Weight of the World

Looking for admiration, fulfilment, and respect? Try Prozac and instant ramen instead.

‘You were right to suspect there was more going on.’

These were the most encouraging words I’d heard all year. It wasn’t when I finally graduated or when it got into my dream program; it was finding out I had complex PTSD and depression on top of my pre-existing OCD, making the relationship between my mental health conditions a delectable ménage à trois.

The diagnosis felt like a legitimation of everything I’d been experiencing and helped me put what I’d been feeling for the last few months into clear, discernible terms. I was collecting mental health conditions like they were Pokémon. Instead of special powers or abilities, however, each one had its barriers and limitations, unless having unwashed laundry dispersed across the floor, obsessions with morality, and lacking a stable sense of identity count as superpowers. As it turns out, they do not.

Needless to say, navigating adulthood while battling my mental health hasn’t been fun. Here’s a bit as to why:

***

Atlas Shrugged – and I did too.

‘You really think you’re going to change the world, don’t you?’

I’m sat across my grandmother, with tears welling up, threatening to release. I’m trying to explain my decision not to go into corporate law and how the sector didn’t align with my values. She’s not budging. Instead, her arms are crossed like a panther ready to pounce on anyone with any form of progressive aspiration. Even though my beliefs are diametrically opposed to the one she holds and I’m no stranger to lectures berating the politics I subscribe to, it didn’t lessen the pain.

Both of my grandparents grew up on farms, started with nothing, and worked hard to develop successful careers in business and medicine, leading them to adopt a no nonsense, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality that’s infiltrated he rest of the family. They’re firm believers in meritocracy and personal responsibility, a firmness so extreme to the point that they suggest everything, in some way or another, is eventually your fault. Systems of oppression don’t exist to them – and making attempts to explain them is like trying to sell veganism to a shark.

As such, their favourite book is Atlas Shrugged – a 1200-page novel adored by the right, which essentially serves as a thick stack of neoliberal propaganda. For anyone unfamiliar, the book tells the story of a train magnate combatting strikers and ‘looters’. It reads with the excitement of a toaster manual and would work better as an anaesthetic than a novel – but, in an effort to impress them and gain their approval, I took it upon myself to read it, going as far as making it the focus of a middle school book report.

I remember beaming with glee when my teacher announced I’d gotten the highest mark on the month’s book report. I broke into a smug grin, feeling on top of the world for having read such a complex book at such a young age. In reality, I just had time to read a book I barely understood and knew how to eloquently recite the bullshit I’d been fed throughout my childhood.

Years later, after an ideological spat, I’d find myself rinsing that same book under a faucet out of anger, scrubbing the words with a Macbethian tenacity, thinking I could erase the lies I’d been fed by washing the words off the page. It turns out healing from harmful ideology can’t be remedied through any form of physicality; it requires a total shift in mentality.

***

I decided to do a law degree in the hopes that it would be seen as a pragmatic choice that would lead to a respectable and distinguished career.

When I realised I couldn’t achieve what I then perceived as success without working for a profit-rendering firm, I convinced myself that I could work in corporate law. But I rolled my eyes at networking events, begrudgingly had corporate partners involved in my society, argued with a mentor, and failed to say anything more than ‘you could do more mergers and acquisitions’ when asked how a firm I was interviewing at could grow.

I drank the Kool-Aid because the Kool-Aid tasted like canapes and free champagne. I didn’t really want a six-figure salary; I just wanted stability.

After an entire law degree, I decided my heart was in the non-profit sector, the sector where it always was. While every part of me could have found a stable corporate job, I decided to return to an underappreciated, underpaid life of precarity, living contract to contract before achieving any form of stability. But I’ve always preferred knowing I can make a tangible difference in someone else’s life to spending my time enriching the fortunes of someone else – and that’s never going to change.

***

Some people were born and raised with progressive beliefs. While I’m happy for them, part of me wants to scream at them at the top of my lungs, resenting the ease by which they feel empowered to take on the world – and I’d be lying if I said I’d never lost my temper at them before. I, on the other hand, have grandparents who don’t believe in marginalisation, once had Stephen Harper over for dinner, and used to vote for a far-right party that no longer exists.

Because I didn’t grow up with social justice-oriented beliefs, I went to my first protest far later in my life than most of my other social justice-minded friends. I remember my voice crackling while chanting for tenant’s rights and feeling like I was doing something wrong as my cold hands gripped a clipboard for dear life.

