Good news with a Trigger warning: mention of rape

Today is a good day, I feel like I've confronted a bully, my anxiety is a lil better and I've finished my fourth book this year. The second in the mortal instruments collection, worth a go.

This will just be a small post due to the fact that I am flying high on a cloud of oramorp, for my endometriosis which has been particularly troublesome, but back to better things...

I sent the 'friend' who assaulted me this message after taking my painkillers

and I feel strangely fantastic. I'm nervous like some wild animal is inside my heart but I feel better, I feel like I've taken a step forward. The strange bundle of tension between my shoulder blades has begun to seep away.

I gave the person who hurt me a week to explain why it happened and what drove him to it or I would have to find closure some other way. He's made me do that and although I've not gone to the doctors (who I will be getting woman's centre info from) yet the appointment will be happening next week.

I have been very public about this but I feel it helps, evidence of the purge, that I can do this and that I am struggling but I am surviving. Perhaps it is cliché but that is the truth. So many people have known me during this time and have had no idea, maybe I'm just trying to explain.

Times are tough but we do what we must to survive.

Peace and health to all of you.

You are strong even as your hand shakes.

✨✨✨

All hail the glow cat

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Night of the secret santa

Ok, so tonight's blog post is not going to be the most cheerful and I will put here a trigger warning regarding assault and abusive relationships. Hopefully the tale has a happy tale, happier than the past but far from a fairy tale happily ever after.

The story begins in my second year at University, having been assaulted during my first year and not being the most social creature I made a few friends, some better than others as I drifted through the day to day life of a university student with mental health issues. At this point my manic depression diagnosis had not been changed to Borderline Personality Disorder with the admittance of past child abuse(which I had accepted as part of my life but not part of the present). Saying that, I suspect it is likely that those events in my childhood aided what was to come with a twisted idea of love. To this day I do not hate the young man who touched me but view him with something hazy and grey. It is possible I have yet to address this fact fully and that I live in the limbo between trauma and recovery. I know that is what it feels like now, caught in a tide of emotions unable to rise without interrupting some element of my life. but I'm getting off point.

In my second year at university I happened upon a young man in the corner shop near our campus and thought I had seen the face of god. I was your typical lonely romantic, inspired into strange bursts of creativity by this mysterious specimen who I did not see for days or possibly weeks later. I can just remember seeing him and being struck by something about him that I would later read as a recognition of demons and self disgust. 

One of my friends happened to be in the art year below me and during one of his seminars I remember seeing the same figure, seated in front, indistinguishable by any reasonable methods. I was infatuated with a stranger who looked so similar to the film crushes of my past and the pale Lotharios of the Anne Rice novels I found so enjoyable. I was compelled by his presence to draw him, to scrawl notes on what strange reactions transversed my medicated mind. But just like the first sighting life went on and he fell out of thought, inspiring nothing in absence. Out of sight was out of mind, but of course I would see him on campus and turn to my friend, gushing of his beauty and how like a favoured tv character he appeared. That character so like him, appearing so melancholy, weighted by things not all of the world can comprehend. I projected by ideas upon him and when we finally spoke I found myself insulted, a joke about my mood being pms turning my blood cold with embarrassment. This person I had found so inspiring was seemingly a wretch.

I spoke of him in later days to another friend in his year, admitting his handsomeness and despairing of his nature only to learn he had been drunk. It was an excuse that bought him a pardon but I do not recall speaking to him or when it was that we came to orbit the same circle of friends. I remember meeting them, a group of people who have either fallen to the way side as time and nature dictate. and those who I remain close with. I met them in the campus bar, we smoked together, all drunk, all happy and from then my lack of adventure into society ceased. I drifted from what friends I had already made and it was by chance that these people were his friends and that we would drink together often in the future.

It was normal then and I cannot recall the turning point but it began slowly as poison so often does. I openly despised his rudeness and called him on it whilst flirting with our mutual friends at house parties and gatherings, trying things I had never tried and propositioning people I never wanted after getting to know them. They were good people but they were my friends and nothing more. But life as it so often does throws right hooks and one of our mutual friends appeared to fall for me as we spent more time together; he, the muse and I drinking into the early hours and building a friendship I liken now to people drowning, we clung to one another with our alcoholic tendencies, gave into them, welcomed the self awareness of our miseries and distracted one another from them. They were closer friends than any in our group but as our friend's feelings appeared to come out the muse spoke to me of them curiously, defensive and vague in a way that made me explain nothing was returned. He appeared at peace then and life went on with minor blips of party flirtations until the end of the year began to draw near threatening to ruin what fragile calm had been found. Perhaps it was some fear of this or a plan to use it and escape consequence that the muse began to flirt, began to demand our attentions more frequently with fights and dramas.

