Month: February 2016

My Body Isn’t Subject For Debate.

My Body Isn’t Subject For Debate.

 

On Wednesday, 24th February, a video opinion piece I had filmed with the Guardian Newspaper went live on their website and Facebook page. It was the video accompaniment to my ‘Modern Day Poverty‘ article.

I was excited.

I had managed to (finally) grow out the ridiculous haircut I had done last February, an entire year ago, which was a treat, supposedly, after not visiting a hairdresser for close to a decade. After looking in the mirror at the new ‘style’ I remembered why I hadn’t been for a decade and wished I’d stayed away. But anyway, my hair had grown back, and I’d even used some straighteners on it. It looked good.

I had watched make up tutorials and managed to conceal, contour and powder away my strawberry-red skin. I was happy with the result. I looked a normal human colour instead of like an extra from Attack of The Killer Tomatoes. My skin condition (an allergy to one of my medicines) had cleared up, so I didn’t look like a tomato pizza either.

And I had bought a nice top from Select for the occasion. In a size 14, if you care. Not because of any massive amount of vanity, but honestly because my wardrobe had come down to three T-shirts from Primark and two pairs of jeans. If I was going to be seen by thousands, maybe millions, then I owed it to myself to make an effort.

And here’s the thing. You don’t see my body in the film. At all. You can see the width of my shoulders, my neck, and my face. My face, which was bloated, because on a day when I will be spending hours travelling to and from London, across our great Capital, into Guardian offices, filming, I was not going to take my usual two water pills and be stuck without a toilet.

Oh, yeah. Let’s be blunt about it, as no-one seemed to have issues being ‘honest’ about my weight.

Each morning, I wake up between seven and eight pounds heavier than I weigh when I go to bed. My heart is too weak to effectively stop water building up in my body, and the tablets I take allow me to, frankly, piss away the excess. The water gathers around my ankles and my calves…and my face. It makes me look bloated. It makes me look fat. It gathers during the day, and again through the night. My pills stop it building up, because oedema, especially around a heart as strained as mine, is dangerous.

Now, I’m not one for body positivity. In keeping with the blunt theme here, I hate myself. I can’t stand the way I look. I detest what has happened to my body since my heart attack. My reflection fills me with disgust, shame, and grief. It makes me cry. There is no part of my body left, which I can look at and know as my own. It’s bloated, tired, scarred, and isn’t recognisable as the ‘me’ I used to be. I avoid cameras and photos as much as I can, and only use a mirror to do my hair–and on this day, my make up.

I felt good, when I filmed the opinion piece, though. I felt confident. I was wearing size 14 clothes, didn’t look terrible, and my angina was behaving.

And I knew the instant I caught a reflected glimpse of myself in a window, that I would be ripped apart because my face was fat. So I prepared myself for it. I knew it was coming, and I battened down my mental hatches and waved a figurative hand in a ‘whatever’ gesture, and waited for the onslaught. An onslaught, which pissed me off because my gods there are some dickheads out there! An onslaught, which pissed me off because rather than focus on the very real struggle of so many thousands of people, day in, day out, there were dickheads discussing my size–which they couldn’t see.

For all you can see of my body in this video, I could have been wearing a light grey scarf, and had the rest of me naked, painted blue, with a fucking rainbow across my missing nipple! But despite my anger at their ignorance, I wasn’t upset.

And then I was. Because there are thousands of women, and more than a few men, who were reading those comments, and they had not had the time to prepare themselves for what was being said. They were reading those comments, overweight, perhaps having so little money available that their meals are largely consisting of Iceland Value sausages (40 for £2) and bread (10p if you can get it at the end of a day in Tesco). And I started to get angrier and upset on their behalf. I have a fat face, which deflates when I take some pills. Whatever. But the reality of poverty, as so many people face, means subsistence living and cheap, fatty, unhealthy meals. It means so many people living under the breadline are medically overweight. So, so many.

I am fortunate. As I have previously posted, I learnt to cook by watching Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey, The Hairy Bikers and Rick Stein. My meals consist of a lot of rice, pulses, pasta, vegetables, and cheap meat (sorry, it’s not free range organic, but it’s cheap and it’s enough to fill us all up). I can cook. I cook without oils and without fats, Slimming World style. I use herbs, spices, and I am consistently losing weight despite the medication and the water retention.

But there are thousands out there who don’t know how to cook, and they had to also read the vitriol aimed at my head. A message that said clearly, “You can’t be struggling, you are fat.” “You’re obviously not starved.” “You have enough to buy food, obviously.” (I do have enough – I have never said it’s not enough)

I am so sorry, to all of you who might struggle with your weight, and who read the crap written by the sanctimonious arseholes in those comment sections. Thank you for getting in touch with me to see if I was okay–I was. I am. I hope you are too. You’re beautiful–more than those idiots typing vileness into a comment box can ever hope to be.

