FemSoc Saved my Life - anon
TW: Abuse and mental health.
People consistently ask me how I got in to feminism but from
where I am standing my feminism seems like such an integral part of my identity
that I find it difficult to know where it really originates. Maybe my feminist
awakening happened at age twelve when I cried in a history class because one of
my friends dismissed the suffragettes as boring or perhaps it happened when I
was fifteen and my PE class staged a walk out against my school’s change in
uniform policy.
I know that if I am really being honest with myself it didn’t
happen until much later. When I arrived at Royal Holloway I was still hesitant
about the idea of feminist society, I spent a few minutes lingering around
their booth at the freshers fair wrestling with the idea. I was still new to
the idea and very much afraid of anything that seemed ‘too radical’
(occasionally I wish that I could show 2011 me what I have become I think I
would be impressed but also mildly horrified).
My life has changed a lot since first year and now I am talking
to you one mental breakdown later and I want to tell you that FemSoc saved my
life. I failed my first year at university due to severe agoraphobia and
anxiety that rendered me unable to attend vast swathes of my lectures. So when
I arrived back for my second year alongside passing my incomplete first year
courses I launched my own personal campaign to try to ‘be braver’ (This was a
goal that is very simple to say but near impossible to realise).
The first step I took on my
mission to ‘be braver’ was attending a Post Secret event alone. Whilst I was
there the floor was opened up for people in the audience to be able to share
their secrets, this was the first time that I spoke about my ex-boyfriend
having raped me. I told my most painful secret to a room full of 500 strangers
and I felt supported. Two people came up to me after the event and told me that
they shared my secret; the first was a police woman who specifically dealt with
cases involving abusive relationships, the second was a feminist blogger who I
recognised and admired and it was this interaction that encouraged me to become
as involved with feminism as I could.
I knew I needed people around me who could provide me with a sense of support and community and FemSoc was where I found them. My mental health has been through ups and downs and I have had some awful ‘cannot get out of bed because the world is far too scary’ days and on those days it has been friends that I have made through feminism that have encouraged me and supported me and I have tried to offer them the same sort of support in return. Feminist spaces are where I feel at my happiest and most fulfilled and I mean it in complete seriousness when I tell people that FemSoc made me feel safe and supported at university and that is what saved my life.
I knew I needed people around me who could provide me with a sense of support and community and FemSoc was where I found them. My mental health has been through ups and downs and I have had some awful ‘cannot get out of bed because the world is far too scary’ days and on those days it has been friends that I have made through feminism that have encouraged me and supported me and I have tried to offer them the same sort of support in return. Feminist spaces are where I feel at my happiest and most fulfilled and I mean it in complete seriousness when I tell people that FemSoc made me feel safe and supported at university and that is what saved my life.