There was one party where I noticed something had changed as the drunken muse arrived, provoking a guest into violence that was not to be quelled or out of character. Several good people at that party helped, one dragging the muse away as I at only 5ft channelled the wrath of god into the six foot brick shit house who had been riled. I was drunk and high on life, protective and infuriated at the prospect of someone hurting him. I had experienced such rage only once before and had been so much younger, so very sober that it had been something less endangering. The night went on, I left after attempting to calm the muse only to be shoved away. I was intoxicated as much on the chemicals in my system as my care for him. Emotional and in need of our shared friend whose want of me assured comfort I left, seeing a glimpse of the muse held up by others before walking away to the song of my name screamed from his mouth.

It was there, I could feel it, something just beneath the skin, something so knowingly wrong but so tempting. We treated each other like shit with sporadic expressions of care; my removal from a party to sit with him after he had collapsed, his watch over me at a party where I had been too drunk. There was some care but it came at a price and it had driven me to tears as I stumbled drunk to our friends window and knocked, grateful to have him answer gown clad and freshly awake. I was comforted by friends who checked I had not been struck before the muse returned to where he lived. Things were calmer, he punched a display class and we picked up glass as he paced on, apologetic and still drunk. My hand got cut and he later expressed concern after friends dropped away to sleep as normal people do. We stayed up with a hero from the party soon bidding farewell after a meal in exchange for his kindness.

The muse propositioned me then, asking if he could perform oral on me, bringing up memories of a twenty minutes riff about the greatness of my ass and the strange attraction that had started it all. I resisted and offered to help talk it out with him, his problems not, the offer. I swear now that I truly wanted to help but I would be lying if I said some part of me did not know the risk of further flirtations. It happened as did talk of his discomfort in his relationship, we curled up together before I left after his hands began to wander too far.

Months later saw us move in together with our strange group and on my birthday we exchanged the sort of affections I thought someone like me would never do with a man in a relationship. He compared me to a woman who had assaulted him in the past and called me a devil woman, we fell out and I was once again hurt by something I knew to be wrong anyway.

As time passed our friendship grew, we got to know one another, exchanged insults and odd affections, he gave the best hugs and for whatever reason expressed a protectiveness over me that made me feel safe from the world. He was too unstable for anyone to bother and at some point I heard of a fight between him and a man he knew I once slept with, I heard it was over some prejudice act by the one night mistake but I used to wonder. I preferred being at the right hand of the devil than in his path.

Since being on such strong painkillers I can describe it as an addiction of some sort, some bid to chase a spectre known only briefly in my past. I still felt some draw to the man from my childhood when I thought of him but did not connect his likeness to that of the muse until much later. The similarities in the damage they ended up doing to me just appears to be my own mistake, the itch I felt one of warning as much as one of need. My body had been warning me of what was happening and I ignored it, I forgave insults and cruelties, I blew him and accepted his distance days after. I stayed silent when his girlfriend came to stay with us and felt sick when in his absence she opened up enough to expose discomfort and want of more, her drunken admittance of interest ignored by me as I ensured she went to bed and did not know what happened when her boyfriend came to 'talk' to me in the night.

The systematic cruelty, the rejection, the distance and the kindness fell around me, eased and ignored by vodka as I slipped into practices too commonly used to cope. It was during this time that I picked up the habit of self harm to a degree that I now have more scars than I care to count and a relationship to blood that sees me lulled into a serenity sweet in a way I cannot describe. Perhaps those tribes that practised blood letting were right and these actions were an act of defiance, my tactic at a war I did not fully understand.

At Christmas despite the usual tensions between house mates we had a gathering of food, drink and secret santa, my muse had me and procured me vodka and ice cream. It is the sort of gift that says I don't know you at all but I don't mind that you're becoming an alcoholic and that night we stayed up longer than others. He was displaying the familiar signs of anguish, that he would slip into one of his episodes and end up missing for days only to return with tales of drugs and brawls. He was fascinating you see, so smart, so deliciously troubled like myself that I felt less dysfunctional around him as if I were amongst my own kind.

