The death of hope is a balm

[andrewducker]

After three years of increasing stress watching Brexit approach, be deflected, go up against numerous crunch votes, and not quite make it through, the knowledge that it's happening has been actually very helpful for my mental health.

Now, whenever I see an item about the latest stupidity I take in the headline, snort about what idiots they are, and move on. It feels very much Not My Problem.

I mean, it will be. It will be everyone's. But now it's an approaching storm that I can get on with battening down the hatches for. It is an inevitable part of the future, not something I should be trying to stop.

In some ways it feels the same as the ending of some of my relationships - endless stressing about how to fix things (and whether they can be fixed) is now over and the heartbreak is nowhere near as bad as the stress was.

I realise that my ability to put in place survival mechanisms is a sign of privilege. The people who will be hit worst by this are the poorest and most precarious. I'll do what I can to help people when it comes clear what that help looks like. But at the moment I mostly just feel the relief of knowing the fight is over and we lost.

Comments

[drplokta]

But the new fight begins on 1 February, and will eventually win, when the good old days that are dimly remembered by sixty- and seventy- somethings who are confusing their own life trajectory with the state of the nation involve EU membership. I’m afraid it may take twenty or thirty years, though.

[andrewducker]

I am very curious to see what happens when the people who lived through the Winter of Discontent die off, as that's going to change our voter profiles a lot.

[drplokta]

I’m afraid I won’t get to see what happens when those voters die, because I’m one of them.

[andrewducker]

Let's hope you're one of the longer lived ones!

[cmcmck]

I'm also one of those sixtysomethings and know a lot of other sixtysomethings who don't think like these imbeciles.

It may have to do with being working class in origin and growing up in a council prefab in the Medway towns (which I know you know). What good old days?