There’s nothing shameful in life being a double edged sword, we can write and if it touches someone, or it helps them to feel less alone then what a gift we’ve found in amongst the chaos.
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
hospital; a rant about poland syndrome
Poland Syndrome is a rare congenital birth defect. In boys and men it usually presents as missing chest wall muscle, a concave lopsided chest, sometimes a shorter arm, leg, hand. It can be different in different folks. In girls and women it sometimes, like for me, only becomes apparent when you hit puberty and suddenly your breast tissue only grows on one side.
This was the time I was nervous about an operation until a rainbow chummed me…
Edinburgh Marine Gardens and Zoological Park was a sprawling amusement park, the first of its kind in Scotland, which contained a domed music hall (The Empress Ballroom), bandstand, rollercoaster, ice rink, billiard hall and outdoor cinema and theatre plus a small zoo with lion cubs. It lived along the shoreline from Kings Road in Portobello to where the Seafield Cat & Dog Home is now. It opened in 1909 and 3 quarters of a million people visited in its first year. Portobello had a train station at the time, along with trams and was a popular return holiday destination for families.
The amusements had a 3 tier rail ride, joy wheel, mountain slide, maze and river caves. The Ballroom and band court held daily all-star variety shows by the vaudeville and music hall groups singing, dancing, magic and comedy. It also featured a very Victorian and deeply racist Somali Village, where you could come and stare at families who were brought from Somaliland to carry out their day on display. At the time ‘human zoos’ or ‘ethnological exhibitions’ were tauted as educational entertainment but in reality they were a colonialist dehumanisation spectacle similar to the circus freakshows, popularised by the hugely famous Barnum circus, that toured western countries. A freakshow would exhibit ‘freaks of nature’ - those with biological rarities, heavily tattooed or pierced folks, along with those performing shocking and dangerous acts like fire breathers and sword swallowers
The park closed at the beginning of the first world war, all demolished except for the music hall which was commandeered as temporary accomodation for troops.
My kid’s dad and I got keys to a 1930s bungalow which looked out over the car sales spots that now live on that stretch above the prom, that had once been home to the music hall and seaside vaudeville, on the day that our son was born. An old boy called Eric had lived there with his family since the house was built. There were photos of them all in the garden and their daughter had come to hand over the keys, she got all emotional thinking about growing up in the house, happy a new family had bought the place. I spent the first 2 or 3 months of being a new mum trying to project manage a bit of a renovation, with new plumbing, plastering, pals helping to paint rooms, new flooring and all sorts. We split when our boy was 2 and me and him finally moved out and into our flat in Portobello when he was 3.
Those first few weeks of being a new mum were stressful and weird. My entire body was different, my hormones fighting to do things parts of me weren’t able to do. I’d had a necessary elective c-section, something everyone seemed to think was their business. I had to have it because of previous surgeries (another tale for another day, all about how we store trauma in our gut). I’d been kept in hospital an extra day and my bladder and brain had fallen out when I was numb from the tits down. I was eventually sent home to my folks place with a catheter to drag around for a few days. I also was given an industrial breast pump as my milk hadn’t really come in. And finally she gets to the point of the tale. I have a condition called Poland syndrome. You wouldn’t know to look at me now but for the whole of my teens and for the first few years of being a parent it was painfully obvious to me. I didn’t get a name for it until 2019 (my kid was already 6 by then) when I had to get the first of my annual mammograms after my mum had breast cancer, which runs in the family.
Poland Syndrome is a rare congenital birth defect. In boys and men it usually presents as missing chest wall muscle, a concave lopsided chest, sometimes a shorter arm, leg, hand. It can be different in different folks. In girls and women it sometimes, like for me, only becomes apparent when you hit puberty and suddenly your breast tissue only grows on one side.
Both sides of my family are short big boobed women. So the difference was very apparent. Nowadays I think girls are offered ‘corrective’ surgery as soon as the issue is made known with follow up surgeries if required but when I was a teen they made you wait until they thought your boobs were fully grown before you could get NHS treatment. And I know it’s not something that is universally available at all, it’s a postcode lottery in the UK and in other countries an incredibly expensive surgery or not an option without travel.
Spending the entirity of my teenage years with one massive boob and a tiny one on the other side had a huge psychological impact on me. I felt like a freakshow. A vaudeville side-show. It affected my posture, the clothes I wore, the activities I tried to avoid at school, I would skive off PE and any sports as often as possible so I didn’t have to change in front of anyone or take off baggy jumpers and cardigans. I would stuff extra padding into the left side of a wonderbra, which come with removable pads to sit under your boob to maximise their pertness. But I used one a size that just made my chest as even as possible and I wore other layers on underwear on top to try to hide under them. I avoided boys for a long time. I was/am awkward as fuck anyways!