At some point that night I retired to my room and at some point he came to find me, we talked, we fumbled, he asked for me to put my cigarette out of him as I so often used to do to myself and I obliged before things settled into a conversation uneasy enough to dissolve whatever self control he still had. He head butted my wall and despaired of his love for a girlfriend he did not wish to be with, I calmed him for a while and we settled down together as we so often did. Something we so often had done with other friends, all of us together as if a pack of cubs curled into our siblings to hide from the horrors of the world.

I was drunk but I remember rolling over to sleep, assuming he had drifted off and I remember him against my back, moving me onto my front as he pressed against me from behind. I remember him grinding and my placating nos that soon spiralled into more insistent commands that fell on deaf ears, muffled by the pillows. We had given one another injuries before, love bites, wounds of pride but I remember the way he ignored me so completely, moving me about and commencing an act I managed to escape from in tears. It could only have been minutes but it felt longer and even as I type this now my chest gets tight whilst my limbs shake. Fear slips in easier now.

I hid myself in the bathroom whilst at some point he collapsed at the entrance to my room whilst a friend came to investigate. I remained hidden before eventually showering and returning to my room where I had to leave him asleep just outside. I text friends vague messages of s.o.s before falling asleep curled up on the part of my bed he had not touched.

The next morning he came in forgetful and fearful and I told him. I explained I was fine and did not give details of the blood he'd drawn or the constant pain his force had caused. I offered help and our friendship seemed to tumble along as it had been simply without flirtations as often and a clear avoidance at being in rooms alone together. I hinted at friends in a bid to have them guess and some did, I regret them knowing now only because I sided with my attacker, defended him, swore not to press charges if he got help. I thought I was okay, it had happened before and I had only spent days in bed before going on with life but I recall now that it was the same time I chose to go by Lola. I had found a way to change my life then but living with the man who did it, seeing him, knowing him... it slowly began to eat at me and I went to get myself assessed by doctors and was offered therapy if I agreed to go to NA and AA. I went out drinking that day with friends, offered the muse a place with me at meetings neither of us would attend. I rejected therapy, University demanded my attention and I could not fail my degree.

I thought everything was alright but after a new years eve spent stilling him from assaulting men who I spoke to that I night things began to unravel and eventually I met a person who showed me what life could be like. This post is not about my salvation though and despite my happiness I have found myself over a year later beseiged by an anxiety I have never known, unable to leave the house after only being sent into shock when I saw him months before today. The symptoms of that night have been slow in their reveal and in part I put it down to my history of repression, but maybe it is because I feel safe enough now to address what happened even as it terrifies me.

Over time I got money for my slice of the house's deposit from him as he had ruined numerous parts of the building including my bedroom wall, it felt like an agreeable pay back at the time. Now I'm disgusted I spoke to him with such civility and reason.

I've spoken to him recently after advice from friends previously pushed away in the name of defending him, I need some sort of closure from what happened instead of this elastic band that threatens to snap and take me with it. I want to know why he did it, I want to finally understand what the fuck happened, why it happened, how he could so easily ignoring me begging him and how he could look at me afterwards whilst trying to appease me with stolen croissants.

I've told him he has a week to tell me what I need to know and he has given me the usual excuses he somehow always finds but if I don't know by next Wednesday evening I'm going to seek help from a woman's centre or the police. I have no plan of pressing charges, I don't want him in prison but I need to purge myself of this toxin, something I realised last night after a week of lethargy and grey abyss was washed away by rather violent sickness.

I often contemplate the ludicrous idea that his attack is what brought on my current condition. Foolish I know.

I'm sorry if you've read this and found it poorly written or boring, pointless or self indulgent for I am sure it is all and many more things but I needed to write this for myself. I hope this will be the first step on the way to getting my life back and I will not be denied my recovery simply because of another person's offence. I'm sorry, sort of.

My best wishes to all of you out there.

Peace and health

x  

Hello there strangers

WARNING: brief mentions of assault



I'm sorry for such a long wait between posts even if it is a blog that gets read most probably by myself. If you do read however I extend my apologies to you.

I finished reading Odd Thomas' last book and have also just finished Frankenstein and have moved onto the second in The Mortal Instruments books. I've also watched more x-files after having paused several years at season six. It is great and somehow it has awoken in me a muse I have not seen for many a year. When I watch it with notes open on my phone words flow from me without hesitation and form a tale I have wished to write for an age.

