Started writing my book proper in 2018.
6 years later it's finished.
If you ever wanted to know what's the deal with that woman, this is the book for you.
I've resisted getting a book agent until now. But it's time, considering I got over 400k views on the thread that insipired this post.
I posted the first half of the introduction to the book in this post. And hereās the January 2022 post that made me determined to finish the book.
Here's the second half.
Reach out if you are a book agent (or publisher) that works with foreign correspondents and journalists and want to read the rest.
NOT FOR SALE OR DISTRIBUTION
Ā© Samantha Asumadu
INTRODUCTION PART 2
..As I edged back and the other journalists clamoured forward I remembered her comment, part of a conversation with the protagonist I think, the white male protagonist of course in a film about an African genocide. I remembered my boyfriend and I crying. It had been a bonding moment.
Back in 2018 listening to a radio debate about mental health on LBC, a London centric phone-in and talk radio station, a woman caller described something that sounded very similar to my off and on feelings since that reporting trip. She had been working in Borough Market when it was attacked by some determined men with knives and a van who had deliberately driven into pedestrians on London Bridge, and then crashed on the south bank. They had then gone to Borough Market where they stabbed multiple people in and around restaurants and pubs in what was later deemed a terrorist attack.
She told the presenter her story about having sleepless nights, time off work and anxiety and described it as PTSD. I began to wonder did I have PTSD? For a while after the Bududa landslides in a remote region of Eastern Uganda in 2010 I too had sleepless and nightmare filled nights but rather than dream of dead bodies I saw rhinoceros and elephant skin similar to the ashy look of the many dead victims of the landslide.
But then again when I was twenty-two a former colleague who I worked with at a documentary post house that hosted 2nd tier BBC factual and daytime programming had called me unstable. It had seemed fitting then and just past forty-three now I have since been called fiery, stubborn, moody, bitch, a cow, cunt.
In July 2018 after a yearās break or more officially, a sabbatical from the online world and the organisation I founded in 2013 I wrote about my months working on a construction site and what it taught me about working class men and Brexit. Before I submitted the article to the Telegraph I met a friend, a boy and poet, someone who I had spent a tremendous amount of time with in the year before I went offline.
We met at BFI Southbank in Waterloo. We had often met there, or restaurants, Festival Hall, the 5th floor floor balcony of Southbank Centre in 2016. Anywhere we'd be alone.
We had a drink and he read the introduction to this book, bar this paragraph of course in front of me. Heās not much of a public reader. i.e. I had never seen him read anything more than a book jacket in the ten years Iād known him. So I sat on tenterhooks as he read, seemingly rapt, I valued his opinion see.
I hadnāt seen him for two years, but in the year before that weād spent a huge amount of time together. We had become each other, or at least each otherās cerebral self. We'd created our own language, our own shorthand and our own secrets.
When we werenāt together we were whatsapping. Whatsapping as the Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a fascist who shouted āBritain Firstā and āKeep Britain Independentā, as he shot and stabbed her.
Whatsapping when nine protesters from Black Lives Matter UK got on to the runway and chained themselves together, shutting down Londonās City airport.
Together at Southbank Centre having just watched Ben Okri in conversation with Jeremy Corbyn on 5 July 2016 when a coup d'Ć©tat was attempted by Turkish Armed Forces against state institutions, including the government and President ErdoÄan.
And in all that time weād never touched each other, not in that year, not in ten years, bar once.
For all of three seconds we held hands at a poetry night where he'd just announced we would be publishing a book together. His publishing press, my writers. It may as well have been a high five, as we were actually just acknowledging how fucking great we were when we worked together. We were killing it.
We were on the rise in those months, working hard, finding comfort in each other (mostly).
When we werenāt working, we would be telling each other our woes, our frustrations with ālesserā artists. The fakes, the inauthentic ethnics, our hates, our loves, our jealousies, death.
Heād send me his poetry, I would send him my articles. He'd send me his videos, Iād send him my videos and school him on his politics (We had different ideas of what a liberal was). Heād give me advice on my messy love life. Both looking for approval, comfort and perhaps a little excitement.
I was his conscience, he was my challenge, the Lyndsey Buckingham to my Stevie Nicks, without the substance abuse issues, just a little alcohol dependency on my part. A working class kid done good. Same as me. Because we were each other, but he was Brown and I was Black.
We cared about everything and nothing at all. That's what made us lethal.
So on this day we walked down the graffiti tunnel that connected South bank to Lower Marsh, to dinner, to drinks. I was knackered, as at that time I got up at 5am each day to prepare start my job on the construction site Iād be working on for a few months. I would stay there until around six in the evening and on fun days go to the pub with the boys after.
We went to a cosy bar Iād loved for years, which a few weeks later I would go to again by myself after I had quit. It was the night my article about class, misogyny, racism and Brexit was published in the Telegraph. I only take special people there, special people and me. A treat.
It was there he diagnosed me with ADHD. We were having probably one of our only banal conversations, refreshing. I had Ronan Farrowās book āWar and Peaceā, with me (I was reading it on my down time at work alongside teaching myself to do trigonometry) He said he would read it.
Something, something about TV. I said I rarely watch new TV series. I would instead re-watch a series that I like because I found it hard to concentrate on new things.
He said that sounds like you have ADHD. A friend of his had said something similar to him or maybe he was projecting and finding a way to talk about himself. I had obviously seen something in him and he in me that made us drawn to each other for over ten years.
I said erm, ādonāt really know what that isā. In the days and weeks to follow I looked into it and suddenly my world, my whole life made sense. It seemed.
Iād had times where I thought I must be a psychopath or a sociopath, or be bipolar or god forbid have narcissistic personality disorder (during the Trump years I became very paranoid about the latter). So having such a straightforward (possible) diagnosis that explained why I had recurring negative thoughts was like managing to get a taste of that last bite of ice cream you dropped in the sweltering heat two hours ago.
Iād had recurring thoughts for decades. Iād say them to myself over and over again, sometimes out loud too. āYouāre worthless, youāre worthless, youāre worthless. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourselfā.
My extended periods of activity, my extended periods of inactivity. The convoluted way I spoke, the convoluted way I wrote. My obsession with Rachmaninov and DJing. It made sense. This boy had made sense of me.
This boy whose company I had enjoyed, who just a few weeks later was screaming at me, and I was screaming at him, hurting each other, hurting those around us. My doomed soul mate had diagnosed me when dozens of doctors couldnāt.
So maybe it was PTSD or maybe it was ADHD, or maybe it was just me but I knew looking at the devastation in Bududa I had wanted to get away from breaking news reporting and back to making films asap.
Chapter 1. The Day I Thought I Would Die
I haven't gotten on the London tube in 14 years. Ever since I returned from living in East Africa. The last time on it I got in a panic, had an asthma attack and had to get a black taxi to the hospital. It was expensive. After that when I had need to explain to someone why I didn't get on the tube I'd tell them it was because I'd spent the last few years in East Africa, riding on motorbikes, I didn't like being underground. I believed it. For years. It wasn't until quite recently one of my oldest friends, I have precious few of them told me it's because of the landslide of course. I looked at him and said, āhuh?ā He said well you're afraid. āOf what?ā Of the tube tunnel collapsing on you and burying you alive. It made sense. I just hadn't been able to see it.
Cont.
(Constructive comments welcome šš¾)
P.S I know there is going to be some non-black women and /or middle class women who try to take my experiences and use them as their own. Trust me, I will hunt you down if you do and you will catch these hands