a Year On…
THIS COMES WITH ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS.
No pretty pictures, just some heavy words but with a happy and hopeful ending. THANK YOU for engaging with this, oversharing on the internet gets you wondering if you are doing it as a trauma response, if you are trying to appeal to those who won’t listen or who you’d like to speak to but they aren’t there, or if it’s something else. For me, it’s worth looking like a hot mess as it’s brought me some amazing connections. I’ve found it hugely helpful, I’ve found despite some naysayers that mostly I’ve had incredible conversations with people through all of this. It might have looked like I was properly losing my shit but it has felt like the opposite, despite being hard and exhausting.
When you’ve always been told how you think, act, feel is wrong, when people try to shut you down, gaslight, gate-keep, ostracise and misunderstand you it feels amazing to put all of it out there, in my writing, on social media and ultimately through my self portraiture and to try not to worry about how others take it. Slowly chipping away at the people pleasing tendencies and putting myself first too. And as difficult as it is to know that what you are saying it highly triggering for some, it’s also letting others know they aren’t alone in their difficult experiences and feelings. Just to feel like while you are really going through it that somewhere someone appreciates that you are saying it out loud really helps to stick with it and push through instead of pulling back and reaching for another way of numbing or coping that isn’t healthy. THANK YOU to everyone who’s supported me, who’s validated and believed me. Even when I’ve not been in a place to really talk about it, thank you to the men who say ‘who the fuck did that to you?’ instead of turning a blind eye. Thank you to the women who’ve said they’re proud of me and to keep going, I love you.
Some of you will know that it’s been a year since I named my abusive ex boyfriend on the internet. I met that guy when I was 17 and we lived together for around a year in my mid twenties. Ever since then he tries to get in touch every couple of years or so. He’s predatory. I’ve since found out he’s a serial rapist, sexual and psychological abuser and stalker.
Over the last year I’ve been processing what really happened fully for the first time. I started to realise what I’d been through because of chats with a much missed friend a few years back. There was a lot of cross over with what they were experiencing at the time and it woke me up to what had really gone on. After we lost that friend I foolishly spoke about it with someone I shouldn’t have, a local guy who was having his own struggles and that ended up being a very difficult experience too. I’ve been wondering why a lot over this last year. I think when multiple dark things happen and you are the common denominator it’s very easy to blame yourself. You see people you had a difficult time with go on to have outwardly healthier relationships and you question all the things they accused you of, all the things they projected and you wonder if they are all true, if you really are a piece of shit person. It’s very easy to internalise all of it and beat yourself up. But you can’t live like that for very long.
Having friends who are diagnosed ADHD reach out to say, pal, I think you have ADHD has very much rescued me in many ways. I knew nothing about neurodivergence before the pandemic really. I was aware that I have a lot of symptoms of complex post traumatic stress disorder and I’ve always just put that down to these abusive relationships but spending this last year really focussing on a bit of self reflection and seeing how different daily life was during all those lockdowns, made me realise that I’m very much probably autistic as well as ADHD and that a lot of the struggles I’ve experienced are a part of that.
For example, why did I get into that situation with the abusive ex? Aside from the fact that it can happen to anyone, I always liked being a bit of a tom boy and I hated being judged for my appearance. Him and his friends shared a love of similar music to that I loved, I would say that music has always been a special interest. I’ve not been fanatical about specific bands or genres researching about them since I was a school kid but I’ve always needed music, always loved gigs. I worked at them for years for a reason. And I’ve never fitted into social groups. I’d be adopted by groups of girls or women and sooner or later ostracised. Mostly for reasons that I realise now were ableism (she’s too intense, she’s weird/blunt/rude/aloof…) or for no reason they ever chose to share. There would be individual pals I’d get on great with but never groups for very long. I’d be the one left out every time. In primary 7 my whole class, bar the shortest and tallest girls, refused to speak to me for a full year aside from the odd snide comment. So I was very vulnerable to a daft friendly bunch of lads who liked dancing and their tunes as much as I did. That group was made up of a few folk that I think was pretty oblivious to the behaviours of the others and the others were up to disgusting shit. But they normalised that misogynistic behaviour and I think it took me years to face that I wasn’t complicit in it at all, that I’d fully been taken advantage of and abused. There was a slow and consistent systematic removal of my consent. Knowing now that my brain works differently I spent a lot of time over this last year grieving for that version of me and how low she got. I was living in passive suicidality but to the outside world I probably looked like I was having a wee rock n roll party to myself. Most folks around us were pretty hedonistic too and I think in hindsight a lot of us were lost in similar ways.
