Maëlys McArdle

Blog

  • The Lure of Thoughtlessness

    Being in my mid-thirties I’ve witnessed a revolution in day-to-day activities.

    The fundamentals look the same: spending time at work, making meals at home, driving places. The details are completely different. Everything in the mid-90s took more time and was less accessible. Work meant waiting in traffic. It could take a month between when taking photos and having a picture in your hands. Depositing money meant driving to the bank, and if it was a cheque, waiting days for it to cash. Paper maps and dictionaries were time-consuming necessities. Letters took a week to arrive. Music was limited to the small collection of CDs you purchased or FM radio. You could only get delivery for pizza and Chinese food; anything was an outing to a restaurant. If you were queer, especially in a smaller town, meeting new people was constrained to who your friends knew, the gay bar, and events.

    It’s a completely different world now, the smart phone being the latest harbinger of change. This has been wonderful, but there are two big caveats. One is with the platforms with suggested content, infinite scrolls, and/or regular notifications: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, even Netflix. They are engineered to capture your attention, with content tailored to you specifically, drawn from millions of user-generated options. When one app closes, there’s another to open. I’m not one to believe that books are inherently a superior form of entertainment, but unlike older forms of distraction, these are easy to unintentionally lose half a day to mindless scrolling.

    We need to have time to engage with intentional activities, or even be occasionally bored, and be wary of being sucked into unintentional distractions. We need to be with our thoughts. Turning away is getting harder and harder as the content increases in personal relevance, thanks to clever engineering and opening these apps becomes a habit while a noticeable void is felt in their absence.

    The other big caveat is with the inability to disconnect as a result of smart phones and remote work. For example, I get work messages at midnight, and if I’m on-call, I need to respond immediately or I risk losing my job. I am not permitted to simply work 9-5; I must be there for work 24/7 but I’m not paid a cent more for it. Even when not on call I get emails at all hours, and meetings can be at any time because the staff is spread across time zones. When people take vacations, they will be contacted while away to do work for some urgent matter or other. So again, this revolution which made remote working possible, saving a daily commute and opening up job opportunities, also prevents the ability to take mental space for oneself. It doesn’t have to be like this.

    We’re so lucky to have so much more free time and new ways to forge connections thanks to this revolution. We need to ensure to take care of our mental well-being by being intentional about how much time we use aimless distraction. We also need right-to-disconnect laws and a culture shift that accounts for this revolution.

  • Sparing the ugliness

    Bill C-4, the legislation that bans conversion therapy, is now law.

    It happened very quickly. The bill was introduced on November 29, 2021 by the Liberal government. On December 1st, a Conservative MP asked for unanimous consent for the proposed legislation to pass the House of Commons. They got it. On December 7th, a Conservative senator asked for unanimous approval to pass the Senate. They got it. On December 8, the bill received royal assent.

    This is a very different outcome than what I anticipated. A majority of Conservative MPs opposed the previous effort to ban conversion therapy months ago, and it was a Conservative Senator that ultimately killed it. Legacy media has continued to be hostile to trans people in the intervening time, with CTV running an episode of their investigative show W5 alleging that transition related care is too accessible and a danger to impressionable cisgender youth, and the National Post running this front page centering the same regret narrative:

    Given the inroads made by anti-trans advocates, I fully expected another year of toxic parliamentary debate about trans people, and for that process leading to venues and legacy media throughout Canada to host transphobes. I’m so grateful that we will be spared this extra hostility.

    I don’t know what the political calculus was for the Conservatives’ about face. Given the flip by Ontario conservatives the other direction, this development crystallizes for me that support for rights legislation has everything to do with the party leader.

    In spite of the good news, I believe the wording of the new legislation opens it up for a constitutional challenge on similar grounds to the Canada (AG) v Bedford case.

    Update

    The conservatives have ousted their leader, Erin O’Toole, in part because he was responsible for getting the party to support the ban on conversion therapy.

  • Maldives

    Maldives

    I’ve spent the last week in the Maldives. I was mostly in Malé with my partner, but also visited Villingili.

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  • Trauma made me small

    Trauma made me small

    And that smallness became my prison.

    As I sit here looking to the ocean, I think of how I haven’t travelled as much as I wanted to. Not because of finances or any material constraints, but because I thought I didn’t have it in me to do it.

    It’s the same about how I only got my first car in my mid-thirties. It was unfamiliar, so I thought I couldn’t. Or how I thought I couldn’t move away from Ottawa. Or how in relationships my smallness extended to my own self, my worth, and how much I left it to others to do the emotional heavy lifting.

    The limits were real, but entirely psychological. The product of complicated formative years, with well-meaning but emotionally stunted parents. They gave me a lot and supported the hobbies that would become my livelihood. But in many ways they made me small; where others grew to learn how to navigate difficult feelings, I learned to self-harm to avoid the threats of violence that came with expressing them before my parents. Where others learned how to share their inner thoughts, I learned that doing so would be used against me. Where others learned to engage in difficult conversations, I learned only avoiding led to safety. Where others learned to explore their body, I was left with only a desire to be hit like my step-dad would. Where others had friends or family to confide in, I had no one. I had no emotionally intimate friendship, my big sister couldn’t stand me and my only grandparent wanted nothing to do with me. Never having had an environment where vulnerability was safe, I feared any jumps into the unknown that would make me so.

    I entered adulthood not thinking anything about this, but, entirely controlled by its effects. I was able to take care of my affairs – get a job, get a place, enjoy friendships – but was lacking intimacy. When that closeness was eventually found, I was toxic. I was deeply jealous of their freedom, and punished them for it. I put down a partner that moved to Vancouver, and a friend that travelled the world. I reduced them to these singular things. A friend got a nice car and I only had thoughts of envy. I was bitter and mean. The smallness that was necessary in adolescence became a trap in adulthood that I didn’t even know I was in.

    I lost so many good people to my hurtful behaviour. While I’m glad I’ve learned to do better, at 36, a lot of time has gone by. There is no undoing what I’ve done, only moving forward with a freedom I’ve always had but never known, and a regret for those I’ve hurt. I am not burdened by this regret as they’ve moved on, and so should I, as we all deserve happiness. It’s not a neatly packaged ending. So be it.

    Where once I felt I couldn’t, now I can.

  • 36

    I’m 36. If I had had a kid when I turned 18, they’d now be an adult themselves. I’m older than my mom when she had me. This puts things in a different perspective.

    So much of my adulthood has been defined by my being emotionally stunted and making my issues other people’s problem. With that finally behind me, plus money and good health, I find myself with a freedom I never really had before.