TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual violence, emotional abuse, male violence.

Here we are, the other side of saying out loud the stuff I suppose I’ve been alluding to for some time. I might be wee but I’ve discovered I have massive cojones. Bada fucking bing. I’m feeling really grateful for the good people around me. I’m feeling really proud of myself for processing some big nasty things in healthy ways. What’s she on about? A lot of the things I’ve been writing and my self portraits I think have all been ways of trying to free myself of the last few lingering voices of old shit that made me feel small.

And as is always the way, turns out the abusive assholes are forever lurking around, desperate for attention and to bring you down a notch or two. This month my rapist ex boyfriend tried yet again to get in touch with me, again trying to follow me online. I blocked him and outed him on the page he was blocked on and the very next day I get a passive aggressive condescending email. To me, that’s only an admission of guilt, I guess he was hoping I’d feel threatened but I ken where you live too, aye and thank fuck it’s far away. So I posted that too. I’ve since deleted it as he doesn’t get to have a voice in any places I exist.

I think I needed to do that for a long time, to name out loud what happened to me too but put it off because I’m deeply mortified I ever found anything about him remotely interesting. He’s a disgusting misogynist playing the part of whatever. I didn’t want to give him airtime as I feel that people like that are just parasitic in their need for attention, good or bad. I feel like people like that completely lack basic empathy and just play act being mostly like everyone else - they’ve got their house and car, wife and kids and some dark as fuck violent secrets and it’s just not somewhere that I want a part of in any way. But that fucker has been trying to darken my door since I was a teenager and it’s not right. His name is Richard Mason, he’s apparently a teacher in USA now, with a family. It always creeps me out how some people can live a complete lie.

“Abusive people don’t abuse everyone and the folks they are abusive to, often it’s a slow build up of insidious ways of breaking down your self confidence and gaslighting the hell out of you so you start to doubt yourself.”

I think it’s important, especially for other men to see, to share this shit cos abusive people don’t stop being abusive the minute you leave them. They will be abusive as long as they can gain access to you so you have to shut them down. Sometimes that can be hard, maybe where there’s strong trauma bonds and a bunch of psychological abuse or you share kids or whatever. Abusive people aren’t always abusive, sometimes they’re in charm offensive mode. Abusive people don’t abuse everyone and the folks they are abusive to, often it’s a slow build up of insidious ways of breaking down your self confidence and gaslighting the hell out of you so you start to doubt yourself. And I’ve been getting really angry about the ways I have doubted myself because of this shit. Being an angry stress-head doesn’t sit very well on me, I’m not into it at all. I’m at home lost in ideas, trying to find time to have a laugh rolling around in paint or whatever.

But in naming it, a load of stuff I had already been through and the big healthy anger surfaced. I had a bit of an emotional flashback for a few days. All that stuff kicked off when my kid was on school holiday and not feeling well. So it was a bit intense trying to juggle it all. I hate that feeling of being back in danger. It can take a while to realise that’s what’s going on and it can mess with your judgement a bit. Thankfully I don’t have many visual memories from those days at all, maybe I’m lucky I was an utter bam who drank waaaay too much and the rest. But the emotional flashbacks aren’t a pleasant thing to go through. They can last days, they used to be longer and more frequent. It’s like feeling stuck in fight or flight. You feel deeply anxious - for me my whole body tightens up, I get stomach cramps and insomnia or sometimes violent nightmares and wake in a panic. I’m also pretty sure the suspected Crohn’s Disease I had to go to specialists for every few months for years is completely related. I’ve read up a lot about complex post traumatic stress disorder which helps and in therapy discovered I had pretty much zero handle on interoception - where you notice and understand internal sensations as signals from your nervous system.

(Anyone who finds any of this familiar I can recommend reading stuff by Pete Walker, Gabor Mate and Bessel Van Der Kolk if you haven’t already). Feeling trapped or stuck isn’t something I want to stay in, I'm not going to live in old wounds, I have way too many good things to be doing.