The tale in question is one of my art project and fictional town, the work amassed before this inspiration was okay at best but since watching that programme some sort of hope has welled inside me, feeding my confidence to continue, to pursue the ends of tales I've only dreamt of and haphazardly pondered. A map has been made and a list of characters with surnames has begun and shortly after that the story started, fingers driven by the subconscious, perhaps by the tale itself in a demand to live. I think it is fairly telling that I have just read Frankenstein and I do not ignore that my conquest of three books this year alone most definitely plays a role in this creative rejuvenation.

I do however admit that things have weighed upon me and that is the reason behind my absence. Forms for DWP matters had to be filled in and the paperwork they require shall be sent of soon, I've been changed onto a stronger painkiller that has yet to have been collected (due to my own rush to get out the house, subsequent forgetting of the prescription and a sleeping pattern that appears to remain a sanctuary from pain). I have also been contemplating the matters of my recent assault and have found myself needing answers from the friend I lost that night. I have been told via a third party that he will answer questions I have sent to him and can only hope that this will bring some sort of closure to an incident which appears to haunt me. My anxiety regarding it, for I can distinguish my usual from this brand, had me in tears of terror and shaking before attending a doctor's appointment because the medical centre is somewhere near where I could run into this person. It was ridiculous to me to suddenly fear someone I had appeared to forgive and although I think I have I believe my mind refuses to let go of the harsh facts: this person hurt me and even though we care for them we must not be lulled back into their lives. I think my mind is attempting to protect itself and I am aware of the thousands of other things this anxiety could be and agree that yes, my current condition could have assisted.

On a lighter note I showered after days of avoidance because simply put, showering gives me too much time alone where there is nothing to do but think and my mind is not the sort that I feel safe being alone with when it wanders...

Of course I do not mean I contemplate death on the regular and indeed have not thought seriously on it for over a year and a half, excluding a pain induced delirium where the painkillers weren't working and withdrawal crept in. I told my doctor about the withdrawal, not the sudden burst of despair, and he insists I cease the tramadol once I begin the morphine... yes, he gave me a stronger drug that should I get addicted to may destroy whatever sense I have left when I try to escape its hold.

It seems in reading this that life may be bad but despite the grey cloud that hovers about my mind, chasing the communications of synapses and dripping into flesh where it festers I am disgustingly happy. I do not wish to boast but my greatest aid has been another whose presence and care has steadied me when I've come close to losing hold. He has readied me as if an officer in a guard dedicated against that great beast of misery. I have become stronger with his help, strategizing, learning and fighting with whatever helps. Sometimes it is frozen chocolate fingers, sometimes a hug with my two favourite boys and sometimes it is the near forcible ejection of me from the house for fresh air.

It isn't easy but it is possible. I'm hopeful that the morphine will cut through this pain and give me back my life. I know I've lost my job but another can be found and I would swap the concerns of a job for this pain which keeps me from normality in almost every sense.

A strange addition to this week was the Snapchat of a friend whom I once felt a little too much for. Yes I once cried in the tub because I wanted him to want me as my then fiancé did but as time passed and most importantly, as I became who I am today I realised he was not someone to desire. He's handsome yes but so are many others and despite care for him obtained through sporadic conversations of serious matters I find it now to be a care without attraction. I can see his good points but whatever I felt as a young girl entranced by stoic seemingly loveless men, is gone. I have grown up and I have found the sort of happiness no cynic could ever hope to find. I feel sorry for him, for his cold look of the world where facts are of great importance and emotions are something not to express for I suspect like every person he does feel. Perhaps I hoped that I may change him by showing him how to fight the cold darkness of the world by focusing elsewhere and perhaps it was merely a crush of a trapped young woman which swiftly spurred her into action. I surely owe my happiness in part to him for without his dry and painfully blunt observations of my life I may have stayed hiding from the world forever.

I may meet up with him when I visit my mother but I do not forget that this is a man who has been willingly cruel and inappropriate in suggestion in the past. He says he has changed but I suspect he would laugh and jest at this blog amongst a great number of things in my life and I have no wish to wallow in such company. The human mind is a mystery as are each and every person on this planet in their own way but I know, though he says he has changed, I may end up attending his company for a moment before having to excuse myself for my wellbeing. Whether I am soft or not, for I have become more free with my emotions thanks to good friends, I do not know but I'm happy at a time in my life where happiness could easily be perceived as a miracle. I'd rather not test that but I stay hopeful. We shall see.

I leave you with a song I find compelling in matters of peace and creativity which I happened upon in an x-files episode called Closure. It is divine.

Click Here

And a picture for kicks



Peace of mind to all and happy days throughout
✨✨✨



image found:

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