I Can See Clearly Now

I feel that I have been running a very long race.  The race of my life.  Now, I can almost see the finish line ahead and I am both excited, and scared.  It is really the finish line?  Or a mirage?  Are there more unseen obstacles ahead?

My road has been a long one.  Going from my teenager years and thenwhen I was 20, I had the worst period of depression of my life.  A time where I could find no hope, only pain.  A pain that I could not escape from and in truth, for a time there, I wanted to die.  It was the only way I could see out of unimaginable pain.  How this went on for, I no longer truly know.  Months, definately, a year?  Probably.

The only way I have been able to describe the level of emotional pain I felt each day, is equating it to the moment I was told my dad had died.  That immediate, surge of pain, before grief, before taking it in.  I do not exaggerate when I say this, nor would I compare the two lightly.

It was during this time however that I somehow found my inner strength.  A voice inside of me that shouted no.  You are stronger than this.  A voice so strong, so clear that it stopped me in my tracks.  Take that as you will.

I will admit that my whole twenties were a mess.  I had learned to withhold what I felt.  Not show my pain.  Not show the outside world the carnage that was on the inside.  I had no voice.  No opinions.  I was surviving, not thriving as my twenties should have been.  I had learned that no one really wants to see the bad inside, the hurt.  They wanted a smile.  So that is what I gave them.

There was one in particular whom I could have shared my thoughts with.  She would have been there for me, and indeed very much was, for the parts that she did see.  But I was too scared.  I didn’t want to lose her, even though deep down, I knew that I wouldn’t.   I wish that I had.  I could and do still trust her completely.  She is a forever friend.  She knew me before I hit rock bottom.  The real me. 

It has taken me so long to find that person again.

I started writing properly when I hit my thirties and I started to slowly evacuate the ghosts in my head.  

This whole blog was created in order to work on my self confident, my self image and my self worth.  I came so far, achieving things that I never thought that I would be able to accomplish.  From the small steps of changing what I wore from all black to colour, to going to events by myself in London and sharing a picture of myself in a swimsuit.  I talked about confidence until I started to find it for myself, and even received an email once from a woman telling me that my journey had inspired the start of her own.

I have my faults, but what I do have is determination and stubbornness (I appreciate that the latter can be a fault too!).  I am slow to change, but when I do, I make a very large jump.  I have always been this way.  I have always strived to be better.  To heal.  But my roadmap was more like a very complicated squiggle than a straight line.

I found Twitter which helped me find my voice and I found others who were lost and on their way to becoming found.  I felt myself coming alive.

By my mid thirties, I realised that my efforts to hide what I felt from the world had gone too far.  I had become so good at masking that I had convinced myself that my fake smile was real.   

I remember the day so clearly.  I was walking the dog, the sun was out and it was gloriously warm.  I remember suddenly realising that I felt happy; I was enjoying the day and was looking forward to an evening out with friends.  But I could actually feel those feelings.  It was both wonderful, and terrible.  Because it that moment I realised just how long I had not truly felt.  Over a decade.  I always felt the sad emotions, but the good ones had been lost to the mask I wore every day.

It wasn’t until I met my partner a couple of years later that that changed.  I had someone who could see all of me.  Every emotion.  Every feeling.  And they loved all of me.  Every single bit.  I have never felt loved like this in my life.  So seen.  So wanted.

I gained self confidence a while ago now, but the lesson of self worth has been much, much harder.   

It doesn’t matter how much someone tells you that you are worth it.  That you are worthy of love.  That you matter.  You have to believe it yourself.

A couple of weeks ago, things finally started to fall into place and I found my self worth that had been lost to me for so long.  I unburied the last of the things hidden and locked away in my mind.  I confronted face on the reasons why I lost it.

So here I am today.  I am starting counselling in a few weeks.  This I truly believe will help me with the tools I need to move forward.  Move on.  Not forgetting, but not letting my past rule my future.

I have changed my mind whilst writing this post.  I am excited.  I am no longer afraid.  I look forward to the bright future in front of me.  I intend to celebrate every single minute.  

To the Man Who Killed My Dad

A letter I will never send.  I would not know where to send it.  I am not sure I ever would if I did.

Hello Gavin,  

Where do I start?  

You don’t know me.  I don’t know you.  We have never met.  But we are linked, forever.  

All I really know about you is that in August 1987 you were seventeen and driving a fast car when you crashed into my dad on the motorway, taking his life away from him.  Taking him away from me and my family.

The incident was your fault.  You were charged was driving without due care and attention, which sounds ridiculous when you did in fact take a man’s life away.  But I cannot change that.  It feels wrong.   Even now.

I was 8 years old the day my father died.  My childhood, my life, was unequivocally changed forever by your actions.  I hated you.  I felt that way for so many years.  Can you really blame me?

You were the demon in my dreams who took my dad away from me.  The man who loved me so much.  The man who read me stories on a Sunday morning and brought me surprises on a Friday night.  The man that I still miss so much, decades later.  In my eyes, for a long time, I thought that you should have been rotting away in prison, suffering.  As much as we suffered.  

I am in my 40s now.  I have lived through much and have come to some realisations and understandings.  One of them is that hate solves nothing.  

Strange as it sounds, when entering into working life, I went into civil litigation.  Road traffic accidents.  Helping to bring claims against people like you who had caused accidents, damage, injury and death.  It was not a conscious decision that I remember making, but it is where I ended up.

These days I work with far tougher cases.  Cases of historical abuse.  The worst you can imagine.  It has changed me in many ways.  I went through a lot because of your actions but nothing compared to those I speak to on a daily basis.  I have learned from those people about moving on.  Acceptance.  Perspective.

