What does it mean to be a good revolutionary?

Cognitive dissonance in activism and finding life-saving agency.

***Content warning: depression and suicide.

Please do not read if you feel you might be triggered, or else please read this with someone you trust so you can fall back on them if needed***

---

Hello, returning friends and new readers. Thank you for joining me in this ephemeral space. If you’re new to The Amphibian, welcome. I invite you to breathe through your skin with me and feel keenly the world around you.

The past two months have been a period of intense transformation where I’ve faced the full depth of my depression. In May, I officially graduated from the University of Sydney, receiving my diploma in person. While I didn’t know it at the time, returning from that graduation hollowed out June and July in painful but ultimately good ways. I got to reflect on the past three years, particularly my being in the Philippines and my place in the revolutionary movement.

Firstly, a reflection on the word take. It is strange to me that the phrase we commonly use for suicide involves the mundane word take. For example, I took a leave of absence from my job as an environmental consultant in July. The word connotes agency and ownership. In the case of my leave, I made the decision to forego income in order to rest and reflect, a decision I can make because I own my time and my labor. In the case of suicide, however, saying ‘I tried to take my own life’ doesn’t quite capture the experience of wanting to die. I wrote this in more private pages before but it’s the best way to explain it: How can I take my own life if I never owned it in the first place?

This question, in my experience at least, lies at the heart of depression and suicidal ideation. Feeling an utter lack of agency, like a black hole absorbing light, spawns the longing for death. I felt this lack of agency throughout my university years, which coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Within the first month of moving to Sydney and settling in my new life, everything was subverted: my dorm closed down, our classrooms were transferred to online spaces, and my dreams of finding true community in college were deflated.

Catapulted from one place to another, I spent the three years of my undergraduate studies in three different places: Sydney, Singapore, and finally, the Philippines. My decision to move the Philippines was an attempt at reclaiming my agency. I could make a fresh start. I could build a life of activism and service to my people, which, in the context of a global pandemic and the worsening climate crisis, seemed the most meaningful way to live my life. Indeed, it was and still is extremely meaningful. The problem was I didn’t realize how alien and affronting the situation in the Philippines would be until I was waist-deep in the environmental and climate space.

The first affront was that only a few people in the climate and environmental space here are dedicated to true change in a political and social sense. The rest are willfully ignorant of class struggle or have compartmentalized their environmentalism from politics, which inevitably creates complexity and obstacles when navigating the space. Co-creating solutions are not feasible when the people you are surrounded with limit themselves to the symptoms of climate change and biodiversity loss rather than the root cause: colonial and capitalist exploitation. (Noting as well the performative and capitalist activism which poisons the integrity of the movement)

The second affront was the extent of State violence and impunity. The government suppresses anything that may look like insurgency, validating themselves by calling it terrorism, never mind that these people they annihilate are teachers, journalists, youth activists, and innocent people who champion truth and justice. I did not realize the evil of the State until I spent one year here, and I confess that it dismayed me. How was I, a privileged and naive girl from Singapore — one of the safest countries in the world — meant to be a revolutionary when doing so means having your life threatened?

Here lies the cognitive dissonance which contradicts agency and makes one wish for death. I find personal meaning in being a ‘good’ revolutionary, but doing so threatens my corporeal wellbeing as a target of the State. However, if I preserve my body by choosing alternative life paths, I will fall to despair as my life becomes void of meaning. Thus, I am stuck between two forms of annihilation. One potentially annihilates my body while the other potentially annihilates my spirit.

Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party and a revolutionary I especially look up to, advised against choosing annihilation of the spirit. “It is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions.”

If I stop being a revolutionary out of the fear of being annihilated by the State, my own spirit will die and lead me to wish for physical death anyway. Thus, it is much better to be killed doing what I find meaningful — cultivating just systems within my communities — rather than face suicide. No matter what happens as a revolutionary, at least my life will still be mine. At least I will maintain my own inherent power.

I knew this rationally, but it wasn’t felt in my body until I actually tried to take my own life in the beginning of July. I share this without feeling any shame for what I tried to do. Evidently, I still had power left in the form of love through the person who saved me. I feel that I stored enough of my own spirit and agency with my partner that he was able to restore me. This is why I don’t feel ashamed, and why I think anyone who survives after attempting suicide should never be ashamed, and instead feel only pride. We survived the worst kind of annihilation, and it is evidence of the strength of your spirit and love for the world that you chose to stay. It is a choice made every day after the attempt, a choice that bears the weight of responsibility and displays the extraordinary beauty of the mundane.

Every day after my attempt, I’ve reflected on what makes life worth living. I’ve allowed myself the freedom to leave the revolutionary life, if that is perhaps what is draining my spirit rather than feeding it. I spent many days soaking up the sun, swimming in the ocean or kayaking through mangroves. Importantly, I’ve shared my love to my immediate and distant communities, knowing that if my spirit ever dwindles again, they will be the ones to save me. Very quickly, however, after only a few days, I returned to the question of what makes a good revolutionary. Since reclaiming my agency, it is the most important question.

It is a question that I can’t immediately answer, but I’ll be exploring it in the future, probably for the rest of my life.