Concrete and Abstract

This is a way of remembering the aftermath. So that, should any idiot come up and try to give me grief, I can remember the wealth of support that was offered to me. That I’ve never seen the words ‘brave’, ‘courageous’, ‘inspiring’ written so many times. That I had person after person applaud me, offer to talk, offer to reach out.

Honesty begets honesty. There was a heartbreaking number of people describing similar experiences. In some ways this was an affirmation. One of the problems before posting this was that the damage that was going to be done was concrete, tangible and clear. I was about to make someone’s life very difficult, about to upset his family and disconcert or confuse his friends. I was about to make the people on that night feel wretched, even if there is nothing they could have done. I was about to make a lot of people have an unpleasant sense of clarity as jokes made in the past took on a whole new meaning and context.

But the help that I could do? That was hypothetical, conditional — by nature unknown. It was fuzzy, gray, and easily attributable to a smudge on some rose-tinted glasses. You cannot know the stories another has until they have proffered them to you. Having this solidify in front of me, the unknown faces take shape into agents, peers, acquaintances, friends was in some cases heartbreaking, but other times desperately needed. A women who I was in awe of age 13 reached out to me, with her own account — a sign that someone can be sparky, and funny, and strong and a complete entity regardless of what has happened. I had practical advice, from girls who had shared their stories before on how to manage the deluge of messages. I had stories of people who also felt they had inhabited that liminal space, and that I had inspired them to get help.

The magnitude of that last sentence has only really sunken in as I’ve written it. All of a sudden, I have goosebumps and chills. 9 girls who have messaged me directly are in some way seeking out support or change as a result of what I posted. I hate that this is relevant to so many people, but I was aware, I think, of the degree of the problem. Honestly, writing this, some of my motivations were reasonably selfish. I wanted people to know, I didn’t want to have to deal with uncomfortable pinpricks, the unfairness and injustice of it all, I wanted people to be aware that this happened. I think this in part derives from the fact ‘I’ was the only person I could see on the other side of the scale. Because the ‘they’ didn’t really exist as a concrete, existent entity, it was hard to think of the effect on them.

Now I can see it, and had I been able to before, I think I would have spoken up much earlier. It now seems a clear cut choice between two groups of people — staying silent helps one, but speaking out helps these other 9 girls. Put like this, speaking out seems obvious, logical. It’s a simple, scaled, welfare judgement.

I guess this post (which I’m not sharing publicly) is something to encourage people who are doubting themselves for speaking out — who are worried about the upset it may bring. Once the abstract solidifies to the concrete, the tipping of the scales is obvious.