eve's thought garden

The best minds of my generation were torn apart by anxiety-inducing social media platforms. 
People who, desperate to show how many followers they had, desperate for fulfilment in a world based on visuals, a world that revolves around how you look and not what you think,
a world in which politicians refuse to pay for childrens’ school dinners, crying and yelling
and screaming that parents should do better, that people should just stop being poor. 
Those who lie on the streets of London tucked up in a worn-down sleeping bag and
beg for money from shoppers who spend all their funds on clothes from shops that pay
children in factories less than minimum wage, and businessmen who eat out in restaurants
that charge hundreds of pounds for two starters, but who still cannot find it in them to
offer someone two pounds on the street.
Who never got an opportunity to vote in the referendum but still have to face the consequences of mass border control, rising prices for milk and bread and not being able to explore the world and all it has to offer because you were too scared of foreigners taking your jobs.
Who juggle three jobs in order that their children have food on the table and a cake for their birthday, working into the early hours of the morning with bags under the eyes that drop lower and lower as each day plods on, rushing around in order to appear fine at the next parent-teacher meeting when the last cheque still hasn’t made it through the door and 
you’re relying on the money the government gives you but now the government wants to
cut your benefits again.
Who looks in the mirror before school and hates everything they see, clutching at skin that in their mind seems to spill over, that seems to fall in a heap ruining everything, collarbones poking out and ribs protruding but still the same thoughts flood through about not being good enough.
Who watches the news and wonders when the men in suits with big red buttons and manifestos will begin to care about forest fires, flooding and mass deforestation, whilst a teenage girl enrages those men by speaking out about the problems they choose to ignore,
stubbornness, pride, arrogance, ambition.
Who sat on the tube, beard straggly and full, fingernails chewed down to the bottom and eyes red and puffy, talking to a person invisible about how they weren’t at church last weekend but they were missed whilst the rest of the carriage look on at you as if you are a person deranged.
Who writes a list of all the different kinds of coffee and milk everyone in the office wants and still gets treated like a tiny fly that gets in the way, hovering and stuttering and asking questions no one seems bothered to respond to.
Who sits in the back of dimly-lit bars, lipstick bright and bubbly, mascara stains underneath bottom lashes and stares into the third glass of wine they’ve had that night.
Who spends their whole life trying to figure out why people who look like them are never in films or television shows, magazines and books, why no one seems to know or care about the stories of your ancestors, why the people who treated them like animals are still allowed to be tolerated, made into statues for all to admire in tourist hotspots.
Who goes on a walk to the supermarket and instead gets their hijab torn off, garment flying in the air, more than a garment though, a symbol. Who gets told they are a terrorist, that they are responsible for all that has gone wrong in this country, that they are the problem, that they are a threat to society, that even though they work all day long in a hospital and resurrect your family members from the grave, even though they give money to charity and never say a word against anyone else, you still paint them as the devil.
Who walks the dog each morning and afternoon because their wife died three years ago, the house left silent, it seemed to grow bigger each day she wasn’t there, walls expanding whilst the rest of the world shrunk smaller, and no one seemed to ever pick up the phone in time.
Who sat in the waiting-room and told the doctor they needed help only to be told there was another queue they’d be put in until December, as if by December they wouldn’t still feel like walking off the edge of a cliff.
Who stayed up studying until 3 am because the government decided that teenagers needed to be tested more, needed to “man up” and start living in the real world, days without sleep and eating half a breakfast bar because the bus comes at 8am each morning. Late nights, piling years of knowledge into your brain in the space of four months and hoping you’ll regurgitate enough that you’ll make it into sixth form and university and get the perfect job in order to be the perfect person you’re meant to be according to everyone else.
Who dances to music alone in their room, headphones off, the world disappearing into the background, trying to forget about the fact the laundry isn’t done and neither is the work but none of that seems to matter when the eyes are closed, body swaying to-and-fro, bass and melody and rhythm together in a tango.
Who loses count of how many species fall into extinction, warnings heavy and underlined in red years ago but the message is never listened to, polar bears with no ice to grasp onto, birds with no trees to rest in and flowers without fields to bloom in.
Who longed for the days of a Britain that never was, a so-called golden age in which the nation was “thriving”, food still rationed and children starving, women still treated as if the home was the only place they belonged in, anyone less than white labelled an alien, and prejudice that ran rampant.
Who claimed the Empire was the peak of Britain’s success, that the country had gone downhill, snowflakes taking over and destroying democracy whilst you complain about wearing masks whilst NHS nurses watch your loved ones dying in hospital, too tired to make dinner when they finally make it home late evening in order to watch the 10 o’clock news where they watch you chanting that this is an infringement on your rights, but your life has not changed even the slightest from what it was.
Who married a man who revealed himself to be a hidden monster, the lies, the secrets, the underlying bitterness and hatred, all-consuming horror and dread and anxiety, the kind that keeps you up at night and makes you drive until your eyes feel hazy and heavy, the darkness more inviting than your own home.
Who speak in their mother tongue and are crucified for it, begged to ‘go back’ to where they belong while they stand with a union jack in one hand and passport in another, never knowing why it is that no one can accept they are here to stay.
Who had a baby at sixteen and learnt to be an adult overnight, baby food that falls onto bibs and decorates the floor, clothes that refuse to fit and parties you no longer have time to attend.
Who sits in the back of the class and understands nothing, notes scrawled in the back of a maths workbook and doodles down the margins, a mask hiding the paranoia of never quite fitting in, hair that is coated in gel so thick it looks wet and skin ridden with acne.
Who stands with the Big Issue in the cold on the weekdays, smiling at all the faces that go by as if that might be the answer.
Who works in the fish and chip shop and cries when the football team scores a goal, grease coats the fingers that clasp onto a half-finished can of Coke but the nostalgia is infinite, the rush of watching another match a kind of euphoria.
Who reads books in the back of the car whilst the parents argue about council tax and why so-and-so was calling the telephone last night at that time, hands clenched and raised voices, the pages thin and warm to the touch.
Who walked home in the dark with no shoes on, heels clutched in both hands and stares as they passed the bus-stop, blisters on the back of their heels but the music still ringing in their ears.
Who wanted to see their dad again so sent letters in the post, a relationship reliant on pen and paper, memories of white and grey walls, fences and police, echoes of sirens and shouting and growling.
Who were kidnapped and flung in cages as if they could be reconstructed, redesigned to fit a certain aesthetic, brainwashed and belittled and treated like inferiors, blood on the hands of their perpetrators who claimed in the media they were being bullied by the rest of the world.
Who tried to get home for their daughter’s birthday whilst the Extinction Rebellion sat on the train.
Who tried to protest about climate change but realised the only people who should be listening were too preoccupied with stopping refugees getting through the walls they’d built into barriers to ever actually listen.