Only three words

There are things people can tell you. There are stories about women screaming and struggling and crying. There are the ones about those who are too paralysed with fear to do anything but wait until it’s over. Some are beaten and left for dead. All will be traumatised. 

Some people will talk about false accusations, debate the circumstances, argue about consent, about relationships, context. You can talk to doctors and lawyers and policemen and policewomen and victims and counsellors and husbands and children and bloggers and poets and memories. There are a thousand ways to learn, before it ever happens to you.

There are things no-one will tell you...

The dress you wore the next day will go into a suitcase as soon as you get home. So you don't have to see it every time you open your drawers, and feel the pit of your stomach drop and your heart clench unnaturally and your breath hitch. You will want to burn it in a giant bonfire along with everything he ever gave you - but you will keep it because it's yours and you want to say FUCK YOU in whatever small ways you can muster. It was one of your favourite dresses and you don't want him to take that from you - you've already lost so much. So you lock it away, hoping one day it will just be a dress again.

You will think of him every time you see those small hotel tubes of shampoo and conditioner because that was what you stared at in the shower afterwards, bewildered. While you washed every inch of yourself, trying to pull yourself back into your body. Trying to wash the horror, the disbelief down into the drain with the soap froth. 

You didn’t fight him because you couldn’t believe you needed to.

You will get anxious every time you catch the train line that you share, even when you know he isn't going to be there. Even when you walk to the opposite end of the platform, knowing he always goes to the last carriage and sits on the top level. You will always sit at the bottom level now, just to be contrary, and because you know he won't find you there.

For a while, when you sleep naked, the swell of your own breasts against your arm will remind you, because he liked you to sleep that way. You loved your bodies pressed together in whatever configuration you could stand to sleep in. You will think about going back to him one last time because it's terrifying to think of having sex with someone unfamiliar and new, who might touch all the traumatised places in you and not even know, who might visit that horror on you again, inadvertently... maybe on purpose.

You loved his body and the way he touched you and how you felt desired with him. You will miss him so hard that it punches holes in your silhouette, but you will not breathe a word of that longing to anyone, because how can you miss your rapist? How can you admit to such a thing when you are so sure of the evil that has been done to you, when you turned away from him so completely?

The next man who asks about your relationship history will not accept your euphemisms, the polite version about boundaries not being respected. He will ask what you mean, dig, probe, until you shock him with the truth: he raped me. Holding your breath a little as you wait for a reply. He will tell you “that’s a lot of information”, and you’ll say, “no, it’s only 3 words”. And you'll forgive him his overwhelm, but won’t want to talk to him any longer.

You will stop telling people because you will believe they are tired of hearing about it (and some of them will be). Because you know they can't handle it, because you need to not be questioned over and over. You will tell new people about it, even though you don't want to talk about what happened anymore. You will want to talk about what is happening now, after: what it means, how it's changing you still, how you never forget - only get distracted.

You will have days where you feel like yourself again, when you smile and laugh and work hard and dance with abandon. There will be nights where he is all you can think about in the broken cocoon of your own bed. 

One day, maybe soon, maybe far off, you'll look up from your recovery. You'll look up from your life and see a pair of eyes that won't let you forget them. You'll feel that pull, that desire again. You'll crave it with all of you and be utterly terrified. And you'll make a choice, the one that's right for you: for all the torn up, deeply bruised, trembling, hungry, fierce, raging, loving parts of you.

Cast the runes (poem)

If I had cast the runes
before we met would they
have told me of our collision?
How we would come together
like asteroids, burning through
sky? How for one this would
only be a perihelion but the
other would blaze to earth.

If I had cast the runes
would they have told me of
my unfolding, smoothing out
the creases of habits, talismans
held up against the darkness
of my own desires? Of brittle limbs
turned to clinging liquid in the
flaring heat of our fleshly worship?

If I had cast the runes
would they have told me
how a heart can break open
and break again over itself?
How it feels like nothing will
ever recover? But it's only the skin
of a snake cracking and peeling
back to let a larger creature out

Starting a war on lol

I am declaring war on the ubiquitous acronym lol. Not only does it confuse those who didn't grow to maturity in a 90's chat room or in the current glut of social media platforms (how many non-digital natives think it means Lots of Love?), but it no longer holds any real meaning. It's used mostly to imply 'I find your statement mildly amusing' and then when you really are laughing out loud it needs to be stated with more fervence.

I found myself recently saying llol instead: Literally Laughing Out Loud. I've seen people write "lolling" as if lol is now a word instead of an acronym. And them there's lmao and pmsl and rotflmao and many other variations that are attempts to express the varying levels of amusement that may be generated in online interactions.

There are so many brilliant words for the many forms of laughter that are never used outside of an erudite novel. When was the last time you heard someone guffaw? Do you ever chortle or chuckle?  How about that person on the train who had the best cackle you'd ever heard? Everyone should snigger at least once, and sometimes a joke deserves a titter.

And that's just in English, in which there are apparently 42 ways to express laughter in typing. Even plain old hahaha is expressed differently in other languages online.

One of my favourite movie moments is a character in Amelie describing to her how Nino used to collect laughs. I've found myself mentally doing the same. Noting the kind of infectious laughter that makes you laugh too. Or the one that makes you snap out of your own thoughts just because it's so unusual.

How many ways can you laugh?

Letters to the future

When I was thirteen I started a ritual. I got the idea from a novel - the name of which has long fallen out of my memory.

Each birthday I sit down and write a letter to my future self. A real handwritten letter on paper and sealed in an envelope for a year. Then at 3pm each birthday (my birth time) or as close to it as I can manage, I open it, read it and write the next one.

I did it for ten years, then stopped for ten years, and started again last year. Ironically I think the years I wasn't writing it were probably some of the hardest years I've had: the ones where that annual reflection and reminder from my past self might have been more useful than usual.

I've only ever showed those letters to a few select people in my most inner circle, but maybe there's something in there for other people too. So here's a snippet from last year's letter:

"When you are lost, you only need to remember. Look at who you have been to remember who you are. Look to the dailiness of love that you have lived, even when the softness of it was not there. Trust your reserve and your patience and kindness. Follow your sensitivity."

For me those letters have become a touchstone for the person I am. A way to reconnect with who I have been all along, a reminder of my ambitions and daydreams and yearnings. Sometimes reading them makes me sad at the contrast between one year and the next; sometimes it leaves me with a wry smile at the surprising wisdom of my younger selves; and then sometimes it's incredibly grounding.

People write letters to their younger selves all the time, but that seems pretty useless to me. We can't go back in time. Our youth cannot be shaped by the adult we will become, but the reverse is usually true.

So, what do you want to say to your future self?

Chronicles 2012 (1)

We wait, steady on the tarmac
watching others come in
They look so fragile on the wing
dipping and swaying lower
last minute adjustments
as the ground rushes up
to touch in a cough of smoke

Now we inch forward
turning from the land
and then the rush, the gravity
My belly is feathery, fluttering
the power catches my breath
Up, up, impossibly airborne
on wings of metal and wire
weighted with scraps of our lives

My attendants are both men
one beautiful and shiny, lovely
but his soft edges, a lilt to
the voice and hips, a slick
of lipgloss betray his allegiance
The other is sculpted in face
his hair rising to a peak
an accent, pale eyes, a smile
for the ladies. A set to his
mouth reminiscent of a smirk.
He's not my cup of tea
---- though he serves me a coffee
(it's airplane coffee, watery
with a dribble of milk
but it induces a sense of
working towards wakefulness)

Two women a row behind me
laugh the same laugh, in sync
once, twice, peals like waves
a man is the cause I'm sure
I smile to myself and the window