Who Cried Wolf

25th May 2023

To all of my past selves,

Thank you.

I know I only get to enjoy these good years now because you carried me through the worst.

I love you all so much. Today I am proud to say that that is wholeheartedly true.

Fuck I'm proud of us for making it here.

Look how far we've come! From burning our first letter that barely whispered of the possibility of (abuse), to publishing our first entry online.

Thank you for every single time you picked up a pen and wrote through clenched fist about what happened - no- what was done to me. It is thanks to all of those hundreds and thousands of courageous little acts that their crimes no longer fester inside of me.

Thank you for every time you spoke the words despite decades of clogged up silence trying to swallow them back down.  

Thank you for staying quiet for me when it proved unsafe to speak.

Thank you for freezing for my life and thereby minimizing my injuries.

Thank you for leaving even when you weren't quite sure why. Thank you for heeding that imperative and taking your time to run.

Thank you for staying. Thank you for facing love, even when it felt more frightening than preemptive rejection.

Thank you for staying. When you were not sure what we were living for. Thank you for finding reasons to keep going until we started to believe I am enough.

Thank you for asking for help.

Thank you for nursing every disappointment, neglect and rejection. Thank you for summoning the courage to ask for help again, and again, and again.

Thank you for every single time you called a help line, even though you weren’t sure what you were going to say, and you weren’t sure if it was bad enough, and you didn’t know even if you would be able to say anything at all, thank you for not hanging up before somebody heard you.  

Thank you for consoling me after each time somebody I hoped would hear me let me down.

Thank you for not shutting down. Thank you for risking that pain, again and again until you found people who could hold you and the truth of what people had done to you, together in one room.

Thank you for uncovering what love truly is. For understanding that it is not just a word that abusers misuse, but a feeling reflected through millions of actions and responses over time. Thank you for learning to see, recognise and feel these.

Thank you for learning how to feel love-d! For practicing this, slowly increasing our tolerance to receive these intense emotions without startling; without shutting down and lying yourself unworthy.

Thank you for building a deep foundation of intrinsic self-worth. Thank you for excavating all the bullshit left behind by people treating you as if your only worth was the pleasure they took from your body.

Thank you for your ever greater expectations for how you will be loved.

THANK YOU for ever improving your skills at communicating. Thank you for ever terrified first, second and third attempt at articulating your wants, needs and desires with loved ones. And thank you for eventually coming around to accepting that you do have needs (and that is okay) even though yes technically you survived without these things for so long, that was not okay.  

Thank you for every empowering "no".

Thank you for every erotic negotiation. Because of all of you, what used to feel awkward, shameful and frightening to talk about, is now simply essential extended foreplay.

Life is so much simpler once you can talk about it. It is so much easier now for me to ask for and either receive what I need, or leave.

Thank you for finding your pleasure in your body.

Thank you for persevering through all of the pain to get here.

Writing your first post. Not sure if anyone will read it, but hopeful.

May it help others find their own way through.

May we heal from sexual harm, together.

May we stop sexual violence.

May we reclaim sexual pleasure and connection.

May we re-inhabit our bodies.

For those of you like me, who were abused from such an early age that you cannot remember a good time to go back to. May you experience an ever-expanding spiral of firsts.

First time feeling safe.

First time feeling loved and at peace. (Be that with others or by yourself, feeling sufficiently warmed by your own light.)

Feeling anything and everything.

First sexual experience during which you stayed inside your body.

First consensual orgasm, first sexual connection with somebody you love. First time you realise you can have sex without genital touch. (Spoiler; genitals are totally superfluous to the flow of sexual energy unless you're trying to make a baby).

For you asexuals out there, first time you realise you don't need to have sex to live a full and fabulous life.

It is time to release all misembodied shame.

The shame that you feel is not rightfully yours.

It was not your fault.

You are not broken.

You are healing.

Healing is messy, it's scary, it is unpredictable and it is not at all linear, but it is possible (despite the fact that it rarely feels that way while you're in the middle of it).

You will be amazed by what you are capable of healing. Horrified by what people are capable of doing to one another. But hopefully determined never to do the same to anybody else.

We can break these cycles of abuse.

We already are.

We have already begun.

Love yourself,

Love,

Listen to your Body,

Love all of You.

Sit still, breathe,

It will leave.

It is not you,

You are SO much bigger than this.

I was 25 when I began to believe that my life is worth protecting.

That was thanks to a Master in martial arts showing me, week after week after month after year, that I was worth all the thought, time and energy he put into training me (pro-bono), to defend myself.

So long as our justice systems fail to hold perpetrators accountable, and our communities refuse to hear these 'unspeakable' crimes;

Love and shut the fuck up

Saying it is not enough, you have to live it

Live love, even when it's hard

Especially when it's hard

Straight in the face of hatred, Love

In the flames of anger, Love

Because the only other option is

to fuel the anger and the hatred

and we can't have that

We've had that.

That's all we've ever had and

we can't have that no more.

My head swirls with words hammering at the door, begging to get out;

Out onto paper.

Out into the world.

Free to be read by other minds.

I pick up my pen and they run and hide again.

The Blank Page...

This open door to that wider world, swings in the wind of another wordless exhale.

This threshold remains uncrossed.

Tomorrow, I will try again.

I was so afraid of anyone reading anything I wrote.

Once, when I was young (somewhere in between 5 and 7) I found my mother reading my diary to some of my other ex-family members and caught them laughing.

I had written about how lonely I felt; and how I did not feel like anybody loved me.

They did not help.

[Transcripts of letters to myself from May 2018. Edited a little. If you'd like to read the originals + my red pen additions from 2020 then by all means; zoom in]

5th May 2018

Dear Me,

I have been grieving/depressed/circling the abyss for a few days now. We can afford a few days. However, when one is tossing and turning around the edge of the abyss, a few moments feels like it holds the threat of eternity.

I do not have the patience for an eternity of this. So on top of feeling depressed, I feel angry at myself for feeling depressed.

I know I shouldn't get angry at myself for feeling any particular way, I know I should be kinder to you.

So I get angry at myself for that too, and then again at you again for reflecting my failures back at me.

I'm going to sign off by telling you that I love you, even though that feels like a lie today.

I hope that tomorrow it will become true.

I love you,

Myself.

6th May 2018

I love you.

You're doing really well.

Love,