I don’t like talking about my time at university. It was hell. And it was hell because of my involvement in the highly abusive cult that is the International Marxist Tendency.
University in this country as in many others in the Western world is sold as a chance to make a fresh start from the unpleasantness of high school drama, to gain independence, gain valuable experiences, maybe even find love. I suppose my cult experience was ‘valuable’, though for all the wrong reasons. Nor can I say that I was enjoying much independence given my emotional attachment to an organisation which abused me to the point of driving me to kill myself. At my most depressed, I considered taking my own life every single day. That is how much the organisation affected me.
Much of my time at university seems to me like a blur. It consisted of long hours spent alone in my room feeling depressed and listening obsessively to 60s love songs, Marxist Society drama and bullying, falling in love with the wrong person, dashing off essays, attending IMT events in London, paper sales, contact work, ‘socials’ – but no meaningful, lasting relationships. Two and a half years of my time, energy and money were poured into this loathsome ’cause’ to the detriment of my own mental well-being. There is not a single person I was at university with I still speak to. I did not forge those much vaunted connections that university is supposed to encourage. I felt utterly worthless and rejected. I have never felt as low as I did then.
No, I do not miss the campus life, and I do not miss the campus cult that helped to make it a living hell. I have learned a lesson. I will never put any ’cause’ above my own well-being, certainly not the cause of a totalitarian cult seeking to destroy Western civilisation and individual freedom as we know it. I have earned the right to be selfish. The horrible experience also forged one other important thing – a desire to become a singer. Here is a song celebrating my newfound freedom: