Last week, I followed the link in the automated message that housing options sent me when I first emailed them to ask them how I request a subject assess request in July, and found a page where it allows you to request one, which I did.
Let’s see if they actually acknowledge my request this time.
On moving day, after the moving company left, and I finally got to have a good look around, I was shocked to find that the flat was much filthier than I thought it was on the day of the viewing.
As we tried to clean, it became obvious there were bigger issues than simple dirt, and the longer I lived there, the more I learned those issues included several life-threateninginfestations.
All of my guesses at what the crap covering everything was, was certainly correct to a point, for example, the inside of the toilet was covered in human waste, so I expect the outside was to some extent too, however what other parts of the crap was, I never could have imagined because I had never lived in a slum before becoming a Torus tenant.
Now I know the bath and tiles in the bathroom weren’t dirty, they were mouldy, as were the blinds in the bedroom, which I couldn’t replace, due to the window they were covering also being mouldy, and in such a bad condition we couldn’t get it off.
Probably, predicably, the carpet didn’t look like it had been cleaned, but that could also have been mould, and it was infested with flees.
There were bloody handprints smeared along one of the walls in the bedroom. I found the source of this blood when the flees forced me to rip up the carpet. Whoever had fitted it, had cut themselves badly on the carpet grips, bled all over the flat, and never cleaned it up. And just to show you how much blood had not been cleaned up, it was obvious they cut themselves in the Livingroom, yet there were puddles of dried blood all over the hallway and bedroom floor, underneath the carpet.
Behind the door in the bathroom was a heated towel rail that was so rusty we couldn’t remove it all.
The entire flat was covered in either male body hair, pubes, or a combination of both.
When we were cleaning the kitchen, I noticed these hard, weird black lumps that sort of resembled instant coffee grounds, but which felt like they were glued down, and theywere in only the lower cupboards and not the cupboards up on the wall. The reason for that, I found out later, was because it was mouse crap. Which means the brown puddles next to it must have been mouse piss.
The first time I tried to open the top draw of the kitchen cabinet, it fell off and almost took my toes off with it, it smashed me in the foot that hard.
The previous tenant had left behind grimy, rusty pans, a mouldy shower curtain, and a virgin media box, none ofwhich Torus removed, because the probably never even inspected the flat before letting me view it, or after.
During the viewing, Phil, the housing officer, must have caught me either staring at the mystery crap stains in the kitchen, or pulling a disgusted face as I accidently touched one, because he assured me the flat would be clean when I moved in.
Like an idiot I believed him, even though with hindsight it seems obvious it wouldn’t be, as it should have been clean when I viewed it.
And as if to confirm he was telling the truth, a man carrying a vacuum cleaner turned up while I was there and said he was going to clean the carpet.
The bathroom
Around the base of the toilet, on the lid of the toilet seat and around the toilet was, was black and brown chunky dirt, that resembled faeces.
There were orange and black grimy looking stains all over the bath and on the white tiles around the bath.
Over the sink, on the black tiles, were hard yellow lumps which appeared to be glue.
I did not go inside the bathroom, just observed from the doorway.
The bedroom
Another room that I did not go inside and just observed from the doorway, was the bedroom.
Other than the blinds, which looked dirty, from the outside, the rest of the room looked fine, and I planned on getting my own curtains anyway.
The kitchen
Although the kitchen work tops were darkly coloured, so hid most of the crap that was on them, I could tell it was there, as they were sticky wherever and whenever I touched them, and the cabinet doors, which are a lighter fake wood design, were splattered in crap, in a variety of different colours.
The living room
Like the bedroom, the living room appeared pretty much ok, other than some paint that was missing from the wall where it seemed a TV had been mounted.
The carpet
Excluding the bathroom and kitchen, the entire floor of the flat was carpeted in this dirty looking white shag carpet.
It happened just before the implosion of the penthouse crew.
When Mel told me about it, she claimed it had traumatised her. Yet, to me, she seemed completely unaffected by it, but I acknowledge that my judgement of her here would be both ignorant and hypocritical. After all, I am apparently empathy impaired meaning I struggle to, and sometimes cant, read peoples emotions and intentions, and due to my borderline personality disorder, I don’t behave how people expect a person to behave, ever, but especially in stressful situations.
It happened, if I remember correctly, on a Saturday morning. The residents from Gubbys other third floor, which was where Mel lived, had been out the previous night in central London.
The girl whose screaming woke the entire third floor that morning had brough her boyfriend along, as he was visiting her that weekend.
By the time Mel, who lived opposite her, made it into the corridor, several of her neighbours were already out there, trying without success to force open the unlocked door of the room the screaming was coming from.
“She’s behind the door, and she wont move,” one of Mel’s neighbours explained.
Another was speaking to the girl behind the door, trying to find out what was wrong, and persuade her to move away from the door.
Mel was a larger woman, both tall and sturdy, yet even when she charged the door, it didn’t budge.
It took several of the largest women to open the door just wide and long enough for the smallest of the group to squeeze through.
What she found inside had caused her to leave university, because she most definitely was traumatised.
At some point during the night, while his girlfriend slept, the vising boyfriend had hung himself from the hinge of the door, which made sure it shut and locked behind you.
Panicking, she had pulled open the door while he was still hanging there, desperate to flee, but instead closing the hinge, which severed whatever it was he had used to hang himself, causing him to fall on top of her.
Despite housing options being adamant that they would not take my disabilities into consideration when rehousing me, which they didn’t, they did inform LMH that I had recently been sectioned for a failed suicide attempt.
I also told them this, at the viewing.
Yet, there are several places both inside my flat and in the communal area, that are perfect places to hang yourself from.
1. The stairs in the communal hallway.
The staircase in the communal hallway has a metal banister, and no mesh guard on the first floor. This means that unlike a wooden banister, that you would have in a normal home, it wont break under the weight of an adult, and because there’s no guard rail you can jump over the banister, possibly snapping your neck in the process of hanging yourself. However, there is a bend in the staircase in between the ground floor and first floor that is high enough for five foot me to hang myself from.
2. The closing hinge on my front door
The is a reason psychiatric hospitals do not have those v shaped hinges at the top of doors that make sure the door closes behind you, which the one on my front door doesn’t even do, so it is useless, unless of course you want to hang yourself from it, which bring us full circle as to why these types of hospitals don’t have them, they are perfect to hang yourself from.
In fact, I knew of a person who successfully hung themselves from one of these before I was even sectioned the first time.
3.The heated towel rail in the bathroom.
4. The weird square handle on my cupboard door in the hallway.
Saturday 14th October 2023
I have taken a quick look at my first few complaint entries, which I wrote in 2022.
It seems I thought that the best place to begin was with my first housing officer, Phil, and how he discriminated against me because I am disabled and abused me.
Current me agrees this is the best place to start. However, while doing this I believe I need to include information not relevant to this part of my complaint, rather to the part about the condition and suability of my flat, because both Phil and LMH completely ignored all this when they should not have at the time they offered me the flat and allowed me to move in.
So, here is my current plan on how I am going to approach my complaint.
First, I am going to talk about the parts relevant to the conditions and suitability of my property that both LMH anPhil ignored, which were obvious issues at the time of my viewing and when I moved in. These will likely be straight to the point lists.
Then I am going to tell you about my first housing officer. This will probably be in my usual style of autobiographical stories.
After which, I am going to go straight into my complaint about my housing officer, including any evidence I currently have.
The second type of dissociation I experience is much stranger, and is the “out of body type”, which is apparently common among suffers of borderline personality disorder.
What isn’t common apparently, the way I experience it.
Others say that during this type of dissociation, they watch themselves do things from outside their own body.
For me, it is how I image a playable game character must feelwhen somebody is playing as them. It is as though I am trapped inside my body, while somebody else is controlling it.
So, finally, here it is, the new form of memory dissociation, that writing my post about my flat viewing caused me to discover I have, and what has made it impossible to write about so far, I have floating memories that my brain can’t put in order at all.
The only way I currently have to describe it, which I admit doesn’t come close to explaining well what I am experience, is if we use the alphabet method.
I have the event, in an order I am not sure is correct, which is let’s say –
BDOSGKXRQ
But I also have
The number one, a triangle shape and the colour blue.
When I recall the viewing in my mind, my mind tells me things happened in an order I am not sure is correct, but there are other memories that are definitely from the viewing that I cant place at all, just floating along the event timeline searching for the place they fit but never finding it.
Doctors have told me this type of dissociation, meaning dissociation that effects your memories, is caused when your brain purposely chooses to hide memories from you.
As I understand it, my brain makes the memory, retains the memory, but buries the memory for whatever reason.
Whether this is true, I’m not qualified to confirm.
However, based on my own experience, I would say it probably is true, as I have at least one recovered memory.
This is a missing piece of the episode that led me to be sectioned in 2018,d and was missing up until around 2020 or 2021 when it hit me how I imagine flashbacks hit people.
By the August of 2018, when I was sectioned for the second time, I was experiencing another form of this type of dissociation, which seems to occur exclusively as a result ofsevere borderline episodes, at least in my case.
This form does not affect me in the moment. Instead, it affects me when I recall the even, whether that be on purpose oraccidentally. When I do, pieces of the episode are missing and/or mixed up.
If you want an example of when this has happened to me, in regards to the missing pieces, you should read my story about the second time I was sectioned.
In regards to both the missing and missed up pieces, this will be discussed in my post about my flat viewing, which I am currently in the process of writing, and which prompted me to write todays posts.
However, I am still going to explain how this affects me here, just using a different technique to an anecdote.
During the time I was sectioned in 2018, I was told by a student psychiatric nurse that these types of episodes are common in patients with bi polar disorder, and that I described them in the most understand and accurate way anybody had ever descried it to him, this is the way am about to describe it to you now,
Imagine my episode is the alphabet-
Sometimes the memories I have of it are similar to-
B D G K O Q R S X
Whereas sometimes the memories I have of the are similar to-
B D O S G K X R Q
Around the time I was diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder, I was having thoughts that did not feel like mine, that in the moment I found funny and euphoric, which told me to
1. Slit my throat.
2. 2. Set myself on fire
3. Set my house on fire, lock myself in the bathroom, then set myself on fire.
One trigger in particular, was opening my post.
I would sit there sometimes for hours staring at my post trying to fight these thoughts, that wordlessly, told me, I did not have to open my post, as I could open my throat instead.
When I came out of these episodes, I was understandably frightened and distressed by them.
On the morning of the day I was last sectioned, I put the post that had just arrived on the pile of unopened post that lived on my coffed table. It was a mess of a pile, completely disorganised and scattered, with other items unintentionally mixed into it. As I placed the new letters on top, the pile shifted, and as the letters began to fall, a knife slid out.
Horrified, because I knew, I had sat there prepared, or preparing, to end my life instead of opening my post, but having no memory of that event, I decided I needed to go to psychiatrist crisis team right then.
Quite possibly the scariest form of this type of dissociation, at least that I have experienced, is having no memory that an entire event even happened until I stumble upon evidence of ithappening.
It begs the question-
What things have I done, or what things have happened to me, that I will never know, that I did, or that it happened?
These events can be as mundane as doing a load of whaling, or as serious as a suicide attempt.
As you may know, if you follow me on social media, I took up cross stitching the July of 2022.
A few weeks ago, I was working on a larger piece, which I was only a few hours away from completing, and I had picked out the next piece I wanted to do.
After a really stressful couple of days, I decided to do some cross stitching to try to calm myself down.
When I went to pick up my almost finished piece, it wasn’t there. In its place was the piece I planned to start next, and it had a good few hours of work put into it.
Now, even more stressed than I had previously been, I looked inside the box where I keep my finished pieces, and there it was, folded neatly on top of the pile.
For weeks, the event I’ve just recounted plagued me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how scary it was that I had been walking around in public doing stuff I had no memory of doing.
Eventually, I went to my GP surgery, and saw a doctor, who we’ll call doctor Harding , because I actually think that washis name. I described the event and the impact it was having on me in great detail.
His response was that I was just tired, and he didn’t seem even slightly concerned.
Still, to this day, I wonder what happened during my first experience of missing time.
To set the scene
Me, and my then boyfriend, were buying a house on a very stressfully rent to buy scheme when this took place.
This scheme gave us six months to save up a six thousand pounds deposit, while living in, and paying rent on the property, at a reduced rate.
If we did not have the six thousand pounds for the deposit by the end of the six months, we would lose both the house, and our credit ratings.
What made this period of my life worse, was that as soon as entered into this agreement with the property developers, my previously friendly colleagues began to bully me.
The event
(Which, I am going to tell in exactly the way it felt like it happened to me.)
On this particular day, I had not had time to make a lunch for work, so being both on a tight budget, and at this time being an undiagnosed binge eater, I decide it would be sensible to take just enough money with me to buy a sandwich and a bottle of water.
I left the office, went downstairs, outside, and next door, to the Sainsbury’s, where I had gone regularly to buy my lunch before being on such a tight budget. I headed straight for the “meal deals” section, grabbed a sandwich and bottle of water, but not a snack, as I didn’t want a meal deal, then joined the queue.
Sitting back down at my desk, I immediately realise something was wrong. Not only did I have the sandwich and the water, I also had snacks and all the money I had taken with me.
What I did not have, was a receipt and memory of being served.
This caused me to panic.
What had happened between me joining the queue, and sitting back down at my desk?
More importantly, had I paid for my food?
There are probably thousands of scenarios, I just can’t imagine, that could have led to me having my food and the money I took with me, but in the moment all I could think was that I must have left without paying for them.
Because this was the first time I had ever experienced this type of dissociation, I was an emotional mess. With a mixture of fear, worry and distress, fuelling me, I gathered my items and ran back to the Sainsburys.
When I asked the cashiers if I had just been served, one of them actually remembered serving me.
Part of me felt so relieved, I wanted to cry.
Another part of me wanted to request to see the CCTV, to see how the event had played out, but I knew I would be allowed to, and the cashiers were already looking at me like I was weird, so I just thanked them and left.
Since before I had a mental illness diagnosis, I have suffered with, and been aware I suffer with missing time, that takes a few different forms.
The first form this takes, is that I realise I am missing a chunk of time while still in the even the chunk of time is missing from.
I have been told by doctors that this is a very common form of dislocation.
Explaining dissociation in an understandable way, can be extremely difficult. It’s hard to not only get across the severity of dissociation in comparison to normal, everyday memory loss, but also the severity of the impact it has on your life, as well as your mental and emotional state. For these reasons, I have decided it would be best to explain how this type of dissociation impacts me in subsections, then, where needed give examples of when it happened to me, or how it affects my memories in general.
Before I go any further with my autobiographical stories and complaint regarding Torus housing, I need to talk about a symptom of my illness, called dissociation, and how it affects me.
There are two ways, right now, that I am aware of it impacting me, and I am going to discuss both, however, at the moment, only “Type A” is important for you to understand while you are reading my posts directly preceding and following todays. I have spoken about this type before on my blog, if I remember correctly, it was on my post regarding my second suicide attempt (when I count my suicide attempts, I only count those I have been sectioned for, which is two. I won’t explain why now, but I will in the future) which happened very close to the events I am currently writing about.
So, why do I want to discuss it again?
Several reasons-
1. I don’t want to keep repeating myself, and I’m sure you don’t want me to keep repeating myself…
2. Also, it takes me off topic.
If I write a stand-alone post on it, I can add the link as and when it needs explaining, then new readers can follow the link if they want to.
3.While writing my account of what happened at my flat viewing, I discovered a new way “Type A” effect my memories, which has made it very difficult to write.
If I have a stand-alone post and this happens again, it will make it much easier for me to add new information.
4. I want to document how my illness affects me, while it is affecting me, for advocacy and educational purposes.
With all that said, let’s get started.
Also, I remembered I requested information on how to get a DSAR from them, and they did not get back to me, so I will be following that u as I believe they aren’t allowed to ignore my request.
These are my thoughts since writing about housing options.
1. The city council staff are referring vulnerable people to them without being honest as to why, what it does, or that it is the city council.
2. They are turning people away who meet their criteria for help.
3. Their staff either don’t have the correct, or adequate, training in what disabilities are and the appropriate support needs for certain disabilities, or they are choosing to ignore disabled people, and their support needs.
4. Five years on, because they chose not to take into consideration that I am disabled, and need appropriate disability accommodation, I am in a much worse situation that I would have been if I had allowed them to refuse me help like they wanted to.
For this short post, we are going to jump ahead by around a month, to the day I signed my tenancy agreement with LMH.
What I overheard, that morning while I was sat waiting for my appointment, confirms everything I speculated on in my previous posts, about the city council enabling housing associations to abuse vulnerable people.
When this happened, I honestly didn’t know what to make of it, in terms of whether the potential tenant was telling the truth. Regrettably, if you had asked me to guess, having no experience as a Torus tenant yet, and growing up in a housing association property that was immaculate, I would have guessed she must be lying. Mainly though, what would have swayed me more than anything else, would have been my incorrect belief that housing associations would not have been allowed to rent out dangerous properties.
The woman in question, arrived visibly upset, pushing what appeared to an almost newborn baby in a pram. She was very young. She looked to me to be in the age range of sixteen to eighteen years old.
Despite being a literal child and extremely distressed, she managed to explain her predicament particularly well to the advisor at the public help desk. Her and her daughter (the baby in the pram) where homeless and currently living in a homeless shelter, which we can all agree, is no place for either a teenager or a newborn baby. LMH had offered her a flat, which she did not bid on, and when she went to view it, it had a serious damp and mould issue in the bedroom.Understandably, because a damp and mouldy flat is not a safe place for a newborn baby to be, she had refused the offer.LMH had then gone to property pool and claimed that this literal child, who was doing what was best for her newborn baby, had refused a perfectly good property. As a result of this, because she was in band A, property pool had removed her from their website, basically sentencing these two literal children to indefinite homelessness.
When she complained about the state of the property she had been offered by LMH to property pool, to try to get back on their website, they told her that she needed to get LMH to notify them that the property they had offered her was not suitable for her, which is why she was there that morning, to request that they admit to property pool the flat they offered her was unsafe.
From what she said I immediately understood the situation she was saying they had put her in, which I now believe they had, and what she was requesting they do, yet the advisor didn’t seem to, as she kept referring the girl back to property pool, adamant that not only would they not have let her view a flat in that condition, but what ever problem she was now facing was a property pool issue, not an LMH issue.
Now, I know, due to my experience with Torus and the state of my flat not only when I viewed it but when I moved in, the advisor understood perfectly well the predicament this girl was in as a direct result of their actions, she just didn’t care.
She did not care that these two literal children were now going to be indefinitely homeless because Torus tried to take advantage of the fact they were vulnerable, and she didn’t let them.
What would baffle me about this, if I wasn’t aware of how petty and vindictive Torus staff, and Torus as an organisation are, is why they would turn away what was seemingly a long-term tenant. They could easily have offered her something suitable, right? But, they didn’t, because all their properties are dirty, run down, dangerous slums, which is how they want them, probably because it means less work and more profit for them, and if you try to defend yourself against their abusethey will punish you in any way they can.
Even if you are literal children.
Direct matches, in regards to housing associations, are when a housing association directly offers you a property that matches your needs, without you bidding on it.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work, apparently.
However, as you have probably guessed, that’s not the case.
In my experience, what they actually do, is identify the most vulnerable people and offer them hard to let properties.
I was extremely vulnerable when I was offered the flat that I am now going to die because-
• I’m disabled mentally.
• Had just tried to kill myself.
• Had just lost my job due to my mental disability.
• Was losing the house I owned due to both domestic abuse and losing my job.
Direct matches are the other part of how I ended up in this dangerous and disability unsuitable property.
Torus offered me this a direct match, and as you know form my property pool post about 2018, I had no right to refuse it, and if I had, I would have been removed from property pool, and been left to become homeless indefinitely.
Property pool is a UK government/city council website, where housing associations put up their available properties, then desperate, vulnerable people bid on them.
In my opinion, property pool is awful just for that reason.
However, it has a lot more issues than that.
1. How are actually homeless people meant to access the internet?
2. In band A- which is for homelessness, a lot of the available properties aren’t even built yet, and in most cases won’t be for over a year. At least this was the case in 2018.
3. You have no property refusals in band A. Which means you can’t refuse any property offered to you for any reason. This leaves some of the most vulnerable people open to abuse by housing associations, because it means they can offer you run down and/or dangerous properties, and you have to accept them, or you will be taken off property pool. It also means that disabled people can’trefuse a property offered to them that isn’t disability suitable.
This is part of how I ended up in a dangerous disability unsuitable property myself.
Let’s start at the very beginning, with my visit to an organisation called housing options.
It was Liverpool city councils one stop shop who referred me to them, instead of helping me themselves, when I went in to enquire as to how I could get myself on the list for a housing association property.
This was just days after I had been discharged from the psychiatric hospital, I had been held in under a section two, for making an unsuccessful attempt on my life.
Around the august of 2018, I had been forced to resign from my job at Santander UK, due to them denying me disability support, my doctor and psychiatrist had requested, several times since around the July of 2016. Due to how long and hard my battle for reasonable adjustments had been, the disability I was requesting support for had gotten significantly worse, and because I had not been able to work for a large part of those two years I spent fighting Santander, I had run up what felt like a huge amount of debt in order to eat and pay bills.
In the weeks between my resignation and suicide attempt, I had been receiving temporary EAS payments. On the morning of my suicide attempt, I had received a letter telling me it was going to be stopped.
I was desperate and panicking when I went into the one stop shop. As well as having zero income and mounting overdraft, I was having to sell the house I co owned with my abusive ex-boyfriend, and had nowhere else to go, once it sold I would not only be homeless, I would lose everything I owned including furniture I was still paying off on credit.
The reason the man who worked for the city council, said he was referring me to housing options was due to me being both vulnerable, and having a disability, which would need taking into consideration when it came to offering me a property.
So, trusting that I was going to be helped by this organisation I had never heard of, I allowed him to make me an appointment with them.
What actually happened was the complete opposite.
Like the majority of the borderline episodes (meaning borderline personality disorder related episodes) I have suffered in public, I remember very little about the actual event, however I do recall enough to know that I was not treated with the appropriate care, and which gives me reasonto believe nobody else was/is being/or will be where housing options is concerned.
Upon my arrival, at 9am, there was already a man, aged roughly twenty, who appeared to be highly agitated, sitting in the tiny waiting area. His mum was at the desk, enquiring asto how long they would likely be waiting, as her son had a mental illness which caused him problems remaining “calm” and in one place for even short periods.
The receptions was neither understanding, nor compassionate. She forcefully replied that if her son left he wouldn’t be given another appointment, and ordered her to sit back down.
After timidly giving my details to the same receptionist, I was called into a private room.
On edge, due to how the other woman had been spoken to, I sat down and tried to explain to the man my appointment was with that I have memory issues, and asked could he please note down any important information or advice that he gave me in just bullet points, such as go here, do this.
His attitude had been off when I entered the room, like I was inconveniencing him by making him do his job. Yet, I did not anticipate the reaction I got. His expression changed to a level of annoyance I feel even I would struggle to reach, and he very aggressively barked at me that he could not do that as there simply was not enough time, then he shoved a leaflet at me and sort of sighed exasperatedly, “Why are you here?”
Honestly, I didn’t know why I was there. I had never heard of them before the man at the council referred me there, and the staffs’ attitudes had caught me completely off guard, so I just stared at him unable to answer, wanting to say that I had expected him to tell me why I was there.
For a few awkward and endless seconds or minutes that stretched out forever, he stared back at me silently, until I blurted all of that out, then began recounting my conversation with the man at the one stop shop.
He stopped me almost immediately, notifying me that I would not be put on the housing association waiting list until my house actually sold, and I was literally homeless.
This caused me to break down into hysterical snotty sobbing as I rambled in circles about how I would lose everything I owned if that happened.
This is the first occasion I lost time.
My next memory is of me sat in that same room alone, only now I wasn’t hysterical or afraid, I was furious, and I knew I had acted under the influence of that fury.
I waited for over fifteen minutes for him to return. When he finally did, he was in a mood that I was unable to interpret. He could have been angry, worried, or some other similar emotion. In a tone that confidently suggested he was doing me a favour he shouldn’t be, he said they were going to start helping me straight away. His expression did not match his voice.
Though I am missing a bit more of the conversation here, I think its more due to nothing memorable happening here and the passing of five years, rather than dissociation.
The next issue arose when he questioned me on my disabilities.
When I answered that I had borderline personality disorder, he told me in the same manner that he greeted me in, and I quote, “We don’t take mental health into consideration when rehousing people, because everybody suffers with mental health.”
I attempted to explain to him that borderline personality disorder is not a mental health issue, it’s a very serious mental illness, and that mental health and mental illness are not the same.
For some reason, he took offence to this, and snapped at me. It must have been far worse than when he had previously snapped at me, as I don’t remember what he said, just the shock of being spoken to in such an aggressive manner by a person I was asking for help.
The next memory I have is leaving the office in tears.
Having completely misread his attitude, I attempted to explain to the manager that I had circulation problems, so had asked for my coat because I was worried about my hands, and as a result had been verbally and physically abused.
I remember the managers mouth moving, but I hear no words, yet I know his tone was emotionally flat.
I remember the bouncer who threw me regaining his courage, leaning in close to me, over his colleagues shoulder, his breath on my neck and the static type chill that run down my spine as he whispered in my ear, but I hear no words.
I remember the female bouncer trapped in between us, her body being forced into mine, and I realise I hear absolutely no sound at all when I recall this part of the incident.
As the male bouncer grabbed my hair, slamming my head into the sharp edge of the door, not only did pain suddenly explode through my skull, the sound in my memories does too.
Despite the fact I am aware that both men threatened me, it is my belief that my head hitting the door was unintentional and he was actually attempting to drag me outside by my hair, which would have been bad enough, while standing in front of me rather than behind me, and with a wide person in between us.
It is my opinion that it was obvious to the bouncer that the managers words had a paralysing impact on me, and that is why he suddenly regained his courage, as my body instantly went limp and slumped, and I started sobbing, but my hands which had remained in place, gripping the door throughout this entire ordeal held me up, until my head hit the metal and my body jerked back up straight, stiffening.
Mentally, I was dazed and no longer consciously in control of my body. It stood motionless, stuck in the last command my brain had given it, which was to get inside to safety, so when the bouncers began trying to close the door again my body automatically responded by trying to stop them.
In the end, it took all three bouncers pulling on the door, while a group of girls prised and held my fingers off the edge of it, and Laura, Mel, and three men from the crowd, wrestled me backwards, for them to successfully shut and lock the door.
This is one of those times I feel others should really have been aware that I was mentally ill, due to my emotional instability, as well as my actions not matching the emotions I was showing.
It was only since I began writing this, that I suspect that some people did recognise I was mentally ill.
They certainly seemed to have recognised that I was vulnerable.
Mel’s voice cut through my heaving sobs, the banging of the girls who had removed my hands from the doors fists and palms now slapping against the metal they had helped close, and the excited chatter of the other students who had been watching, as I was half guided, half carried, to the grass and through the crowds, by her and Laura, the boys who had assisted them hurrying to keep up with us as they followed closely behind.
“Look at the state of you.”
“Look at what they’ve done to you.”
“Look at your hands.”
“We need to get you home.”
When we stopped, as far away form everybody else as physically possible, while staying on the grass, she took my hands in her own, hoping to warm them.
At the time this happened, these men were complete strangers to all three of us. Although they all would remain strangers, to at least me, I would learn a little bit of information on the man who interacted with me, including his name, during my second year a university. His name was Jason. So, for the purpose of not constantly referring to him as one of the men, I am going to use his name.
Why Jason decided to lie, by telling us he set off the fire alarm, I don’t know, as I never asked him. He did a very good job at acting, I’ll give that, particularly in pretending to be apologetic.
It seems he should have been aware this was a stupid thing to lie about, even if you don’t take into consideration the physical and emotional condition I was in, or the events that had just taken place.
If it hadn’t been for his lie though, I would have very likely collapsed on the grass there and then, and literally waited to die in the cold.
Chaos complete.
Currently in fall apart mode.
Initiate self destruct mode.
Luckily for me, he said the wrong thing, at the right time, reigniting my anger, which snapped my consciousness back into my body.
It’s strange to me that when I directed my anger at him in response to his lie, he appeared utterly shocked and caught off guard, despite having just witnessed me shrieking at the top of my lungs for several minutes straight, without taking a break to breath.
To me, it was even stranger in the moment, as I assumed the fact that I was excellent at shrieking was all he knew about me.
It has only just occurred to me, that although I had never noticed him before, he might have noticed me, because he studied at the Cat Hill campus, however I didn’t know this at the time.
“This is all your fault,” I was wailing, on repeat.
I doubt any of them understood what I was saying fully, if at all, but Laura understood my reaction enough to explain why I was so angry at him. She calmly informed him that I had circulation issues, so I had requested my coat, which had resulted in me being verbally abused, mainly with sexually inappropriate remarks, then physically assaulted, which led to the incident they had witnessed, then gotten themselves involved in.
Another thing that surprised me in the moment was that he apparently couldn’t see all this himself. My hands were blue, my clothes destroyed, and thanks to the sleet I had blood smeared all over me.
I want to make it clear that what I am about to suggest in relation to Jason’s motivation is speculation on my part, that only occurred to me while writing part two of this story, last week, because for the last sixteen years, this theory never crossed my mind, and I didn’t think badly about Jason at all in any way, quite the opposite.
Now it occurs to me that not only could he definitely see all this, it was also possibly the actual reason he was speaking to me.
Maybe I am wrong.
Maybe he truly cared.
Maybe he just felt that he was in too deep because he had falsely confessed to being responsible for what had happened to me, even if just in directly. Therefore, he felt obligate to help me.
Possibly though, he had a motive that I didn’t even consider until last week, but am now convinced is the case. He might have wanted to have sex with me, and believed he had a good chance because he either thought I was drunk, or could see I was mentally ill, both of which would have made me vulnerable.
From what I have experienced in my own life, and witnessed over the years, some men make a hobby out of taking advantage of vulnerable mentally disabled women, especially for sex, then brag about it to their friends, while further degrading us by laughing at how our disabilities affect us, and using our disabilities as an excuse for why it was more than ok for them to treat us that way.
Whether the boys had been wearing their own jackets all night is something that I am not going to speculate of here, as it makes no difference to what had already happened to me, or what was about to happen.
Taking his jacket off, Jason offered it to me.
Stubbornly, I shook my head.
“Put it on,” he insisted, shoving it into my arms. “This is my fault.”
“No,” I refused.
“Put the coat on,” Mel ordered, picking it up and wrapping it around my shoulders.
“Do you have your ticket?” Jason enquired.
My brain was still busy malfunctioning, so I started at him blankly unable to decipher his question.
It was either Laura or Mel who opened my and bag, dug out my cloak room ticket, and handed it to him.
“Where are you going?” His friend called after him, irritation obvious in his voice, as Jason marched off purposefully in the direction of the student union.
“To get her coat,” he replied, without looking back.
Then he disappeared into the crowds.
What happened next, several sets of people confirmed, independently and in isolation.
Everybody said they expected me to slam into the pavement, at the feet of the man who threw me. Instead, to their surprise, I cleared it, hurting towards by standers on the grass, who shrieked as they scattered to avoid being hit by me. Crashing onto the grass was obviously better for me, as smashing against concrete would have inflicted serious injuries on my body, even more so at the speed I was travelling. I was travelling so fast, after landing, I began to roll. Yet, before gravity had a chance to slow me, never mind stop me, I sprung to my feet and without pausing and charged in the direction of the bouncers, screaming incoherently.
Though I have no memory of the event between being launched into the air, and staggering forward with purpose, I recall what followed with complete clarity, meaning, I know what I was shouting. I was repeating two sentences on a loop. “You threw me. He threw me.”
I doubt many people, very few of whom are women, have ever seen a man of his size gawp down at them with an expression of such extreme disbelief, horror, and fear, especially one who has just tossed them into the air like a rag doll, as I did that night.
It wasn’t only him staring at me with that expression. His two colleagues were too.
They stood their ground uncertainly for a couple of seconds, as men from the crowd grabbed me in a pathetic attempt to hold me back. When I shook those men off as though they weighed nothing, the panicking bouncers retreated inside, hurrying to close the large metal double doors.
But, I reached them before they could.
Clamping my curled frozen fingers around the edge of the door to my right, I managed to keep it open.
Immediately one of the male bouncers rammed his meaty hand into my face, pushing my head so far back my neck ached, and it was difficult to breath. The other jammed his fist into my stomach twisting and shoving it simultaneously. Despite this I fought over the door with the female bouncer never once making physical contact with any of them. The thought never crossed my mind, because I wasn’t trying to fight them, I was trying to get passed them into the building, in search of help I desperately needed and a person who both could and would help me.
It was raining sleet or lightly snowing, so the grass was soaking, which meant I was drenched. As I rolled, I tore the skin on my arms and legs, so I was bleeding. My blouse was ripped in several places and had lost its middle buttons. To me, I was fighting to survive, injured and more vulnerable to the elements than I had previously been.
Quickly, I began to win our tug of war. That’s when the two male bouncers decided to stop physically assaulting me in order to assist their colleague in her efforts.
Their decision did not work in their favour, quite the opposite, as it was much easier for me to drag open the door while I wasn’t being beaten by two massive men, and I got the gap wide enough to fit the left side of my body through.
Backing up, the bouncer who threw me, hid behind his female colleague. Using her as a human shield, he yelled at the students behind the desk to call the police and accused me of wanting to kill him.
I wish I could say that with hindsight, if he was genuinely afraid of me, it is hilarious. He, a maybe forty year old man, twice my size, who had made the choice to abuse me verbally and physically instead of helping me, believed that I a five foot, seven stone, twenty year old woman, soaking wet, frozen to the point my fingers were blue, with my barely there clothes destroyed and hanging off me, covered in my own blood, because I was injured, after literally being beaten by him and his male friend together, was capable of murdering him.
However, it is not. Today it is as upsetting and insulting as it was the moment he had the cheek to suggest it.
“Call the police,” I agreed with conviction. “These three assaulted me.”
But, none of the students behind the table moved. They all just stared at me with the same horrified expressions.
“Call the police!” I screamed.
But again, nobody moved.
Changing my tactic, I instead demanded to speak to whoever was in charge. That is how young, stupid, and naive I was, just a few months out of my teens. It never occurred to me that setting that fire alarm off on purpose, and not following the correct evacuation plan, therefore putting us all in danger, might qualify as a crime, or was at least serious enough, to get the person in charge, who must have given the plan the green light, but who realistically probably actually thought of the plan and gave the staff orders to do it, in real legal trouble. Therefore, they had more reason not to want the police involved, and more motive to side with the staff, rather than help me.
Of course, it might be that they just never cared about an injured, vulnerable woman, or anybody hurt in the chaos that preceded me being beaten. That seems, to me, to be the most reasonable assumption all things considered.
“I’m in charge,” the female answered.
“You are a door man,” I told her.
“I am security, and I am a supervisor,” I think, she intended to say it with confidence, but it sounded as though her ego was wounded, so she was sulking.
“If I wanted to speak to a supervisor, I’d have asked to speak to your manager. I asked to speak to whoever is in charge,” I insisted.
“That is not going to happen,” she spat each word at me aggressively.
However, whatever authority she though she possessed, was being undermined by her own staff, those two giant men who were so afraid of me apparently that they were cowering behind her.
As me and her glared silently at each other, one of the girls edged cautiously around the table, and dashed into the function hall.
When she returned, what felt like an eternity later, she was accompanied by a tiny, meek looking man, who claimed to be the manager.
To be fair to him, if I had been the girl who brought the situation to his attention, I would have warned him of the condition the girl who was demanding to speak to him was in, as well as what exactly had been done, and said, to her. That table was close enough to the door for those staff members to have not only seen everything they did to me, but also everything they said to me, Laura and Mel.
It wasn’t his lack of shock or horror, even surrounded by people showing those emotions very strongly, that chills me to this day, it was his lack of emotion at all, in either his face or voice.
And although I can’t tell you what it was he said, I can’t even guess, I can tell you with certainty that it was his words that sent me over the edge.
Although I don’t want to go off topic. It is important for me to explain exactly what I mean here. There is a point during my worst episodes that I have talked about before. It is the line between “me” being “in control” (I appreciate these words are not fully accurate, as if I could control my “undesirable” behaviours and was simply choosing not to, I wouldn’t be diagnosed with a mental illness) and the illness fully occupying the driver’s seat.
What I mean when I describe my illness as fully occupying the driver’s seat is a severe borderline episode, meaning an episode cause by my borderline personality disorder, not nearly having an episode. During these episodes, I sometimes watch and listen to my body do and say things I am not consciously giving it the commands to do, which is very scary, as it feels as though something other than me is controlling my body and I am trapped inside it powerless to intervene, being forced to observe. On other occasions I “give up” and fall apart while I am having the episode rather than once the episode is finished and/or I am out of harms way. On these occasions it is like nothing is controlling my body, not even me, and it is an empty shell. It was the latter of these types of episodes that I experienced on this particular night, after going over the edge.
Its important to make people aware that when my illness has any level of control over me, it can only push me to my own extremes of what I am personally capable of, and nothing more.
If I wouldn’t harm another person or animal etc when I am not having an episode, which I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t harm another person or animal etc when I am having an episode. It’s that simple.
Being mentally ill doesn’t change who I am as a person, and it certainly doesn’t make me a bad or evil person, or even a person capable of doing bad or evil things.
Whenever I look back at my worst episodes, it is usually easy for me to identify the part of the event that sent me over the edge. This is due to elements of the inciting incident being missing from my memory, usually this is what somebody said to me, as it was in the case.
Mostly, these elements remain missing to me. Rarely, they return to me at some random point in the future. This is because its not that my brain didn’t save and store these memories, it is because it caught them and locked them away where I can’t access them, in order to “protect me from them”.
Both my perceived lack of control over my actions, and my loss memories, are forms of dissociation.
Only very bad things cause me to dissociate.
That night started off badly.
This is why-
Firstly, it was colder than we expected. I believe it was February of 2007. I know it had snowed heavily that January. The snow was so deep even those students born and raised in London claimed they’d never experienced weather like it. The forecast had reassured us the weather would be getting warmer. It was wrong.
To make the temperature situation worse, we were on our way to a school uniform night at the Enfield campus, so we were wearing short skirts and thin blouses. I, a northern girl, from a city infamous for women winter clubbing in nothing more than tiny dresses, was the only one of us who had worn a jacket. Please keep in mind I have very bad circulation issues, particularly in my fingers and toes, and though at the time I didn’t know why, I was aware I had them.
I want to add a note here saying it is my recommendation that you don’t go to school uniform nights, especially if you’re a student. They are disgusting, and what makes it even worse is the majority of the people they were encouraging to dress up like school children had only just left school themselves. We were barely older than the children wearing those school uniforms to school rather than a university event. It is my opinion the people running these events were perverts. I especially still looked like a very young child.
Secondly, Amy had decided not to go at the very last moment, I don’t remember why, leaving me to go alone with Laura, Mel, and Nicola. Nicola also decided not to go right as we were leaving.
This happened around the time me and Amy removed ourselves from the penthouse crew. As a result of this, and that the five of us always ended up together a uni events anyway at this point, I had become much closer to Laura and Mel, so Amy’s change of plans did not change my plans.
Most of that night is now lost to me. What I do still have is a hazy recollection of the journey there, and a clear memory of the end of the night.
In this post I am going to talk just about the journey there.
We had as usual been pre event drinking. I need to pee every five minutes normally, drinking alcohol make this worse. Due to the cold temperature though, I wasn’t the only person desperate for the toilet on our journey from the Trent Park campus to the Enfield campus, on the bus there, Laura started complaint that she needed to go too.
Once off the bus, there was a maybe ten minute walk to the campus, then we would have to wait a queue, while the bouncers searched those before us who were also waiting to get inside the student union.
Laura was certain she couldn’t make it to the campus. I wasn’t sure I’d survive the queue, but due to what happened to me that night in central London, I was adamant that we try to make it to the event to pee.
Halfway there, Laura declared she couldn’t hold it anymore. Refusing to go into an alleyway alone at night, she insisted I go with her.
As I was with someone else, I couldn’t make myself pee. This wasn’t like the night in Trent Park woods with Amy, where it was so dark we couldn’t see each other and could hear each other pissing into the grass and soil. Here, there was the dim glow of the streetlamps, and the ground was concrete.
Despite this, Laura had no problem going.
The building we were behind was a closed commercial building, so why it never occurred to us that there would be security cameras I don’t know.
Laura was done by the time she noticed the security camera that was pointing directly at us. I hadn’t been able to start. Regardless, we got out of there straight away. Laura waved up at the camera smiling as we did.
She though it was hilarious and told everyone.
Again, I felt shame and violation. What I also felt was a different type of fear to the type I had felt in the alley way in central London.
Regardless of our councils here in England not providing enough public toilets, and those they do closing at night, urinating in public is illegal. If I had urinated in public and gotten into trouble, or even had been the one who had demanded we did it but couldn’t, that wouldn’t have been great, but at least I would have actually broken the law. What I was afraid of was getting into trouble for something I hadn’t even done. This is a fear that has haunted me through both my teenage years and adulthood, as well as one that triggers my episodes.
Though I don’t remember doing it, I’m certain I dwelt on this possibility all night, as I know myself.
On top of this, the bouncers at the door treated me with suspicion. There reason for doing so seemed to be that I was wearing a jacket and nobody else was, even though it was freezing cold. As well as searching my handbag which was standard practice, they patted me down which wasn’t, despite me obviously having no pockets and wearing barely there clothing, further exacerbating my bladder discomfort. I had wanted to keep my jacket with me, but when they insisted, they either take another few minutes to check it, or I take a few seconds to check it into the cloak room, I checked it into the cloakroom, in order to get to the toilet faster.
The cloak room was just a row of coat hangers in buildings entrance, which was separate to the main function room, which they had put some tables in front of so they could charge everyone a couple of pounds in return for a raffle tick receipt to get your coat back.
Little did I know that my decision to leave my jacket in that cloak room would lead to me being physically assaulted by these very bouncers just a few hours later.
Slipping into the dark, empty, alleyway that separated the two shops in front of me, I followed it as far up and away from the still busy main road as I could get, which was when I reached an alleyway that ran along the back of the strand of shops.
I suppose it would be accurate to say I was forced to make the choice I did, because it was my choice, however at the time it felt like my only option.
In my post Conditioned To Expect And Accept It Part 2.c, the post about Adams friend who had the strange hobby of sexually assaulting any blonde women that he came into contact with, I mentioned how the rest of the night wasn’t uneventful for the group that went on to the club with him.
The truth is, it wasn’t uneventful for me either.
There is part of what occurred as we made our way home that night, that I left out of the post. The reason why I did this isn’t because at the time it happened to me it was deeply shameful and extremely traumatising, which it definitely was, rather I try not to ramble or go off topic in my posts, which is actually very hard for me due to my racing scrambled thoughts, this is also why I am going to tell you about it separate to the stories that prompted me to tell you this story today, all of which happened on the same night as each other, but not on the same night as this one.
It does have loose links to the first incident, in that it was fresh in my life, and I recall feeling ashamed, violated, and afraid, on both nights, while in the alleyways and after, but also later while standing in the snow half dressed.
Now, at the age of thirty six, the story in this post is one I have told as funny anecdote on many occasions when people who know about it ask me to, usually at parties, to their friends I have never met.
After we split up in to two groups, a quick discussion took place between the people in the group I was in, about how we were going to get home now our night had been cut short. I wanted to go into a pub, any pub, before we set off, to use the toilet, as I was feeling the urge to pee coming on, but the others were determined to make the last train and insisted I could use the toilet at the tube station, if it had one.
I knew that even if the tube station had a toilet, using it before we got on the train home wouldn’t be possible, as to me it didn’t seem like we could realistically make it to the station on time. Never mind fit in a toilet visit, yet when I voiced my concerns, they were dismissed, so I kept my mouth shut for the next ten minutes until we reached the tube station, twenty minutes after it had closed.
The last train had been due fifteen minutes earlier than they thought it was.
Desperate now, and surrounded by closed shops, I requested that we find any open business that might have a public toilet in it.
Again, I was told firmly that we didn’t have time, only now their reason was that they wanted to make the earliest night bus possible.
That was it. My stomach was aching, I was so desperate. There was no chance I was making it from central London to oakwood on a bus without pissing myself, I wasn’t even convinced I could make it to the end of the street. I needed to go, and I needed to go right there and then. The choice I made was the only one I thought might not involve me covered in my own liquid waste. I had to pee, even if led to me ending up alone, in a strange city, at night. I’d get a taxi home, like we had all planned to, only alone. I would pay the huge fare myself if I had to.
The place I found, that alley way, never seemed like an ideal place to go, but it was because I suspected many people had pissed in this exact same spot, on this exact same night.
Attempting to squat and balance, while not allowing any of my bare skin or clothing to touch either, the floor, wall, or my own pee, I let go.
It was at that very moment I learned the back of those shops wasn’t as isolated as I had thought it would be.
I heard them before I saw them, coming along the alleyway behind the buildings, rather than the one up the side, which I was at the top of. A couple of them were already whooping and laughing.
Then one of them shouted, “There’s a woman pissing in that alleyway.”
That’s when they all started clapping and cheering as they approached me.
I tried to stop, but it was impossible. I had been so desperate and held it for so long that I couldn’t. Plus, when they started whooping, they were close enough to the side alley I was in to see me in the very dim light from the streetlamps at the front of the shops.
It was out of my control. I continued to pee as they passed by, all having a good look.
As soon as I finished, I pulled up my underpants and ran back out onto the main road, where I was thankful to find the group waiting for me.
In shock, I explained what had just happened to me, and they all laughed too.
“Fucking hell Eric, you’re such an insensitive, inconsiderate, prick.”
All of us, having pre event drinks, in Johnnies room, turned to see what Amy was complaining about.
Erics costume, which was a Nazi soldiers uniform, did not surprise us.
If I had to describe Eric, all I could say about him, as its all I know about him, is that he was offensive, purely because he enjoyed being offensive. Honestly though, I think that’s all I need to say about Eric in order for you to get an accurate picture of who he was. Unfortunately, I think we all probably have, or will, meet somebody like Eric at some point. He was the type of person who ruins everything enjoyable on purpose. When I saw him that night, I instantly regretted allowing myself to be persuaded to go to the Halloween event, which was being held at our campus, the Trent Park campus. Why I hadn’t wanted to go, I don’t recall. I only remember that I hadn’t, and as a result had to throw together a costume from my own clothes, and a fake parrot I already had, which was supposed to sit on your shoulder, but kept falling off.
What did surprise us, though in my opinion it did not make his costume any less offensive, was his excuse for wearing it.
“Did you know, during the second world war, the mansion was used as a prison for Nazi soldiers?”
None of us had know this at the time, yet it is true. I might be wrong, but I believe Eric was a history student, and the history students were based at the mansion building, so this information would have been both interesting to him, as well as relevant to his degree.
“I’m going to piss off some Nazi ghosts tonight!” Eric boomed, roaring with laughter, as he ran back into the corridor, heading off to try to upset as many people as possible.
Whether any prisoners died at Trent Park to produce ghosts, I don’t know. What I do know is, people have died there since, so they probably had died there before.
At this time, and even now, I’m not sure if I believe ghosts exist.
However, many students, including Sam and Emma, did, and claimed they were experience paranormal activity, such as open doors closing by themselves, belongings moving around, and even disappearing only to reappear later.
None of which I believed was happening, until it started happening to me.
It is my opinion, most of these students were lying. What I suspect is that Erics story spread that night, then continued to spread during the following weeks, morphing into a ghost origins story, rather than a piece of trivia.
However, some female students might have been telling the truth, and because she was my next door neighbour, Sam could have genuinely been experiencing some of these things, if her room had been mistaken for mine in the beginning, because it has since been proven that I was really experiencing these things.
Maybe, I would have taken what was happening to me a bit more seriously if it hadn’t been for all the gossip about ghosts.
I need to state here, that I think, my Jewellery was stolen after this mystery was solved, during my third term of my first year.
It was half way through my second term when I began to notice my belongings moving around my room when I wasn’t there, or more often disappearing completely, in my case, never to return.
At first, I genuinely thought I was going crazy, until I noticed a pattern in when these odd things were occurring, which was mainly on a Friday.
Looking back now, it’s obvious, two factors came together to make what was really taking place a possibility. My only weekly lecture was on a Friday morning, which coincidentally was the same time the cleaner would clean my room. They never ever double locked the door on leaving, meaning, if you knew how, you could break in using any plastic card you would normally find in your purse or wallet.
Regardless, I will admit there were likely days when I just forgot to double lock my door, therefore allowing my room to be broken into on days other than a Friday. Also, I won’t pretend I definitely would have been aware something more serious was going on, if the ghost rumours hadn’t been circulating. After all, when I mentioned it to S, and asked if he thought I had a ghost in my room, he laughed and told me no, I had just misplaced or lost my missing possessions, which is, especially were I’m concerned, the most reasonable and logical answer.
Only, this couldn’t have been the case in every instance.
For example- One Friday, I forgot to take my sketch books with me to university. In the afternoon, I returned to collect them, and found them where I had left them, which was in a pile on my desk, ready to put in my bag, next to my source materials, minus several of my loose sketches that I remember putting inside the books. Those sketches had never left that room, they had never even left my desk.
There was also a very obvious pattern, now am aware of what that pattern is, in what items were going missing. It was mainly smaller and/or loose pieces of my art work, booklets from my favourite CD’s, hair clips, cheap accessories, make up, underwear, and smaller and/or thinner items of clothing. These are all things, that in disappearing, should have alerted me to the fact I was being stalked by a dangerous predator, who had marked me has his next victim.
Charlie’s message was both bizarre and came out of the blue.
It shocked me, but it never made me question the decision I had already made.
I miss you.
She was never coming back to university, so she would miss me regardless of whether, or not, her message worked.
We all miss you.
Carole and fee could never stand me. And even if Amy and May missed me, it wasn’t me they actually missed, it was playing with me like a doll.
I’m worried about you.
We’re all worried about you.
I think there might be something wrong with you.
We all think there might be something wrong with you.
What was wrong with me in their opinion, that I wasn’t a money obsessed, racist, who looked down on other people, and killed animals for fun?
If so, I was fine with having something wrong with me.
I think you might need help.
We all think you might need help.
Why did I need help in their opinion, was it because I stopped allowing them to play with me like a toy, while also treating me like something they stepped in, or was it that I confronted them about how they treated other people?
Either way, I was better off without help that would make me either similar, or submissive, to them.
I knew why Charlie had sent me the message. The members of the penthouse crew wanted to make up, so that things could, “get back to normal.”
I wasn’t pushed.
I was even offered a helping hand off the ledge and back inside.
I jumped.
I chose to jump.
Even knowing where I landed, and how it effected both me and my life, I don’t regret that decision.
Genuinely, I can’t recall if I already mentioned why I distanced myself from Carole, as truthfully I rarely remember she even existed and I have searched my blood and chocolate titles and found none that suggest I have, so I am going tell you about it in this post.
It’s not a thrilling story, I just want to tie this section of my stories about the penthouse crew up, and to do it in a way that makes my situation at this point in my life clear where these particular people are concerned, which is that I was no longer friends with any of them.
It would be inaccurate to phrase what occurred with Carole as a falling out, because we were never close to begin with, and there wasn’t a single incident that divided us, more it was just that I couldn’t stand to be around her anymore, which is why I have chosen to use the phrase distance myself from her, as even after I fell out with Amy I still tried to be friends with Carole. As cruel as it sounds, I did have a valid reason for not being able to stand being around her, and I don’t think she cared, because I don’t think she could stand me either.
As always, I do want to be fair to the person I am discussing, in this case Carole, so I am happy to admit there were times when she was nice to me.
For example- when she lent me her camera, though I do wonder if the reason she offered to let me borrow it was so she could be involved in the event. Either way, her reason doesn’t matter to me, she didn’t need to offer to let me use it at all, and I am still very grateful she did.
One the other hand, there were times when it felt as though we were getting along well, then she turned around and was a bit of a cow to me for no reason.
The reality is, Carole was not an easy person to like, yet it is only now as I write this post about her that I realise this was the case. When this was happening, I actually felt bad about the way everybody else treated, and talked behind her back about, her.
The fact I, Carole seemed to have an overly hight opinion of herself, which I am never going to knock anybody for, confidence is a great thing and I sincerely wish everybody loved themselves. The problem with carols confidence was that it came from putting other people down. Carole blatantly thought some people were trash compared to her and treated them as such an awful lot. I was one of these people.
Again, I want to be fair to Carole, so I will state here that I know nothing about her, or her families, financial situations, all I know is that she liked to make things about money a lot, more precisely she liked to make things about other people’s money, especially mine.
Her issue with me wasn’t that I was a northerner, as she was also a northerner, and I have good reason to doubt that it had anything to do with me being from Liverpool, and more that it was to do with her friendship with Fee and May.
Once, at the beginning of our first year at university, me and Carole went shopping in Enfield together alone. We were having fun. She was even buying more than I was, and her purchases were all items she wanted, rather than needed. However, as soon as I spent money her attitude changed. All I bought that day was a few CD’s. Keep in mind this was the mid 2000’s, when music wasn’t as easy to stream for free, if it was at all, and everybody who I knew who listened to music online downloaded it illegally, which I never did. She lectured me on wasting money, during which she said, “If those are worth starving for, then you buy them.”
On a couple of occasions, when she desperately needed to do a food shop, but had nobody to go with, I went with her. I tended to do smaller, more regular shops, alone. Whereas the others tended to do bigger shops, less frequently, in groups, to the point they became incapable of going to the supermarket by themselves, especially if they didn’t drive. Sometimes though, I would go if they invited me, even if it was only to browse and/or buy snacks, regardless of whether I was going to have to put money in for taxi fare home. Which is what had happened on this night. Though there had been similar incidents that had taken place before this one.
For example- Sometimes, the penthouse crew would make group meals together. As me and Carole were vegetarians, we were never included in these events. This never bothered me, particularly as if I wanted to I would still eat with them, I would just eat whatever food I had made myself, but it did seem to bother Carole, so on one of these evenings I suggested me and her make dinner together. Her answer was, “You need your food more than I do.”
Her responses were so weird. I tried to write them off as her worrying about her own money, and projecting those worries onto other people, mainly me, but on this night I couldn’t, and I realised that it was more likely Carole had been looking down on me all along.
After unpacking our shopping, I began eating a yogurt as we talked in the larger kitchen.
“That looks so nice. I wish I’d bought some of them,” she told me, eyeing it.
Seeing as I had bought a mountain of them, I offered her one.
She replied, “You need protein more than I do.”
Bored of her cryptic responses , I questioned her, “Why do I need protein more than you?”
As she began rambling about “your money,” I noticed the disgust and judgement in both her expression and voice, but also I’m not stupid, so the irony of her talking about my money like she was doing me a favour after she had just used me for taxi fare home was not lost on me.
I was done.
I was done with her judgement, disgust, and hypocrisy.
I was done with her.
“What do you mean they’re looking for a new place to live next year, its not even easter?”
“Their landlord already has new tenants lined up, and they only told him they won’t be renewing their lease last week. They found their current place this time last year. This is the time of year you need to start looking for a new place to live if you’re a student and you want to rent privately. If they leave it any longer, they’re going to either end up back in halls, or be forced to take a gap year,” S, who was a second year, so had several sets of friends who lived in privately rented student accommodation, explained. “Have you decided what you’re going to do for accommodation next year yet? If not, you need to.”
“I think I might be moving in with Amy. Ill speak to her about it,” I reassured him.
It had been Amy who suggested that me, her, and Charlie, move in together during our second year, and though Charlie had already gone, Amy hadn’t said anything to me about her plans changing. So, when I saw her walking towards her room, on my way back from S’s room, I took the opportunity to mention it to her.
“S says we need to start looking for a place to rent next year now, if were going to move in together,” I informed her, being very careful not to imply anything in regards to her plans.
For a split second her face dropped. Then she laughed at me, as though I was stupid, “Do you still think me and you are moving in together?”
It was her reaction, rather than what she said, that caught me off guard. What I wanted to say was that she hadn’t given me any indication that her plans had changed, and that’s why I mentioned it to her, but instead I found myself stammering, “ I know Charlies gone-“
She cut me off, her expression turning serious, almost hard, and disgusted at the thought even, “Rachel, stop. Don’t grovel. Don’t, embarrass yourself. It’s got nothing to do with Charlie leaving. It’s you. I can’t move in with you. You’re poor. What happens to me if you can’t pay your part of the rent?”
I didn’t answer. I never even tried to answer. There was so much I could have responded with. There was so much I should have responded with. Instead, I just stood there, like the idiot she clearly though I was, stunned and staring at her, feeling like I had been slapped in the face emotionally.
“I’m moving in with Hannah and Johnny. I trust them,” She smirked. Then she entered her room, leaving me in the corridor alone, to gather my thoughts and emotions.
I don’t remember going back to my room, sitting down at my desk, or even how long I sat there staring at the wall, before I picked up the pen and note pad and began to write-
Amy, you have definitely made the right decision, but not for you, Hannah, or even Johnny, rather you have made the right decision for me. You see, I paid my rent in full last term and this term myself at the start of those terms. You never paid your rent in full yourself last term. You had to ask your parents to help you at the very last minute. You have not yet paid your rent in full this term. I imagine you will ask your parents to help you again at the last minute. Yes, I am poor. That means if you didn’t pay your part of the rent, and your parents decided not to pay it, I would be in a lot of trouble financially, as I can’t afford to pay for you just because you can’t manage your own money, and don’t know how to be a responsible adult. Thank you. You have done me a huge favour. You have also taught me a great lesson. You were right, I was an idiot, because it never occurred to me that I couldn’t trust you, simply because I believed you were my friend, I had to have you show me that I couldn’t trust you, and that you are not,
Rachel.
I do remember that I stared at those note pad pages laid out in front of me, that I had only written on one side of, for a very long time before I scooped them up, walked to Amy’s room, and stuck each of them neatly on her door in order so that everybody could read them.
“I have a surprise for you,” Amy grinned, as I opened my door to her.
Not waiting for a response, she pushed past me into my room, flopped down on my bed, and waited for me to close my door on the rest of the world, just like she had done many times before.
“My dad has arranged a ride back to Liverpool in one of his lorries on Friday morning for you, but you’ll need to be at the loading bay by the time the supplies it’s taking are loaded onto it-“
“Sorry, what?” I held my hands up and shook my head as I interrupted her, showing I was mentally fighting off the idea, sure she was half way through a joke I hadn’t managed to catch onto fast enough, and desperately wanting the distress it was causing me to end, due to me still being severely traumatised by the incident with the taxi driver.
In a truly bizarre twist of fate, Amy’s dad, who was a property developer, had been building a prison in Liverpool since before me and her met.
Despite the prison not being in the same area my family lived in, she constantly referred to it as though it was. She also constantly spoke about it as though it was being built to specifically house the people who lived in that area. By this, I mean, she seemed to be under the impression that because the prison was being build in that area, that area must be a terrible place, and the people living there must all be criminals.
Regardless of her belief that prison are built exclusively in terrible areas likely being incorrect, I am an honest person, so I will happily admit that the area the prison was being built in could be considered a poor and dangerous area overall, that the area I grew up in was worse, and that the two areas are next to each other.
However, me and Amy never discussed the areas we grew up in, in detail, nor how rich or poor our families were.
To me, and everybody else, it was obvious that Amy’s family was rich, even without her hinting at it, which she did often.
To Amy, and everybody else, my opinion is that, it shouldn’t have been obvious that my family was working class. Me and my mum had both worked for many years, my sister had just started working, I also got student loads, just like every other student I knew, including Amy, and even at nineteen and twenty I was a binge eater with a shopping habit.
Yes, I likely made occasional comments about my life which made other people aware I was from a working class family, but I could easily have been lying as my life style certainly wouldn’t have backed up any comments I might have made about my life in Liverpool, or my financial situation in London.
We all discussed our financial situations from time to time, but I certainly never implied mine was worse than theirs, on the contrary it was people like May, who were from the wealthiest families, that complained about having no money.
Either way, none of that really matters in relation to this specific incident, especially if we look at it in isolation. There is no chance that I could have said anything to Amy, or anyone else for that matter, that suggest I couldn’t afford a train ticket home to Liverpool that Friday, or that I wanted or need to go there, as even if I had desperately wanted to, I couldn’t have, due to it being just after I enrolled onto fine art, meaning I had a mountain of work to catch up on, as well as a group to find and join for the group exhibition project.
“My dad has lorries taking building materials to the prison on Friday. He’s arranged for you to get a ride home in one of them,” Now I could tell by Amy’s expression and tone that not only was she not joking, but she truly believed that her and her dad were doing me a massive favour. She was actually expecting me to jump at the chance to travel across the country in a lorry with a complete stranger, not only to me, but to the two of them, all to save me a few pounds on the cost of a train ticket.
Listen, I’m certainly not trying to imply all lorry drivers are bad people, just like I wasn’t trying to imply all taxi drivers are bad people in both my stories about the taxi drivers I told, because the vast majority obviously will be good people, just like with any group of people, but would you allow your nineteen or twenty year old daughter to travel two hundred miles in a lorry with a stranger?
That is my issue with this event.
Then and now, I had/have dozens of questions, all of which I am sure you yourself are asking.
However, as far as I am concerned, the question I have just asked you, is the only question that matters.
Would Amy’s dad have allowed her to travel two hundred miles in a lorry with a stranger?
Would Amy have done it?
I believe the answer is no.
I am sure I reacted better than either of them would have if the situation had been reversed. There is no doubt in my mind both of them would have been angry and offended, and that they would have made those feeling clear.
I did not make my feelings clear. Yes, I was angry. Instead of expressing that anger though, I told myself it wasn’t Amy who thought so little of me she was actually willing to put me in danger and call it a favour, it was her father.
How wrong I was, not about her fathers opinion of me, that was correct, but that she didn’t share his opinion.
“I have a lecture I can’t miss Friday morning” was all I said. I deeply regret this.
This is one time I wish I hadn’t been the better person. Maybe if I had made it clear she was never to treat me like a peasant who needed her or her father’s charity ever again she would have respected me a little bit more, and the worst thing I would have had to deal with that year, and possibly the next two years, would have been being friends with an unpleasant person.
None of us knew what to say.
It was one of those rate moments in life when you can honestly apply the sayings- the silence was deafening, and you could cut the tension/atmosphere with a knife, to.
The expressions on the faces of everybody else in Johnnies room that afternoon suggested they were all struggling with the same problem, and how to approach it, as I was.
At nineteen/twenty, I had neither heard, nor seen, the word xenophobia, despite being subjected to it my entire life. Therefore, I believe these people who had never been subjected to it, didn’t understand what had just happened, even if they were aware of the word and its meaning.
Its one thing to be educated on a word that describes a type of hate, and another to experience, or even witness, it.
Our reaction raises great questions, questions that are more important today, in a society that claims to be “woke”, than it was when it happened, sixteen years ago, in a society that didn’t.
Are we educated enough on the different types of bigoted hate, and the people on the receiving end of it?
Do we understand that no form of bigoted hate is ok?
What happens when the answers to these questions are no?
To me, it seems, that at best, we get a group of people too confused and/or scared to confront a person for discriminatory hate, and unable to do in the correct way, because they have been taught the person who is carrying out the discrimination is vulnerable to the same type of hate they are inflicting on somebody else.
At worst, you get a group of people who think it is ok to hate one person for the same reason you cant hate another, and usually that group of people aren’t part of either the hated group, or the group they understand cant be hated.
To me, what Amy said- “Do you also find those two guys less hot now you know they’re Turkish?”- had seemed racist. (The two guys in question on this occasion, were the two guys who just weeks later would be in Ashani’s room when Charlie banged on the wall screaming her racist slurs about Ashani being from India.)
Now, I understand it was their nationality she had a problem with, but I still don’t understand why.
“I don’t find either of them hot, but it’s got nothing to do with them being Turkish,” I had answered.
My response only deepened the silence, and thickened the tension in the room.
What had I said wrong?
Uncomfortable, I tried to catch the eyes of anybody in the room who wasn’t Amy, desperate for a clue, but now, instead of staring at Amy, they were all looking at the floor.
Not knowing what else to do, I stood up and left, feeling terribly confused, awful about what I and Amy had said, and somehow responsible for the entire situation, even though what had set it off was the guys inviting us all to a party that night, and Amy’s comment after they left.
Before I begin this story, I want to say that, in my opinion, unless you’re dying of starvation, or something equally as serious, you shouldn’t steal anything ever, and there really isn’t a valid reason for doing so.
Yet, I am not judging you if you have, as I obviously don’t know the circumstances around that event, and I would bet as teenagers, or under the influence of alcohol, etc, most of us probably have stolen something, and that the circumstances were probably some what similar to those in this story.
I also understand how you might end up in that situation, after all, I did. None of us are perfect, nor completely innocent creatures. We all make mistakes. We all do stupid stuff.
Stealing certainly isn’t “for me.” It is in no way who I am, or a reflection of my morals or character.
Despite wanting to explain the factors that might have contributed to this incident, I am in no way making excuses for what I did, or attempting to shift the blame to anything, or anybody, else. Ultimately, I did what I did because I made the choice to, while being fully aware it was wrong.
On the day I stole, I did not go out with the intention to steal, at no point did I make a plan to steal, I simply saw something I considered to be worth very little value financially, that I thought I should have been able to buy, and because I couldn’t, and I wanted it, I decided in the moment to take it.
This is all to say, that though I feel it is important to address the state of my life and my mental health at this time, none of it was the cause of what I did. It all just created this perfect storm during which I cared very little for either myself or life, and truly I believed I shouldn’t, which resulted in me doing something out of character.
These feelings were further fuelled by the fact that everybody else thought so little of me and my life, and had or were treating me accordingly, and to a large extent I was allowing them to treat me this way.
As all these contributing factors are either stories I have told, will tell, or am currently in the middle of telling, I will just briefly list them here (and, if I remember, add links to the full stories below, as and when I write them).
It was the summer holidays in between my first and second year of university, meaning I had spent the previous year dealing with both xenophobic and classist discrimination.
Why not be a thief if that’s what everybody believes you are?
Well, for one thing, it not only makes what were incorrect and unfair opinions of you correct and fair, if you’re caught it proves to the people who held those incorrect and unfair opinions that they were correct, therefore further harming everybody else who is unfairly effected by those untrue opinions.
More importantly, though, you should never allow hateful, bigoted, people to change who you are, especially for the worse.
Listen, I understand this second one is hard, particularly when we are upset, angry, stressed, etc. The best of us can, and will, fall down occasionally. What really matters is that we haven’t harmed anybody in the process, and that we pick ourselves back up, dust ourselves off, and resume trying to be the best version of ourselves we can be. This includes apologising if it is both necessary and appropriate, and fixing anything we have done wrong if it is possible. Be honest, and admit your mistakes. Own them. If you don’t, or can’t, you will never learn from them, or improve as a result of making them.
During this same year, I had ironically been the victim of the very thing people suspected I was, a thief. This thief had keys to my room in halls, and was allowed to entre it when ever they decided it was necessary, which somehow made me to blame for being victimised because I had stupidly assumed I could safely keep my possession in a private room I paid to occupy.
Why, then, should anybody care if I stole from a large organisation’s attraction, that I considered to be a scam?
Also, why should I face any punishment when the person who stole from me hadn’t.
Maybe you agree with this idea, but the truth is, I actually don’t. Business have to pay staff, bills, and other costs. If we all thought this way, if we all did what I did, some companies would make such a loss they would go under, while others would close down because they would no longer be profitable.
I also don’t agree that I shouldn’t have been punished, despite the reality that the punishment I received would likely have had a much greater impact on both my life then, and now, than the item was worth, as well as being much greater than the loss the organisation suffered, as a direct result of my actions, deserved. I doubt anybody ever realised the item was missing.
Theft wasn’t the only crime I had been the victim of, then blamed for, that year. There was the big one. The one I am moving towards telling you about. The one that lead to my first long BPD episode that was misdiagnosed as a nervous break down, and eventually to my first suicide attempt.
There was the fact that I had to move back home, and back in with my mum, for the summer.
Here, I would like to say I foolishly took a job in a pub that summer, which I walked to and from down isolated roads, even in the early hours of the morning, all of which contributed to the deterioration of my mental state, regardless of the fact nothing to awful happened to me. Honestly, though, I had no choice. I needed the money, after all you don’t get student loan over the summer holidays, and I was earning so little at the pub, due to a combination of my age and sexism, that I couldn’t afford taxi fares home, and my options were limited to getting a taxi or walking.
Then, there were the friends I was with that day, who they were as people, and my relationship with them.
On top of all this, I was suffering severely with a serious undiagnosed mental illness. One that causes me impulse control issues. Looking back on this incident, with the knowledge that I have this illness and the type of episodes it causes me to have, I feel strongly that on this particular day, I was in the grip of a mixed manic type and suicidal type episode.
I knew I had made a mistake on the train journey there. I hadn’t wanted to go, and I had told MK as much. More importantly, I hadn’t felt mentally well enough to go.
The best way to describe how I was feeling that entire summer is mentally unwell.
Those words sound strange, obvious, and like a colossal understatement, now I have a diagnosis which proves they were always true.
You see, mentally unwell, are words I have thought and said my entire life, while experience borderline episodes, whether short or long.
Mainly, I said them to GP’s, desperately and hysterically, while crying and “shouting”.
Their response was always that I was fine/ normal/ there was nothing wrong with me, everybody suffers from anxiety/stress/depression/etc, at times. It was delivered in a tone and/or manner that suggest I was being dramatic/wasting their time/ after attention/ trying to get out doing something I didn’t want to do.
So, whenever the feeling of being mentally unwell became overwhelming in the moment, for any reason, I would chide myself, echoing both these doctors’ words as well as their attitudes. I would tell myself I was faking feeling mentally unwell, either to get out of doing something I didn’t want to do or for attention. It never occurred to me, very likely because I am genuinely mentally ill, therefore vulnerable, particularly when it comes to abuse, use, or negligence of responsibility and duties, of people in a position of power, such as these GP’s, that this couldn’t be true, as not only did I not once attempt to use feeling mentally unwell to get out of doing anything or to gain attention, on the contrary I actually tried my best to hide the fact that I was struggling and to behave “normally”.
Whose idea it had been to go to Blackpool, I don’t know, but I am fairly certain it wasn’t MK’s, therefore I am fairly certain he had been invited and want to go, but didn’t want to risk ending up alone for the day, and this was his motivation for nagging me so aggressively and relentlessly to go with them during the days leading up to the trip.
My reason for coming to this conclusion is that the only people MK knew in the group that day was me, KK, and one other person.
The only people I knew out of the group going were MK and KK.
KK was never my friend, she was MK’s, but I liked her, and for a while I thought of her as my friend. To me, it seemed as though she considered me to be her friend too, but on reflection I understand this probably wasn’t the case.
All the other people we went with were also only loosely connected to each other. What I mean by this is that, not a single person in the group, of around twenty of us, knew the majority of the other people in our group. One person had suggested to another they should go, they both invited their own people, who invited people, who invited other people, and so on. This is strange in itself.
This is why, on arriving at the fair ground, we all split off into groups of two or three.
It was only at this point, KK explained to me that she had wanted to go, but had been scheduled to work, and though she had requested a shift swap, she didn’t think she was going to get it.
On hearing this, the sensation that had begun to build inside me on the train journey there, which was that I was trapped in a situation I didn’t want to be in, a sensation I experience a lot, began to grow into a manic energy that screamed to be released. Often, when I feel this way, I want my consciousness to leave my brain with a frantic urgency, then I begin to feel trapped inside my own brain, as though my consciousness is hysterically clawing at my flesh and bones to escape.
With this, came the rage I experience when I realise I have been used, abused, or taken advantage of, in some way.
How many times had I declined MK’s invitations?
How many times had I made it clear I didn’t want to go?
Too many, not only to count, but to not feel like I had been manipulated into going for MK’s own selfish reasons, rather than he just want me to.
Every time I had said no, I didn’t want to go, he had reasons why I should, I hadn’t been to Blackpool since I was a very young child/ I had only ever been with my parents, never my friends/ it would do me good to have some fun.
Only, I don’t find fair grounds fun, I hate them, I hate the rides, I hate the crowds of people, I hate the loud repetitive noises, I hate the music, I hate everything about them, and I had expressed as much to MK.
At first, the only two people in my group were MK and KK. This meant that not only did MK continue to nag me to take part in things I didn’t want to take part in, such as go on rides, KK joined in with the nagging.
I practically begged to wait with their things instead, but they rallied strangers, either in the queues, or running the rides, to “encourage” me to get on them. This group pressure got much worse when we were joined by another sub group form our larger group, then a second.
Now there were, if I remember correctly, eight of us in our group.
With each ride I was pressured onto, my anxiety – and with it the feeling of a building panic attack, my stress- and with it my racing thoughts, and my depression- and with it the desire to die, and blaming myself for being pathetic because I could assert myself, grew, agitating me further, until I felt as though I was suffocating inside my own body, and I desperately needed to get away from both my friends and myself.
To make the situation more unbearable, by the point we naturally came to the game stalls, I need food. It wasn’t just that I was starving, which I was. One of myself harm behaviours is eating- I am a binge eater. I imagine any other self harmer understands the compulsion and need to engage in self harm behaviours, and that is what I was feeling in the moment, the mounting, intensely painful, urge to engage in mine.
Which, as I write this, makes me wonder if what I did was an attempt at self harm, or just a desperate attempt to get out of a situation I didn’t want to be in, didn’t feel safe in, but felt trapped in. Maybe, I wanted to get caught.
Maybe, I just didn’t care if got caught. After all, when you don’t value yourself or your life, and neither does anybody else, and/or you want to die, it is hard to care about the consequences your actions have on both you and your life.
But more realistically, maybe I did it because I wanted that fucking stupid toy, and I was sick of feeling like everything and everyone was was, taking advantage of me then telling me it way my fault they had taken advantage of me, telling me a was a bad person while expecting me to be a better person than they were.
Either way, when I saw the giant my little pony toys, which were about half my height in length, that was one of the prizes, I wanted one.
Assessing the stalls, I searched for a game I thought I might be able to win, which also had the my little ponies as a prize, vocalising my intentions.
“You cant win,” MK informed me. “Those games are rigged so nobody wins.”
“He’s right,” one of the girls in our group agreed. “Everybody know they’re a scam.”
“Surely, they would be allowed to do that,” I argued.
“They do,” One of the body shrugged.
“That’s not fair,” I started to complain, stopping when I realised the majority of the stalls were unmanned, and I could see they had toys on their shelves below their counter tops.
If I remember correctly, there were three rows of stalls. None of the centre stalls were manned, and only one in every two or three of the stalls on the outside rows were. Even better, all the manned stalls were busy, so none of the staff at them were paying attention to us.
“Let’s take one,” I whispered. I wasn’t thinking about how my actions might affect the staff or business, because I was under the impression these games were rigged, therefore I was simply evening things out a bit.
“No,” MK told me forcefully. “You take one if you want one, but when you get caught, you’re not with us.”
“Fine. You’re all cowards,” I laughed, thinking about all the rides they had bullied me onto that day. Yet, they were all scared of taking a toy from a conman. As bizarre as it is, in this moment I wasn’t even angry at them. I was angry at them the entire day before, and after, and for many of the following days and weeks, but not in this moment. I wasn’t even upset that they wouldn’t “help me”. I expected to get caught. I Knew nothing about stealing. They weren’t responsible for my actions, I was.
However, here’s the thing, and I completely understand if you don’t believe me, because this is a story about me stealing, but if the roles had been reversed, I would have at least tried to talk them down. I deeply regret what I did that day, I would never do it again, and up until that point it is something I never imagined I would ever do.
The really crazy thing, though, is that I hadn’t really believed I could win a prize, even when I though the games were fair, and I would have happily lost.
Honestly, looking back, I think I was more pissed off because they had took that small bit of fun I could have enjoyed that day away from me.
And, if they had tried to help me, I reckon they would have gotten me caught.
Settling on my target stall, I walked confidently towards it, despite having no idea how I was going to execute my heist. As I did, I watched the staff, to make sure they weren’t watching me, in what I felt was a perfect imitation of my previous indecision over what game to play. When I reached my target, I kept walking. Placing my hand on its counter top, I slid it along the surface, before dropping it underneath and grabbing the tail of the first pony I felt on the shelf below. Then, when I got to the end of the stall, I pulled my hand with they toy in it over the side of the booth, where the gate to get in and out was, without missing a step, and continued the entire length of the row of stalls, before turning around and rejoining the group.
Later, they would admit that even knowing I was stealing, they never saw the actual act occur.
“It seemed like one second your hand was empty, then magically the next you were holding the pony,” the girl who had agreed with MK giggled.
When the entire group met up at the exit later, one of the men in the group had a giant, human sized fish toy. A fish toy I recognised from those game stalls.
“How the fuck did you steal that?” I asked in awe.
“I didn’t. I won it,” he had answered confused.
Maybe there are no shades of grey, just black and white, when it comes to stealing.
Maybe, it doesn’t matter why we stole, or who we stole from.
As stated in my introduction to today’s post, my opinion is that stealing is wrong. Yet, I wont judge anybody just because they have stolen, as context does matter to me.
Though, I would be very interested to hear your opinion.
What do you think, does
-who you stole from
-what you stole
-why you stole it
-or any other fact around the act of stealing,
matter?
You’re more than welcome to discus your thoughts in the comments.
There are, however, some factors I cant forgive when it comes to stealing.
One of these is throwing, vulnerable, ill and/or disabled people, under the bus to save yourself. By this I mean, pretending you have physical and/or mental disability and/or illness to avoid blame and/or punishment. When people do this, they fuel, if not outright create, stigma and discrimination, that those of us who genuinely do sufferer with these illness and disabilities then also have to suffer through.
It is because of what I did in today’s post, that I knew immediately, on seeing the CCTV footage, the technique that lady who stole my bag used.
Due to this technique being so well executed, as well as my half a decade, plus, experience working in retail, it is my opinion, because I obviously can’t say for certain, that neither of those ladies needed that wheelchair for illness or disability, and instead were using it fully as a tool and prop.
As a tool, the chair obstructs by standers, and security cameras, views of the crime as it happens. Then, it serves as a place to both hide and store anything they successfully manage to steal.
As a prop, its purpose is much darker.
People are less likely to confront a physically disabled person, even when they see them doing something wrong. Most people will just pretend they didn’t see it. On the rare occasion a person does confront them, they are more likely to do it discretely and in a less emotionally heated manner.
This isn’t the case for mentally ill or mentally disabled people, even when our illness or disability is obvious. In fact, more people feel both entitled to intervene, and to use aggression or force, if they suspect we are mentally ill or mentally disabled.
Here is where the use of a wheelchair gives an extra advantage that baffles me, especially because we know criminals will fake disability to aid their crimes.
If say, it was a mentally ill or mentally disabled person being confronted for stealing, and they, or a person with them, explained they were mentally ill or disabled, that would likely only encourage the person confronting them to call the police, and escalate any force or aggression they were already using.
Whereas, if the person in the wheelchair, or pushing it, claimed to be mentally ill or mentally disabled, that would likely not only deescalated the confrontation, but earn them sympathy and pity, and likely allow them to go about their day without the police even being mentioned.
This is not me saying mentally ill and mentally disabled people should be allowed to steal and/or face no consequences if they do. This is me saying this double standard baffles me.
I do wonder, as I write this, if caught, would those two ladies who stole from me, a genuinely mentally disabled person, therefore a person who is more vulnerable to crime, have claimed disability was the reason they victimised me?
And if at the time, I had known I was disabled and stated as much to discredit that excuse, which of us would have been believed, me the victim, or them the thief?
And how much of that belief or disbelief would have be due to there being a wheelchair involved?
Why are we more likely to believe and have sympathy for somebody just because they appear to be physically disabled?
And why are mentally disabled people constantly met with so much aggression, physical force, and disgust and/or distrust?
Does this conversation make you uncomfortable?
If so, good, it should.
But, it should make you feel uncomfortable for the right reasons-
It should make you question inbuilt social norms that are ignorant and ableist, that we have all been raised with, and made to believe are correct, until we are suddenly understand they are not, and why they are not, because we are on the receiving end of the ignorance and ableism.
This includes me, I was born into the same world as you, I was raised with the social norms that are discriminatory, the only difference is, I was born with the genetic predisposition to certain mental illness, and then had experiences as a child that triggered those illnesses, and because of that everything I say or do is now looked at by society through a lens of distrust and disgust.
If on the other hand anybody reading this feels offended by my observations, experiences, and opinions on disability discrimination, stigma, and inequality, around disability, not only when it comes to being disabled but the different disabilities, as a disabled person- know this, I don’t care, these people can go off and continue to be ignorant, ableist, and bigoted, and me and other disabled people will continue to talk about all these things to decent human beings who just don’t understand yet, or who just have never really had these things brought to their attention yet, etc and because of both our advocacy work, and the decent people who we encounter, the world will move on and catch up, and when it does these people will pretend they have no problem with us, and never did, just like they do for every other set of people who has ever been victimised unfairly in a similar way, so they can earn clout from complete strangers, for values they don’t really hold- but if this description fits you, you better not say anything bigoted about my disability where I can see it or hear it, because if you do I will keep those receipts, and I am happy to pull them out in the future and remind everybody who you really are.
It would serve these people well, people who now hang on to liberated minorities coattails, while talking absolute crap that they don’t realise exposes them as a bigot, to remember that at the points in time these minorities were being persecuted the popular belief was that they were awful people, that is what allowed them to be persecuted. Mental illness, and my type of mental illness, are no different. It might be popular to hate them now, but one day, hopefully soon, people will understand why persecuting us is wrong, and those people will be on the wrong side of history.
As a person with borderline personality disorder, I could blame the traits of the illness that affect me, such a lack of impulse control, for my crime in todays story, but it wouldn’t be true. In my experience BPD doesn’t make you do anything you wouldn’t do if you didn’t have it, it just takes you to your own personal extremes an awful lot, be that self harm or shouting when you’re upset, and for most of us who suffer from it, our personal extremes are the same as most people who don’t suffer from its personal extremes.
So, why should I as a disabled person who wouldn’t blame my disability for doing wrong, who understands the importance of not blaming my disability for doing wrong, allow other people who don’t have my illness, or an illness similar to it, blame our illnesses for the bad things either they themselves or other people do?
I shouldn’t. And I won’t.
That is why it is important that I tell todays story, and the context of everything that surrounded the event, then put it into perspective in regards to how it is viewed in the real world, compared to how other people doing the same thing is viewed in the real world.
And lets all be honest, if I didn’t have BPD, and I was telling this story at a party, for example, I’m sure instead of turning me into a villain, you would giggle like the girl with us that day did, and then tell me your own story, about a time you also stole something completely fucking stupid.
Blog posts done
Week starting
Monday, 18 April 2022
-Sunday autobiographical X1
-Saturday post X 1
-Writing journals X2
-Writing schedules X2
-Writing overviews X2
-(Indecipherable X2)
-Monthly overview for hours X 1
-Monthly overview for blog posts X1
-Dictionary corners X4
-Commonly confused words X2
-Alternative words x16
-Running journal X 1
-Running schedule X 1
-Running overview X 1
-Monthly running overview X 1
-Running plan X 1
-Fabrics X3
Hours
Owed= O
Planed =15
Total hours to do =15
Extra hours done= 13 hours 31 minutes
Total hours done =28 hours 31 minutes
Week starting
Monday, 18 April 2022
Schedule planned
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
They say – 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Done
Monday – 5 hours 30 minutes
Tuesday – 2 hours 48 minutes
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 1 hour 40 minutes
Friday – 5 hours
Saturday – 5 hours 9 minutes
Sunday – 6 hours 20 minutes
Monday, 18 April 2022
On Monday morning, I can’t sleep so I try to write.
I complete 2 hours 40 minutes of emotional rambling, then comment that I think I might be having an episode, and I can’t believe I even managed to do what I have done, as I am completely out of it on both Co-Codamol – because of my messed up shoulder back and side, and antipsychotics. Also, my eyes hurt so bad I couldn’t see properly.
However, when I still can’t sleep, I do another 2 hours and 50 minutes of writing.
5 hours 30 minutes total writing.
Tuesday, 19 April 2022
2 hours 48 minutes writing.
Wednesday, 20th April 2022
3 hours writing done.
Finished
1X Sunday autobiographical blog post
1X Saturday post
Thursday, 21 April 2022
1 hour 27 minutes
17 minutes
Total writing Done 1 hour 44 minutes
Friday, 22 April 2022
4 hours writing
Saturday, 23 April 2022
On Sunday morning when I can’t sleep I do one hour writing.
Then I tried to sleep.
Do you another 39 minutes of writing before managing to sleep.
When I wake up I do 1 hour 25 minutes of writing.
Then later I do 2 hours five minutes.
Total time spent writing was 5 hours 9 minutes.
Sunday, 24 April 2022
Sunday morning while I can’t sleep, I do 1 hour 54 minutes writing
During Sunday daytime, I keep forgetting to set my timer, but I do record intervals of 1 hour
2 hours 26 minutes
1 hour
Total recording time writing was 6 hours 20 minutes
I complete
– 2X writing journals
– 2X writing schedules
– 2X writing overviews
– 2X indecipherable
– 1X monthly overview for hours
– 1X overview for monthly blog posts completed
– 1X monthly writing plan
–4X dictionary corner
–2X commonly confused words
–16 X alternative words
–1X Morning Journal
–1X running schedule
–1X running overview
–1X monthly overview
–1X monthly running plan
–3X fabric
Who the second, third, and fourth victim of the Smith’s toy store thief was, I don’t recall, other than one of them was Meera, but I do remember who the first victim was, not his name, but him. He was an utterly obnoxious six former, who refused to eat anything but beans on toast for breakfast, yet complained he didn’t have enough time to get ready in the morning, which was his excuse for being late every day, even though his mum drove him. He looked down on us all, due to his opinion that we weren’t as smart or as accomplished as him, even though he was still living with his parents, he had never had a job before, and he was literally a schoolboy, as well as being so dim he badmouthed us all to each other, including me, Meera, Michael and Alex, the tightest friend group in the store. Obviously, we immediately told each other what he said.
If I could bring myself to believe the only reason I remember that he was the first victim of the thief was his tantrum, and the aftermath, that would be great…
To say he lost it wouldn’t touch the edges of the event. This child in a huge man’s body (he was at least four times the size of me) tore apart the staff room that evening. That’s where we were having to leave our coats and bags, unattended for the majority of the day, in a pile on the table in the corner, because the staff lockers hadn’t arrived and wouldn’t for a few more weeks. Screaming about being robbed, he picked up other peoples coats and bags and began throwing them around, before picking up a couple of chairs and smashing them into pieces against the wall. It was home time, so the staff room was full, almost all of us were there, when his tantrum began. We all froze. Then one of the women, pulled the other woman around her towards the door. Even the men cowered. That is, until he tried to pick up the table the coats had been on, and several of the men sprung into action, all of them around my age, or slightly younger, I was twenty one, restraining him until he calmed down.
Afterwards he looked embarrassed, but I couldn’t work out if he was embarrassed that he lost it in front of us mere mortals, or if he was ashamed one of the stupid people had bested him.
… The truth is though, that I was terribly afraid.
Not of him.
But, of these people who I considered to be my friends.
Though this event took place prior to the incident with the damaged bra and the robotic, mindless, xenophobic Topshop staff, I had lived in London long enough, sort of almost two years, to know that people automatically didn’t trust me, purely due to my accent.
Honestly, I had been shocked I even got the job in the first place, not just because of my accent, but also because I had insisted I would only work shopfloor. That’s the role I applied for, and it was the only role I would accept.
I was baffled that I still had a job after going missing on the day we were meant to start setting up the new store, and resurfacing a week later, fresh from a medium security psychiatric hospital. So I’m sure you can imagine how I felt when I was promoted to department manager, during the same conversation I looked my manager dead in the eye and informed him that his angry persistent phone calls had saved my life less than two weeks earlier, as I lay in a half full bath, my hands and feet black from the cold, in a state of semiconsciousness, still somehow awake after downing several boxes of Lorazepam, with the chain of the bathtub tangled around my toes.
“Leave me to die. I want to die,” I had mumbled to the paramedics as they joked about me.
“You don’t look like that type of girl,” Andrew, the store manager had replied.
That had been my first taste of what stigma felt like. At the time, it shook me. Now, it feels like a glancing blow.
This is all to explain where exactly my unwell mind was as I watch the episode play out, as I listened to my colleagues joke about how he was so idiotic and steroid fuelled he probably lost the money, and speculated on how long it would be until he was fired, over the following couple of days.
Regardless of the reality that everybody believed his money hadn’t been stolen, to me, they were sizing me up, testing my reactions, seeing how I responded. To me, they all suspected me.
So, when Meera and two other people reported having money stolen from them, and nobody had reported any money being stolen while I was sectioned, I became convinced it was only a matter of time before I was both accused, and punished for the crimes.
Then, it’s happened to me.
It happened after a spectacularly bad shift. I had handed Andrew his arse, and somehow come out on top. Following a particularly stressful opening week, and fourteen shifts in a row, on a day I am sure I only had five pounds to my name (we got paid the next day).
However, I didn’t realise the five pound note that I that had been in my bag was missing until I reached Arnos Grove tube station, and went to top up my oyster card.
A wave of emotion rolled over me.
Self loathing, I’d lost the last of my money, I was a fucking idiot, incompetent at life, and as a human being.
Regret, I shouldn’t have insisted on staying in London this summer, to make it my home, and make it completely on my own.
Fear. If there really was a thief, sooner or later I was going to be the one who got blamed.
Despair and dread. How was I getting home? I had no money and no idea of how to get there by foot, and this was before you could ask your phone to show you the way, before your phone could even pull up a map.
That is when my memory cut out.
The next memory I have, is of me sobbing on the floor of my room.
Even then, I had no idea how I had gotten home, I still don’t to this day, but I am certain I never found that five pound note, as the reason I was crying was because I had accepted that I had been robbed, yet I couldn’t tell anybody in case they suspected I was lying in attempt to cover up that I was the thief.
Although I didn’t want to go back to work, as everything just felt like too much to deal with, I decided that it would make me look guilty if I didn’t. It never occurred to me that those who knew about my suicide attempt would understand I was struggling.
The next day, aware I had five more very tiring and stressful days to get through before I could have a day off finally, I returned to work.
For the full five days, I went about the motions of work, not really there, buried deep in my own mind. Terrified, I listened as a sixth and seventh person claimed they had been robbed, saying nothing.
My weekend wasn’t restful either, I spent it the same way I spent my week, so when I returned to work on the Monday, I was convinced the police would be there to arrest me.
“Rachel,” Meera called excitedly, as I entered the store an hour after opening. I was working the closing shift, and Meera the opening shift. “J. has been fired.”
Sliding behind the counter, wanting to know what has happened before I spoke to Andrew, as J. was one of my nursery department staff, I scanned the empty store to check nobody was within earshot. “What did she do?”
“Andrew caught her in the staff room, going through my purse. She’s the thief.”
I said nothing to Meera about how I had been robbed.
I told nobody.
Until today.
Week starting
Monday, 11 April 2022
Days – 3
laps –12
Mouse run – 4.986
Miles walk – 12.6
Total miles – 22.572
Week starting
Monday, 11 April 2022
Planned
Monday -run
Tuesday – rest day
Wednesday – run
Thursday – rest day
Friday – run
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – run
Done
Monday – one lap of, two minutes running, three minutes walking
Two laps of, one minute running 30 seconds walking
– one lap of walking
Tuesday – resting
Wednesday – no run. no note
Thursday – 1 lap off, 2 minute running, 3 minutes walking.
-2 laps of, one minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap of, walking
Friday – rest day
Saturday -1 lap off, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap of, walking
Sunday – rest day
Monday, 11 April 2022
-1 lap of, 2 minute running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of – 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap of, walking
My first lap felt very hard.
Tuesday, 12 April 2022
Rest day.
Wednesday, 13 April 2022
No run.
No notes.
Thursday, 4 April 2022
-1 lap off, 2 minute running, 3 minutes walking.
-2 laps of, one minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap of, walking
Friday, 15 April 2022
Rest day
Saturday, 16 April 2022
-1 lap off, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap of, walking
Sunday, 17 April 2022
Rest day.
Blog posts completed
Week starting
Monday, 11 April 2022
-5X dictionary Corner
-14X alternative words
-2X alternative word redone
-2X commonly confused words
-1X commonly confused words tips
-2X running journal
-2X running schedule
-2X running overview
-1X running guide
-1X Sunday autobiographical post
-1X writing journal
-1X writing schedule
-1x writing overview
-1X completed list (??)
-1X fabric
-1X fabric update
Hours and Days
Week starting
Monday, 11 April 2022
Hours owed =0
Hours planned = 15
Total hours to do = 15
Extra hours done = 8 hours 3 minutes
Total hours done = 23 hours 3 minutes
Owed = 0
Week starting
Monday, 11 April 2022
Planned
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Done
Monday – 4 hours 12 minutes
Tuesday – 1 hour 57 minutes
Wednesday – 1 hour 3 minutes
Thursday – 2hours 20 minutes
Friday – 4 hours
Saturday – 3 hours 31 minutes
Sunday – 6 hours
Monday, 11 April 2022
2 hours of writing done before my run.
2 hours 12 minutes of writing done after my run.
Total writing done = 4 hours 12 minutes
Tuesday, 12 April 2022
1 hour 57 minutes of writing done.
Finished
-3X dictionary corner
-8X alternative words
-2X redone alternative words
-1X commonly confused words
-1X commonly confused words tips
-1X running journal
-1X running schedule
-1X running overview
Wednesday, 13 April 2022
1 hour 3 minutes writing done.
Thursday, 14 April 2022
2 hours 20 minutes
Finished
-1X running guide
Friday, 15 April 2022
4 hours of writing done.
Saturday, 16 April 2022
3 hours 31 minutes of writing done.
Finished
-1X Sunday autobiographical
Sunday, 17 April 2022
3 hours 5 minutes
1 hour 15 minutes
1 hour 5 minutes
Total time writing = 6 hours
Finished
-1X writing journal
-1X writing schedule
-1X writing overview
-1X completed list (??)
-1X commonly confused words
-2X dictionary Corner
-6X alternative words
-1X running journal
-1x running schedule
-1X running overview
-1X fabric
-1X fabric update
I had been robbed.
That was my first thought when I looked down to pick up my handbag and plastic top shop bag, and saw just my handbag.
Immediately, I began to panic. As the hysterical chatter in my head got worse, I felt heat rush to my face, and I knew that my skin was burning red.
Suddenly, I was fighting the urge to burst into tears, not because I was upset, but because I was panicking, and felt stupid I was panicking over something so unimportant.
Grabbing my handbag off the floor next to my feet, I searched it quickly and found everything that should be inside it, was still inside it.
Then one voice cut through the chatter, “You’ve dropped it, or left it somewhere, you fucking idiot.”
With that, all the chatter in my head changed to match it, leaving me fighting back tears for an entirely different reason –
I was hopeless.
I couldn’t do anything right.
This wouldn’t happen to anybody else, just me, because I was so fucking moronic, and such an incompetent human being that I couldn’t do the simplest of things without it turning into a disaster.
Retracing my steps around the huge boots store, then out into the city centre, I got halfway back to the top shop before I questioned what I was doing.
If I’d dropped it in the street, I would never find it.
Now, I wanted to sit down in the packed city centre and cry like a child.
Again, that critical voice cut through the rest –
Pull yourself together you fucking baby.
Pull yourself together you fucking weirdo.
Why are you getting so worked up about a cheap necklace.
It’s not about the necklace, my thoughts respond to this rogue thought that didn’t belong to them, that didn’t belong in my head.
It’s about finding out what happened.
It’s about how useless we are.
It’s about how pathetic we are.
Pull yourself together, I ordered myself. It’s a cheap necklace, if it’s gone it’s gone, if you can’t find out why it’s gone, then you can’t find out why it’s gone.
We’ve only been in two shops, top shop and boots, one of my many thoughts remind me.
Trying to calm myself down, I marched into the top shop and up to the counter, to speak to (completely by chance) the same man I had spoken to less than an hour earlier, when I came in to exchange the broken necklace I’d had for less than a week.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected them to let me exchange it, but he had. It was this adorable, giant, robot, with dangly arms and legs, almost all of which had fallen off, and one of which was completely missing.
“I would take a refund,” he had advised me. “It feels like we’ve had every single one of these we’ve sold returned for the exact same reason. I don’t even think you’ll find a complete one left in the store. The stand they’re on looks like a robot scrapyard.”
But, I had found one complete robot in the store that day, and I loved the necklace so much and was so sure I could find a way to better secured its limbs to its body, that I had taken an exchange.
“Did leave my plastic bag here?” I asked him.
“No, I don’t think so, nobody’s handed it in anyway” he told me, clearly remembering me.
Thanking him, I left the top shop, heading back to the boots for another search inside the store, but by the time I arrived, I’d accepted that I probably had been robbed, and convinced myself that I should raise the alarm in case this person who robbed me was still inside the store robbing other people.
Walking straight up to the till, I explained that I believe I’d been robbed inside the store, and a minute later a plain clothes security guard was leading me to the security office to watch the camera footage, in order to try to identify if the thief was still inside the shop, telling me all about how people steal shopping bags with the intention of returning any items paid for in cash for a refund, as well as lecturing me about how stupid I had been to put my bag down on the floor, as he did.
When he rewound the security footage to the point where I reentered the store and walk straight to the cashier, he peppered me with questions that not only made me feel even more stupid, but as though he thought I was a liar.
After explaining I’d gone back to the top shop before raising the alarm, it was obvious he didn’t believe me at all, as he refused to roll the footage back any further, because “[He] didn’t think the thief would still be in the store.”
That’s when the tears eventually won and I began to cry, although it wasn’t because I felt like he was being unfair, he was being fair, but because I not only felt like I deserved everything bad that had happened to me that day –
I was greedy to return the damaged necklace.
I was stupid for not getting a refund.
I was stupid for putting my bag down on the floor.
I was wrong for not going straight to the cashier in boots to raise the alarm –
I also didn’t know why or how I even ended up in the security office, it wasn’t like I wanted the necklace back, I should’ve thrown it in the bin days ago.
I was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, and all the chatter in my head agree with me.
“Stop crying,” he complained. “I’ll go back.”
Somehow, I managed to pull myself together enough to decide I just needed to remove myself from the situation, so my hand was on the door handle when he spoke again, stopping me.
“You were robbed,” he confirm, sounding surprised.
Silently, I joined him at the monitor, as he rewound it back couple of seconds then pressed play.
I watched myself on the screen as I crouched down, let go of my bags, resting them against my right foot, picked up an item and looked at it for a minute, before put it down. Then, as I though they had also been watching me, and timed it perfectly, as I stood back up, two ladies, one sitting in a wheelchair, and the other pushing it, passed between me and the camera from the left hand side to the right hand side, and when my feet came back in to view, my top shop bag had disappeared.
He moved to another monitor, then another, following them as they moved immediately from me to the exit.
They were gone before I even finished searching my handbag to make sure nothing was missing.
It wasn’t me who noticed it. It was Charlie and Amy. Although Charlie was the first person to mention it, Amy was the first person to understand it.
“Why is the security guard following us around?” Charlie asked. Her question was blatantly rhetorical, as she shouted it loudly, while looking over her shoulder at the security guard, who was indeed following us, and making no attempt to hide it. He was almost directly behind us, to the point where, if we had change direction and spun around one hundred and eighty degrees, he would’ve walked right into us.
“He thinks Rachels stealing,” Amy answered, her tone bored. “Haven’t you noticed that we can walk around any shop normally until Rachel speaks, and then immediately a security guard follows us around until we leave.” Then without warning she turned and addressed the security guard directly. “You know it’s not okay to discriminate against somebody because of their accent don’t you?”
He stared back emotionless, and didn’t respond.
“Fuck this shit,” Amy said. “I was actually shopping here. Like, I was actually going to give you people my money, but I’m fed up with this bullshit, so I’ll go give some other business my money,” she put the clothes she had draped over her arm down, and stormed out of the shop.
Me and Charlie followed, neither of us saying a word.
I had never noticed it before, but after that I did, and it made me afraid to speak in public.
Today I am going to tell you three stories about my experiences as a victim of Scouse xenophobia (I have more).
The first two, High Alert, and A Hole In Your Story, are my experiences as a customer, being a person from Liverpool, in a city that was not Liverpool.
The third, Ms Robot, is a story about a time that I was the victim of a robbery in Liverpool. The reason I’m telling this third story is because it happened a couple of years after A Hole In Your Story took place, and it gave me more insight into what those women were thinking, and to me, it further proves the fact that they were xenophobic.
Their first thought on me returning an item with a small hole in it, was that I had somehow managed to fit a giant metal security tag through a small hole, which was one of those large round tags that are the same size on both sides (which I might be wrong, but I believe are the same size on both sides because they are filled with ink).
However, when I produce the receipt (which was straight away) they didn’t go from that thought too, heres evidence that she bought it, they went instead to, who did she steal this off.
It is also a great example of a time when I, as a victim of robbery, was sort of blamed, or disbelief, because as a disabled person, I didn’t “behave normally.”
Week starting –
Monday, 4 April 2022
No overview for this week because I was very well.
Planned
Monday-Rest day
Tuesday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Wednesday-Rest day
Thursday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Friday-Rest day
Saturday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Sunday-Rest day
Done
Monday- rest day
Tuesday- No run. No notes
Wednesday- 1/2 lap of 2 minutes running 3 minutes walking
-1 lap of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds running
Thursday- rest day
Friday- Responsible no run day
Saturday- Responsible no run day
Sunday- Responsible no run day
Monday, 4 April 2022
On Monday, I don’t go for a run, because I have several personal problems that exploded, causing me to become more stressed and depressed than normal, which by the time I finish dealing with I was too tired and hungry to even think about going for my run.
Tuesday, 5 April 2022
Although I can’t remember why I didn’t go for a run on Tuesday, I do remember that I wanted to go at 11 pm, but it was too late.
Wednesday, 6 April 2022
I feel so bad mentally on Wednesday. This paired with how desperately I wanted to go running yesterday night, makes me believe that a run will do me good.
It makes me much worse.
The problem with running, is that it can isolate you with your thoughts. When you are already feeling stressed, depressed, and agitated, this can be a recipe for disaster.
I kept stopping to vent tweet, so I wasn’t having a productive run anyway. So, when I realise I’m feeling suicidal, I do the responsible thing, stop my run and walk home, instead of trying to push through because I’m already out.
It is at this point I realise I am very disorientated. I could have done either 2 laps, or 3. What I am sure of is, that I did –
-1/2 a lap of – 2 minute running, 3 minutes walking
-1 lap of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
1/2 a lap, walking
Thursday, 7 April 2022
Rest day.
Friday, 8 April 2022
On Friday, I still wasn’t feeling well, so I didn’t go for my run today.
Saturday, 9 April 2022
Repeat of yesterday
Sunday, 10 April 2022
Same as Friday and Saturday.
Blog Posts Completed
Week starting
Monday, 4th April 2022
1 x commonly confused words
2 x dictionary Corner
14 x alternative words
1 x announcement
1 x running overview
1x monthly running plan
1x running guide
1 x sunday autobiographical post
Hours and Days
Week starting –
Monday, 4th April 2022
Hours owed = 0
Planned hours for this week = 15
Total hours of writing to do this week = 15
Additional hours done = 0 hours 21 minutes
Total hours done = 15 hours 12 minutes
Hours owed = 0
5/7 days
But wrong days
Hours all over the place
Week starting –
Monday, 4th April 2022
Planned
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday rest day
Sunday – rest day
Done
Monday – 0
Tuesday – 1 hour 1 minute
Wednesday– 1 hour 12 minutes
Thursday – 4 hours 48 minutes
Friday – 0
Saturday – 5 hours 13 minutes
Sunday – 1 hour 7 minutes
Monday, 4th April 2022
On Monday, I do no writing, because I have several personal problems that explode, causing me to become more stressed and depressed than normal, which by the time I finish dealing with I was too tired and hungry to even think about attempting to do anything else.
Tuesday, 5th April 2022
1 hour, 1 minutes of writing done
Posts completed
⁃ 2 x dictionary corner
⁃ 1 x commonly confused words
⁃ 14 x alternative words
Wednesday, 6th April 2022
1 hour 12 minutes of writing complete
Thursday, 7th April 2022
During the early hours of Thursday morning, while I can’t sleep, I do 1 hour 15 minutes writing.
After I wake up, I do another 4 hours 58 minutes.
Total writing done = 6 hours 48 minutes.
I completed
1 x announcement
1x running overview
1x April running sand
1x running guide
Friday, 8th April 2022
No notes, so I assume no writing done.
Saturday, 9th April 2022
5 hours 13 minutes writing complete
Blog post completed
1x Sunday autobiographical blog post
Sunday, 10th April 2022
1 hour 7 minutes of writing complete
Note: Before I begin this post, I want to make sure that anybody reading it knows that, I do refer to myself as a Scouser, I have no problem with anybody else referring to me as a Scouser, there are even people who only refer to me as a Scouser because they have heard, or seen, me refer to myself as a Scouser. Personally, I’m not offended by the name Scouser, I believe the majority of people from Liverpool also aren’t offended by it, and currently it is what we are most commonly known as.
However, if a person from Liverpool was to request that you do not refer to them as a Scouser, or even went as far to ask you not to use the word around them, it is my honest opinion, that it is a valid request, that they are both entitled to make, and have met by you, unless of course you enjoy upsetting other people just because you can.
There’s this weird phenomenon that I face a lot, as a suffer out of pseudo psychosis, which happens when I request people don’t use the word psycho, that I know happens whenever you request people stop using any word that is offensive, demonising, or stigmatising, et cetera, this is where the person being offensive, gets offended, then is defensive, because you have asked them nicely not to be offensive. Then they try to explain to you why are you being offended is wrong and therefore the problem. After which they then go off to ask other people, that they know will agree with them that it’s not offensive, why it is offensive.
This behaviour is not only bizarre, it’s a huge problem.
Can we stop telling people who we offend that them being offended is the problem, rather than our offensive behaviour. If somebody has taken offence or something you have said, there’s a very good reason for that. If you aren’t aware of what that reason is, then you clearly don’t understand, in this case, why the word you’re using, or the way in which you are using it, is offensive, and not knowing those things doesn’t entitle you to be offensive.
If you don’t understand why something might be offensive, the best person to ask about why it’s offensive is the person it’s offending. Nobody else can explain why that person, who is personally offended by it, is offended by it.
So, with that said, let’s get started with this post.
Xenophobia against people from Liverpool still is today, and has been a huge issue for at least my entire lifetime, and possibly anybody who is alive today’s entire lifetime, and it is an issue that according to the headlines of several articles, I chose not to read, we’re so tired of now that we are finally fighting back against it.
If you’re from the UK, you probably understand what I mean by xenophobia against people from Liverpool.
However, as most of my readers are not from the UK, I’m going to write a small post, this post, explaining briefly what Scouse xenophobia looks like, in general, on the milder the end of the scale. Then I am going to follow up with a couple of small blog post, each as a separate post, so that I can add to them if I remember any more examples, of how it effected me as a Scouser living outside of Liverpool, in general, on the milder end of the scale, before I go into how it effected me more seriously in specific situations, as I talk about those situations in the future.
As I have faced Scouse xenophobia my entire life, and it’s such a multilayered and complicated prejudice, I am only going to be skimming the surface of what it is here, and won’t be going into massive amounts of detail on it, or what causes it, as my aim is to give you enough information to understand my social disadvantage due to the specific type of prejudice during this particular time in my life, meaning my time at university, without going too far off topic.
The word Scouser itself could be considered derogatory, as Scouse was, in the past, “a poor man’s stew,” and the reason we are referred to as Scousers is because people started using it to imply everybody in Liverpool ate Scouse for every meal, because we were so impoverished we couldn’t afford food. Insert eye roll emoji here. According to historians, Scouse is a relatively new, meaning created in the last hundredish years or so, name for people from Liverpool, therefore when it was created, not everyone in Liverpool would have been so severely impoverished nobody in the city was eating.
Yet, I don’t know a single person who considers it to be derogatory, but I am aware that some people do.
You could argue this is due to people not being aware of the origin of the name, if you had never met a person from Liverpool ever. Trust me, we all know what Scouse is. I believe our lack of offence over the name shows our attitude towards petty hate, and that we are capable of differentiating between what is petty hate, and what a serious hate. We don’t care that nasty people feel the need to be nasty just because they can, as it says nothing about us and everything about them, so we embraced it, and we have in doing so, taken away the power and stigma attached to the word. We also know what issues are important, and we spend our time and energy working on trying to change those things.
This is not to say we shouldn’t care, maybe we should, especially if we really do intend on eradicating Scouse xenophobia once and for all.
In a nutshell, Scouse xenophobia is the creation of, and belief in, the derogatory stereotypes of people from Liverpool, by people who are not from Liverpool. These stereotypes include, but are not limited to, the ideas that people from Liverpool are – dirty, disrespectful, evil, thieving, alcoholic, drug addict, scumbags, who are loud, and fight and argue for the sake of fighting and arguing, and don’t work simply because we don’t want to.
As a person who has lived in both Liverpool and London, I’m going to use the two cities, as comparisons, based on my personal experiences
Liverpool overall is much cleaner city, when it comes to things like public spaces and transport, and I am very sorry Londoners, I know that most of you are clean, but some of you are so dirty in yourself and/or your habits that I don’t know, how combined with the stickiness, and grubbiness of the city, there isn’t an outbreak of the Ye Olde plague there every couple of weeks.
Theft seems like a much bigger issue in London than in Liverpool, as off the top of my head I can remember being robbed twice in London. Sam was also robbed in London.
Here we normally don’t even take advantage of stuff. If money is left on a self serve till, or a card in a chip and pin machine, we hand it in. Just last week I found a mobile phone on a checkout in the pharmacy and handed it in. This wasn’t even the first time something similar has happened. That’s who we are.
If I had to guess, I’d guess that the loud, aggressive portrayal of us comes from how outspoken and prepared to fight injustice and inequality we are (this statement shows just how complex multilayered, and far back in history the prejudice against us is, and goes, as not even I, a person who has not only being subjected to Scouse xenophobia my entire life, and makes it my business to educate myself, can say without guessing or doing actual research, where some of the most infamous and harmful stereotypes about us come from, and because I want this post to be about my own experiences, and knowledge, up until at least this point, I have not, and don’t intend to, do any actual research on the subject) though the majority of us fight this through legal and governmental processes, rather than with aggression or violence.
If you don’t believe any of my last paragraph, do a quick Google search on both the Hillsborough disaster, and the 2015, I think, neo-Nazi March, when the Nazis decided to hold an event in Liverpool.
Liverpool is a multicultural, multi diverse, city. I believe our non-white communities have existed here for centuries, and I believe we have the largest LGBTQ+ community in England.
The people of Liverpool are still fighting for justice over what happened both at, and after, that football match, decades ago.
The people of Liverpool said no to the Nazis, and when they ignored us and came anyway, a lot of us protested, a small few physically fought and rioted (I did neither, as I was both at work that day, and so out of touch with what was going on in the world I had no idea they were even coming to Liverpool) yet the riots in lime Street station became infamous online, particularly on YouTube, of which the majority of the videos about it seem to have been taken down since.
Either way, the government and the police have learned that we are not afraid of them.
The nazis learned the only people protecting them were diversely cultured police officers, who were being paid to do so. The very people they hate, were the only people standing between them and the rioters, and there were no streets to hold their event on, because we were filling the streets with our protest march against them.
When it comes to drug and alcohol dependency, which while we’re on the subject we need to address better as a society, due to the fact that many addicts use as a result of being let down by governmental systems, such as the NHS (national health service) I can’t say whether we do have more addicts than anywhere else, what I can say, from firsthand experience, is that our healthcare system in Liverpool is appallingly bad, especially when it comes to how it deals with mental health.
The same could be said for the unemployment here. As a working class city, the majority of people here work either heavily manual labour jobs, or heavily mentally taxing jobs, and there are very minimal disability support requirements that these companies need to adhere to, and nobody that holds them accountable when they discriminate against the disabled. Employers are allowed to use and abuse their staff to the point of physical and/or mental breakdown, then throw them away. Then there is the pressure being working class puts on people to not only choose to work long hours, but to allow them selves to be used and abuse by employers. Once ill you find out that the systems apparently put in place to help you, particularly when it comes to illness recovery, are just empty boxes we have paid a fortune for. This is something I also know from firsthand experience.
Over the decades, Scouse xenophobia has changed.
Although I do think common sense must have played a role in the change, I personally think it wasn’t a significant role. Of course not everybody in Liverpool isn’t unemployed, we have shops and other businesses here, therefore some of us must work, so a weird form of societal split thinking has happened, Scouse has become a label for the “bad” Liverpool people, and Liverpudlian has become a word used for the “good” Liverpool people, and if this idea wasn’t ridiculous enough, I’ve heard Liverpudlian could also be considered a derogatory name, but nobody has ever said this to me directly, and I don’t know the origins of the word Liverpudlian or care enough to Google the origins, what I do now is that historians believe the correct name for a person from Liverpool is liverpolitan or something similar.
Which brings us full circle back to where we started this post, and to its end.
Days- 1
Total laps- 4
Total miles- 6.648
Total miles run- 4.986
Total miles walked- 1.662
Planned
Monday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Tuesday- Rest day
Wednesday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Thursday-Rest day
Friday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Saturday-Rest day
Sunday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Done
Monday-1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
-2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Tuesday-Rest day
Wednesday-No run raining
Thursday- No run no notes
Friday- Went to but new running shoes. No run.
Saturday- No run. No notes.
Sunday- No run. No notes.
Monday, 28 March 2022
– 1 lap of, 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
– 2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
– 1 lap, walking
Tuesday, 29 March 2022
Rest day
Wednesday 30th March 2022
No run.
Raining.
Thursday 31st March 2022
No run.
No notes.
Friday, 1st April 2022
No run.
Went to buy a new running shoes.
Saturday 2nd April 2022
No run.
No notes.
Sunday, 3rd April 2022
No run.
No notes.
Posts completed
2x – word definitions
2x – commonly confused words
3x – alternative words
1x– running journal entry
1x– running schedule
1x– running overview
1x– an announcement
1x– friday guide
1x– an autobiographical post for Sunday
Hours and Days
Owed from last week = 0
Plans for this week = 15 hours
Total hours of writing to do this week = 15 hours
Additional hours done = 4 hours 55 minutes
Total done = 19 hours 55 minutes
Hours owed = 0
5–7 days.
But wrong 5 days.
Planned
Monday-3 hours
Tuesday-3 hours
Wednesday-3 hours
Thursday-3 hours
Friday-3 hours
Saturday-Rest day
Sunday-Rest day
Done
Monday- 4 hours 3 minutes
Tuesday- 4 hours 5 minutes
Wednesday- 5 hours 39 minutes
Thursday- 6 hours 8 minutes
Friday- 0
Saturday- 2 hours 8 minutes
Sunday- 0
Monday, 28th March 2022
4 hours 3 minutes writing
Tuesday, 29th March 2022
4 hours 5 minutes writing
Wednesday, 30th March 2022
4 hours 5 minutes, + 1 hour 8 minutes, +26 minutes.
Total writing done = 5 hours 39 minutes
Posts complete
2X – word definitions
2X – commonly confused words
3X – alternative words
Thursday, 31st March 2022
1 hour 37 minutes, +1 hour 18 minutes, +2 hours 16 minutes, +57 minutes
Total writing done = 6 hours 8 minutes
Post completed
– Friday running journal
– Friday running schedule
– Friday running overview
– An announcement
– A Friday running guide
Friday 1st April 2022
No writing.
No notes.
Saturday, 22nd April 2022
2 hours 8 minutes writing.
Posts completed
-Sunday autobiographical
Sunday, 3rd April 2022
No writing.
No notes.
“What are you going to do about paying your rent?” Amy enquired, sounding genuinely concerned.
“What do you mean? I’ve paid my rent.” I informed her.
“No, not the part of your rent that the student loans pay, the part of it you have to pay,” she elaborated.
Although the student loans paid the majority of my rent, I had to pay two hundred pounds of it myself every term. So did Amy.
Already, at the age of nineteen, understanding that rent was at the top of the pay list for bills, pay it was the very first thing I did on the day I received the part of student loan that I got to cover general living expenses.
“I’ve paid it. Why? Haven’t you?” I put down my unopened sandwich, my second sandwich, having only just finished my first, and the one that had sparked our conversation about how we were both down to the last of our first terms student loan.
“I’m still hungry,” I had complained but I was acting twitchy, so still stressed was probably more accurate.
“Might as well go out living life large,” Amy had joked, but there had been no humour in her voice, more of an agitated tone.
My twitchiness was annoying her.
“Why haven’t you paid it?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
We sat there in silence, alone, other than the staff, in the cat hill campus cafe.
“What are you going to do about paying it?” I wondered, finally picking up my sandwich again.
“That’s why I was asking you?” She admitted. “I was going to try to copy whatever your solution was, but I suppose I’ll have to ask my parents. What are you going to do about money for the next couple of weeks? How are you going to pay for your train ticket home at Christmas?”
“I’ve got my tickets already. And Middlesex still haven’t given me my bursary yet.”
“Thats because you’re not getting the bursary.”
“Yes I am. They’ve already told me I am. Plus, I haven’t touched my overdraft at all, I have all five hundred pound of my student overdraft left.”
“Oh,” was all she said in response. I suppose now she understood that when I said I only had twenty pound of my student loan left, and she had replied I only have fifty, I literally meant I only had twenty pound of my student loan left, and not that I pissed every penny that I had access to up the wall on nights out and designer clothes.
I was convinced I had permanently blinded myself.
If you suffer with racing thoughts, you can probably understand the distress that I felt when this possibility entered my mind, as in a second I was hit by literally hundreds of hysterical screaming thoughts about how not being able to see would change my life.
That is when I started to cry, and staggered out of the bathroom in just my towel in search of help, unable to open my eyes because the sharp, burning pain was too bad when I tried at this point.
Somebody else had been in the shower in the small bathroom outside my room when I needed to use it, so instead I had to use the shower on the other side of the third floor.
This meant that not only was Charlie’s room the nearest, and the most identifiable, due to its location in between three fire doors, usually her door was open.
Feeling my way along the wall with my hand, eventually I found Charlie’s room and stumbled inside.
At first I was met with laughter.
“Oh my God Rach, your hair looks like candy floss,” Charlie howled.
“Why have you done that to your hair, Rach,” Amy asked, sounding unimpressed.
Then Charlie must have noticed my scorched red eyelids and tear strained cheeks because she stopped laughing.
“It’s in my eyes, and I still can’t wash it out,” I sobbed.
“Oh shit,” Charlie exclaimed, but she didn’t follow her statement up with a solution or an offer of help.
“Come on,” Amy was already next to me. She took me by the shoulders, turned me around, and led me slowly and carefully back to the bathroom, where she placed me by the sink while she went to get a cup. If you aren’t thirty five like me, or older, you may not remember the dawn of unnatural hair colours becoming popular. As I experienced it, it started out in the “alternative scenes” that I was a part of. At this time named brand, and therefore professional brand, box dies in unnatural colours wasn’t an easily accessible thing to get your hands on as a member of the non hairdressing public, if it was even a thing at all, I had certainly never encountered one and I had been a hairdressing student. You would have to go to an alternative shopping centre, such as Quiggins, if you were in Liverpool – yes I really am from Liverpool, I really am thirty five, and I really was an emo – or, markets like Camden market in London, to buy these weird, obscure, therefore probably not safe, specialty dyes, in brands that you never seen anywhere else.
Camden market is where I had bought this particular obscure, pink, semipermanent box dye.
Only once had I dyed my own hair, all the other times it have been professionally done by a hairdresser, and that was when I had dark brown hair with bleach blonde streaks for the dye to go on to. So, what possessed me to put pink streaks into my now entirely bleached hair myself, is honestly a mystery to me, but that is what I had attempted to do.
The event started out mildly successful, with me managing to apply it mainly to my fringe as my hair was quite short at the back, but not exactly how I wanted it.
The problems began in the shower. Maybe I had applied too much dye, or shampoo, or both, or maybe it was just wasn’t as safe as it should have been, as I dye my own hair all the time now, and I still can’t wash it off without getting it in my eyes. The difference is, that these days I don’t end up in severe pain that makes it hard for me to open my eyes, and causes me to have temporarily, extremely foggy vision when I managed to.
As soon as I got it in my eyes, I tried to wash it out with my hands, but it felt like I was just rubbing more of it into my eyes.
“Get out of the shower, wash your hands properly with soap, and start again,” I told myself, desperately trying to control the panic that was rapidly taking over my mind and body, but when I did the same thing happened, I was just rubbing more dye into my eyes, but now I was also struggling to hold my towel in place while I did.
That is when I became hysterical, and realised I really needed help.
However, when Amy returned, she was having the same problem.
“There’s too much of it still in your hair,” she explained. “It’s all running down your face. We need to wash it off first. Wait here while I go to get myself a towel.”
“No. No. No.,” Insisted understanding immediately what she was suggesting. “You are not getting in the shower with me. I can wash it off myself.”
“Is that how you ended up in this situation, because you can wash it out yourself?” Amy quipped.
“My ability to wash the dye out of my hair isn’t the issue. It’s in my eyes that’s the issue,” I argued.
“It’s in your eyes because you fucked up washing it off. Did you mean for all your hair to turn fluorescent pink?” She shot me down.
“No. No, I didn’t,” I agreed.
“Okay, well, listen, you stand in the shower so nobody else gets in,” as she said this she help me inside the shower. “I’ll be right back.”
“Please, don’t look at me,” I begged her when she returned, lock the door and began to undress. It didn’t seem fair that she could see and I couldn’t, and I already felt so vulnerable in the situation.
“I won’t, I promise.”
Eric was the first to mention it to me afterwards, and in true Eric form he was extra slimy and douchey about it, “Amy told me about you and her taking a shower together.”
As the days went on though, everybody commented to me about it.
When I confronted Amy, she shrugged it off and laughed about it, even though she had disgusted seeing me naked.
“You promised you wouldn’t look,” I fumed as though that, and not her talking about my body to other people, was the issue.
“Oh, be serious Rach. You couldn’t have believed I wouldn’t look. Of course I looked your hot,” She had rolled her eyes, as though I was being over dramatic.
After that, every time somebody brought it up I’d respond, “Remember that time Amy pissed herself in the woods when we were drunk, then just got on the tube into central covered in piss?”
“I can’t believe you’re reminding people of the time I wee’d on my shorts! I can’t believe you’re telling people who didn’t know that I wee’d on my shorts that it happened!” Amy complained when people started mentioning it to her.
“Keeping secrets works both both ways,” I informed her. “You keep mine, I keep yours. You tell mine, I tell yours.”
Week one
And
Week two
25th April 22
– 2 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds walking, 3 minutes and 30 seconds walking
– 1 lap of 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
– 1 lap walking
Week 3
And
Week 4
9 May 2022
– 1 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds walking, 3 minutes and 30 seconds walking
– 2 lap of 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
– 1 lap walking
Weeks 9 to 12
28th February 2022
To
27th March 2022
Plan
Days = 13
Total miles = 63.156
Total miles to run = 16.7308
Total miles to walk = 46.4476
Done
Day = 9
Total miles = 53.184
Total miles= 13.9241
Total miles walked =39.2599
Comparison
-4 days
-9.972 miles
-2.8067 miles run
-7.1877 walked
Days- 2
Total laps-8
Total miles-13.296
Total miles run-2.9916
Total miles walked-10.3044
Planned
Monday-Rest day
Tuesday-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
1 lap walking
Wednesday-Rest day
Thursday-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
1 lap walking
Friday-Rest day
Saturday-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
1 lap walking
Sunday-Rest day
Done
Monday-Rest day
Tuesday-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
1 lap walking
Wednesday-Rest day
Thursday-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
1 lap walking
Friday-Rest day
Saturday-No run. No notes.
Sunday-No run. No notes.
Monday, 21st March 2022
No notes, so I assume no run.
Tuesday, 22nd March 2022
-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking.
-1 lap walking.
Wednesday 23rd of March 2022
Rest day.
Thursday, 24th March 2022
-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap walking
Friday, 25th March 2022
Rest day.
Saturday 26th of March 2022
No one. No notes.
Sunday 27th of March 2022
No run. No notes.
Blog post completed
Week 9
28th February 2022
“all Wednesday posts”
“all Friday posts”
Week 10
7th March 2022
No notes of what I completed.
Week 11
14th March 2022
5X – Wednesday writing journals
5X – Wednesday writing schedules
5X – Wednesday writing overview
2X – commonly confused words
8X – word definitions
18X – alternative words
4X – Friday running journals
4X – Friday running schedules
4X – Friday running overviews
One X – guide outtakes
One X – running plan
OneX – Sunday autobiographical blog posts
week 12
Wednesday, March 2022
– running guide
– Sundays autobiographical blog post
May
To focus more on doing 15 hours writing over 5 days, as I am starting to meet my 15 hours writing a week goal, but not at 3 hours a day over 5 days a week target.
Hours
Week 9 to 12
Week 9
28th February 2022
Hours of writing planned =15
Hours of writing owed= 4
Total hours of writing to do = 19
Hours done = 16 hours
Hours owed = 3 hours
Did not meet my overall hour target.
Also did not meet my target of writing for 3 hours a day 5 days a week.
Week 10
7th March 2022
Hours of writing planned = 15
Hours of writing owed = 3
Total hours of writing to do = 18 hours
Total hours of writing done = 21 hours 4 minutes
Hourly goal achieved.
Goal of writing for 3 hours 5 days a week, not achieved
Week 11
14 March 2022
Hours planned planned = 15
Hours done = 24 hours 3 minutes
Targets of 15 hours exceeded, but both my physical and mental health suffered as a result.
Target of writing for t3 hours 5 days a week, not achieved again.
Week 12
21st March 2022
Hours of writing planned =15
Hours of writing dine =18 hours 13 minutes
Target of writing for 15 hours a week achieved.
Target of writing for 3 hours a day 5 days a week not met, still.
Overview target for total hours done achieved 3/4 weeks.
Target for how hours are spread across the week achieved 0/4 weeks.
⁃ Running guide
⁃ Sunday autobiographical blog post
Hours owed from last week- 0
Hours planned for this week- 15
Total hours to do this week- 15
Extra time done- 3 hours 13 minutes
Total Time done- 18 hours 13 minutes
Time owed- 0
Planned
Monday- 3 hours
Tuesday- 3 hours
Wednesday- 3 hours
Thursday- 3 hours
Friday- 3 hours
Saturday-Rest day
Sunday-Rest day
Done
Monday- 2 hours 30 minutes
Tuesday- 4 hours 34 minutes
Wednesday- 4 hours 35 minutes
Thursday- 3 hours
Friday- 3 hours 34 minutes
Saturday- 2 hours
Sunday- No notes.
Monday, 21st March 2022
Monday is an extreme waste of 2 hours 30 minutes of research for my running blog, as I am unable to focus, meaning that the research was disorganised and therefore pointless.
Tuesday, 22nd March 2022
On Tuesday, I work on my blog for 4 hours 34 minutes. I don’t make any notes as to what I work on, but seeing as yesterday I was attempting to do research for my running guide, I imagine it was that I worked on.
Wednesday, 23rd March 2022
Today I do 4 hours 35 minutes writing, I finish my running guide for Friday.
Thursday, 24th March 2022
3 hours of writing done.
Friday, 25th March 2022
While unable to sleep on Friday morning, I do 2 hours 34 minutes of writing.
At some point, I do another hour, but I don’t record when.
I finish Sundays autobiographical blog post.
Saturday, 26th March 2022
2 hours of writing done.
Sunday 27th of March 2022
As I have no notes for Sunday, I assume that I did no writing, but I don’t know why.
A thought prologue
Yes, I admit that I missed all the red flags, some that were obvious.
But, I think everybody else did too.
Maybe, it was because I had never been friends with girls like the penthouse crew before.
They were all, “normal girls.”
Whereas, people seemed to look at me and see a girl they considered not to be “normal,” a girl they felt was too male – in her style, attitude, and behaviours.
Teachers at school called me, “Young lady,” just so they could follow it with, “I use the term lightly.”
To me, my family, and my college friends though, I was a/the “Girly girl.”
Yet, even I saw that I was very different to these girls.
Maybe, everybody else missed the red flags because the most obvious happened in private.
Or, it could have been because all of them treated me the same as Amy treated me, only to a much smaller extent.
To them, I was a toy, well that’s how it eventually began to feel to me. I was a doll to play with, and a source of fun and amusement.
Although me and Amy did have things in common, we were also polar opposites.
We were night and day, north and south, opposite sides of the same coin.
Both of us were strikingly beautiful.
Amy with her velvety dark skin, sleek black hair, and piercing green eyes.
Me with my translucent white skin, bleach blonde, iron curled her, and shockingly yellow eyes.
Her style was somewhere between glamorous and casual, and she could often be found in designer stores on Bond Street.
My style was stereotypically emo, punctuated by flashes of club kid brightness and sparkle. I belonged to Camden.
We were both from “broken” homes.
However, she was the daughter of an ex miss Wales title holder, and a very wealthy property developer.
Whereas, I had grown up on one of the most dangerous council estates in Liverpool.
That, I believe is why Amy was drawn to me. Maybe I satisfied some urge she had to rebel. Wasn’t being friends with an “alternative” girl, from the “bad side,” of the “wrong” city a great way to rebel? Wouldn’t Being more than friends take that rebellion to the next level?
Regardless of whether I am right or wrong in my assumptions of why, I’m certain I am correct about what I’ve only now, fifteen years later, having missed all the signs of the time, realised, which is that Amy wasn’t really interested in my friendship, she was interested in me in a much more intimate way.
“You remind me of a much more beautiful Gwen Stefani, and Gwen Stefani is really beautiful,” she told me one day.
“When I first met you, I thought, why is such a beautiful girl wearing that nose ring? Nose rings are hideous! But now I know you, I think it really suits you, I even sort of like it, it matches your personality,” she confessed on another.
She was blatantly disappointed at discovering I wasn’t a natural blonde.
“I need to find a hairdresser here. My roots desperately need doing ,” I had complained.
At first when she responded, “Aren’t you a natural blonde?” I had thought she was joking, because my very dark brown to roots were half the length of my hair.
Then, I saw hair expression, which at that moment was bleaker than my own, and I realise she was serious.
There was also the occasion when she declared, “If you were a boy, I’d fuck you.”
With hindsight, and my clear recollection of how she said it and the look on her face, I’d guess the me being a boy part was the opposite of what she really wanted.
It was however, the event that I am going to tell you about in the second part of this post that to me confirms my belief, and not because of the event itself, which in reality was entirely innocent, at least on my side.
Rather, it was not only how she would recount the event to anybody and everybody, but also the way she spoke about it, like she was bragging about it, and her over sexualisation of it.
A thought Epilogue
Would my relationship with Amy have ended differently, if at all, if Charlie hadn’t behaved in a racist manner towards Ashani, or gotten pregnant?
If you had ask me that question as these events were unfolding, my answer would have been that I didn’t think our friends would have ended at all if it wasn’t for us both loosing Charlie as a friend.
Now, I believe it would have ended, but differently, and still not well, as I can hazard what I consider to be a pretty accurate guess as to what would have, under different circumstances, eventually happened, which is that our friendship would have ended in a similar way to many of my friendships with my male friends.
Amy, if I remember correctly, would have been friend zero, the first person to decide to throw me away for this particular reason, but I could equally be caught up in the emotion I’m currently feeling, and as a result forgetting people who came before her. Maybe, she actually was friend zero, but I just never realised until now, fifteen years later, as I look back on, and examine, our relationship.
Her potential reason for throwing me away, is going to be the subject of my next blog post, although I never intended it to be.
You see, I started to write about how things actually ended with me and Amy, and all these feelings that must have been hidden away in my subconscious for fifteen years began to tumble out of me instead.
So, before I move onto that, I want to talk about some other feelings that have tumbled from my subconscious, while trying to write about why I fell out with Amy, as I used to think it was my falling out with Amy that set me on the path to that awful thing that happened to me happening, but now I understand that it was really Charlie’s departure from both of our lives that set me on that path.
Yet, I still can’t bring myself to regret the breakdown of our friendships.
Back then, I believe that I was better off without friends like Amy and Charlie.
I still do.
Regardless of the fact that I have learnt the hard way several times, both before we were friends and after, that there are worse people you could be friends with.
Just because one person isn’t as bad as another, doesn’t mean you should be friends with them. Being friends with neither of the “bad” people is a valid option.
Here, is what I want to say about Charlie.
Even though I honestly thought I was angry at the two of them when I found out that they were keeping secrets from me, I never really was, I was confused and hurt, which felt a lot like anger.
At the point Amy decided to notify me of Charlie’s predicament, it would have already been too late for me to intervene and change things, if I believed it was any of my business or wanted to, which I didn’t, as Charlie and her boyfriend had already packed up her things and we’re on their way back to Basingstoke, Charlie having handed her keys back to the office staff at Gubby, and officially withdrawn from her degree.
Even as a person who doesn’t want, and has never wanted, children, I couldn’t understand why Amy thought being pregnant was worse than her having the life threatening illness my constantly anxious mind had conjured up when Amy had insisted I would regret our falling out.
I was glad Charlie wasn’t sick, but as much as her being sick would have upset and worried me, it wouldn’t have changed the situation between me and her.
Getting pregnant with your abusive boyfriends child at all, never mind in your first year at university, is not a life I would have chosen for myself, even if I had wanted children. And Charlie not only want to children, despite the pregnancy being unplanned, she wanted that specific child.
Even if she hadn’t, I don’t believe she would have terminated the pregnancy, or given away the baby.
Honestly, I don’t think under the same circumstances, at that time in my life, I would have, or could have, either.
Her families reaction though, baffled me as much as it baffled Amy, as they seemed to be treating her as though her life was, and should be, over, just because she had created a new life. They were demanding that she drop out of university, and return home to start a life of being a stay at home mother immediately.
This made no sense, as according to Amy, Charlie’s baby wasn’t due until after we finished our first year of university, so it would have been better for Charlie, and her future, if she had stayed and completed the year, while getting advice on what her options would be if she wanted to return to university in the future.
In fact, to me it seemed like the responsible action, as well as the option that would have been best for her baby.
It would have given her the possibility of not only getting a well paid job and having a career she loved, but one that also provide financial stability for her child, and financial independence for herself (not that I am assuming she hasn’t since achieved these things in the decade and a half that has passed, I am here, simply talking about my perspective on the situation at this specific time this was all unfolding) while also providing good life lessons for her child.
I have spoken previously about how I feel now in regards to Charlie, but I want to repeat some of it here.
Although I was disgusted with her behaviour, I never hated her, I was just unable, and unwilling to be friends with somebody who could not only hate for reasons that are so very wrong and awful, but who could display that hate in the causal and confident manner she did.
As well as about how I now, as a woman with an extra fifteen years of experience of how the world and people are, believe Charlie was a vulnerable, young, woman, not only parroting the views of the man she was trapped in a bad relationship with, but a family with outdated views on both people and life, who were making her life choices for her, and approved of her bad relationship. Not that any of that excuses her bad behaviour. It is my personal wish, that as a woman who also has fifteen extra years of experience of life and people, that Charlie’s views and behaviour has changed.
And how I hope she is happy, with a good life.
I want to add, that I hope her, now hopefully grown daughter, is happy, with a good life.
I hope neither of them are affected, or haunted, by the life choices other people made for them, when both their life’s were only just beginning.
I also want to thank her, not only for her friendship, but her ability to see me as a person, and a person worth being friends with, when all the people controlling her, and surrounding us, didn’t, including the woman who called herself my best friend. As I now understand that Charlie wasn’t just my real best friend our of every member of the penthouse crew, she was my only real friends out of them.
Week starting
Monday, 14 March 2022
Plan
Days – 3
Total miles – 19.944
Total miles run– 4.4874
Total miles to walk – 15. 4566
Done
Days – 2
Total miles – 13.296
Total miles run – 2.9916
Total miles walked– 10.3044
Comparison
-1 day
-6.648 total miles
-1.4958 miles run
-5.1522 miles walked
Week starting
Wednesday, 14 March 2022
Planned
Monday – rest day
Tuesday –-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap, walking
Wednesday –rest day
Thursday –-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap, walking
Friday – rest day
Saturday –-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap, walking
Sunday – rest day
Done
Monday – rest day
Tuesday – No run
Wednesday – No run- rain
Thursday –-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap, walking
Friday – rest day
Saturday –-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap, walking
Sunday – rest day
Monday, 14th March 2022
No run.
No notes.
Tuesday, 15 March 2022
Wanted to go running, but couldn’t, as my terrible disorganisation meant I had no clean running leggings.
Wednesday 16th of March 2022
No run today, because it was raining.
Thursday 17th of March 2022
-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap, walking
Friday 18th of March 2022
Rest day
Saturday, 19th March 2022
-3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 3 minutes 30 seconds walking
-1 lap, walking
Sunday, 20th March 2022
Rest day
Week starting
Monday, 14th March 2022
– Wednesday’s writing journals = 5
– Wednesday’s writing schedules = 5
– Wednesday’s overviews = 5
– Commonly confused words = 2
– Word definitions = 8
–Words do you could use instead of =18
–Friday’s running journals = 4
–Friday’s running schedule = 4
–Friday’s running overview = 4
–Friday running outtakes = 1
– Monthly running plan =1
– Sunday blog posts = 1
Week starting
Monday, 14 March 2022
⁃ Owed from last week =0
⁃ Planned hours for this week = 15 hours
⁃ Total hours to do this week = 15 hours
⁃ Extra hours done = 9 hours 3 minutes
⁃ Total done = 24 hours 3 minutes
Week starting
Monday, 14 March 2022
Planned
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Done
Monday – 4 hours
Tuesday – 4hours
Wednesday –1 hour
Thursday – 3 hours 23 minutes
Friday – 4 hours 4 minutes
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – 7 hours 27 minutes
Monday, 14th March 2022
On Monday I wrote for 4 hours, split into 2, 2 hour time slots.
I finished,
– Wednesdays writing journal, schedule, and overview.
– 1 commonly confused words post
– 3 words definition posts
– 6 words you could use instead of posts
– Friday’s running journal, schedule, and overview
– Running outtakes post
– Marches running plan.
Tuesday, 15th March 2022
4 hours of writing done today.
Wednesday, 16th March 2022
Only 1 hour of writing done.
Thursday, 17th March 2022
On Thursday I write for 3 hours 23 minutes.
I finish
-1 Sunday blog post
Friday, 18th March 2022
4 hours 4 minutes of writing done.
Saturday, 19th March 2022
Saturdays notes say I took it as a rest day.
Sunday, 20th March 2022
In total I did 7 hours 27 minutes of writing today, because I was behind.
I felt absolutely destroyed both physically and mentally afterwards.
I finished
– 4 Wednesday journal entries, schedules, and overviews.
– 1 commonly confused words
– 5 word definitions
– 12 words you could use instead of
– 3 running journal schedules
“I knew about it all along. So did Carol. But, both May and Fee swore us to secrecy,” Amy confessed.
It was later the same night that the argument that ended the penthouse crew had taken place, and Amy had just finished explaining to me how she had known for months that May and her family took part in foxhunting at least once a year, and that Fee would be joining them, for here first time fox hunting, this year.
May and her whole family wrote letters to each other.
Fee had found one of these letters, which talked about an up coming fox hunting trip, out in the open on May’s desk, one weekend day when the four of them were sat in Mays room.
How the argument erupted that night, I still don’t know.
But Carol had decided I was to blame, because the meeting it happened at was about me.
Sam, Emma, and Charlie had all been as equally disgusted at May and Fee as I had.
I had gone to Amy’s room to confront her about betraying me, not only by luring me to that bizarre meeting, so that I could be public on shit on by our other “friends,” but also for telling everybody my private business.
“You can’t not tell one of your friends, that one of your other friends has fallen out with them,” Amy had insisted defensively, as though I was the one who was in the wrong.
Whose best friend was she?
Best. Friend. Words Amy threw around. Not me
“This is my best friend,” she would beam when she introduced me to her other friends.
With hindsight, it feels as though she was showing me off. None of my ex boyfriends have paraded me around the way Amy did.
“Your Rachel?” They would respond excitedly. “We’ve heard all about you. We’ve been dying to meet you. Amy said you were very beautiful, but we didn’t think you would be this beautiful. Amy has also told us you’re funny. I bet you’re hilarious. Amy has also told us you’re a lot of fun. I bet you are just the best time.”
It amazed me that Amy could keep a straight face when she referred to May as a friend in front of me. After all, she talked a lot of shit about May in front of me.
“She’s ugly.”
“She’s talentless.”
“She’s annoying.”
“She’s not ugly. She just sort of has crocodile eyes and a false looking smile. She can’t help that,” I defended May.
When May smiled, it really was disturbing. She appeared to be thinking cruel thoughts.
There are creepy pasta stories I have heard, where the entire plot revolves around a smile less creepy sounding than Mays.
“She’s not talentless,” I disagreed.
She wasn’t.
She once wove a functional belt out of just paper.
“She is really annoying,” I agreed.
She once done a big shop, then spent the entire week complaining that she had to eat all the fresh, expensive food she had bought. On the days the rest of us ordered takeaway during that week, she scowled, and huffed and puffed as she watched us all eat.
Why had Amy been so determined to keep the secrets of a person she apparently couldn’t stand, yet be so eager to reveal the secrets of the person she called her best friend?
What other secrets of mine had she told people?
What secrets of others was she keeping?
I’d have bet money there was more.
“Carol knew! Can you believe that? What a hypocrite,” Amy had diverted the conversation from her behaviour to carols.
I shouldn’t have been able to believe it. Carol had been both vegetarian and anti-blood sport for almost as long as I had. But, I could believe it. She was also cringe inducingly needy when it came to her very obvious, and strange, desire to be friends with May and Fee, who both blatantly could not stand her.
I’d have bet money that Carol had begged to go fox hunting with them, and had been rejected.
As it turns out, I wasn’t wrong on least one of my bets. Amy did know a lot more than she had told me. In fact, both her and Charlie had been keeping secrets from me, even when I considered them to be my friends.
For a start, Amy had heard Charlie make racist comments before, which baffled me. What baffled me even more though, was Amy’s unbothered attitude about it. Both me and Charlie were white. Amy was not.
However, there was an even bigger secret that her and Charlie had been keeping from me.
“Charlie is gone,” Amy informed me, as she dropped down into the chair opposite me.
I was sat in the café at cat hill, taking a break.
“Gone where?” I bit.
“Gone home, to Basingstoke. She’s dropping out.”
“Am I supposed to care?” I enquired flatly.
“Stop it Rach. Don’t be like that. Charlie is your friend. You’ll realise that, and regret your behaviour, sooner rather than later.”
“Apparently, I won’t get a chance to regret anything involving my behaviour and Charlie, because she’s gone.”
“You have to help me convince her to come back. I know she’ll come back if you ask her to, if she know she has people who love, and will support, her,” Amy continued, ignoring my disinterest.
Since the penthouse crew imploded, it was just Charlie and Amy, and me and Amy.
“No,” I refused bluntly.
“Come on Rach. Please. You can’t let her throw her education away over this,” Amy’s pleas grew so loud that several other students at tables near by turned to see what was going on at ours.
“What education? Charlie hasn’t been to a class or lecture in weeks,” I wasn’t Charlies mother, if she wanted to throw her education away that was none of my business.
“That’s because she wanted to leave weeks ago, when she found out, but I convinced her to stay. I have been convincing her to stay, until he showed up this morning, demanding she drop out and move back home.”
I knew the he Amy was referring to by the tone of her voice. She meant Charlie’s boyfriend.
“Amy, is Charlie sick?” I finally stopped texting and put my phone down on the table, giving Amy my full attention.
“No,” Amy dropped her head into her hands dramitically. “It’s much worse than that. Charlie is pregnant”
“We want to talk to you about the problems you’re causing,” Charlie notified me, as I sat down on her room floor.
It was, excluding this weird meeting Amy had brought me to, telling me only that there was an “important third floor meeting,” that I need to attend, but refusing to reveal any more, including what the meeting was about, a normal weekday evening, following a normal weekday, and a quiet few weeks where my possibly problematic drunk antics were concerned. I had been tremendously good for any student, never mind me, since the incident where the freezer ended up in the bath.
“Why? What have I done now?” I wondered nervously.
“You’ve fallen out with three of us, for absolutely no reason,” Sam accused aggressively.
If I hadn’t been feeling so emotionally raw over the few days prior to this meeting, and wasn’t unusually emotionally numb on that particular day, I would have laughed hysterically at Sams absurd remark.
As it was though, my falling out with both May and Charlie, as well as my “break up,” with David, had all happens incredibly close to each other, and this meeting appeared to be the result.
Saying I was emotionally raw, is actually as much of an understatement, as Amy saying this was a third floor meeting, had been an overstatement. There was just the penthouse crew, along with Sam and Emma present.
Me and May had never really been friends with each other to begin with. It had been obvious since the formation of the penthouse crew that May and Fee were barely tolerating me, as they made no effort to hide this. However, there had been no official falling out between us, I had simply started to distance myself from her, and only Amy knew this was the case, and why. This was something that I had discussed in private with Amy, meaning that she had betrayed me by making everybody else aware of what was occurring.
Distancing myself from her, was probably how I would have also dealt with the Charlie being a racist situation, if of course she hadn’t fallen out with me first.
“Don’t speak to me ever again,” She had called after me, each word dripping with manic glee, on the night I had learned that she was racist and confronted her about it.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on,” I had replied, and I meant it.
Charlie on the other hand, hadn’t meant it, and had complained constantly since, that I have fallen out with her, because I refused to act like the incident never occurred, or discuss the possibility of reconciliation.
Everybody had taken Charlie side (as though there was a side to take, which in my opinion there wasn’t, friendships end, to me that doesn’t mean it should affect either sides relationships with mutual friends) because they couldn’t understand why her racist behaviour towards somebody who wasn’t me, should affect my relationship with her.
Instead of laughing hysterically, I replied calmly and flatly, “You came out of your room not to help me, but to scream at me for disturbing you, while I was attempting to defend myself from a guy who was assaulting me. Even worse, you sent a gang of men, who you knew intended to assault me, to my room. The real mystery here isn’t why I am no longer making the effort to be your friend, it’s why I ever made an effort in the first place. Honestly, I find this entire meeting bizarre. Which one of you invited Sam and Emma? And why did you two even come? You two hate the penthouse crew, and the penthouse crew hate you. I know this, because both of your two little groups have talked shit to me about each other. Also, you two,” I waved my finger between Charlie and Amy. “Have talked so much shit about May, Fee, and even Carol, that I don’t understand why either of you care that I am no longer friends with May–” at this point, my mobile phone began to ring interrupting me.
“I’m going to answer that,” I told them defiantly, standing up, and going to the privacy of my own room, to speak to my mum, sure that I wouldn’t be returning to the meeting afterwards.
However, I had barely called my mum back, and uttered a greeting when the shouting started.
It was so loud, that I could hear it from five doors down, and through the fire door. I could even make out who was shouting, it was Sam, Emma, and Charlie, although I couldn’t make out what it was they were shouting.
Confused and curious, I told my mum that I would call her back later, and returned to Charlies room, where I watched what was unfolding inside, from outside her door.
By the time I arrived, Fee was screaming back at the three other women.
While May was cowering, and sobbing, in the corner, as though somebody had physically attacked her.
Nobody had, or did.
The argument was so heated, that even when I was standing in the doorway of the room it was happening in, I wasn’t able to decipher what those involved were shouting at each other, and what had caused the explosive verbal fight.
“Look what you’ve done,” Carol spat at me when she saw me.
“How’s this my fault?” I asked, but it wasn’t really a question, although my tone was still flat, it had I don’t fuck with me edge to it, which I suppose is really the message I was trying to convey.
None of this was my fault.
“May and Fee have a foxhunting trip planned,” Amy added, like that explained how the argument was my fault.
This news hit me hard, and I suddenly felt physically sick. I have been a vegetarian since I was a very young child, and anti-blood sports, such as foxhunting and horseracing for just as long. How had I been friends with people who were capable of considering such awful cruelty and violence against animals? I felt so ashamed and disappointed in myself.
Beyond caring if any of these people ever spoke to me again, I requested that Amy do me a favour, and tell Fee, when she stopped screaming, that I was done with her too.
That was the end of my loose friendship with fee.
It was also the end of the penthouse crew.
Plans
Days – 3
Laps – 6
Miles total – 9.972
Miles to run-3 .324
Miles to walk – 6.648
Done
Day– 3
Laps – 9
Total miles – 14.958
Total miles run- 4 .423
Total miles walked – 10.535
Comparison
3/3 days
+3 laps
+4.986 total miles
+1.099 miles run
+3.887 miles walked
Planned
Monday – Rest day
Tuesday – 2 laps of 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
Wednesday – Rest day
Thursday – 2 laps of 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
Friday – Rest day
Saturday- 2 laps of 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
Sunday Rest
Done
Monday –
Rest day
Tuesday –
– 1 lap of, 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
– 1 lap of, 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minutes walking
– 1 lap of, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking
– 1 lap walking
Wednesday-
Rest day
Thursday
– 3 laps of, 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minute walking
– 1 lap walking.
Friday-
Rest day
Saturday-
Rest day
Sunday-
– 3 laps of 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minutes walking
-1 lap walking
Monday 7th March 2022
No run.
No notes.
Tuesday 8th March 2022
– 1 lap of, 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
– 1 lap of, 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minutes walking
– 1 lap of, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking
– 1 lap walking
Wednesday, 9th March 2022
Rest day.
Thursday 10th March 2022
– 3 laps of, 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minute walking
– 1 lap walking
Friday 11th of March 2022
Rest day
Saturday 12th of March 2022
Unplanned rest day, as I’m too tired and my legs are too sore, to go running today because of Thursday’s run.
Sunday 13th of March 2022
When I start running on Sunday I really don’t think that I’m going to be able to complete a single lap, I’m still tired from Thursday’s run, and my legs feel like they are going to fall off below the knee, but once I warm up I am fine.
I complete
– 3 laps of 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minutes walking
-1 lap walking
Planned = 15 hours
Owed = 3 hours
Total = 18 hours
Done = 21 hours 4 minutes
Planned
Monday – 3 hours +1 hour
Tuesday – 3 hours +1 hour
Wednesday – 3 hours +1 hour
Thursday –3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Actually done
Monday – 2 hours
Tuesday – 2 hours 20 minutes
Wednesday – 3 hours 41 minutes
Thursday – 3 hours 44 minutes
Friday – 2 hours 40 minutes
Saturday – 5 hours 47 minutes
Sunday – 5 hours 37 minutes
Monday 7th March 2022
2 hours writing from midnight until 2 am (again). Worked on Wednesday’s post.
Tuesday 8th March 2022
2 hours 20 minutes, researching sports bra.
Wednesday 9th March 2022
Wrote for 3 hours 41 minutes.
Thursday 10th March 2022
3 hours 44 minutes writing done.
Friday 11th of March 2022
2 hours 40 minutes, worked on Sunday blog post.
Saturday 12th of March 2022
5 hours 47 minutes working on Sunday blog post.
Sunday 13th of March 2022
4 hours 37 minutes writing done. Notes are an undecipherable mess.
“I was right,” I was furious.
“What a bitch!”
“Calm down Rach. You’re making a big deal over nothing. You’re not even right about her intentions. She’s not trying to steal what you want, just because you want it. She’s been lonely. She’s flattered by his attention. She’s never had a boyfriend. She’s never even had a guy who’s been interested in her before. It’s you that’s in the wrong here.”
It was that last sentence that snapped my anger from May to Amy.
Whose idea had this entire plan been?
“Sorry? I’m in the wrong? This was your plan. You praised my choice of “bait” and you told her the lie.”
“Well, she’s in a relationship with him now. There’s nothing you can do about that,” she warned me, as though she was warning me off, as though she’d forgotten the purpose of this plan she created.
“What do you mean there’s nothing I can do about it? There’s nothing I want to do about it. Have you forgotten that I don’t actually like him? That nobody actually likes him. That we chose him because he was the most unlikable person we could think of? They, are welcome to each other. They, deserve each other. I, on the other hand, deserve better friends. That’s why I am done with her,” with that, I stormed out of Amy’s room, the same room me and her had plotted in only a week prior, to attempt to do what Amy had requested I do – calm down.
Which was actually pretty easy on this occasion, once I finally remembered that I didn’t particularly like May, and was only friends with her because she was friends with Amy, Charlie, and Carol.
Mine and May’s very loose friendship, is probably one of the reasons that it took me so long to realise what was happening. That, and my A sexuality.
Yet, my A sexuality was definitely a factor that eventually helped me realise what happening as well.
Though talk of who was attracted to who, was common among the penthouse crew members, and the members of the other friendship groups we associated with, it was very rare that I contributed to the topic. Only when I had would May contribute, and only to say how weird it was that both me and her were interested in the same person. A person that I would later find out, in every case she had never spoken to, and in most cases had never even seen, before the specific conversation where I had mentioned them, and she certainly hadn’t mentioned a single one of these people to me, or anybody else, prior to me mentioning them to her.
Then, she would find anyway she could to actively pursue these people, who never reciprocated her interest.
The man who, unknowingly, brought this issue to my attention (who I might or might not have decided I was attracted to later, but who I was never interested in pursuing anything more than a friendship with either way, and at the time May jumped on me about him, I would not have had time to decide whether I was interested in him or not) I had mentioned casually in passing rather than during one of these conversations, simply saying I had made a new friend on my course, who was an amazing painter (his talent convinced me, before I had even given painting ago, that I wasn’t a painter) and who made me laugh (although I wasn’t sure that was on purpose.)
“Might your new friend be hot?” Amy had teased
I suppose he was sort of my type, tall, dark, and adorable, but that doesn’t mean I was automatically attracted to, or interested in him, and that didn’t even matter, because before I had the chance to answer Amy’s playful question, May was demanding to know his name.
“You won’t know him,” I assured her. Although I believed this to be true, the real reason that I didn’t want to tell them was that other people we knew did know him, including Amy, and I didn’t want this throw away comment I had made, that they had blown out of proportion as soon as it left my mouth, to affect my life.
However, May persisted, telling me that she was sure she would definitely know him.
I just open my mouth to sarcastically respond that I was sure she would know him, just like she had known every person I had ever said I was attracted to or interested in, when the reality of the comments I was about to make hit me.
May was pursuing men I liked, for the sole reason that I like them.
Immediately, I shut my mouth without saying another word, and shutdown refusing to give further information on the subject or to explain why, until Amy brought it back up a few weeks later, while we were alone in her room.
“Can you just tell me his name at least? May driving me crazy over this,” she had pleaded, after returning from the kitchen. She had gone to get a glass of orange juice twenty minutes earlier.
“Whose name?” I enquired, understandably not able to recall a conversation that had taken place weeks ago.
“The guy on your course, who you like.”
“What guy on my course, who I like?”
“The painter.”
It took me a few minutes, and a lot of prompting, to remember the conversation she was referring to. “No. I never said I liked him. You did. You caused this. You can deal with it.”
“Why are you being like that?” She accused
My tone had been slightly blunt and irritable, but not unjustifiably so, “Because, you always do this. You always take the smallest comment I make about any guy and twist it to make it seem like I’m interested him in him, when I’m not, and I’m sick of it.”
“I’m just joking Rach. It’s harmless fun.”
I couldn’t believe she was really that stupid. “No Amy it’s not harmless fun. Can you really not see the danger in what you’re doing? The guys you’re talking about, or their girlfriends, could find out what you’re saying.”
“So what?”
“So what? So, their girlfriends could make my life very unpleasant. Or, one of these guys could assault me because they think I want it.”
“You’re so dramatic,” she rolled her eyes.
“Regardless of whether I’m being dramatic or not, you should respect my feelings on anything you do that directly affects me, especially if it’s just something you’re doing for a bit of fun at my expense.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just doing what all girls do. I’m the normal one. You’re the one that’s not normal. Most girls only mention a guy to their friends if they are interested in that guy. If you’re not interested in a guy, don’t mention him to us.”
“Ok, next time you ask me how my day was, and I have made friends with one of your friends, I won’t mention that if our now mutual friend has a nob,” I started. Then, for some reason even I’m not sure of, but which I think was probably due to the fact that I felt like Amy was blaming me for having to endure the consequences of her own actions, I abruptly shifted the subject back to May. “Is what May’s doing also normal? Do most women only go after men they think their friend is interested in, because they think their friend is interested in them?”
“What are you talking about?” Amy appeared genuinely confused.
“I’m talking about the exact same thing you’re talking about– May harassing you for information about a guy she very likely doesn’t know, and probably has never even seen before, so that she can pursue him, just because she thinks I like him.”
“That’s next level paranoia Rach. She’s… Probably… Just… Trying… To… Bond… With… You –” She cut herself off, as she realised that it was her May was now harassing for information, and was in fact obsessive, and bothering her. I could see it in her expression, and hear it in her voice, as it hit her bit by bit. “Let’s prove it.”
“What?” Now it was my turn to be genuinely confused.
“Let’s prove that’s what she’s doing, so we can confront her about it,” she insisted enthusiastically.
“Or we could just not tell her this stuff in the first place,” I suggested.
“No. Let’s give her a name and see if she takes the bait.”
“No,” I wasn’t a game player. People weren’t objects for my amusement. Even if that’s how Amy viewed them.
Even if that’s how May viewed them?
After all, wasn’t that the case?
Wasn’t May attempting to using men like objects to somehow prove something to either me or herself. The more I considered it (in the fraction of a second that it took me to consider it, due to my racing thoughts) the more it did seem like May was playing a very nasty game, and not just with me, but with these men who she didn’t know, had never spoken to, met, or even seen in some cases, and just began harassing out of the blue, to the extent that some of them actually investigate her themselves, and on discovering I was a mutual acquaintance, complained to me about it in order to request that I stop her, as though I had, or wanted to have, any power over her. Of course I never revealed to these men that she must have found them through me, it wasn’t something I suspected in the beginning. I also made it clear I wasn’t going to get involved, after all it didn’t seem like my business. “No. I’m not about to dangle one of our friends in front of he as “bait.””
At that Amy burst out laughing. “Oh Rach, you’re so innocent. You don’t give her the name of one of your friends, or someone you like. Imagine if your friend found out you use them as bait. Even worse, imagine if you gave her the name of someone you actually liked, and then they end up in a relationship. Also, what would that even prove? If you gave her the name of some hot, talented, funny guy, and then she went after him, all that proves is that she likes hot, talented, funny guys. No. That would be moronic. What do you do, is you give her the name of a guy who isn’t hot, and is so completely unlikable in every way that there isn’t a single person who could like him.”
“No. I’m a useless liar,” I shook my head, as though I could shake both the problem, and her solution from it.
Really, how did Amy think of these things?
“Then I’ll do it. Give me a name, and the next time she’s harassing me about the painter, I’ll tell her that you don’t even like the painter…”
“I don’t.”
“… But that you do actually like this other guy.”
We sat in silence for a minute. I was no longer considering whether or not I was going to go along with her plan, but whether there really was anybody as unlikable as the type of person Amy was describing. Then, without it crossing my mind, the name just tumbled out of my mouth, “Asbestos Michael.”
“The annoying guy, with the iPod, from your exhibition?” She laughed again.
“Yes,” I nodded, wondering what was so funny.
“Oh Rach!” She howled. “I love you. You’re an evil genius.”
Weeks 5 to 8
31 January 2022
To
27 February 2022
Unofficial running months, the same as January, so no overview, but there will be one for March.
Plan
No plan
Actually done
Nothing
Wednesday 21st of February 2023
To
Sunday 27th of February 2022
No run all week.
No notes all week
Think we had bad weather.
Hi guys,
I’m really sorry, but I somehow mixed up last weeks and this weeks running journal entries.
It’s the first time I have made a mistake like this, and I’ll try my best not to make it again.
Weeks 5 to 8
2022 started out as a complete disaster when it came to note taking, so I decided, as you have probably noticed, to strip it back to the bare minimum, then start to build it back up.
This means that at this point, the only thing that I was consistently achieving (if you don’t count forgetting to start my timer) is taking notes of how long I wrote for.
I failed on everything else, including my goal of writing for three hours a day, five days a week.
Week 1
31st March 22
Done 18 hours 27 minutes
Week 2
7th February 2022
Done 7 hours 45 minutes
Week 3
14th February 2022
Done 19 hours 11 minutes
Week 4
21st February 2022
Done 14 hours 10 minutes
Total hours done -59 hours 33 minutes
Owed -27 minutes
Planned = 15 hours
Owed = 4 hours
Total =19 hours
Done= 16 hours
Owed= 3 hours
Planned
Monday – 3 hours +1 hour
Tuesday – 3 hours +1 hour
Wednesday – 3 hours +1 hour
Thursday – 3 hours +1 hour
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Actually done
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 4 hours
Wednesday – 4 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – 0
Sunday – 0
Monday 28th February 2022
3 hours of writing done.
Tuesday 1st March 2022
2 hours 30 minutes of writing done.
Completed all Wednesday and Friday’s post.
Plus 1 hour 30 minutes trying to sort out Saturdays post.
Total hours done = 4 hours
Wednesday second of March 2022
3 hours spent working on my Saturday post. I get hardly anything done because all I have is my mobile phone and mobile data, so it takes me hours just to up load a couple of videos.
Thursday 3rd March 2020
3 hours working on dirty scrabble.
Friday 4th March 2022
3 hours writing done.
Finishing Sundays post and worked on Wednesday’s post.
Saturday 5th March 2022
No writing done.
No notes
Sunday 6th March 2022
No writing done.
No notes.
Part Two
When the metal and fabric didn’t offer us a solution, after a good five minutes of us just staring at it in silence, Lucy snapped us all out of it.
