at some point in their lives, but there is still a real stigma around talking about them.
*It may surprise you to learn that I consider myself to be a very private person. I’ve written about depression, ectopic pregnancy and made (oblique) references to *cough* masturbation and that doesn’t seem like something that a private person would do, does it? I wouldn’t have open discussions about those topics with most people and yet I’ve put them out there for anyone to read.

Key trends from the Samaritans Suicide Statistics Report 2016

• There were 6,581 suicides in the UK and Republic of Ireland, in 2014.
• In 2014, 6,122 suicides were registered in the UK. This corresponds to a suicide rate of 10.8 per 100,000 people (16.8 per 100,000 for men and 5.2 per 100,000 for women).
• The highest suicide rate in the UK in 2014 was for men aged 45-49 at 26.5 per 100,000.
• The male suicide rate decreased in the UK (by 5.6%), England (by less than 1%), Wales (by 37.6%), Scotland (by 17.6%), Northern Ireland  (by 10.2%) and Republic of Ireland (by 6.4%) between 2013 and 2014.
• Female suicide rates increased in the UK (by 8.3%), England (by 14%), Scotland (by 7.8%) and Republic of Ireland (by 14.7%) between 2013  and 2014. Female suicide rates decreased in Wales (by 38.2%) and Northern Ireland (by 17.7%).
• The female suicide rate in England is at its highest since 2005.
• The female suicide rate in the UK is at its highest since 2011.

And perhaps, as the statistics from The Samaritans show, mental health needs to be talked about as much as politics, history, travel, disease, education, baking, athletics, football and Taylor Swift.

I’ve become aware that other blogs, ones which are less personal, are tackling wider issues and it makes me rather ashamed of my own narcissistic little journal. I’m constantly abashed by the fact that I don’t really talk politics (I don’t feel qualified) or human rights. Some people might perceive it as a privilege of the affluent West to have preoccupations with things like vaginal perfume http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/but-seriously.html when, in parts of the Congo, women, young girls and baby girls are being systematically raped. But I think of gender inequality as a continuum where, what we experience in the West is at one end of the spectrum and the horrendous abuses that happen elsewhere are at the other. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t protest against the milder stuff, it still comes under the umbrella of misogyny . After all, you wouldn’t not report a theft because in other parts of the world, people were having bombs dropped on them, would you?

So, this cheery little post started out as a celebration, turned into reflection then, almost an apology piece. Some people see all social media as the elevation of the mundane: Beryl gets 90 Facebook ‘likes’ for posting - ‘At home, chopping a cucumber’, type thing. But is that really so bad? Perhaps, with all the hideous happenings that are beyond our control, it’s better to take time to smell the roses and appreciate other people’s cucumber chopping …

So, the next time I prepare a salad, I’ll be sure to write about it, OK.

Bekonscot Model Village