Sometimes Resistance Means Rest

We’ve already been fighting for so long, and there are so many more battles ahead

Photo by Ihsan Adityawarman (none of my cats would sit still)

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”
— Audre Lorde

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2024 was a difficult year on so many levels. It was a difficult year for me personally, for the LGBTQ+ community, and really for anyone with a drop of empathy for other human beings.

These 12 months were possibly the longest and shortest of my life. (Yes, I’m including the Covid years.)

I lost a cat, Zeus, my partner’s ‘soul cat’, to a sudden, painful illness. It was distressing in a way I don’t think we were prepared for.

It foreshadowed the distress that would come with the death of my mother-in-law soon after. My partner watched her mum go from a manageable breast cancer diagnosis with a prognosis of years to rapid deterioration and death within just a few months. Christmas has been hard this year.

We left a house which we hoped would be a long-term home, due to the landlord’s refusal to take our concerns about rising damp and mould seriously. We had to tear apart so much of the hard work we put into making the place ours and see it thrown in the local tip.

We have thankfully moved to a wonderful new home (also rented, but from farmers who are family friends), but it comes with painful memories since it’s the childhood home of my partner and the place where her mum so recently passed away.

I don’t have to tell anyone who’s moved house how stressful it is. Especially in winter, especially in a hurry, especially while still grieving the loss of a parent. Especially while driving back and forth on hundred-mile round trips with chronic illness and constant pain and tiredness as a baseline, as was the case for my partner.

Needless to say all of this has taken a toll on our mental and physical health.

And this is just the personal stuff.

For more than a year now we’ve seen our supposed international rule of law revealed as a farce as Western governments aid Israel’s brutal genocide in Palestine and their eventual invasion of Iran, Lebanon, and now Syria (it’s getting hard to keep track).

Of course, Palestine is just the ongoing horror story we hear the most about right now, and the hurt being felt by Palestinians is echoed among so many different groups around the world.

I’ve watched my queer friends in the US experience the horror of a dawning second Trump presidency and the realisation that many ‘liberals’ blame them for this, for daring to ask for the same rights they have.

Things have also gone from bad to worse in the UK, where I live, as the Labour government which took power earlier in the year quickly revealed themselves to be little different from their Conservative predecessors (as many of us warned they would).

In particular, attacks on trans people (that’s me) have ramped up on both sides of the Atlantic and just about everywhere else. If 2014 was the transgender tipping point, 2024 was the transphobic tipping point.

Transgender people are only one of the groups being scapegoated by elites and opportunists hungry for a bit of power.

As neoliberal capitalism eats itself and economies fail, people are looking for answers and someone to blame. The far-right is happy to provide both, as they always have been.

There’s a nascent fascist movement growing in Western so-called civilisation (maybe that movement is far-right, or alt-right — whatever you want to call it, the semantics matter less than the substance at this point).

It’s more obvious in the US, vis-a-vis Trumpism, but it’s happening in the UK and Europe, too.

Just as the failures of the Democratic Party led again to Trump (yes, it’s the Democrats’ own fault they didn’t get elected), Keir Starmer’s neoliberal shell of a Labour Party is leading the UK right into the hands of petty fascists.

It’s painful to hear loved ones parrot the far-right rhetoric of hateful grifters, to hear them dehumanise migrants, the disabled, women, and others who they have far more in common with than the likes of Nigel Farage or Donald Trump.

Especially when I know that if they’re buying into all that other hate, they’re almost certainly buying into anti-LGBTQ+ hate, too — or at the very least absorbing it through an insidious process of ideological osmosis.

All of which is a very long intro to get to my main point: my mental health is in pieces.

I am tired.

I doubt I’m the only one. I know I’m not the only one.

The problem is that resistance is desperately needed now, possibly more so than at any other time in recent memory.

Resistance to so many things: queerphobia, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, nationalism, ableism, imperialism, warmongering, corruption, cronyism, and the most inescapable thing for literally all of us, the destruction of the planet through sheer greed.

We need to resist the kind of parochial thinking that says we can separate these issues and deal with them individually because, really, they’re part of the same persistent, toxic whole.

We need to resist blaming the “other” and the victim, to resist directing our anger wherever the media and politicians tell us to.

Most of all, we need to resist the temptation to retreat into cynical nihilism; we need to resist giving up.

I’m mainly speaking to myself with that last one, but maybe you needed to hear it, too.

I’ve been fighting for years at this point. I’ve been fighting my whole life really. I’m queer, I’m disabled, I’m weird, and I’m poor as hell and always have been.

I’ve forever been resisting in some way, even just by existing when others would really rather I didn’t.

Just now, writing is my way of resisting. But I haven’t been able to do that much recently. Honestly, this is the first cogent thing I’ve been able to piece together in weeks — that probably speaks volumes all on its own.

When your main route to activism and any chance of contributing to social change is writing — and if you’re as neurodivergent, mentally ill, and disconnected from real-life community as I am, you’ll know what I mean — you inevitably find yourself becoming chronically online.

You have to be. That’s how you learn about what’s happening, so you can write about it, tell others about it, and resist.

But what that also means is reading, every single day, about how much some people hate you (increasingly more apparently). About how much some people want to eradicate people like you or those you care about — whether that’s a family member, a friend, or some kid you’ve never met in Palestine.

It’s distressing (and that isn’t a strong enough word) to constantly read about the sheer extent of vitriol some humans have for others and the lengths they’re willing to go to hurt other people — and, unfortunately, how successful they often are in doing so.

I’m at a point where I can’t read LGBTQ+ news. I’ve taken all my social media apps off my phone. I don’t watch TV, or read newspapers. I know what I’ll find there — hate.

I can’t bring myself to write about queer rights because when I try to do the research I can feel my heart rate go up as a panic attack looms and my mood plummets.

I feel too scared, too hopeless, too tired to engage with the fight right now. And that isn’t like me: I’m a fighter. I always have been, in my own little way.

As I said, resistance is needed now more than at any other time in recent memory.

But I’m here to tell you that, if you’re too tired to resist right now, that’s okay.

Whether you’ve been resisting for your whole life, for the past year, or since yesterday, you can’t keep going forever. We all need a break sometimes, so we can keep going.

I’ve seen some ‘seasoned’ activists laying on the guilt trip. That isn’t helping anyone and only tells me that they probably need a break, too.

Yes, taking a break from fighting is okay. It’s not giving up; it’s self-care. It’s necessary.

Self-care is resistance.

Wanting to still be here so you can fight, not allowing the hate to get to you, is one of the most powerful forms of resistance we have.

So stop feeling guilty that you’re too tired to do whatever it is that you do to resist. Go hang out with friends, play your favourite video game, get out and touch grass, go to the gym, read a book, cook, bake, create something, or just sleep for three days.

Whatever rest looks like for you, do it.

And know that by recuperating, by looking after yourself, you’re resisting.

Because in the next few years, we’re going to need everyone fighting fit.

See you on the battle lines (after a much-needed nap, of course).

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This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, Let’s Write Tales of Resistance: Queer People Need These Stories Right Now!