“I’ve had a bunch of operations on my poor tits and ass for Poland Syndrome and Crohn’s Disease. There was this one time that I was about to pass out, high as fuck from pre-meds and my anaesthetic and I said, in a kinda posh English old lady voice, “I’m used to a whole different type of theatre, darling.” And I passed out hearing them all laughing.”
I finally got surgery when I was 19. I struggled through a couple of relationships feeling incredibly self conscious and with extremely low self esteem. I look at photos of myself back then and I was a beautiful wee mad thing but I really did not feel it at all in any way. I reached for many unhealthy coping strategies and now realising my neurodivergence all these years later, a lot of the more impulsive damaging behaviours have context.
I think I spent most of my teens and the years after surgery when I still numbed out that low esteem and getting into horrible damaging relationships with men in a state of passive suicidality. I really did not care for myself anywhere as much as a healthy confident human should and I got myself into a lot of toxic and dangerous situations. I’m no victim, I lived through them all despite the state of my mental health and lack of self care. But the lack of information about what the condition was just made me feel like a total freak and subconsciously I continued to punish myself for that. The surgeon I spoke to as a teen hadn’t given me much information at all about what the condition might be, that I wasn’t the only person in the world to have it or any mental health support to deal with the self hatred that lack of knowledge brought with it. And of course this was all before smartphones and instant access to all the information so I had no way of researching and finding out for myself until all those years later when a doctor at the breast screening clinic just said ‘Poland Syndrome’ in passing while checking on some mammogram images.
In the hospital for ‘corrective’ surgery I felt vain, selfish and guilty as I was in a ward with women who were getting breast surgery for cancers. I felt like I was there for ‘cosmetic’ surgery. At the time it was still the fashion with the women the tabloids brutalised and objectified to have big fake boobs. All the magazines we read as teenagers laid into these women as fake bimbos, as dumb shaggers. There was such a pervasive idea that women with cosmetic surgery were second class citizens, zero respect offered but miles of objectification and judgement as the male gaze and misogyny rule. We built up women like that only to treat them like they were lacking in intelligence and only capable of being sex objects. Lad culture reigned and with it big boobs meant you were a thick slapper. Feminist pals would talk of cosmetic surgery as falling for patriarchal demand and not as having ownership of your autonomy. Even after having the surgery and now having 2 big boobs I felt that I had to hide under clothes. I regularly saw people talk to my chest instead of my face and it horrified me.
After the surgery in my teens I was pretty self destructive for a number of reasons but I didn’t have the condition on my mind 24/7 any more. I felt a lot less self conscious for a long time although I still usually covered up and often lacked the confidence to dress the way I really wanted to to express myself. I think there was a brief time going out of a Saturday night when I’d dress up and feel good but I was surrounded by peacocks I thought were creative and interesting people but really they weren’t and they took advantage of me in many ways which is a whole different story which I’m also sharing on here soon (for anyone who’s been reading these for a while you’ll know I’m talking about my abusive predatory serial rapist ex and his pals and anyone else, trigger warning). The condition faded from my thoughts for a good long while, only reignited again when someone spoke to my chest or made some comment about my body or plastic surgery. It only really came back as an issue in pregnancy.
As a pregnant woman I received 12 pieces of literature in different forms all about how breastfeeding is best. Not a single one of them makes any mention of the fact that some bodies will not produce enough milk to sustain a baby, not one mentions that elective sections and not going into labour might affect things, not one makes any mention of how to protect your mental health as a pin cushioned exhausted sleep deprived new mum if you just cannot breast feed. Not a single one.
None of the midwives I saw shared any knowledge at all about irregular breasts or the possibility of being unable to breastfeed either. I spent the first 8 weeks as a mum, with those stitches permanently attached to an industrial sized hospital breast pump, or if on site at the new place speaking to the plumber, plasterer, flooring guys I had a portable pump with me. It was constant. My son also hadn’t really latched on. My boobs never got rock hard and full of milk like so many new mums moan about. I’d spend hours pumping and only get 10ml of milk. I felt like a failure as my body hadn’t been able to naturally give birth and wasn’t capable of sustaining my baby. I was absolutely shattered and felt like I had very little support. My mental health was in the toilet for a lot of the time despite being one of the lucky ones that bonded straight away with my baby.
