From flashback to flashback?

Submitted by Andrea(s) Speck on Fri, 03/12/2021 - 19:15

I don't know if I'm still in my flashback from the beginning of the week, or if I'm going from flashback to flashback. I can't seem to recover, or not for more than a few hours. Yesterday I had my fatal moments, and I was struggling most of the day not to fall completely. I managed in the afternoon, and, in fact, felt quite well during and after the assembly of my beloved queer group at my home.

Tags: 
Trauma

Flashback! Again those damn flashbacks

Submitted by Andrea(s) Speck on Thu, 02/12/2021 - 14:14

The flashbacks are back, and with a vengeance. These damn purely emotional flashbacks, with no memory in my mind, and sometimes (many times) it takes me quite a while to realise that I'm having a flashback.

I had a pretty brutal flashback from at least Monday noon until Tuesday afternoon. I was almost pure fear, an unexplainable fear based on my current situation or some of the things that are going on around me. An emotional flashback. A fear of my past, of my childhood or adolescence.

Tags: 
Trauma

«The Heat is On» So: where is the climate uprising?

Submitted by Andrea(s) Speck on Mon, 01/11/2021 - 14:41

The IPCC's latest report on the likelihood of crossing the 1.5 degree level of warming in the coming decades reveals that "Unless rapid and deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades, achieving the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement “will be beyond reach”". And: "The document ... finds that averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of heating." [1]

Tags: 
Climate Justice

(Semi) Quarantine and Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Submitted by Andrea(s) Speck on Sat, 10/07/2021 - 20:30

I knew this was going to happen sooner or later: six days ago I was in close contact with a friend who later tested positive for COVID. On Wednesday a friend alerted me, and I contacted Salud Responde. As I am fully vaccinated (the privilege of age) I don't have to do a strict quarantine, but I do have to avoid close contacts, i.e. I can't really meet anyone, except with distance and a face mask, which doesn't work for me. I wear a face mask when there are a lot of people, or when I go into a shop, or on public transport.

Tags: 
Trauma
COVID-19

On being nonbinary in a civil disobedience action

Submitted by Andrea(s) Speck on Fri, 28/05/2021 - 23:00
Anarquismo queer

A week ago I took part in a civil disobedience action for climate justice in Lisbon. It was not my first civil disobedience action, nor will it be my last. However, in this action I realised that for me it is no longer the same.

I have been arrested several times in various countries during my activist life. My first arrest was in 1986 in Germany, in an action against a nuclear waste processing factory. The last one was probably a few years ago in England or Belgium. So, I know more or less well the process of an arrest in various countries. Although it is true that it is not pleasant, I have learned to manage the fear that always accompanies these situations. Or, so I thought, until last Saturday.

Tags: 
Nonviolence
Queer issues
Climate Justice