“Would you like to help me set up the final room honey?” She smiled at me, sounding as though she was offering me the last piece of cake. Lucy’s enthusiasm and passion for art was greater than anybody else’s I have ever met for anything, and it was contagious.
“Yes,” I nodded eagerly, finding it impossible not to return her smile. I would have happily helped with any of the work that needed to be done, however I didn’t know the other girls as well as I knew Lucy, who I barely knew at all at this point, so assisting her seemed like my only and best option.
One mind numbingly boring task at a time, we set up the final room of our exhibition, chatting as we worked.
I’m sure both me and Lucy believe we were speaking quietly, but the likelihood that we were is slim, being that neither of us had any volume control where our voices were concerned.
“The man drilling for asbestos is Michael. Nobody in the group likes him. He’s friends with the students who got in trouble for throwing the parties. He doesn’t actually want to be here. He wants to change to his friends group, but won’t because he wants the blown the photograph back first, even though we paid to have a blown up, and he hasn’t contributed financially yet, at all. I told him he can go if he wants, and if he pays us for it he can take the photograph even on such short notice and so close to the exhibition. If he paid me now for it I’d let him take it. The rest of us would figure something else out in time for tomorrow,” Lucy explained.
Despite the fact that I had enrolled onto fine art late , I was fully aware of the incident with the parties.
During the days I had wandered the studio trying to make friends, it was all everybody was talking about, whether they were involved in the situation or not, probably because the issue had only just been “resolved.”
A group of students had decided they were entitled to use the indoor studio as their own personal nightclub, and believed that they were much smarter than everybody else, including the staff, therefore they could get away with it.
Predictably, they were not, and they did not.
By parties, I mean not just loud music, you got that more than you didn’t in the studios, but deafeningly loud music, guests who weren’t students at cathill, or even students at all, food, and alcohol, the latter which was obviously not allowed on the premises of cathill .
Their plan, was to the claim that their parties were one night art projects.
Oddly, when they were finally formally interviewed by the staff about these parties, the excuse, “It’s an art project, that’s why we filled the entire cubicle of workspace with balloons,” flew as well as their cheap air filled balloons had.
What I think they were betting on most for them to be successful, was that after seven or eight in the evening, there would be no staff or students around to witness what they were doing. Being that they were extremely lazy though, none of them bothered to research this, as if they had they would have discovered quickly that they were wrong. There was a very good reason why the cathill campus, and the fine art studio stayed open until ten or eleven o’clock at night, which was because a lot of the students worked late.
Though it was impossible to find a tutor that late at night if you needed one, which I never understood, surely a member of staff from the fine art department should have been required to be on site while the studios were open, there were staff present, mainly the security guards, Who continued to do their patrols throughout the night.
Baffled by the attitudes of the party goers when he came across the party, who refused to follow his directions and break up their party, he reported it as a health and safety risk, which clearly it was, to the fine art staff.
Due to the staff not taking any action after the first, second, third, or fourth parties, they truly bought into their sense of entitlement and belief of having a higher intelligence level than rest of us, so when the hammer finally came down on them over a month later, they defiantly fought to save their their parties even when advised they could be expelled. They pinned up photographs of their parties in their workspaces, declaring to anyone who passed by that their art work was being censored.
Considering that one of these girls entire project at this point was literally a bunch of receipts collected from the student she lived with in her halls of residence, nobody outside of the group responsible for the parties was sympathetic to their plight, and who could blame them for not being. The rest of the students were working hard, and facing not only disruptions but defaced or destroyed work due to the parties, and now the group responsible, who had done very little work of their own, were claiming partying was their art work.
If you’re still unconvinced about just how awful this group were, I made the mistake of talking to the girl with the receipts, who spoke to me like I was something undecipherable that she had stepped in, while complaining, “It’s all that boy who died’s fault.”
“Who was the boy who died?” I asked Lucy.
She stopped what she was doing and turned to me, a sombre expression on her usually happy face. “That was such a tragedy. I thought you would have known more about it than me, considering you do photography and he was a photography student. He was setting up equipment in one of the photography studios for a shoot, when he fell off a ladder, landed wrong and died instantly. The accident is a massive problem for Middlesex, because students aren’t allowed to use ladders on site, it’s against health and safety rules, or laws, or something, so they are desperately trying to tighten up health and safety practices on all of the cathill departments to avoid being sued.”
Later that night on the tube journey home, I obsessed about the drilling, convinced I was going to get sick and die from asbestos related poisoning, and dwelled on the memory of a dead boy I had never met, and how awful it was that something as stupid as falling of a ladder and landing wrong had ended his life.
These thought kept me awake for most of that night, and many more, sometimes the asbestos still does, even though I’ve looked it up several times online and I found nothing to confirm one time exposure can kill you.
It didn’t take me and lucy long to complete setting up the final room, surprisingly by the time we were done, the other girls had transformed the large room into a maze of smaller ones, with walls made from fabric.
The asbestos driller had returned, and was watching girls half his size heft around equipment that was twice theres.
“Aren’t you going to help?” Lu suggested.
“It’d just get me into trouble,” he snarled.
Giving me a look that told me she was thinking exactly what I was, but refusing to rise to his argument bait, she instead called out to the other girls for instructions, for me and her, on what was left to do.
The response was nothing. We were almost done.
“Where did you go?” Lu addressed Michael pleasantly, obviously attempting to engage him in a normal conversation.
“To hand out leaflets. Do you have a problem with that?” He growled, as though her question had been an accusation.
“No,” she shook her hear, her curls jiggling, her smile not faltering. “I was just wondering. Are they still out there now?”
“Yes! Why are you interrogating me?” He accused.
“I’m not. I just wanted to know if I should text them. They said if we finished setting up before they went home, I should text them. They want to come and see how it looks.” I was impressed by Lucy’s ability to keep calm. Pulling out her mobile phone, she headed outside for “better signal.”
I followed her, not wanting to be left alone with this hostile man.
After sending a few quick text, lucy lit a cigarette and we waited outside in the freezing cold, on the shady little side street outside the rag factory, for the girls who had been handing out leaflets to join us.
“Get any interest?” Lucy queried as they approached us.
“Some. It’s a good job we didn’t let Michael hand out the leaflets though, he chased half the people who tried to ask us about the event away,” one girl complained.
“God forbid anybody get in the way of him flirting with [insert name],” another joked.
“Stop it,” the girl she was referring to ordered.
“You know he likes you,” the same girl teased.
“That doesn’t mean I have to put up with jokes about it. It’s not funny. He makes me uncomfortable. He’s always staring at my boobs.”
Lucy put out her cigarette, and led us inside, where the others had already finished.
We waited patiently for them to look around, desperate to go home and get some sleep before our busy weekend, so we were all beyond irritated when Michael insisted that we all had to wait with him for his dad to meet him. Only then did he actually text his dad, who had to get the tube to us from wherever he currently was, to leave.
After twenty minutes of us all waiting with him, when his dad arrived, he didn’t want to see the exhibition, and the pair of them sped up and walked a good distance in front of us to the same tube station as we were.
“His dad dropped him off the rag factory,” one girl whispered.
“Like in a car?” Another requested clarification.
“No, like how he’s walking him the tube station now like a child.”
“How old is he?” I wondered.
“Our age,” the same girl informed me.
“That’s so weird,” I observed.
“He’s so weird,” she observed.
That made us all laugh, which earned us dirty looks from the two men.
Outside the train station, Lucy said goodbye to everybody, as she wanted a cigarette before catching her train.
I hung back as the others disappeared inside.
“Thank you,” I said for the millionth time. “I’m really grateful that you let me be part of this.”
“You’re welcome. It’s not a problem. We are happy to have you,” She leaned in embracing me.
I reciprocated. If hadn’t been for the asbestos, I would have enjoyed the night and her company.
That’s when I knew that I had found my course in fine art, and my people in lucy.
Hi guys, I just wanted to address the fact that for the last two weeks I’ve gone off topic and done to small mini guides for beginners. I will be returning to my planned posts about running clothes hopefully in the next couple of weeks, before moving on to more in depth guides on the topics covered in these mini posts, and much more, as I do my research.
The reason I’ve gone slightly off topic, is because I work a month a head on my journals but not my guides, and so as my blog has caught up to my first offical week of running and, the weather is improving here in the UK, meaning more people might be consisering taking up running. I just wanted to put put a couple of guides based on my own experience last year, to hopefully help people realise they need to take health and safety seriously when starting a new running routine and encourage a more gradual, relaxed and hopefully enjoyable experience for beginners.
Plans
Days – 4
Laps – 8
Miles – 13.296
Miles to run– 4.432
Miles to walk – 8.864
Done
Days – 2
Laps – (estimated – 7)
Miles – (estimated – 11.634)
Miles run – (estimated – 3.5179)
Miles walked – (estimated – 8.1161)
comparison
-1 day
-1 lap
-1.662 miles
-0.915 miles run
– 0.748 miles walked
Planned
Monday – 2 laps of, 1minute running, 2 minute walking
Tuesday – rest day
Wednesday – 2 laps, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking
Thursday – rest day
Friday – two laps of one minute running, two minutes walking
Saturday rest day
Sunday – 2 laps of 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
Done
Monday – No run
Tuesday – 2 laps of 1minute running, 2 minutes walking
Wednesday –Rest day
Thursday – no run
Friday – (laps unknown, but at the very least it would’ve been 2, so that’s what I’ll count) of 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – 1 lap of, 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
-1 1/2 laps of one minute running 3 1/2 minutes walking
-1/2 a lap of walking
Monday, 28 February 2022
Monday is my first official running day of 2022, yet I don’t go for my run, and I make no notes.
Tuesday, 1 March 2022
Today I was really struggling on my run, so I wasn’t in the mood for the rude idiots I encountered, both of who were walking dogs.
I had only just started my run, when a woman let a huge dog, that was bigger than me, run out of the dog park, across a road, and jump on me from the back right hand side. Honestly, I have no idea how it didn’t knock me over.
Then not even half a lap later, a man let his two shits shitzus on leads dart out in front of me almost tripping me with their leads.
I completed – 2 laps of, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking
Wednesday, 2 March 2022
Rest day.
Thursday 3 March 2022
No run.
No notes.
Friday, 4 March 2022
Another run in the dark.
I completed- an unknown amount of laps, because I forgot to note them, of 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking.
Saturday, 5 March 2022
Rest day.
Sunday, 6 March 2022
Almost hit by bike.
I completed-
⁃ lap of 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
-1 1/2 laps of 1 1/2 minute runnings 3 1/2 minutes walking
-1/2 lap of walking
Planned = 15 hours
Owed = 3 hours 4 minutes
Total = 8 hours 4 minutes
Done = 14 hours 10 minutes
owed (rounded off) =4 hours
Planned
Monday – 3 hours +37 minutes
Tuesday – 3 hours +37 minutes
Wednesdays – 3 hours +87 minutes
Thursday – 3 hours +37 minutes
Friday – 3 hours +37 minutes
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Actually done
Monday – 4 hours
Tuesday – 0
Wednesday – 2 hours 10 minutes
Thursday – rest day
Friday – rest day
Saturday – 3 hours
Sunday – 5 hours
Monday 21st of February 2022
4 hours.
Worked on Wednesday’s blog post.
Tuesday 22nd of February 2022
No writing.
No notes.
Wednesday 23rd of February 2022
Wrote for 2 hours 10 minutes
Thursday 24th of February 2022
First of 2 rest days, as I was mentally and physically worn out from writing.
Friday 25th of February 2022
Second rest day
Saturday 22nd of February 2022.
3 hours
Worked on Wednesday’s post.
Sunday 27th of February 2022
When I can’t sleep on Saturday night/Sunday morning, I spent 2 hours writing.
During Sunday I write for another 3 hours, working on both Wednesday and Fridays blog post.
Part One
“Sorry I had to get your money upfront. Half the people in our group still haven’t contributed financially,” Lucy apologised to me, as I handed her my money.”
Later, I would learn that the same people hadn’t contributed plan wise, or in any other way either. Only then did I appreciate the genius of lucy requesting my financial contribution before I could join her exhibition. Maybe she really just needed to claw back any of the money she had to pay upfront when booking us our two rooms at the rag factory. The group had researched and worked out how much money the exhibition would cost in total early on, then split the amount evenly between each member. Due to the venue being Lucy’s idea, she had been the one to make enquiries about the price to rent space there, so when everybody agreed that they should use the venue, Lucy had been the one to book the rooms. In order to secure them, she had to make the payment for them there and then. As what money had been paid for the event trickled in, it had immediately gone back out on equipment, supplies, et cetera. Regardless of whether her requesting my contribution upfront had been for her benefit or mine, it meant that nobody could dispute me joining the group, as I had already contributed more before I actually joined than some of the members who had been part of the group since day one.
However, it wasn’t until we arrived at the rag factory, on the night we set up our exhibition, that I realise just how out of pocket lucy probably was. There were at least ten of us there that night, and Lucy told me this wasn’t even all of us. A couple of members had volunteered to hand out leaflets all week and weekend, so unless anybody else wanted to swap jobs with them, they weren’t required to be at the rag factory at all. Some members just didn’t show up, and didn’t give any excuses as to why.
Apart from one man, our entire group, including the advertisers and no shows, were all women.
When Lu had described their plan to me, on the day she invited me to join, which was the same day I paid my money, I couldn’t see how two rooms would be enough, as it required four rooms in total.
It was an interactive exhibition, meaning that the visitors were going to make the art exhibited at it. This was because the group formed in the first week, before they knew each other and each other’s work, and they were all intelligent enough and mature enough to acknowledge exhibiting their own art wasn’t going to work out well, if at all, in this particular situation.
At the entrance, or in the first room, a member of our group would greet visitors, ask them to sign our guest book, then direct them to read the sign that explained what was going to happen. The guests could ask the member of our group any questions they had, before proceeding to the next room.
In this room, people who wanted to participate would read a written description of a photograph.
In the third room, where they would no longer be able to see the description, they would draw what they imagined the photograph looked like.
They would then be greeted by a second member of our group, who would invite them to come to display their work in the final room. In here they could view all the participants art, as well as the actual photograph, have snacks, have drinks, and chat to us and any of the visitors who were there at the same time as them.
The exhibition was taking place over three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and all group members not handing out leaflets were supposed to be at the rag factory on all three days, from when we opened early in the morning, to when we closed late at night,. Unsurprisingly, those who no showed to set up, also no showed on every other day.
On entering our space, I still couldn’t see how we were going to make their plan a reality.
The first room was a squat L shaped room. The second was a smaller square room inside it, therefore the reason the larger room was an L shape rather than a square.
Our host, who was a middle aged man, met us at the entrance and brought us inside. He waited patiently as members of our group dragged in equipment and supplies; metal poles, large sheets of cheap white fabric, a huge version of the photograph which they had blown up, easels, signs, art tools, sketch paper, et cetera; before he gathered us all, to tell us everything we need to know about exhibiting there. There were only two very simple and fair no rules-
1. No going in any other parts of the building, unless invited in by the people renting those spaces.
2. No drilling into any walls. There was asbestos in them .
As soon as our host left, the only boy in our group pulled out a drill and began to drill into the far wall.
“What the fuck?” One girl gasped in horror.
“Is he serious?” another complained, as though she couldn’t believe how stupid he was being.”
“Stop drilling,” a third shouted loudly over the whirring of the mechanics, and the boring of the metal into the wall.
Dust was flying through the air like snow.
When he ignored her, several of us shouted with her, until all of us were shouting over the noise at him to stop it.
Stopping the drill, he turned to us and snottily demanded to know how we were going to set up the rooms without drilling.
“In anyway that doesn’t give us, or anybody else, asbestos poisoning,” someone behind me answered.
All the girls laughed.
The boy did not. His face flushed red. He might as well have been exhaling smoke, considering how obvious it was that he was angry at us. Though he didn’t express his rage verbally, he did express it, he did this by storming out of the building, like a child having a tantrum because we had stopped him playing with his toy.
“What a prick,” the woman who had made the offending common sighed. “I tried to convince him that none of us would be upset or angry if he wanted to leave to be part of his friends exhibition. I was convinced I sounded sincere, but he saw through it and said he had contributed more to our project than anybody else had, then threatened to withdraw his contributions. It was just after we had that hideous photograph blown up, so I didn’t press the issue.”
“You should’ve let him take his contribution –” somebody else started.
But another girl cut in “He was probably pissed off because I did the same thing while it was being blown up.”
“I did it before that,” A third confessed.
Then silence swept across the room, and we all turned to stare at the metal poles stacked on the floor, as though we were waiting for them to speak and suggest a solution for how we going to use them to achieve our plans.
It was Lucy who invited me to join the group exhibition I actually took part in.
Lucy. The stories I could tell you about lucy could fill a book on their own. These are her stories. Stories I will never tell.
Lucy. The stories we have made together could fill another book. Good and bad. Happy and sad. These are our stories. Some of them I might tell. Others I will tell.
Lu. One of the three people that I still occasionally speak to from university. Once there were four. I wish we spoke more.
Lu. One of the handful of people I can say I truly miss. One of the handful of people I can truly say was/is my friend. One of the handful of people whose lack of presence in my life truly makes life worse.
Despite how importantly Lu became to me, I can’t recall how I met her, or how she came to invite me into her group. All I have are vague recollections of our conversation.
Of Lucy, with her big glasses, her beautiful big curly hair, and her even bigger personality, pulling deeply on her cigarette in between words.
“Are you sure I won’t be imposing?” I really did want to accept her offer, I was so desperate to get out of the group I was in, and equally as afraid that they would kick me out, but I was also worried that I would encounter the same problems if I joined her group. Especially because Lucy’s invitation felt cold. She was inviting me in, but at the same time she was keeping me at arms length.
Now I know Lu, I know that this was definitely the case, but it’s one of the reasons I love her so much as well. She is welcoming to anyone and everyone, but she gets to know you before she decides whether she trust you or not. She will listen to what people say about you and take a note, but she reserves judgement of you until she can make her own.
Unbeknownst to me, she was friends with every single person in my group, yet she listen to my problem, listen to me complain about the treatment I was receiving, and didn’t say a word about how they were her friends, or to defend them or their behaviour, instead she offered me a place in her group. But not in her life. At least not yet.
Lucy is how I wish everybody was, in this respect.
“There’s nothing to impose on,” She breathed out a plumber smoke, barely tapped her cigarette knocking half the length of it in ash off its end, then brought it to her lips again.
“I don’t have a piece,” I had wasted weeks in my current group, and now I really didn’t have time to make a piece of art specially for an exhibition.
“You don’t need one,” she stubbed her cigarette out.
“That’s what my group said,” we entered the main cat hill building and began walking the short distance to the indoor fine art studios.
“I’m going to need your money by the end of the week.”
“Of course,” I nodded trying to hide the building stress from my face and voice. It was very close to Christmas, meaning what little money I had gotten in student loans for the term was getting low, and the price of entry was the largest chunk of a hundred pounds.
They had already booked a venue, two rooms at the rag factory. “It’s the place Tracey Emin locked herself inside to work,” Lu had explained outside when our conversation began.
According to Lucy, it was worth the money we were paying to be there. People would come to our exhibition simply because it was being held at the rag factory. Regardless of their assumption, they weren’t taking any chances, they were already in the process of having leaflets made to advertise the event, which they planned to hand out along brick lane.
There was no uncertainty with this groups plans.
“When’s the next group meeting?” I enquired, one leg off the fence.
“There isn’t one. We’ve finished planning it. I’ll give you the date and time, to meet us to set up when you give me your money.”
That was it. I took the plunge.
“Thank you. Is there anything I can do, buy, bring?”
“Just yourself,” she shook her head, sending her curls bouncing, pulled the door open, and disappeared into the studio.
Planned
No plan
Actually done
Unknown
Monday 14th February 2022
No run.
No notes
Tuesday 15th of February 2022
It’s cold and dark when I finally manage to get out for my run on Tuesday.
When I reach the 1/4 point of my first lap, the street is empty – meaning no cars or people – except for one man, who decides it’s appropriate to cheer me on as soon as I pass him.
Obviously, the burst of noise right by me frightens me, but it also leaves me shaken for the rest of the run, as it reminds me just how vulnerable I am.
The shock means that when I get home, I forget to note my laps and times.
Wednesday 16th of February 2022
Wednesday is a rest day.
Thursday 17th of February 2022
two
Sunday 20th of February 2022
No run.
No notes, but I think we had bad weather these days.
Planned hours = 15 hours
Hours owed from last week = 7 hours 15 minutes
Total to do = 22 hours 15 minutes
Done = 19 hours 11 minutes
Hours owed = 4 hours 4 minutes
Planned
Monday – 3 hours +1 hour 27 minutes
Tuesday – 3 hours +1 hour 27 minutes
Wednesday – 3hours +1 hour 27 minutes
Thursday – 3 hours +1 hour 27 minutes
Friday – 3 hours +1 hour 27 minutes
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Actually done
One day – 0
Tuesday – 4 hours
Wednesday – 4 hours
Thursday – 1 hour 30 minutes
Friday – 0
Saturday – 4 hours
Sunday – 5 hours
Monday 14 February 2022
No writing done.
No notes as to why.
Tuesday 15 February 2022
On Tuesday I spent 4 hours, writing Wednesday’s post.
I’m still forgetting to set my timer when I start writing, or after breaks. This isn’t just frustrating because it means I don’t know how much writing I have done towards my daily, and weekly, goals, it’s frustrating because I am trying to keep track of how much time each post takes me, so I have a better idea of how much writing is actually required to complete my weekly writing goals.
Wednesday 16th February 2022
4 hours 9 minutes writing. Worked on Wednesday’s post.
Thursday 17th of February 2022
Time spent writing recorded, when I actually remembered to set my timer, is 1 hour 31 minutes. I worked on Fridays Post.
Friday 18th of February 2022
No writing done.
No notes.
Saturday 19th February 2022
4 hours writing.
worked on Sunday blog post.
Sunday 20th of February 2022
Sundays notes are a mess, so I can’t say what I worked on, just that I wrote for 5 hours 31 minutes.
“What’s going to happen if I can’t find a group, or make a piece to exhibit in time?” I enquired. It was the day I enrolled on fine art, and my new tutor had just explained the second project to me, the group project, which was to plan and hold a group exhibition by the time we broke up for the December holidays.
“Those aren’t options,” she had informed me sternly but not unkindly, as though she suspected that might be my intention rather than my worry.
I wish by this point somebody had made me aware of what is possibly the single most important piece of information that every student should have been made aware of at their induction, the only information I could have made the entire first third of that academic year less stressful, especially when you consider that I changed course twice, information that had been given to all the fine arts students at their induction, but none of the fashion students to ours, which was that none of our first years work counted towards our final grade. I would be in my last third of that academic year when several people eventually made me aware of this. It’s not that I would have worked any less hard if I had known, but it may have eased the stress I felt about that group project.
Now you understand why during those first few days as a fine art student, while I was unable to progress with my desire lines project, I took advantage of my free time by making it my business to talk to the other students. I’d have happily hid away in that secluded little square of studio space if it had been an option, but it wasn’t.
If I had to guess, I’d guess that it was Tina who invited me to be a part of the group that was made up entirely of “mature students”, even though I wasn’t one, this is because despite how things played out, I still liked and spoke to Tina afterwards, and all the way up until we graduated, but the truth is that I don’t actually recall who invited me to be part of that group. I could have easily come to like Tina as a result of being part of it, I just doubt it.
Like the others, Tina was a mature student, so she seemed much older than the rest of us, and she was the youngest member of the group before I joined it. Again, I would have to guess how old she was, how old any of them were, I’s guess she was around forty, if not slight younger. She had married and had children, and now not only were those children teenagers, meaning they were at school all day, her family were financially stable enough, due to her husbands job, that she could return to education.
Tina’s work interested me, though it didn’t necessarily inspire me, it certainly made me realise that the only limits to what we could make on this course were the limits we imposed on ourselves, and that was exciting to me.
Think random shapes and patterns, lots of free and loose styles, and you probably still aren’t close to imagining the art Tina created.
Realism in all, or any of its forms, never interested me. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I loved fashion, we’re actively encouraged to break things down, then use the pieces that were made to build something new.
Then, and still now, I have no desire to be a technical artist, to observe and copy.
My art is as much about emotion, self expression, creativity and experimentation, as it is about observe and comment, or experience and comment.
There was six original members in that group, but I only remember three of them, including Tina.
There was Ollie, a man who appeared to be in his fifties, and a woman whose name I don’t recall, who must have been in her sixties, she was the oldest member of the group.
Her and Ollie were clearly in charge, and they became my biggest problem.
They made it clear from the second I arrived at my first group meeting with the group that I wasn’t welcome, and by the end of the meeting the atmosphere suggested I wasn’t welcome at all where any of them were concerned.
Initially, I thought that maybe they were unhappy that they had planned the entire exhibition and I just wondered in at the last minute and contributed nothing, or that there were concerns among them that my piece wouldn’t fit in with their work, or the theme, or would somehow ruin their exhibition, but those thoughts were rapidly disproven and by the end of the meeting I had decided the opposite was true, which was that they didn’t want me coming in and attempting to throw my weight around or making changes.
However, there was one good thing about being a part of this particular group, I didn’t need to make a piece of work prior to the exhibition.
Though the reason for that seemed to be a problem in itself.
The reason that I didn’t need to make a piece of work prior to the event, was because the work for it was going to be made while the event was taking place.
“That’s a really good idea,” I commented, as it was for an event that they had to start planning as soon as they started the course, before they had begun making their own work for their first projects, or knew each other and each other’s work. It was even better for me due to the fact that I had enrolled late, as it alleviated my stress about making a piece in time. It was also as close to the truth as I could get without lying, being that I already knew the reason for this being the case.
If you know me, you know I won’t and can’t lie. Though this didn’t originate as a morals issue, it is definitely become one as I have gotten older. I learnt as a toddler that I wasn’t good at lying, I doubt any toddler are, but my delivery wasn’t good, I had physical tells, and I couldn’t distinguish between an obviously impossible lie and a plausible lie. My mother taught me never to lie, not necessarily as it was morally wrong, but because the truth will always surface in the end. As I got older, and struggled unbeknownst to me due to my severe racing and disorganised thoughts, it became obvious to me that I couldn’t keep a lie straight in my own mind, or not slipup. I had enough problems keeping how things actually occurred straight in my own mind if I had to recount of them, and it could take me several attempts to fully tell somebody the simplest story. However, by this point in my life, honestly had become a morals issue for me. Telling the truth is always best, no matter how uncomfortable it is to be involved in the process of giving or receiving an unwanted truth, and no matter how much it might initially hurt or upset the receiver, in the long run telling the truth is always best for everyone involved.
It became apparent that there were several blatant problems with their plan. The biggest of which was this – it wasn’t an exhibition. The plan was to set up in Brick Lane, on the street, and offer to draw peoples portraits for free, then gift the subjects to piece/pieces of work.
Having read the brief, I had to ask whether any of them had fully explain this idea to a tutor.
The answer was a hostile no.
Thinking on my feet, while trying not to force my solution onto the group as a whole for how I could spin this into an exhibition for at least myself and my own work, I requested that I be able to buy and bring something suitable to display the work I made during the event on, while event was taking place.
“Nobody is going to sit for you, for any of us for free. The portrait is the subject payment,” the oldest lady chided me, in a tone that suggested I was stupid.