Attempting to breastfeed and I guess the changes in hormones from pregancy meant that once again my boobs were completely different sizes. The right had grown and dropped and the difference was probably greater than it had been in my teens. I again just hid away, wore baggy stuff, didn’t let anyone see me naked.
This lasted a few years until a therapist I was seeing suggested maybe visiting the GP about it again after I told her the whole story. And so the week before lockdown I had a breast reduction operation.
In January 2021 I made a self portrait, kinda of my boobs being reborn through my velvet curtains, as a wee lighthearted way of dealing with my experiences. I also just pushed myself to write about it and I shared it on instagram. I’ve since archived all my posts to start again and to be able to share this space and my exhibition in a more concise way for my scattered brains. But I wrote a lot of what I’ve said here. I think it might be the boldest thing I’ve ever done for myself. I found it to be so healing. I’m so glad I just laid it out and shared experiences online when I first made that image as it opened up so much for me.
I had zero idea so many folks with first hand experience, either with the condition themselves, parents of children with it or charitable organisations looking to empower those with it and to spread knowledge of it would get in touch. I also find lots of the folks I work with through my wedding photography are health care workers and for them to read it and hopefully talk to colleagues about it feels very important.
Let’s skip past the whole pandemic situation for now and just say that the last year or so, as I’ve unravelled so much of myself through accepting my neurodivergent brains and letting all sorts of past trauma surface I’ve been making naked self portraiture to really regain my autonomy from all the traumatic experiences. I’ve been swimming topless in the murky sea at Portobello. Reclaiming the waters from the Victorian freak shows and dancing on the sand in honour of all the vaudevillians of the past. I’d fucking start a topless darts team if I could aim better.
Creative play has saved my life. I’d urge everyone to make time for it in whatever capacity they like. Creativity is innate in all of us, society just slowly tries to educate it away. A free, solo expansive never ending source of healing, growth and adventure and we often overlook it or leave it on a long list of some other day.
Here’s a link to the first of many black ans white self portraits made at home, developed and printed in a darkroom cupboard in my flat. There are more recent ones in the exhibition too.
NOW LOVE exhibition runs at Agitate Gallery on William Street in the West End of Edinburgh until 8 March, the gallery is open Tue-Sun 12-6
Thanks for reading, tell anyone and everyone you know who ever works with women’s boobs in any capacity!
x
sometimes you’ve just got to get your hands dirty and get stuck in about doing the work
I had been wondering if me openly unravelling all of this messy human stuff was harming myself but I think it’s the healthiest and sexiest thing I’ve ever done. I figure those who agree will stick around and those that don’t leave space and time for others.
But sometimes you’ve just got to get your hands dirty and get stuck in about doing the work. To really let all that stuff go you have to wade through it and I feel fucking great now. Hopefully it stays that way for a while. I’ve been thinking of lots of juicy transmutations for the anger and becoming so aware of all the things just allows you to process them and grow.
And to think not that long ago I was banging on about nearly dying choking on toilet roll…
On Friday I went full scale private detective and just kept calling different folks at the hospital to try to find a number for someone who’d give me my blood test results. It’s been over 2 months and I couldn’t really face the thought of another full weekend with no way to try to chase it up. I’ve got a busy week of work this week and no time to meltdown about it all. The consultant’s secretary’s line is just always an answerphone. Eventually I got another consultant’s secretary who very kindly broke the rules for me and found my results. The marker in my blood has reduced (not quite to the healthy level but low enough to know it’s not cancer). She said it could be another couple of week’s before the consultant writes to me to explain but for now it’s good enough. All the emotions, ooooft. I had to go for a run along the prom and coast path to give the mussel a wee stroke (hey now, it’s a sculpture at musselburgh beach) and back again.
I’m a very self reliant person but the thought of having cancer and all the treatments, how to look after my boy and everything on top of the stuff that’s been going on just felt too much for a while. Could still do with a healthy nap to get over that wild pandemic, to be honest. My energy has been stinking so I’ve been hiding.
I’ve had a lot of days in bed, missed some fun things I wanted to do cos I just needed to lie down in the dark. And of course literally everyone I know, even folks who don’t like music, have been out at gigs while I was lying in the dark. I missed Beyonce, The Boss, Interpol, Le Tigre, Hidden Door, Primavera but I hope you all had a great time and that’s not even sarcastic. I only had Hidden Door tickets so I’m being a bit dramatic but still. It was a wee kick in the ass to figure out ways of getting out of my head and into my body that don’t involve being in a crowd. Hence the attempts to run (my red face, hair and nails clash when I do vigorous exercise and it’s a vibe), getting in the sea again, amongst other things.