A year ago he tried to add me on instagram again. In the past I’ve ended up deleting facebook, twitter, multiple instagram pages have been started and deleted and started again. I’ve made playlists, galleries and all sorts private. I don’t share images of my kid…
I called him out on instagram as I didn’t feel like there was much else I could try. It’s been a long time and I was done with my nervous system being thrown into a state of fight or flight and feeling like I’m being hunted for sport. So I named him and blocked him. The next day he sent a typically patronising email to my work address just as a reminder that I can’t hide anyways. Oh and to condescend to me about my writing. I think knowing he’s a huge exhibitionist and narcissist it was also in the hope he’d stay relevant in my chat as he probably gets off on any form of attention at all. I found it wild how an orderly queue pf misogynists decided out of the blue to try to contact me over the last year. These creeps all share the same smug entitlement and complete lack of accountibilty for their actions. But I won’t be bullied or gaslit by any of them.
A year ago, I ended up feeling intensely triggered, a flood of horrifically painful things started to surface. I’ve never really fully admitted to myself what he did to me. I’d always blamed myself. I told myself I was somehow complicit. I told myself I was self harming staying around for so long. Maybe to a degree that is true but my consent was taken away consistently and my mental health plummeted. I told myself a heap of things that helped me avoid ever really looking at what I can remember of that time and the people involved. It’s disgusting to think about and it affected my psychology deeply for a long time.
I had so many people reach out and tell me their own experiences once I spoke out. I wasn’t really prepared to hear so much violence. But the patterns of behaviour were so similar across so many experiences. It just compounded my fear of all men. But I’m so glad to have given those people a safe space and to know I am believed. Cos that’s a big thing. When you live with gaslighting and constant insidious abuse and coercive control and you live in a state of people pleasing and codependency you don’t even know who you are half the time and you don’t trust yourself at all any more. You spend most of your time in a state of overwhelm, desperately trying to appease the urgency of abusive behaviours to get some respite and invariably leaning heavily into all the unhealthy coping behaviours you can.
And so as this all surfaced, I became incredibly fearful of men I like, fearful of male friends, fearful of strangers. I got angry. Finally. I think I never let myself fully get angry about any of it before. The last year all the triggers surfaced. I got angry about miscommunication and lost chances. Every big life experience, every lost friendship, every broken relationship, the lack of support, every bullying classmate or boss, my lack of boundaries, people pleasing, codependency, the way I dived into numbing myself out further and further. The ways I feel like maybe I did punish myself by staying around abusive people because I’d lost all self worth and self confidence. It all surfaced to be looked at again but with the knowledge that my brains work differently than I had known at the time. And then there’s the grieving for that lost person who just didn’t trust herself well enough to tell folk to f*ck off with their ableism and their bullying.
Did you know 90% of autistic women and girls have experienced sexual violence? 90%. (for context, it’s estimated at 30% for the general public). Did you know over 45% of women and girls will be misdiagnosed at least once before getting their autism diagnosis and that in Scotland right now there’s a 2 year waiting list for children and up to 12 year waiting list for adult assessment? 80% of female autistics aren’t diagnosed until they’re over 18.
If I’d had the knowledge of neurodivergence that I have now, how many of the difficult experiences that I’ve been through would I have walked away from? Would I have been able to build better boundaries with people, been able to overcome people pleasing and self advocate instead? I feel a lot of neurodivergent traits involve things like pattern recognition and a heightened sense of injustice and deeper emotional responses so I often find things like propaganda in the news triggering as it reminds me of specific gaslighting behaviours I’ve experienced and I find myself down rabbit-holes on things like cognitive dissonance. It seems we’d rather say things like ‘why didn’t she leave’ or even on a larger scale, ‘how can they support a genocide'?’ but we never really educate ourselves on the why. There’s always a manipulation at play, why aren’t we educating ourselves on the whys? It is just the relative comfort and distance of privilege that stops us?