When I went to my first rally and took part in my first disruption in support of transit funding, all that hesitation dissipated. I felt exhilarated by the prospect of making my voice heard. I remembered all the times I’d used the subway to access connection, escape, and opportunity, and how so many other people were in the same shoes, so I clapped and shouted as loud as I could, feeling empowered by everyone around me trying to make a change and stand up for what was right.

***

What insults me the most is when people think what I believe in is arbitrary – a set of idealistic principles rooted in a wishy-washy vision of utopia. But it isn’t arbitrary. I’ve canvassed in buildings where people live among cockroaches and eviction notices, I’ve worked with neurodivergent folks who are treated with disdain for merely existing, I’ve interviewed clients trying to escape the legal complications of their identities, and I’ve heard the stories of youth struggling to access essential care, with nobody else to turn to or relate to in their lives.

There are reasons behind why I know exactly when the library closes, how often transit routes are meant to run, and where to reach out for support in the city – and none of them are particularly good.

You can’t tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they’re walking with blisters and bare feet on broken concrete.

***

Not Notting Hill

My favourite romcom is Notting Hill. I’m not sure what it is about the film that entices me so much. Having never been exposed to romance and healthy relationships growing up, perhaps the sheer absurdity of William Thatcher and Anna Scott’s happenstance encounter in an upscale London neighbourhood makes the inane feel like a plausibility.

Twenty-two was the age I entered my first official relationship. Seeing everyone around me fall in and out of love made me want to prove I could do the same. I craved a sense of normality while forgetting my lived reality, putting in an excessive amount of effort, time, and care into wanting to sustain something meaningful, saying and doing things I would’ve rolled my eyes at a month prior. And, in an instant, he went from being my boyfriend to being my sunk cost fallacy.

I tried to emulate Hugh Grant’s awkward charm, planning dates, coming up with grand gestures, and sharing my favourite parts of the city with him, exchanging stories and jokes over plates of dumplings, injera, and pho washed down with cider, coffee, and matcha lattes

I remember sinking into earth while soaking up the last of the autumn sun with him in my favourite park without a care in the world; it felt, in that moment, all my worries evaporated into the sky.

I made maps of the places we’d been, curated playlists, bought him my favourite fruit, re-enacted the cue card scene in Love Actually, and quoted from Notting Hill before he left for his train back home. To date, hearing those same announcements in the concourse we used to wait in every time he left brings me to the verge of tears, making me remember savouring every last minute together as his departure time became more and more imminent.

But what I failed to acknowledge was the distress the relationship brought out in me. Disparities between our lives brought out feelings of abnormality, instability, and inferiority. I was overwhelmed, exhausted, and lost sight of myself, so I decided to end things – and I didn’t end things well.

***

So, I failed. I failed to sustain a long-term relationship because I didn’t really want one to start with. And I failed to command a sense of understanding and respect because I wasn’t even confident in what I wanted to do. I convinced myself I had to impress everyone and felt a need to justify my life decisions to the world. I felt I had to do everything in my power to disprove my past. And, in the process, I faltered, stumbled, and was subsumed by a tsunami of my own expectations.

In an effort to try to heal and distract myself, I looked into outlets. I tried my hand at hot yoga, experimented with spirituality, and dabbled in acting, taking pretending to be a meerkat more seriously than the entirety of my degree. I thought I could sweat out toxicity and despair, hoping it’d drip out onto the overpriced mat beneath me, without realising that perspiration can never only ever be external, not internal; I compelled myself to believe in a spiritual being, even though I didn’t even believe in myself; and I tried to find reprieve in characters, forgetting that, at the end of the scene, I’d still have to return to being me.

But the truth is, unlike Atlas, you don’t have to carry the weight of the world to change it. For better or worse, only you know why you want the world to change, and nobody can take that away from you. I went from never having protested or canvassed before to getting kicked out of city council and leading canvasses. Every flyer handed out, every door knocked, and every conversation had is a monumental step in the right direction, even when it feels like the world is going backwards. I know who I am, what I’ve been through, what I care about, and why I believe things can be better – and nothing about that requires proof in the form of a grand, sweeping, or romantic gesture. To heavily butcher a quote from Notting Hill, I’m just a boy, standing in front of the world, asking it to change – and maybe, just maybe, it will.

Matthew Lee-Ferguson, 06/06/2023 – Screw 22; Goodness me, I’m 23