Then there’s the fear of men thing (here we go, she’s on her pure lying on a therapist’s sofa chat). It kind of mutated while I was feeling so down into this deep guttural anger that I’ve never allowed myself to feel before. But then two mad things happened (weirdly, about the consultant I originally saw and rapey Richy) that made the anger boil over and made me laugh my ass off. I got to thinking what if it’s not men I’m afraid of all the time but sometimes it’s my own fucking boundless potential because of how men I’ve known had treated me. (I donno how to add the fingernail emoji but just imagine it’s here, This is the bit where you punch the air, give me a wee clap, holler ‘yaas, bitch’ or whatever). Maybe I get really small, try to hide my weird neurodivergent stuff and hold on to questions and get frustrated with myself. Hmmm…
There’s also all the judgements around women who openly talk about male violence which informs the anger. It feels like a lot of people find it way easier to label us as difficult, mentally ill, covert narcissists, man haters, doormats, a bit stupid, demanding, jealous, fantasists, uncouth for airing dirty laundry etc than to hold the men accountable. Everyone thinks they know your business in a small city, even though we all carry these old versions of each other around that have no baring on who folks are now. Except abusive men don’t seem to evolve at all. Their situations change but not their behaviours. And nobody gives a shit unless it’s them at the end of the abuse. That makes places like here feel so small and suffocating at times. I’ve had strangers DM me to find out on a scale of 1-10 just how abusive an ex was as their friend was dating him. Zero fucks for how that question might affect me. And I bet if I had a partner they’d back off because they all see women as objects to own. Fucking seething again going down this train of thought…like how women just know it’s easier to get rid of unwanted attention by saying you have a boyfriend over just saying fuck off, you creepy prick.
I love men. I’m a tomboy, I’ve always loved time and conversations with groups of men over with groups of women. I prefer solo time with female pals, the conversation is always very different to how it is in groups. But I’ve had too many heartbreaking conversations with women lately. I know there’s some kind of art project brewing about it that will feel cathartic, just need to process the cancer whitey first and then it will surface, no doubt.
Tanatsei Gambura, ECA degree show
Frankie Egan, ECA degree show
I had been wondering if me openly unravelling all of this messy human stuff was just harming myself but I think it’s the healthiest and sexiest thing I’ve ever done.
I figure those who agree will stick around and those that don’t leave space and time for others. So long as I hold some gratitude for it all I’m good. I’m coming through the other side of it all but it’s not an exaggeration to say it’s felt like a fuckin dark night of the soul round my gaff lately.
But sometimes you’ve just got to get your hands dirty and get stuck in about doing the work. To really let all that stuff go you have to wade through it and I feel fucking great now. Hopefully it stays that way for a while. I’ve been thinking of lots of juicy transmutations for the anger and becoming so aware of all the things just allows you to process them and grow.
Above: top: Alex Osborn (ECA degree show), Eduardo Paulozzi, Alberta Whittle, bottom: Eileen Agar, Alberta Whittle, Marina Abramovic, Salvador Dali.
I’m trying to organise my time better to catch up a bit for the time in bed. And when I fail I’ll remind myself that time as we use it is a relative concept invented to make us all work for the man. Going to try scheduling in some work posts on instagram and the like with the app I pay for and never use so I’m not on there wasting time consuming endless ads. This week coming is a busy work week with a couple of portrait sessions, finishing up a brand commission and a road trip north too.
I’ll write a bit more on lost and found soon for the hardcore goths and the folks who find my rambling touches a nerve.
First, my chat about all the glimmers and treats I’ve been finding to be gentle with myself - basically getting high on art, rolling about in sand and on grass, hugging my boy extra tight, taking in the small things and big old rants with pals. I spent the rest of this weekend visiting the degree show, the modern galleries, getting a cheeky discount on camisoles at Herman Brown, ranting with a couple of pals and worshipping the sunrise at the end of my street with just a very early metal detector guy and the birds around. I’m so lucky to be right here and I’m glad I’ve figured out healthy ways to fill myself up when I’m struggling so I don’t feel like getting on the sauce. I still find ways to self medicate but they work better for me than booze ever did. Sitting about drinking is boring as fuck after a while, it always just made the minx in me want to break into stuff and get a bit too lairy as some of you will recall. Not really things that help get anxiety out of your system but I’ve got a load of ways to do that these days. Some of them I need you to come with me though.
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