But, for goodness sake, people, since when is it okay to ball out someone for their size? To insult a body you can’t see? To grind away the small bit of pride I had felt in my appearance on the day I filmed?

Since when do you have the right to use my body as a debate about poverty? When did my face get in on the argument and write anything? The only thing my face does is act as a front-piece for my head, which holds my brain. My face, and the size of my chins has no bearing on my intelligence. It holds no bearing on my financial status, and none at all on how much money I have left after paying all my bills.

It’s just chins. It’s just a face. Most people have them. They’re nothing special.

And mine, away from the cameras, aren’t much bigger than the average. But if they were?

That’s not up for debate either.

 

Do You Have A Story You Would Like To Share?

Do You Have A Story You Would Like To Share?

Hello, Everyone!

I hope you’ve all had a decent start to the year. I know some of us are struggling, and others are about ready to punch politicians in the teeth (don’t do it – you’ll get arrested and the politician will claim for new teeth on expenses!), but I wanted to shout out to you all to say a huge THANK YOU for all of your support over the past year.

Over the last 12 months, my inboxes have been heaving. You have contacted me in your thousands to tell me your stories, and to give me an insight into your worlds. Some are heartbreaking, some are funny, but all, almost with exception, are inspirational. I never thought for a moment that a blog about a leg of lamb and Jamie Oliver would go quite so viral, but it did. It touched a nerve, with a hell of a lot of people.

And you all have your own stories!

During March, I would like to hear from you. I want your stories, and I want to know how you all live, year to year, week to week, day to day.

I want to hear from you if you have had your DLA/PIP stopped, as though the government think you can grow back an arm (yes, really, I’ve heard from (and of) no less than seven amputees who have had their disability payments stopped). I want to hear from you if you are losing your home because of the ‘Bedroom Tax’. If you are trying to navigate your way through the maze of Child Tax Credits, or Childcare Payments. Has your Working Tax Credit been stopped, based on last year’s earnings? Are you elderly, or a student, living far below a breadline politicians (don’t punch them) don’t think exists.

Or do you have tips from a generation past, and know how to make something from nothing, and think vital skills have been lost along the way?

I want to hear from you.

You don’t need to be able to spell, or be able to pass A-Level Grammar (there’s no such thing anyway). I will take what you send me, edit it, and then publish it after you have read through the final article. You can remain anonymous, if you choose to do so. Or you can attach photos or pictures to your email, which would be amazing.

Over the last year, I’ve learnt that the Reality of Modern Day Poverty is something that affects thousands, upon thousands. We’ve sat in our homes, thinking we’re alone.

We’re not alone. And it’s time to start believing the shame is not ours! So email me. Share your stories. Tell me your experiences. Let each other know we are not alone, and more importantly, let that one person, sitting in the dark, feeling hopeless, that they are not alone either.

This March, let’s group together and share our lives. It helps more than you’d believe!

 

email me at KathleenKerridge@gmail.com or contact me through Facebook.

Kathleen Kerridge is an author of Fantasy Fiction & LGBT Fantasy. Her books are available on Amazon.

Willow’s Vision And A 24 Hour Push By A Madman.

Willow’s Vision And A 24 Hour Push By A Madman.

I have some strange and wonderful friends. I just want to get that out there before I go any further. I know some weird and wonderful people, all of whom will drop round to my house and sit at my table. They usually bring vodka, so I allow them to stay for a while. Some end up moving in. Most go home. They all add something to my life that I would be lost without.

One of these friends is a stray brought home by The Hubs. They used to work together, and one night he said, in passing, as you do, “I’ll be bringing a friend round for dinner Wednesday.”

So I nodded, prepared a meal. Waited, and waited, and the bloody friend never turned up. It took another ten months before I finally met this friend of The Hubs. By this point, I thought he had gone a bit mental and had an imaginary friend. But he was real, and David entered my life.

Now, David is crazy. He’s been known to dress up as Widow Twanky. He’s done pantomime, radio, plays sport (gasp) and makes up completely mad scripts to songs he hears. He can hold his liquor too. I like that in a friend. But above all that, he works tirelessly for good causes. He’s one of those genuine people you want to be able to hate, because no one can be that nice, surely.

He’s also a double amputee (through the knee on both legs), and a full time wheelchair user. He has prosthetic legs, but he’s been known to break them or take them off and wave them at people. One night, round my house, he scared my daughter’s ex-boyfriend by twisting a leg behind his head. He’s that sort of person.

So when he said he was going to do a 24 hour push, in his wheelchair, I thought, “Okay. Sounds like something insane enough for you to do, David…”

Willow
Willow – Always Smiling!