So I’ve discovered that after resting up and dealing with the physical weight of that type of feeling I’m best getting my anxious wee ass to a gig where I can lose my shit in the crowd and let all the big feelings bubble to the surface cos nobody else notices and if they do they’ll hug you so it’s all good. Just go to a gig, any lyric that touches a nerve, let it like a beautiful wake for the bad shit, seeing it off on it’s way for good. Just go and try to stay present, have a dance about and feel in your body again cos sober dancing sometimes feels like a magic power. It can shake away the dissociation. Everyone else is too tipsy to care what you are up to anyways but you are connecting to something good instead of being stuck with the feeling memory of someone else’s horrible actions. Would recommend for any lover of the tunes who has some heaviness to clear away. Here’s to the good ones that write bangers. Although I’d maybe save it for a bigger venue if you might lose your shit big time cos at somewhere like Sneaky’s it’s not quite so easy to ninja in your emotions. I reckon book lovers must have similar experiences freaking out in lush old dusty libraries with ornate ceilings or film buffs getting to the indie cinema for a double bill. It’s just about connecting to something that fills you up. Bit of shambolic decadence, you know. Figure this is what those hiker types are up to bagging munros and that.

And for me, packing some pants and 4 cameras (and maybe an extra lens or two but who’s counting) and getting on a plane to visit friends for a few days to play around taking portraits is the best thing for sorting out all of it. Especially when there’s a fox waiting for you at the other side. Thank you to my good friend Laura and her boy for the airport surprise, turning up in the cutest wee fox costume, my heart melted all over the place. And I can’t even deal with his wee brother’s duck outfit that she made but you had to be there.

I’m proud of myself for not slipping back into drinking or even really thinking I might want to go there, I know that it made those flashbacks way worse for me. I’m saying all of this stuff because of all the amazingly generous and supportive messages I’ve been getting. I know that folks have my back but also that saying it sometimes helps someone else to find their baws about similar struggles too. And that’s not to say everyone needs to start shouting, sometimes just getting by after heavy shit is as brave as you need to get but talking to someone can help too when the time is right for that. It’s taken me many years to get to this point with the stuff I’ve struggled with.

So now I think I have to just get louder and not hold myself back when some ideas for words and pictures start to surface around these experiences. It’s about my feelings of experiences, not about the shitty people in any ways. I was struggling for a bit with it all a few months ago, trying to focus on finding some joy in the making of things for the sake of making things, if that makes sense. I just need to let it all flow and not overthink it all, trust that my body knows when things feel right. Working on some ways to bring my writing and photography together in a more coherent way now that I feel like I have a bit of clarity. It’s good to be putting sketchbooks of poems I love together with my scribbles and chopped up contact sheets.

I’m really lucky to have people I can be honest with who don’t judge me, they just support and share their own experiences and feelings. I’m lucky to have folks who speak my language. Thanks for the useful suggestions around your own experiences too. I’ve been told to get in about some EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing) therapy so will go and investigate that a bit.

There’s a link to make donations to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre on my instagram here.

It’s been an amazing month overall for me though, investing in all the good stuff. And of course I’m having way too many ideas about how to collaborate and grow some good community vibes off the back of all the lovely messages I’ve been getting but I think I probably need to rein myself in a bit as usual and just let it all happen.

My kid and I have a tradition where we guerilla post homemade valentines around our neighbourhood for strangers to find. We went to this big garden in East Lothian and rolled down hills on the grass, did some cartwheels, fed some horses and saw a deer take a shit. We spent some time playing in the sand on our beach and we danced around a lot. He spent a solid 15 minutes one night trying to convince me that ASMR means Amazingly Satisfying Moments of Reverb and I’m sold. He’s since started whispering it at me at any given moment in all the accents he’s collecting and so far his Essex one is a winner cos he adds ‘babs’ at the end so you know where he’s meant to be from. Thinks he well Gemma Collins. He also threw up all over the bathroom in the middle of the night. Good old school holiday vibes.

March is just around the corner which feels wild cos February has just been all that stuff mixed with not enough strikes and the odd summary warrant for overdue bills I was late to pay so feels quite soon but that’s all good.

Next month I have some more portraiture work lined up and a little time to play and is it Spring yet? x