We had ugly uniforms at school. We wore long grey skirts and oversized tweed blazers. Well, at least mine was oversized. I don’t know how much my parents thought I had left to grow at age 14, but clearly, they thought it was a lot. If I remember correctly, I had that thing tailored twice and I was still drowning in it. Walking around the school feeling like a toddler wearing her dad’s shoes.

I remember seeing all the other girls in their jackets, each one slim and fitting. It was as if I had bought mine in the men’s section where they had all shopped in women’s.

It was a small thing, but it was also just another way it which I felt like the odd one out. Though of course, isolation felt due to an oversized blazer is not the same thing as a difference in skin colour. However, it is easier to write about. 

I’ve always struggled to talk about my racial experiences at school. I think I had to write a piece that made light of the alienation I felt to sooth the part of me that wasn’t always laughing.

Sadly, my experiences weren’t all White Chicks quotes and ignorant re-enactments of Roots. Some of them were overt, outright aggressions as opposed to micro and it was those experiences that stuck with me for years after. Those experiences which over time tore at me and I never quite understood why.

I never used to think of my brushes with racism as a thing that could cause significant emotional distress. British society teaches us not to linger on such things because well, slavery ended 400 years ago so what’s there to linger on?

I never used to lament on my brushes with racism because, at times, the survival mode within the British Other forces us to minimise our experiences as a way of coping and assimilating in British society.

You quickly learn that sometimes it’s easier to force a smile and disengage than it is to stand your ground, because it can’t be Fight Mode every day. We must pick our battles.

However, in doing that we tend to ignore the impact those incidents can have on our mental health.  

I didn’t understand why certain memories niggled at me until I was older and able to process them. Though by that point they’d already taken their toll on me emotionally.

Did you know that racism can have a similar psychological effect to that experienced by domestic abuse and rape victims? Because I didn’t.

Maybe in the USA where Black people are, quite literally, murdered for breathing, sure – but in the UK? In our ‘diverse nation of equal opportunities’? Never!

But, it’s true and it’s possible here too.

Another piece of information that had me shaking my head was that racial experiences have been found to be uniquely predictive of post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Now that one I really had to pause for.  

You think of PTSD and you think of war, right? Soldiers, guns and people dying. Sporadic moments of aggression and violence in which the sufferer doesn’t recognise that they’re no longer in danger and lashes out. That’s what we’ve been told, right?

Cristina Yang and Owen Hunt will confirm it. That is PTSD. Shonda told us so!

(For those of you who missed this teaching – Grey’s Anatomy – where have you been since 2005?)

Anyway, there’re a lot of myths surrounding post-traumatic stress disorder. One of which is that it’s an unfortunate affliction reserved only for those who have been touched by the brutality of war. (It’s not).

Another is that it’s symptoms are incurable and that once burdened, your soul is destined to suffer until the end of time. (Trust me, you can heal).

Then there’s my least favourite of all; that those who are diagnosed with it are weak. (The greatest lie of them all).

Every one of us can experience trauma in our lives. From it, some will develop PTSD while others will not, but it doesn’t make you weak if you do. It’s not a character flaw. Nor does it mean that you’re destined to lash out, randomly choking your lover in their sleep while they lie next to you. (Sorry, Grey’s Anatomy again – it’s a good episode you should watch it. Season 5, episode 18 – you can thank me later!)

Symptoms that are also indicators of depression and anxiety. Symptoms that many people of colour experience due to racism and non-racially related incidents. Also, symptoms that I’m sure many of us, including myself, have felt at some point in our lives, but pushed aside because there were ‘more important things to focus on’.

By the time, I’d decided to address those ‘niggling memories’, I was in a far worse mental state than I would have been had I processed them, instead of forcing myself to push on when they happened.  

By that time, I had already spent years minimising my triggers and in turn, internalising a whole load of emotions that I couldn’t even begin to name.

‘Better out than in’, they say. Better out than in, they are correct.  

You see, the thing is, much like how PTSD is not defined by war, mental health issues are not defined by some great tragedy. Sometimes it’s a build-up of ‘little’ things over time and sometimes you just develop them on a regular Tuesday, like “hey, it’s me, Anxiety, your new friend!”

And even if mental health issues were determined by war and tragedy, I’ve deduced that, in our own way, we’ve all been to war and in many ways, we’re still there. Only this war doesn’t look like armed troops and bombs killing hundreds of people. Instead, this war is silent.

It’s invisible bullets flying through the air, making holes in your body that you can’t see, but overtime you surely will feel.

It’s not a normal war, but just because death from a bullet doesn’t look how you’d expect it to, doesn’t mean we’re not all still bleeding out in our own way.

Mental health, we need to talk about it more and not just with regards to racism, but with regards to everyday life as well.

But then again, coming from the Black community, in order for us to fully acknowledge that mental health can be impacted by racism or any other thing for that matter, we would first have to accept that depression is something that Black people can actually experience…

But, let’s put a pin in that for now. We can boil the kettle another day.

For now, please be kinder to yourselves and also to each other, of course.

Oh, and remember, a problem shared is problem half solved. *Sips Tea*