A mother's daughter relationship with anxiety and epilepsy

This past week, I have failed to fathom the inexcusable anxiety in my life. Last night my mother suffered a mild seizure and was rushed to the hospital by my paranoid father as well as myself. Prior to the incident, I had a vociferous argument with my mother, over the consumption of anti depressants and anti anxiety pills. I seem to dimly doubt my mothers conviction that these pills were dangerous and I should not engage in any idea of taking them. In between trying to let my mother know, the seriousness of my condition and the influence that external pressures exerted on me, I insinuated that she lacked serious psychological capacity to judge the effects of medicine. My accusations against my mother were deeply harsh and neither of us deliberated what we communicated and we were embroiled in an abysmal battle, configuring the negative and ontological aspects of each other's identity. My mother was raised in a lower middle class society in Apartheid South Africa and the benefits of tertiary education were never really endowed upon her, until her mid twenties. Her traditional upbringing, concomitant with values of family, marriage, children, respect for elders and cultural tradition, has made it difficult for me to anchor in any level of acquiecence for another form of inexorable transgressions. Reluctantly, and more often out of respect and integrity, I subtly entice my mother into mainstream feminist ideology, and she becomes incessantly exhausted. After a prolonged argument with my mother, and a severe politics of comparison, I agreed that I would no longer personalize my relations with her. Bluntly I said that I was capitulating on her friendship and her motherhood and our relations would not exceed beyond bill paying and polite small talk. To which my mother plausibly and with a breathe of fresh air concurred.
After some time, my mother was in a state of severity, she was incapacitated and unable to judge her own condition, even under her seizure, with her eyes wide open, she could not hear myself or my father speak and it was an incredibly arduous task getting her to the nearest hospital. I insisted that I should be the driver as my father, in his usual over reactive and pugnacious behaviour was in no manner capable of driving my mother to a hospital.
Along the way and repeatedly I kept thinking as to how much of this dilemma was really my fault and I even implied to the psychiatric nurse that I was the one responsible for this. Dangling the bottle of Celexa in my Bard College Sweater, the night seemed to be surprisingly bitterly cold, for an African Summer, I was confused as to what had transpired and what really triggered this reaction. My mother had been diagnosed with epilepsy since the age of 18, however not in the last 12 years, as she suffered an attack, not even as mild as this one. There are stood, contemplating with my anti anxiety pills, the very catalyst of my mothers trauma, in my pocket, almost bursting into a near anxiety attack.
Its almost as if I had this emotional attachment to my medication and to this thing called "celexa". It seemed that celexa was my way out of everything, that I literally became physically attached to it, during my mothers dilemma. Indubitably this thing called celexa, has put my mother on a series of nervous breakdowns about my anti depressant intake, little did I realise that my dependencies and my self reliancies were here adversities.
Perhaps I am exerting too much blame on my self, my mother is now undertaking an EEG at a local clinic and I am anxiously awaiting the verdict... still with my celexa, laying low in the pockets of my favorite sweater.

Is self flagellation really worth our time

Perhaps a blog is probably not to the most effacacious avenue for self in depth expression but nevertheless I will continue to delineate a rather pressing issue. I know that we all go through period of desperation and especially self deprecation but I think my derailment is driving me to the point of utter abasement and sterility. In my latest endeavours of apologetic behaviour and needing to qualify my every action to everyone, I find that I am looking to alternative sources for upliftment. bell hook's understanding of radical black feminism, cornel west on political annihilation, toni morisson's delineation of the ensalvement of women, ralph ellisson's invisible man et al. I feel not only morally repugnant but invisible again driven by my own perpetual self flagellation. I sometimes or more like, I always feel "unloved", degraded, psychic hatred towards my own self. I don't know if its too much the influence of other people, too much comparison to other people or maybe it's that I find that I am not in the right environment conducive to my needs both academically, culturally and socially. I am in a perennial battle to find self determination and define my own actualization. But in reality its that every endeavour that I attempt, I am also in discontent and displeasement with myself, solely. Some people are perplexed by the responsibility and burden that I constantly carry.
I am really starting to wonder, in my numerous anxiety attacks, if all this self strangulation is really worth it. Maybe I spend too much time devouring and indulging in vigilant attempts to prove myself, make my character better and ameliorated. I don't know what this is driven by. Perhaps I am socialized to internalize too much.
Is all this self flagellation really worth it?

reference list for books on Darfur

I have an increasing request to do this
here is a reference list for some reliable books and Articles on Darfur
Books
Darfur: A Short History of a Long War (African Arguments) by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal (Paperback - Mar 3, 2006)
Famine Crimes: Politics & the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa by Alex de Waal (Paperback - Jan 1998)
Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan (Oxford Studies in African Affairs) by Alex de Waal (Paperback - Dec 17, 2004)
Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, Revised and Updated Edition by Gerard Prunier (Hardcover - Feb 2007)
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power (Paperback - May 6, 2003)
Genocide in Darfur: Investigating the Atrocities in the Sudan by Samuel Totten and Eric Markusen (Paperback - Sep 20, 2006)

Articles
www.sudantribune.com
Review of Gerard Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, Hurst and Co. By Alex de Waal , http://conconflicts.ssrc.org/hornofafrica/ambiguous_genocide/
Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African Identities, Violence and External Engagement , By Alex de Waal, http://conconflicts.ssrc.org/hornofafrica/dewaal/
Chasing GhostsAlex de Waal on the rise and fall of militant Islam in the Horn of Africa, http://conconflicts.ssrc.org/hornofafrica/chasing_ghosts/

Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap
Alex de Waal , http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n15/waal01_.html
Tragedy in Darfur
On understanding and ending the horror
Alex de Waal , http://bostonreview.net/BR29.5/dewaal.html
‘I will not sign’
Alex de Waal writes about the Darfur peace negotiations, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n23/waal01_.html
Darfur peace agreement: so near, so far Alex de Waal, http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/darfur_talks_3950.jsp
The book was closed too soon on peace in Dafur
Restoring stability is a long-term task of nine parts politics and one part force. We need fair representation and time Alex de Waal, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1883575,00.html

Darfur Awareness and where we stand

This Monday, I invited remarkable academic and Darfur expert Alex De Waal to present a lecture series on Darfur. For the last three years, approximately, my life has been fixated on the political crisis in the Darfur region.
Upon my scholarly period in the US, I was rather marvelled yet perplexed by the American public's obessession on the issue of Darfur. Subsequently, I was coalesced and entice to join this movement, setting up my own campaign at Bard College, which would promote education and divestment. Upon my stay in Washington DC, the realisation that American fixation on Darfur was really escalating, I became somewhat weary of people's motives on Darfur, yet I was always aware and conscious of the fact that this was an issue that I cared about deeply and that I was willing to spend a great deal of my time on. As time went on, I found my passion augmenting, but my interactions with people on the issue of Darfur, became incisively exhausting. Upon my return home to South Africa, I contacted a number of NGOS's in response to my passionate realization that I desired to have my own Darfur Action Campaign that would imminently remobilize African civil society on the issue, one that would not defer my agency and put me and many others in a somewhat spectator mentality. I contacted Genocide Intervention Fund in DC asking for help, and because their benevolent and altruistic nature, agreed to assist me set up a campaign. During Monday's talk with Alex, I had been alerted that there was already a Campaign for Darfur at Wits University in South Africa, driven and motivated by the South African Union of Jewish Students as well as MODEL UN and ANC/SASCO. I was rather pleased that students were mobilzing around Darfur. However, as I divulged into my research about the group and after the chairperson contacted me, I was well aware of their intensions. Like many people around the world, this group was of course ignorant of the myriad of ways in which the conflict in Darfur was represented in the media. Their entire motives are driven by ideology, most religiously, by constantly giving this crisis, the appellation of "genocide". They are truly mobilzing for the most insane reasons. I also learned after my phone call with their leader, that they has no idea, precisely what was going on in the region. Abysmally this group, also accused the Palestine Solidarity Committee of being 'genocide supporters". How fucking ridiculous!
To cut a long story short, here is how I feel about Darfur. I think that we all need to read more, Period, How can we act if we are driven by lack of knowledge. It is absolutely quintessentially important that we get our facts straight and know what we are talking about before we act. I urge everybody to take this measure and read as much a spossible about the issue. Further I can kind of understand why the PSC does not wish to engage in Darfur, they do not wish to be the victims of Arab Bashing as thats what the entire campaign for Darfur is imbued with. Most people view it incongruosly as a polemical battle between Arabs and Africans.
Representation, culture and identity politics are deeply important when it comes to Darfur and we should not just saber rattle with moralistic hyperventilation.
So what do I do now, I am stuck in a moral dilemma, do I continue with my campaign or do I equip myself with the skills and knowledge so that I can go to the region and really make the situation on the ground better there?

Oh and it's the academic realm now

I am so happy that I finally got my blog set up. I had previous difficulty, I know I don't really expect you to commiserate, as the wonders of technology are benefitting everyone, but I find that I just have no time and energy these days. Its as if my stamina has been eviscerated from my existence. Lately I have imbued myself with Radical Feminist and Gender Theory Literature, after all it is within these scholarly constraints that I would like to pursue my academic endeavours. Ah the wonders of academia, yet the very prescient sad reality of academia. I don't know why now at this precise point in my life, I choose to pursue this realm, to deflect from my chosen purpose in life. Perhaps it is merely transitory. I have realised in these couple of days how obliterating and self destructure academia can be. Not so much academia but rather academics. It our entire undergraduate and graduate years, it is profoundly sad as to the type of influence that academics exert in our lives. They can randomly build you up and subsequently tear you down so easily. The trusth is, I never really know how to interact with these people, I always seem to have it, in the back of my mind, that really they are remarkably accomplished individuals, but yet sometimes they lack the premise to a basic ingriendient in life, counfounded by their pretentious pHd's and academic scholarly work, they exude no humanity. I am one rather sensitive of stereotypes and monolithic assumptions, and I am nevertheless not negating the deeply important work of academics over social policy, policy in general and world affairs, I just believe that the manner in which they do it, is rather self fulfilling, almost tyrannical at times, and sometimes, completely alienated from the real world. Incontrovertibly, some of the most convivial and amiable individuals I know, are academics, but I find myself rather critical and self conscious, in my presence with academics. Maybe it's an over estimation, maybe it's a woman of color issue, maybe its that I am overtly passionate about things in life. Maybe the direct aesthetic of the academic is somewhat obscured by their prolonged efforts at trying to bridge gaps between narratives, analysis and stated facts. That sounds deeply obfuscating. I find that I am always aware of the incorrigibly, not only of their presence but their bookish and intimidating attitudes. Well if there is anybody who is bookish it's definitely me.
I am too confounded and restraint by the no less than three books that I read a week. Indeed I am driving myself crazy, obsessed with needing to and wanting to know everything, driven by my own inadequacies. So if I am so deeply critical of academia, why do I wish to emulate them or be like them?
I don't know, I am not saying that it's te only possibility I have, I have many options and I believe that we all exude potential, but why do I choose this realm now, when I have seen it's adversities?