You were seventeen.  I know how easy it is to make a stupid mistake.  Especially at that age.  You made a very big mistake that day.  A huge one.  One that took a life.  A life that you did not intend to take.  

You did not set off that day intending for things to happen in the way that they did.  But they did.   You did “borrow” your girlfriend’s sports car.  Which you were not insured to drive.  You did drive too fast and lost control.  You did hit my dad’s car.  You did kill him.

None of us are the same people we were at seventeen, at twenty, at twenty five even.  I know I am not.  I want to think that you changed too.   That the recklessness of that day and the effects of your actions, changed you.

You will always have what you did that day over your head.  That first mistake of taking the car, that snowballed into death.

I cannot imagine what it is to know that you have done that.  All that I can imagine, all that I hope, is that the gravity of what happened taught you some lessons and you lived your life in a better way.     Probably not right away.  Because you were, no doubt, in shock too.  You were too young for something so serious.  

I don’t hate you anymore.  Hate is a hard thing to hold on to in your soul and eats away at you.   Now I can put myself in your shoes and feel sorry for you, in a way.  You made a mistake.  You have had to live with that mistake every day.  That has to be hard.  Your life altered forever, just as mine did.  

I don’t owe you anything Gavin, I certainly don’t owe you forgiveness.  But I do forgive you.  I forgive you for the mistake you made.  Because by forgiving you, I can let go of the hate.  I understand now that the stupid actions and decisions you made as a teenager do not make you a bad person.  An evil person.    You were someone who made a bad choice.  

I do hope that you were truly sorry for what you did.  You never said that you were sorry, we spoke to your insurance company, not you.  But again, you were seventeen and had just killed someone.  I get it.

You did take a life, but I hope that you managed to deal with that and make something good of the rest of your life.  

Goodbye Gavin.  I won’t think of you anymore, writing this has been helpful.  I don’t wish you happiness, but I don’t wish you sadness anymore.  I am done.

Victoria 

Be a Lady They Said, But What Do They Mean?

Be A Lady They Said, But What Do They Mean?

A few years ago now there was a viral video of Cynthia Nixon reading a poem from Camille Rainville “Be A Lady They Said”.

For me, and for many women, it struck the perfect chord about the impossible and every changing standards that women face. Society it seems, some men in particular (not all men yada yada), seem to have no idea not only what they want from women; but also what label to put on us. Something that they desperately want to do. Why are labels so important? Because labels put you in a box. It is an element of control. The 21^st century's version of the Scold's Bridle.

Only a few decades ago, in the Western world, it was easy to put women in a box. Child, wife, mother, spinster, fallen woman, whore. Fallen woman, what does that even mean? A search on Wikipedia tells us that a fallen woman is someone who has lost her “innocence”. What is never mentioned, is who took it.

In countries like Saudia Arabia, Iran and Iraq, women are still firmly in the boxes men want them to be. A woman's testimony is worth half of a man's. If a woman is raped, it takes two male witnesses for her to be believed.

Male rights activists love to point out to feminists that women have it so much worse in those countries and of course, this is true. They say that we should be grateful. Such a strange word, grateful. What it is, is a silent threat. “We did it to you once, be grateful that we don't do this now”.

Yet, in the case of Harvey Weinstein, it took over 100 women for just 2 to be believed. With every single woman who went public being called a whore in the press, someone who gained from the “casting couch”, a gold digger. An attention seeker. Same with the conviction of Bill Cosby.

CPS figures in September 2021 showed that only 3.3% of all reported rapes ended in a conviction. Therefore, according to the stats published, out of 57882 rapes reported, only 1910 were believed and their rapists convicted. According to the readers of the Daily Mail, that makes nearly 56000 women liars. Whores. The highest rated comment was “too many false claims by bitter women”.

That so many think that women would put themselves through so much, going to the police, being examined, relieving and retelling the rape over and over, giving evidence in front of their rapist in Court for supposed “financial gain” or “bitterness” speaks volumes of what women are thought of in society.

A society that still lets a woman's underwear be paraded in open Court as as example of her intention to have sex that night.

Be a lady they said. But what does that even mean any more?

“ A lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets” was something I started to hear in the 1990s. The best of both worlds it was called. A “good girl” in public and your whore in the bedroom. This was in my teenage years and was treated as a joke in the most part. Teenage boys did not in general expect sex. Now, thanks to porn culture, the expectation on teenage girls is far different.

The case of the girl in Cyprus with the up to 12 men who raped her is a prime example. Time and time again I saw the same things said. She wanted it. It was regret sex. Women are whores. See the word that is used time and again?

What made men and boys think that a woman would ever want, court and enjoy a gang bang? Porn.

So what is wanted from women today? Simultaneously a virgin and a slut. Enjoy sex, but not too much you slag. Be more adventurous, but where did you learn that from you whore? Don't be promiscuous, but don't be frigid. Be a good girl, but do anal. You know you want it.

So how do women respond to this? How do we combat this? We fight back. We band together, as so many women did in support of the girl in Cyprus. We say our truth. We call out the cultures and generational beliefs that men have the right to give us the labels they choose. We don't stay silent.

We be the lady, or not, that we CHOOSE to be. We reject the labels. We ridicule those that would label us. We teach our daughters that our self worth is nothing that can be given or taken away from us. We teach them that our bodies belong to ourselves.

We reject the labels and choose our own. Or reject all labels. We are women. Our choices are our own and the ONLY person who can judge us for our choices.

Be whatever you want to be and do not let anyone influence that or change that. This is how we fight.

They cannot change those that refuse to change. They cannot label those who refuse to be labelled.