Does the Left damage its activists?

The other week, I came to help out at a political street stall for the first time in ages. To my embarrassment, I was totally disabled by a full-blown panic attack - pulse pounding, hyperventilating, even difficult to open my eyes. The whole thing.

This didn't use to happen to me. I used to be able to happily stand behind a stall and hand out leaflets, even ask people to buy amateurishly but enthusiastically produced socialist newsletters. Sometimes they even said yes. So what went wrong?

( extremely long and perhaps half-baked ponderings )

So, what am I left with? The strong conviction that - while anyone who doesn't attempt to fight for what is right at this point of planetary upheaval is pretty much a contributing factor to impending eco-social catastrophe - I am of no use to anyone in the struggle. That because of who I am, my particular strengths, weaknesses and background, I am unwanted by anyone or anything, except to the extent that I am prepared to offer myself as cheap or free labour for someone else's agenda.

Let's end by attempting to break out of the cycle of personalisation. Perhaps this isn't an issue for me, a question of my own personal weakness, of my own need to either "take a spoon of concrete and harden up" or simply admit my own uselessness to a struggle for a better world. Perhaps other people have similar experiences, and perhaps self-described groups of revolutionaries have to consider whom they might be excluding - to their detriment. On the other hand, perhaps I (as I am now) really am politically useless.