I didn’t name him a year ago cos I’m some kind of brave warrior, although being told that in the street by a neighbour on a rough morning was ace. I did it cos I felt it was the only option. I historically get sick when my body is in fight or flight for too long. I’ve nearly died from sepsis and suspected Crohn’s Disease. And trauma sits in your guts and mixes with the sh*tty brain chemicals and causes those illnesses. I’m a self employed solo parent, I can’t get sick like that and I’m not letting anyone bring me back to a state of depression.
And then last summer there was the 3 month wait for a blood test result to tell me if I had cancer or not and that was just too much for me at the same time as processing all of that stuff. Around that time a well meaning pal let me know they’d seen Richy was talking about being in Scotland over the summer and I was so so low. Just completely hypervigilant and I felt very isolated. I just thought what the f*ck do I do if he appears? How do I not lose it and batter him to a pulp while all this anger is rising cos he’d deserve it. But violence is never the way.
And as if by magic, a couple of weeks later once he’d disappeared again his old drinking pal, who I’ve also not seen in literally decades, starts sending me daily weird as fuck creepy long emails having signed up for my password protected blog. That’s when the police came round to read them all. It felt like a dark attempt to undermine any safe spaces I had managed to create in amongst it all.
Then some other guy who I met once started too, creating new instagram accounts that only followed a local musician and me after I blocked him when I found out he was abusive to my friend. There’s more to that story but it’s not really mine to tell. Then the Russell Brand stuff came out and people are defending him and spreading rape myths about how many men are wrongly accused and it has been a year and then some when you list all the things that happened back to back.
It’s wild to think that over that time I’ve had to tell myself again and again that I’m not a man hater. In response to the things I’ve shared online, I’ve been accused of being a hateful super narcissist. I don’t think I’m better than anyone or some paragon of virtue, I know all about the times I’ve overstepped and hurt people and I’ve always tried to take ownership of those, reactive abuse aside. I’m not sharing these things for attention, I’m not some fantasist making it all up.
Reactive abuse is a whole other rant but if you see someone out drunk suddenly arguing out of nowhere, looking totally overwhelmed maybe wonder where that came from instead of just presuming they’re being a difficult asshole and mocking them for their outburst. Often times for me being drunk was the only time I’d find ‘confidence’ to defend myself and reactive abuse is a perfect way for abusers to accuse you of being problematic or crazy, as nobody saw what led up to you snapping, they just see your reaction.
I’ve also had to remind myself that calling these men out for coming into my spaces online years after using sexual violence against me isn’t me attacking them or seeking revenge, it’s just defending my peace. I’ve been told maybe I should shut up incase I cause them to be ostracised as if I’m responsible for their previous actions and I’ve been told ‘maybe I should have gone to the police’ and you just won’t really believe the level of victim blaming that goes on. We barely believe survivors and if you live in a small city where you’ve had several shit experiences and everyone thinks they know your business it can be hard, you just presume there’s plenty folks who think they know what you are all about who’ve been told many tall tales. But as someone with rejection sensitivity, who’s struggled to maintain friendships, it makes you question yourself. It makes you blame and internalise. You are the common denominator in all the difficult experiences you’ve had so it just all be your fault, right? Well, no, none of it was ok and we can’t take the blame for things that others have done to us. And we shouldn’t be required to protect them afterward incase it makes people uncomfortable or triggers their shit too.
I didn’t expect for me talking about this stuff to make me some kind of open house for misogynists to try to knock down a peg or two. I didn’t expect to be standing in my living room hugging my pal and just weeping together while our kids played next door. But for all the difficulties that you experience as your body has emotional flashbacks and for the times you feel so unsafe that you might go mad and for the times that you rant and weep it’s very worth going right through all of it. Those that judge are usually just triggered too. There’s no shame in being human and pushing to be healthier and to defend yourself.
