I was obviously too smug for the universe about my 4 gigs in the first 24 hours of the year so it slapped my wrists. FFS.

This year began with me chuckling at my own horrific patter under the fireworks in town watching Pulp, then catching Kathryn Joseph’s witch beauty with Lau at St Giles Cathedral where Tam Dean Burn declared, ‘F*ck Christmas, it’s New Year we celebrate.’ a DIRECT QUOTE from John Knox. So he says. He also said the cathedral is 900 this year so congrats for still standing. Then we saw Bemz and Cloth. So so smug as I tucked myself into bed that night. And then my kid came home and within an hour was wriggling about complaining of belly ache. Not cos of my stinking chat but flash forward like 16 days or whatever and we’ve had 2 overnight stays in Sick Kids but he still has his appendix and managed school this week so far so it’s not all bad. The fact that there are hospitals being bombed makes zero sense.

And here we are weeks into the year and no time for procrastinating, mulling, overthinking. Folks who pay attention around here and my stalkers will know that I’ve spent the last year or so fine tuning my personal madness. I’d say after kind of having to accept about half a dozen neurodivergent peer reviews, in around October 2022 I had a big shift and realised I needed to accept my wild brains. That started this whole process of waking up to all the things of significance that had ever happened in my entire life and how they might have played out differently if I’d realised and forgiving myself for the times I’ve been a wildcat and let myself down.

ALL the triggers surfaced last year, from being quietly bullied for a whole year in primary school when my entire class refused to speak to me, aside from the odd snide remark to having a right laugh remembering when my fiance spent months refusing to have an honest conversation about his relationship with his band’s tour support only for him to move to LA to live with her just after we split. And how I then ended up in hospital cos all the cortisol and wild fight or flight chemicals which had been reignited from the same bullshit from that abusive past relationship I’d tried not to ever think about caused me to have 4 emergency operations on my poor ass cos of ‘suspected’ but never ever confirmed Crohn’s Disease. (older pals will remember the ‘ass aids saga’ of the Cab Vol days). And the abusive past relationship in question there is the one I mentioned on @solornothing around February last year. If you don’t know, I was sexually abused by an ex who it turns out is a serial rapist and who probably also acts like a predatory stalker towards many other women. He tries to get in touch every couple of years. I’ve in the past deleted facebook, twitter, set as many things as possible private, deleted and restarted various instagram pages but this time I figured I had to finally admit to myself exactly what had happened and the best way for me to do that is always just to name it out loud. So I called him out for trying to add me again on Instagram. Then he emailed my work email and I blocked him on that and share it on instagram too. I hadn’t expected for so many women to then reach out to me with their own horrific experiences, goes to show how few safe spaces we all feel we have. And I also didn’t expect the overwhelming level of fear that surfaced or how I could barely speak to any men. Or how I could only self regulate around the time he got in touch by weeping at gigs as the bass rattled my brains. I didn’t expect the steady drip over the year of abusive chat from random misogynists who I clearly upset by naming one of their own either. I also didn’t expect to have to speak to the police about harassment but that all happened along with a cancer scare and wow I’d really just like a nap. But you have to just work your way through all those things when they happen to get to the other side.

Finally accepting what happened to me has been an amazing release. I can be the villan in folks stories but the things I have struggled with are the past times friends had told me they’d been sexually assaulted or were in abusive relationships and I’d just frozen or got to a certain point in conversation and not really been able to help them in the ways they needed because I hadn’t dealt at all with what I’d experienced. Instead I’d actively spent a long time numbing it out or trying to convince myself it was my fault. What was done to me is not ok and it’s very shit that I have let folks down at times because of it. I also think being open about all of this stuff, as wild as my chat might have been at times as I let it all unravel, is maybe a good thing in the long term, despite it being painfully triggering for lots of folks. So I’m keeping going with that which brings me to the real reason for today’s rant. I’ve got a solo photography exhibition coming up next month.

Feb 23 - Mar 8

Agitate, William Street, Edinburgh

An exhibition of my self portraiture and a little accompanying writing on Lost and Found on my website. (sign up here for the password as I’ll have a bunch of big rants relevant to the exhibition live on there at the same time for those who like to know the chat). There will be a mix of digital photographic prints, 35mm black and white nudes which I shot, developed and printed in a cupboard at home, some riso and a few other things that a soapbox vaudeville sideshow might want to include in a photo exhibition.

Now that my kid is better I need to get back to working on the prints and sorting out the chat for the opening night but come along on 23rd and I’ll make some kind of invite soon with the details. I’ll get you some booze and everything if that’s yer vibe. Tell all your pals.

More chat about it all soon

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