THANK YOU for being here.

So I guess it’s a bit of a heavy opener but the last few months have brought a lot of difficult, violent memories and aggressive experiences to the surface. I’ve been writing a lot and trying to make some sense of it all to let it go.

This is maybe an example - listing the things that have surfaced during hard conversations with other women, writing them down and burning the paper as a physical act of letting them go. I hope there’s something cathartic and some strength in sharing it, maybe helping someone else.

I often think it’s wild how we carry old versions of each other around. I’m sure there are plenty people who met me when I was drinking and struggling who still think I’m that total nightmare. We just see that last version of someone we saw in our heads even as we’re all constantly growing, evolving and that is a surface version of a person most of the time.

And there’s the idea that you can only let go if you forgive. I don’t believe that to be the case. I think that’s victim blaming dressed up. You don’t owe anyone who hurt you anything. You owe yourself the chance to grow, to work past it. You don’t need to take responsibility for their problems, their pain or anything. We’ve all got shit happening all the time, we’ve all got difficult experiences however big or small that influence our behaviours and patterns of thinking. None of that is justification for purposefully harming someone else. You don’t get to hit, rape or gaslight and call it love. When someone does something shitty and they show you behind closed doors or out in the open that they have no remorse for how they hurt you or that they’ve not changed their behaviour in any way despite acting different in front of others, get the fuck away from them. The men who’ve abused me are still trying their hardest to be shits to me. And who the fuck cares.

It takes time for your body to catch up though. I’m not scared of my rapist, he’s a coward but my body is still terrified of being alone with men, for all the above reasons and many more. And it makes sense, it’s trying to protect me. When I shut down, dissociate a little or physically freeze that’s so I can hyper focus mentally, become aware of everything that could be a potential threat. It’s exhausting. I’m a busy wee guy, I want to make time to let that stuff melt away but it takes a hell of a lot of kindness and patience.

I’m so aware that so many other women have had similar experiences, also with multiple men. The men I know who’ve been in abusive relationships haven’t experienced these things time and time again in different forms. Misogyny is rife and it’s the men that quietly benefit from not even thinking about it who we really need to start calling shitty men out. Ask yourself if you feel scared to walk around in the dark on your own? Do you ever hold your keys between your fingers? Have you ever held back on sexual desires or on intimacy because your body is in fight or flight due to past experience? Have you been celibate for a while because of the ways other people have treated you? When you meet someone new do you not only have to be painfully aware of their actions and words but also think about if you’ll be safe around the men they spend time with? Cos women do. Many of us have experienced things like being watched or filmed without our consent. Or assaulted at work in bars and clubs. Or by the pal of a pal at an afterparty…the things that have been done to me aren’t rare in any way.

It’s been very cathartic to be writing about specific examples of violent acts along with some of the more ridiculous moments of coercive control and gaslighting. Isolating them can be quite surreal and pathetic - like I keep thinking about how I spent ages planting wildflower seeds only for my angry ex to storm outside and dig a big hole in the ground right in the middle, which felt like such a childish metaphor for it all - but at the time it’s just difficult. But to remember and let it all go through writing is taking away any residual power.

It’s not sane to email someone you repeatedly raped to give them your review of their writing. And it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that an ex I try to avoid is all of a sudden regularly jogging past our street at school drop off time and it’s not ok for my kid’s dad to keep reminding me that the legal minimum maintenance he provides for our kid is for him and not to somehow fund extravagances for me, after he financially abused us for years.

These are not healthy things. They’re also not mine. They keep appearing in my spaces and I’m not entertaining it. It’s their baggage, not mine. They aren’t welcome in my spaces, I’ll call it out and let it all fucking go. It’s now in Lost and Found. I know that I deserve better. And there are men that aren’t like that.

I feel like I’ve been writing about this so much while also wishing to just not have think about it anymore but it’s not that straightforward. To let it go you have to acknowledge all it has meant and all the ways it has affected you. I’ve found the last wee while frustrating, I don’t want to be stuck in dark places, I don’t want to blame myself for not realising my how my own brain worked. I’ve been going down endless rabbit holes around things like rejection sensitivity dysphoria but you can’t rush moving past these things when those men keep attempting to reappear.

So I’ll just lean in to the creating of things, lean into the gratitude for the good ones and the hopeful feelings and the genuine support and understanding. I’ve been looking back at lots of old collages, photos and words from an old instagram account that I deleted at the start of lockdown. It felt very tied to grief and I needed to let it go but sometimes it’s good to look back and realise that things really don’t stay the same for too long. It’s also been good to see some of the ideas I was starting to make and how they’ve stuck around and evolved into other things. I’ve been using them to inform some stories and words for you here so will start to share them soon.

Make safe spaces for others to share. I’ll be back again soon with some hopefully more upbeat and entertaining patter but thank you for being around while all of this stuff passes through.

x