So to anyone who is struggling or who I’ve inadvertenly triggered through all my ramblings about it all, you get to the other side of it and it feels amazing. I’ve got a place now where I’m healing my body, where I’m so much more aware of the subtle ways people try to gatekeep others and undermine your confidence as you heal your shit. I’m under no illusion that I won’t be triggered often but I’m so much more aware of my body and soul need to be able to let that pass quickly and without taking me down with it.
Women are allowed to be looking for confidence but it makes a lot of people very uncomfortable for lots of different reasons when we actually find it. It feels pretty great to be in that space now and if I can get here then anyone who’s experienced similarly traumatic things to me can, I think you just have to keep consciously looking for ways to build the tools you need.
Over the last few years I’ve chucked myself at all sorts - quiting booze, sea swimming, deep tissue massage, talking therapy, learning about neurodivergence, difficult conversations with other survivors, running, writing, making photos, collage, support pages on instagram, taking time to rest, yoga and the support of good people, I’ve needed combinations of all of these things to help me to process what I’ve experienced, a long with a lot of days lying in the dark. And it’s worth it to make that time for yourself, we shouldn’t be living in a constant state of anxiety because of past scars and wounds.
Another rant for another day but I’ve also got into somatic healing, I’ve become really aware of holding tension and trauma in my hips and I’ll explain all that in another rant soon as it’s amazing and a bit wild. And I don’t think for a second I’m suddenly cured of all trauma, I know there’s no such thing. I know even earlier this year I had a few days were I was deeply traumatised again by someone who sexually assaulted me at work getting in touch and gaslighting me as if nothing ever happened. That came up just at the same time as that strange fellow who was adding me on multiple instagram pages was playing on my mind and they just compounded each other. But it also made me realise, as much as I love live music, I have to listen to my body. While a year ago I was deeply grateful to be losing my shit on the dancefloor at a gig in a foreign city, making a crap attempt to make pals, I hadn’t fully realised that the reason I was so happy to be able to cry in a crowd while the bass was rattling my brains was in part cos I didn’t know anyone in the crowd and so I felt safer. Most gigs I go to there’s at least one guy who I know has been a shit to a friend or I over the last few years and never taken responsibility for it. That’s no exaggeration. So for something that I need and find so beneficial in my life to also be a constant reminder of the reasons why I need cathartic things is a bit of a double edge sword when I’m in the shit with things. Sometimes it’s ok to listen to your body and just not go for the sake of mental peace. So I flip between being adamant I won’t let shitty men rob me of my love of music to having to hide under a duvet and wish I wasn’t missing out. There’s a brilliant piece about misogyny in the music industry in the March issue of The Skinny which I hope every man that works in music will read and take onboard but I suspect will mostly be read by women who can already relate.
I think it’s important to also say that the exhibition feels massively cathartic, for accepting my neurodivergence, for reaching into creative play like I did as a kid and feeding my battered brains the good chemicals. But also just for showing all the past versions of myself that we got here, that leaning into creativity is ok. In whatever form makes sense it is something that we all have innate within us and just have to make time for. NOW LOVE. Make time for it. Write, sing, dance, bake, knit, collage, paint, whatever it is, do it. Our society kind of wants us all just on the verge but not quite at burn out, hating our bodies, our ageing and the rest, having to work and monetise all our time, stuck in patterns of spending on whatever type of coping we’re most drawn to. It feels like the ultimate rebellion to just play and to use that towards healing.
More rants soon on lighter feelings but in the meantime, I’m raising money for the Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre on instagram again (please donate if you are able to). I’m listening to the audio book of Unmasked, by Ellie Middleton, which is a very concise and generous book all about being a late diagnosed autistic ADHDer. It covers all the traits that assessment looks for and how they might present differently in women and marginalised people to the typical 8 year old white boy that all the diagnostics are still based on. It talks about masking, ableism, pretty privilege and how late diagnosis can affect mental health. It’s an amazing book and I’d recommend it to everyone.
THANK YOU. I’m honestly so grateful to the folks who’ve had my back over the last year or so while all of this big feeling stuff has surfaced. It’s felt really wild to so consciously have to face things but I’d urge anyone who’s struggling quietly with something to find whatever it is that can help you the way the big list of stuff above has helped me.
NO SCAR IS DEEP ENOUGH TO STOP US, IMPERFECT AS WE ARE
xx