I Am Really Bloody Proud of Myself

The last post was a long time coming. There’s been about 6 drafts, where I’ve tried to say, and things haven’t seemed right. Where words haven’t fit, or they’ve forced me to conform to different roles — an avenger, a victim, an advocate when I simply wanted to write as me, rather than a trope. It had to be honest. But how to write honestly? How does one remove their own gloss on a situation? There were so many incentives to persuade, to convince, to make it seem one way or another, that I had to avoid. I had to write what had happened, without letting language give some kind of veneer. Hard to do when central concepts — ‘consent’, ‘conscious’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘rape’ — are themselves not subject to agreed upon definition. It had to be honest, because only if it was honest and included all the questionable elements, the charges people could raise against me, the unknowns and the error terms, could it be released unencumbered into the world.

But I did it. I sat, and I typed, and I said what had happened. I let it go up, unvarnished and unedited. I did it in a way that let other people gain something. I did it in a way that was accurate, and was fair, and let the ambiguity exist, whilst allowing what I say to be something I felt. And I clicked post, and I made myself keep it up, and now everyone knows.

And I don’t really know what I’m expecting from here. I’ve got messages of support, which are welcome, and have dispelled the horrible image I had of shutters going up, and me being abandoned. I’ve had messages that suggest people have started undergoing a dialogue which is wonderful. I’ve also had some conspicuous silences — people refusing to pin their colours to a mast. I’m not really sure what to make of it. I’ve always sort of been of the view not expressing a view is just that — not expressing a view. But in some cases, it does jar a little. It did hurt. Equally, I think I have to be kind and give people time to make up their own minds. (Update: Turned out the Facebook Algorithm had hidden my post — which was a little frustrating, but FAR better than swathes of my friends just not caring at all).

But most of all I’m so proud of myself. This was something brave, and scary, and also the right thing to do. We need these grey area stories, ones that lie outside the paradigm, so that people aren’t left with the feeling that these experiences are somehow acceptable. They’re not, and I’m so so proud of myself for doing my part to combat this.

This post is a boast. I’ve done something I’ve thought about for so long, and it was something that I had thought about every possible way going wrong. I’d thought of being cut off from my friends at college, creating a divide, of people calling me a liar or giving me abuse. (And maybe people are thinking that but at the very least, they’re not telling me.) It’s something that has scared me for a long time and I did it. And I am really, unashamedly, unapologetically proud of that. This is huge, it’s something that marks an end of a really difficult year of covering up small stings that have occurred under the mask of a smile and a laugh, and it’s something that has lifted something crushing off my chest.

And I’m looking forward to next year. To engaging with people unencumbered by this asymmetry of knowledge. To laughing properly, and to having the principle of charity I so needed at points this year. It’s out there, it’s there and it’s done.

And I am so, so, so proud of myself.