Willow is a 6 year old girl. She has a myriad of issues with her health, and broad learning difficulties. She was starved of oxygen during a complicated birth, and suffered a bilateral brain haemorrhage the day she was born. Willow’s mother, who was kind and patient enough to chat to me about her, thought she was going to lose her baby. She was terrified. She prepared herself for the worst. Yet Willow didn’t die. She lived. She has had nine brain surgeries, has Cerebral Palsy, suffers from Hydrocephalus (Fluid on the brain) and has shunts to drain the fluid.

She is also registered as blind.

David’s 24 hour self-propelled push aims to raise £10,000 for Willow. To get her the sensory equipment that would make her quality of life so much better. She’s had some stem-cell treatment, which has yielded some hopeful results, and now it’s time to build up her eye muscles, and just help Willow have a better quality of living. There may be more treatments in the future as well, but the hospitals are abroad, if her parents choose to take that route again. Travel time, time off work, accommodation…it all adds up. It all takes more money than they have.

So, please, share this around. Because a legless maniac wants to wear out his arms and push himself for 24 straight hours to raise these funds. Do it so Willow can get the sensory equipment she so needs, and deserves. Do it, because you’re all amazing, and you can share things better than anyone I know.

So for Willow, please spread the word about a very odd man, and his masochistic tendencies. Sponsor him if you can. Ask others to, if you can’t. Thank you!

http://www.justgiving.com/Willow24

It Could Be Worse? Try Saying It Another Way!

It’s just a saying, isn’t it? People say it all the time. They look at a broken leg, and tell themselves they should be thankful they have a leg to break. They get the flu, and tell themselves they should be thankful it’s not pneumonia. Some, like me, get pneumonia in the middle of summer, and are thankful it’s not some fatal rapid-onset variety of lung cancer. We all do it. We see ourselves, and our friends in situations, and we say “It could be worse.”

But, and here’s the thing, saying that doesn’t help. It doesn’t make things better. It doesn’t change the dire situation someone is in, just because, somewhere, somehow, it could be worse.

The other night (just before payday, which happened and then, faster than I could appreciate it had happened, it had gone again) I was staring at the contents of my fridge and wondering what the bloody hell I could cook for dinner. As most of you will know, there’s only so many times you can feed kids pasta with a chopped onion and some tomatoes before they begin to riot like French Peasants prior to the revolution. They probably feel the same way about rice, near the end of the month.

You can jazz it up all you want, but it’s still pasta. And that gets bloody boring, right?

So there I was, staring into my fridge, wondering what I could do with some limp spring onions, half an aubergine, and a withering pepper which, to be fair, looked as terrible as I was feeling (I had a cold last week – my heart hates me getting colds and objects in terms I can’t ignore). There was enough to feed one adult, in my fridge. So I looked at my bank balance and decided to risk a small top-up shop. Up the road to Tesco I went, and began to choose the cheapest food my extortionate little corner-Tesco offers. Seriously…it’s a Tesco Metro. This means they can scrap their value range, replacing it with premium brands. It means tomatoes aren’t 32p. They’re, like, a million pounds (or 85p, whatever). Anyway, I was staring just as blankly at the shelves in Tesco as I had stared at my fridge. I debated walking the two miles to the bigger Tesco, but my energy was gone. I thought about walking the mile to Lidl, but honestly, walking to the end of the road was already pushing my hard limits that day.

Then, miracle of miracles, I saw the man with his mark-down gun. He marked down chicken, and potatoes, and vegetables. I tell you, I grabbed that food as though I was in a bread queue in the USSR circa 1986. I paid (it came to under £3.00, and I had two days food, plus lunches. RESULT!) and I went home. And I told myself ‘Well, it could be worse. I have food. Many don’t. There are starving people in the world. Homeless people. My husband has a job, many don’t. I’m not dead yet, so that’s something.”

And it sounded, for once, like what it was. A trite remark, which is meaningless. It’s something people in dire situations tell themselves, and others, in the hope that it will carry them through one more hour, one more day. The politicians, bludgeoning us all with figures to make it seem we’re better off than we are, love it when we look at each other and say ‘It could be worse!’

Maybe, instead of saying ‘It could be worse’, we should start saying, ‘It should be better’. Because when we realise it should be better, we will make other people hear the truth. The truth about rents of £1100: more than the total take home pay of an average earner each month. The truth of council tax that costs close to an entire week’s income, every month. The truth of shops who hike up prices to over double the cost, because they’ve not got competition and because they can. The truth of energy suppliers, who are given a license to steal our money and increase their prices, because no one will stop them. The truth of a government who would have their cronies believe a working family with Tax Credits is playing the system and deserves the same irrational contempt they give someone who isn’t, for whatever reason (and there are many) in work. The truth about media portrayal of the poor, victim shaming and blaming until everyone is too scared to admit the struggle they face, despite being nurses, or office workers, or managers, or shop assistants. The truth that poverty is real, but hidden, and shameful.

So yes, it could be worse. But, for crying out loud, it should be so much better.