Then, I agreed with her on that much. Now, I think if there is anywhere on this planet people would volunteer to sit for an artist for free it would be brick Lane.
Yet, even then I saw some problems with this. Who was going to sit for an artist without seeing a sample of the work beforehand.
When I pointed this out and enquired as to whether we’d all be drawn the same subject or different subjects, nobody could answer my question.
I put it to them that if we all drew the same person then we could keep a small sample of the work to display therefore making it an actual exhibition.
Immediately I was shut down, again by the oldest lady, the work was only to exist in that time and place just like the event, and therefore I couldn’t bring my camera to document the event either.
“But if you’re giving the work away, it won’t exist in just that time or place,” I pointed out.
That earned me hostile, silent glares.
Giving away all of the work alone would have been enough to make me want scrap the idea of creating work at the event before it even got off the ground if I had been involved in the planning stage. What they had planned at best could be called an event as displaying work is what makes an exhibition and exhibition, and the brief clearly stated that we were to plan and hold an exhibition. That it was am exhibition was the entire purpose of the project.
What puzzled me most about their unwillingness to admit they were failing this project, was that nobody walks onto any undergraduate degree without experience, and relevant experience at that, which proves they have the knowledge and skills needed to succeed. Every single one of these people would have taken a national diploma, foundation degree, or equivalent, in an art based or related course. They would have known how to interpret the purpose of, and follow a brief, they would have known the difference between an event and exhibition.
None of them could tell me the time, date, or location along Brick Lane where the event would be held, yet they all claimed the entire thing was already planned from start to finish.
In between the first and second meeting I would be provided with the details of the time, date, and location, and those details would change a dozen times.
To say I was frustrated by the second meeting would be a lie, my frustration frustration with the situation had come and gone and I was now indifferent.
The second meeting was much worse than the first.
The eldest lady and Ollie demanded to know what medium I would be using, then attempted to dictate to me what medium I was allowed to use based on their impression of the work I was currently creating, after which they tried to force me to draw caricatures.
“I’d rather not draw caricatures,” I had said firmly but politely when they started.
By the end of it I found myself lashing out verbally, demanding to know why they cared what medium I was using, after all there was no theme, the work was being taken home by the subject, and if they were so invested in caricatures being drawn at the event why didn’t they personally take on the task?
The argument “I caused” shut that meeting down.
The next day, the eldest lady came to have a conversation with me “On behalf of the entire group.”
“You’re not pulling your weight,” she accused
“How do you work that out?” I didn’t look up from the sketch I was working on. “I’m the only person in the group who seems to understand that we aren’t following the brief, and who has put forward a solution to fix it.”
“Oh right, and when did you propose any solution to this problem that I don’t recall you raising?” She quipped.
“When I requested that we bring something to display our work on, and that we use it to display our work, which is what an exhibition is. Remember? Then you told me off like I am a child?”
She stood up, and walked away.
At the time, I truly believed that I just wasn’t welcome in the group, and that all these things were issues with their abilities to plan an exhibition.
Now, I realise they were clue.
Maybe I should be ashamed to admit that I never realise at the time, or that I only realised fifteen years later while writing this blog post, that those things weren’t issues they were clues, but I’m not. At first I was amused, now I think it was them who were the stupid ones.
Though I can’t prove it. I’m sure that they never held their event, and that they never intended to, as there are more signs that this is the case.
Tutors complained that they couldn’t find the exhibition despite being in the right place, at the right time, on the date they were given.
“We had to change it at the last minute to the following day,” the eldest lady explained.
If student asked them how their exhibition went, they were either met with hostility, much like I had been, or by the person they were asking diverting the subject.
Which makes me wonder why I was invited into the group. Where only Ollie and the eldest woman aware that it was never going to happen? Had they forced or convinced everybody else to pretend it had happened at the last minute, or after it just didn’t happen? Or were they the only group members who correctly identified that I wouldn’t or couldn’t lie?
I promised to write this last week, I wanted to write it 2-3 weeks ago, but I’ve been busy.
Originally, I really didn’t know what my March plan was going to be, as I thought I could figure it out based on how well my last runs in February went, but then we had some bad storms.
Last week, I decided it would be to be completing 3 to 2 laps, of 1 minute running 2 minutes walking, 3 to 4 times a week, by the end of march.
Yesterday, I decided it’s going to be to complete 3 laps of, 1 minute 30 seconds running and 3 minutes 30 seconds of walking, plus one full lap of walking 3 times a week by the end of march.
My aim is to get out regularly again, and start putting in the miles, while hopefully building up my stamina to a level that starts to get me back to the 60% run 40% walk I was comfortable at last year quickly, so I can pushing myself again.
Laps = 6
Run percentage = 33%
Walk percentage = 66%
Total miles = 9.972
Total miles run = 3.29076
Total miles walked = 6.68124
Plan
No plan
Monday – 2 laps of, 1 minute running 2 minute walking
Done
Tuesday – Rest day
Wednesday – 2 laps, of 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
Thursday – rest day
Friday – 2 laps of, 1 minute running 2 minutes walking
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Monday, 7 February 2022
Mondays run isn’t great, not only does it feel pointless because the weather forecast predicts snow next Monday which will force me to take another break, it has rained today so the floor is soaking and slippy.
Plus, I keep getting really bad pains in my chest.
I complete, 2 laps of, 1 minute running 2 minutes walking.
Tuesday 8 February 2022
Tuesday is a rest day.
Wednesday 9 February 2022
Despite it being freezing out on Wednesday, I complete, 2 laps, 1 minute running 2 minutes walking.
Thursday, 10 February 2022
Thursday is a rest day.
Friday 11 February 2022
On Friday I complete, 2 laps of one minute 2 minutes walking.
Saturday, 12 February 2022
Saturdays is a rest day.
Sunday 13 February 2022
Sunday is a rest day.
Planned hours for this week – 15 hours
Hours owed from last week – 0
Total – 15 hours
Done – 7 hours 45 minutes
Next week – 7 hours 15 minutes
Plan
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday- 3 hour
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Actual schedule
Monday – 1 hour 28 minutes
Tuesday – 5 hours 49 minutes
Wednesday – 30 minutes
Thursday – 0
Friday – 0
Saturday – 0
Sunday – 0
Monday 7 February 2022
When I wake up on Monday, I update all my journal notes, where I promise to slay the day.
Then I only do 1 hour 28 minutes of writing, working on my pronation outtakes blog post.
Tuesday, 8 February 2022
On Monday night/Tuesday morning I can’t sleep, as usual. I decide to be productive instead of frustratedly lying in bed trying to sleep and failing, but I don’t want to start anything that will prevent me from sleeping, so I sort out videos on my phone for the Saturday diary entries. I do this for 1 hour 28minutes.
And, I continue with it when I wake up, doing an additional 4 hours 25 minutes.
Wednesday, 9 February 2022
Wednesday is a bad day for writing, as I only do 38 minutes, during which time I work on a the first draft of a Sunday blog post.
However, it’s not as bad as Thursday 10th, Friday 11th, Saturday 12th, Sunday 13th, when although I had writing on my to do list, I crossed none of it out, or wrote any journal notes, meaning I can only assume that I did no writing on these days.
It was obvious to me from my first week as a fine art student that most of the other students in my academic year despised me, just like it had been obvious to me on my first day as a fashion student that I didn’t fit it in.
Why I was despise so immediately and intensely I couldn’t even hazard a guess at, as it didn’t feel like a group decision, it felt as though everybody had their own personal reasons for hating me, but those reasons remained a mystery to me.
Maybe it went all the way back to the day I arrived in London, when I had gone to the student union with a group of fine arts students and instantly knew they weren’t my people.
Maybe it was something to do with the fact that Beth was romantically or sexually attracted to S, so might have been jealous of our friendship.
“She spent all night following me around,” S complained, the day after an event I hadn’t attended, as I have been busy with fashion work. This was before I knew, or had even seen, Beth. “Then she leaned in and demanded that we go back to my place.”
“Urgh,” I cringed, experiencing secondhand shame on her behalf. “What did you say?”
“I laughed,” S laughed.
“So you’re not interested in her at all?” I enquired.
“No, she looks like the cartoon version of Cruella De Vil,” he was still shaking.
“How did she take it?” I couldn’t help myself.
“Not well,” he heaved.
I didn’t join in with his laughter. I felt bad for her.
Or it might have just simply been that they were all already part of their own bitchy little cliques, and didn’t want an outsider coming in and disrupting things.
Either way, if you assumed that I strolled into the studio and everybody accepted and liked me, and that’s why I stayed on the fine art course, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.
With fashion, it had felt as though I was invisible, not really there at all, and everybody was living their life around me.
With fine art it felt as though somebody had dropped a giant pink polka dotted elephant into the studio and nobody knew how to react. I was that elephant.
I’m sure if you asked them today why they had despise me they would tell you that they had good reasons, and what those reasons were, and I bet that every single one of those reasons happened at least a month after I enrolled, if not later.
There was one thing I know for a fact ruffled peoples feathers, but I feel as though that was because they had already decided they didn’t like me, as it really wasn’t an issue that was within my control, therefore it wasn’t an issue that was my fault. That was the studio Space issue.
When I enrolled none of the tutors had made me aware that the cowshed existed, but even if they had, I don’t believe that it would have made a difference, as later I would learn that every bit of space inside the cowshed had already been claimed, just as it had in the indoor studio, and I needed studio space of my own. It wasn’t an option, it was a requirement. Every fine art student needed a studio space, to work in, to display the work they were currently working on, and to do presentations and critiques. That space was also meant to be static, meaning that once you got a space you were supposed to stay there. This was so the tutors knew where to find both you and your work.
A static space is something that I never had that first year. Although all the space had been claimed, there was a lot of space that wasn’t being used for a number of reasons, yet every time I claimed one of those spaces I was instantly and aggressively forced out by somebody who insisted they had already claimed it.
This incident took place in the first studio space that I had. It was an almost completely enclosed square which felt isolated from the rest of the studio, even though it really wasn’t.
I chosen that space because despite the fact that three students appeared to have claimed it by scrawling their names on the walls in pencil, it was completely abandoned, so I didn’t think they would mind me setting up in one of the four corners. There was no work on the walls, and the space was always empty.
For my first couple of days as a fine art student, I had wondered around getting a feel for the studio and the people, who they were, what work they made, where was their space, and what spaces weren’t being used. However, whenever I tried to speak to anybody I was mostly met by cold disinterest.
Finally, with a group critique scheduled for early the next morning, I chose my space and tacked up all the work I physically had, which at that point wasn’t much, just my ghost photographs and some photograms I had made since.
The day after I had shot my shadow and ghost photographs, I had taken my SLR film to be developed professionally. I had wanted to take the shadow photographs with me when I did, but Carol had taken her camera back off me the same night she lent it to me, insisting that she would get them printed for me.
Even though this put me out both financially and time wise, I didn’t argue about it, it was her camera after all. The reason it put me off financially was because I had wanted to pick just the best photographs and have those ones printed out, but without the camera I couldn’t do that. The reason that it put me out time wise was because my photographs were never going to be my final pieces for the project, rather they were my starting point, so without them I couldn’t plan my next steps.
Bored, and anxious to do anything work wise, I had gone to the dark room on impulse one afternoon, bought a packet of the cheapest photograph paper they sold, and played around making photograms, using what I had in my pockets and bag. It seemed only slightly relevant to the project, but at least I was working on something.
On the day of the critique, I hung back, following at a distance and avoided making any comments on the others artwork, as I didn’t think I knew them or their projects well enough to do so, even though, like me, many people were using photography as a medium for this project, and being that I had taken a photography course in the past, and it was obvious they all hadn’t, I probably could have contributed a lot more than any of the others were.
When it came time for my work to be critiqued, only our tutor commented.
Afterwards, I sat at one of the tasks in my new studio space, practising an exercise our tutor I had suggested, trying to critique my own work.
How long he had been standing behind me, quietly watching me work, alone, inside the empty little square, before I felt his presence I don’t know.
He was standing so still and silent, his eyes fixed on my ghost photographs. I recognised him from my critique group. None of the work he had either displayed or presented during his turn was photography based or similar. I believe his name was George.
“Hi,” I closed my note book and stood up as I greeted him. “I’m Rachel.”
He completely ignored me, his expression unpleasant, hostile, and angry.
When he finally spoke, after what seemed like forever, his tone matched his expression.
“Did you develop those in the dark room here?” He pointed at my ghost photographs.
“No, I had those professionally developed.”
“Don’t lie!” He snapped. “I saw you in the dark room the other day.”
Feeling uneasy that he had noticed and remembered me from the darkroom which had been packed the afternoon I had been there, paired with aggressive, accusatorial behaviour, I suddenly felt extremely isolated and afraid.
Why was he so angry at me?
And what exactly was he accusing me of?
It wasn’t as though he could have believed I had stolen his work or ideas, his work had been entirely different to mine.
Honestly, I don’t know how I managed to stay so calm, patient and polite, with him, I owed him no explanation, but I did.
“I was working on those photograms in the dark room,” I tried to draw his attention to the set of photograms, but his eyes remained glued to my ghost photographs.
“If you didn’t develop them in the darkroom how did you create those effects?”
“That’s all camera work,” I informed him.
He continue to stare, again in silence, for a few of minutes, before turning and storming off.
Relieved he was gone, but shaken up by the encounter, I took my photographs down quickly, slipped them into my notebook, gathered all my things, and left, afraid that he would return later, either while I was still there, or while I wasn’t and destroy my work.
I never used the darkroom again. I never felt safe too.
“Do you know what desire lines are?” My new tutor asked me, I had just enrolled on fine art, and she was about to explain my two new work briefs.
All the first year fine art students were already halfway through two projects the day I enrolled. The only two projects they had been set since they enrolled. This was one of those two projects.
Although I was aware that I had a lot of work to catch up with, and none of the projects I had done for fashion were transferable, meaning I should have felt stressed, I actually felt like a mountain of weight been lifted off me stress wise. It hadn’t been my imagination, the fashion tutors really had been setting us an unrealistic amount of work.
“No,” I shook my head.
“You know when you see paths, that aren’t real paths, rather paths that have been worn into, say, fields, by people constantly walking over the ground in that same place, particularly when they are ignoring paths that have been built for them to use close by? They are named desire lines. They are named desire lines because they are the paths people want to walk, rather than the paths they are supposed to walk. What a beautiful name, for a beautiful concept.” Here, she paused, as though she was expecting me to respond, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to respond, so I just smiled and nodded, and she continued. “The project is about the impressions we leave. Beyond that it’s yours to interpret. Whether you choose to focus on the impression you want to leave, that you think you will leave, that you have already left, is up to you. It could even be about the impression somebody else has left…”
Tired both physically and mentally, and feeling desperately like I needed space and time alone, due to my awful morning as an illustration student, I thanked her, gathered my papers, and headed straight home, planning to think about what I wanted to do for my project later that evening.
However, plans rarely ever work out the way we expect them to. Ironically, it was that very thought, that I had as I walked home that day from Cothill to Trent Park, as I thought about how I was on my third course in less than as many months, that derailed my plan.
By the time I reached Gubby, I knew what my project was going to be about.
To put my idea simply, it was about the impressions we were going to leave on both Gubby and each other.
How much of an impression could we leave on a place that we were only going to live in for such a short period of time? Had its previous residence left any permanent impressions on it? And how much of an impression would we leave on each other, and each other’s lives?
I even knew how I wanted to begin. It was with three sets of photographs, of shadows and ghosts.
The penthouse crew were all waiting for me when I got home. It sort of felt like they ambushed me, as I hadn’t realised how late it was. They all wanted to know how my first day of illustration had gone.
“I’m fine art student now,” I answered.
None of them seem surprised. Leaving in the morning to take one course and coming back having enrolled on a different one was typical Rachel according to them, and they all agreed that fine art was so me.
Hearing the excitement, Sam and Emma came to investigate what was happening.
“Rach enrolled on fine art today,” one of the penthouse crew inform them.
“Fine art, like Gabriels course?” Either Sam or Emma clarified.
“Yep,” I confirmed, nodding.
That was enough to set the two of them off too. Immediately they began frantically texting Gabriel, who lived on the ground floor, and mikey who lived in the far quarter of our floor, next door to Carol, demanding they come to join us.
Even Jodie, who wasn’t close with any of us, wanted to hear all about my day, and my plans for my first art project.
All of them wanted to be involved when I explain my idea to them, and for the first time since our first couple of weeks at Gubby our little quarter of the third floor felt united again.
Carol offered to lend me her digital camera for the shadow photographs, as they didn’t require an SLR camera, were as my ghost photographs did. I gratefully accepted her offer, as it meant I could take all three sets that night, being that I only had a couple of reels of film.
Sam and Emma brought table lamps out into the corridor, and we set them up before turning off the overhead lights.
Then Sam, Emma, Gabriel, Mikey, and Jodie took turns posing in front of the lamps, casting shadows against the wall that I photographed.
For the second set of photographs, Sam and Mikey posed around Gubby, and I used my SLR camera to photograph them.
After which, me and Fee went outside, to the stables, the mansion, and even into the woods, to repeat the process, in a strange sort of tribute to our previous nighttime adventures together.
Later that night, once we were finished and everyone had calmed down and split off into their usual smaller groups or gone to bed, me and Amy sat alone together on her bed, me finally recounting the events of my day.
“What do you think will happen to all of us?” Amy wondered, a hint of melancholy in her voice. “Do you think we’ll all still be friends when we leave Gubby? When we graduate? In ten, twenty, or thirty years from now? Or do you think we’ll be like the people in your photographs? Just memories to each other? Ghosts in each others lives?”
“I don’t know,” I said my tone as somber as hers, because I already saw the cracks that threatened our friendships forming, that’s part of what had inspired my project. After all, the only thing any of us had in common was Gubby. So much in my life had already changed since I moved to London, and since I met these people, and though I certainly couldn’t have predicted how much would change and why, there was no way that I could have predicted any of it, I just felt it coming.
Neither of us could have predicted everything that followed.
If I had to guess, I’d guess that none of our friendship survived past graduation.
Not even the building, the only place our paths, or personal desire lines crossed, the only place we all existed at the same time, still stands. It was demolished years ago, taking with it any impressions any of its former residents had left on it, including us.
But Amy could have predicted some of it. How much I don’t know. But she certainly saw some of it coming. Whose secrets were haunting her that night I’ll never know. Mays, fees, Charlies, her own, it could have been anyone of them, or all of them.
Hello, ladies, girls, women, those of us who have Cooper’s ligaments, and those of you who have breast implants, today’s guide is for you, because today we are talking sports bras.
A quick health and safety note before we begin
If you have breast implants please speak to your surgeon or doctor about what type of sports bra you should wear and why. I am not a doctor, surgeon or personal trainer, and I don’t have and never have had breast implants, I’m just a female sexed person who is trying to get back into running, and who hopes to help others who want to get into running by sharing what I learn along the way, therefore I do not want to compromise your health and/or safety, it is important to me that I don’t.
Please also remember that, all my guides are intended as a starting point for your own research.
With that said, let’s dive in
Whether you choose to wear a sports bra or not remains your choice. Your body is yours, like with any clothing you choose to wear, or activity you choose to take part in, what sport/exercise you do, and what clothing you wear to do it, is your choice.
Personally, I love a good sports bra, and I wouldn’t attempt to do any sport/exercise without wearing one, even low impact/intensity sports. I have done exercise in my normal bra in the past when I have forgotten my sports bra, meaning I have learnt the hard way that no sports bra means no sports for me, and I would class myself as a smaller breasted woman being that I am a B cup. Without wearing one it hurts, I feel uncomfortable, and I can’t perform at all.
But, I am aware that many women don’t like wearing them for many reasons.
While I am not trying to convince or force anybody to wear one (it makes no difference to me, at the end of the day the only person you not wearing a sports bra impacts is you, it’s your body, and your life) this blog post exist to help you make an informed decision.
Although I never go into researching a guide biased, and I do always try to find a balanced opinion, more and more I find myself coming out of the research I do agreeing that the clothes we wear when we exercise does impact our bodies, our performance, and our lives. These items of clothing exist for a reason. If you are experiencing discomfort or pain while you exercise, that your bodies way of alerting you that something is wrong, or that you aren’t doing something right, and you should take notice of that because even mild discomfort could be a warning that you’re putting your health and safety at risk.
The big, and possibly unpopular question, that we need to address both in this blog post, and in our lives if we are physically active women of any type, is whether you should be wearing a sports bra when you exercise for your own health and safety.
As you know, I’m not one to shy away from the unpopular facts, which is why this is the perfect topic for me to tackle.
Sorry girls, the verdict is in, and the answer is a very definite yes.
It doesn’t matter if the activity you are doing is low impact/intensity, if you have small breasts, if you have implants, or if you’re not experiencing any discomfort or pain, everybody conducting studies, and writing articles on this topic, all agree that you should be wearing a sports bra while you exercise, even if some of them tiptoe around the subject to do it.
I promise, I really did go in hard to find a balanced opinion on this topic, more so because of my personal love of sports bras. I found only single source that appeared to offer me that at the beginning as it opened –
“If you’re not uncomfortable physically, it’s probably not going to harm you.”
…
“One workout without a bra isn’t going to make any significant changes.”
Yet, by the end of the article it was advising that if (like me) you find that you have forgotten your sports bra, and your only choice is to wear one or taking a financial hit, then you should modify your exercise on this occasion to low impact/intensity, and next time make sure that you don’t forget your sports bra.
And, no, Apparently wearing a regular bra during sport is no better than going braless.
He is a simplified answer, as I understand it, as to why you should be wearing a sports bra during exercise if you are a female sexed person.
Our breasts contain no muscle. Breasts are made entirely from glandula and fatty tissue. They are both connected to our bodies and held in place only by skin and ligaments. These ligaments, which are apparently very delicate, as is the skin on our breasts, are called Cooper’s ligaments. Both the skin on our breasts, and our coopers ligaments can be affected by gravity alone, therefore need support. They both require extra support when you are engaging in physical activity. There are also a lot of sensitive nerves in our breasts that can be affected by “aggressive” movement and activity.
What are the risks associated with not wearing a correct sports bra during exercise?
Without the correct support, regardless of how much they actually weigh, the weight of your breast will cause you to
– Bend forward
And can pull
– you
– or your head forward
it can also
– round your shoulders
(this can lead to,
– discomfort
– pain
– incorrect posture.)
Exercising without adequate breast support can cause,
– diminished performance
– poor performance
– discomfort
– soreness
– pain
– breast pain
– back pain
– neck pain
– headaches
– poor posture
– stretched skin
-stretch marks
– sagging breasts
– drooping breasts
– strain on your ligament
– stretched ligament
– back problems
– neck problem
– tissue damage
-nipple fissures
(also known as joggers nipples. The symptoms of nipple fishes include,
– discomfort
– pain in the nipple
– soreness in the nipple
– redness
– chafing
– bleeding
– scabbing).
What are the benefits of wearing an adequate sports bra?
An adequate sports bra will,
– aid your performance
– allow you to push yourself
– keep your weight well distributed
– help your breasts maintain their shape
it will also support
– your Cooper’s ligaments
– your breasts
– the skin on your breast
While preventing
– discomfort
– soreness
– pain
– sagging
– drooping
– stretch marks
– stretched skin
-stretched ligament
How do you know if a sports bra is adequate
There are two things that you need to consider when you’re choosing a sports bra.
The first is what activities you will be doing while wearing your bra.
There are three different types of impact/intensity that you can choose from, low, medium, and high.
Low to medium impact/intensity sports bras are usually compression sports bras, meaning that they are what most of use probably imagine when we think of a sports bra, they are what are disgustingly referred to as “uni boob” sports bras. They are typically cup less, and work by compressing your breasts tightly against your chest wall, therefore restricting your breasts from moving.
Low impact/intensity sports are activities such as Weight training, most yoga, and even walking.
Medium impact/intensity sports are activities such as cycling and dancing, and surprisingly includes skiing.
High impact/intensity sports bras are usually encapsulated sports bras. These have a defined cup structure, meaning their shape typically resembles a standard bra. They work by supporting each breast individually.
However, some high impact/intensity sports bras combine both encapsulated and compression methods to maximise support.
You can even get additional features you normally wouldn’t find on a sports bra on high impact/intensity sports bras, such as underwire and adjustable straps.
Despite cycling falling into the medium impact/intensity category, some biking sports such as mountain biking fall into the high impact/intensity category.
Other high impact/intensity sport includes activities such as aerobics and running.
This means that, regardless of your breast size, if you are planning on running in your sports bra you should consider investing in a high impact/intensity one.
In fact, the two activities that put the most strain on your Cooper’s ligaments are jumping and running.
When we run our breasts move in a figure eight shape, and can move up and down by up to 8 cm.
Low to medium impact/intensity sports bras Will reduce bounce, but they won’t prevent the side to side movement of our breasts as we run.
It is suggested that because we change the way we run depending on what type of sports bra we are wearing, an adequate sports bra will help us move our body in a more preferable way when we run, as it affects everything from the more obvious areas such as our arms and torso, to less obvious areas such as our pelvises.
The second thing to consider is how the sports bra fits you.
It’s estimated that 80%, or 4 out of 5, women, are wearing the wrong size bra.
Wearing a well fitted sports bra will reduce the friction caused by the fabric of your clothing rubbing against your skin, and as a result will reduce your likeliness of experiencing nipple fissures, especially if you run long distances.
If you are a D cup or above, it is recommended that you wear a high impact/intensity level bra even if you are doing low impact/intensity level sports. This is because exercise induced breast pain is five times more likely in athletes who have medium to large breasts, and the chances that you will start suffering from it increase with every year you age.
My personal advice would be to start by getting a professional bra measuring done, then go from there
Like when buying any clothing item, you need to remember that not all brands or types of bras are going to fit you even if they are your size, so you are probably going to have to try several brands and types to find the best fit.
While wearing your a sports bra there are several ways to tell if it fits you correctly and is going to provide you with enough support.
A well fitted sports bra should actually feel comfortable, and shouldn’t dig, or cut into your skin. It also shouldn’t leave gashes, or indentations, in your skin once you remove it.
If the cup of the bra has wrinkles in it, then it’s likely too big for you, as it should be smooth and comfortably snug.
Alternatively, if your breasts are spilling out of the top, sides, or cup in general, then the cup size is too small for you.
With the straps you should be able to fit one or two fingers under it at the shoulder. Any more than that and they are too big for you. This is the same for the band that goes around your torso, which should sit just below your breasts. Any underwire should be flat against your skin and shouldn’t pinch you.
Another test you can do is to jump around and wave your arms around, or do a skipping rope jumping motion for 20 – 30 seconds. This will give you a good idea as to whether your breasts are adequately supported, whether the straps are too loose, and whether it’s going to stay in place.
Lift your hands above your head. If the band rises up on you, and the bra has no adjustable straps or back enclosure that fixes the issue, then the bra is too big for you.
Sports bras with straps that cross at the back are often better at staying in place, but may not give you adequate support if you have medium or large breasts.
Other things to consider when buying a sports bra
When buying sports bras it is best to avoid bras that have been unnecessarily beautified. For example, an intricately woven strap design might look nice, but it might also affect the support, comfort, and overall practicality of the bra.
Most sports bras are made from materials that wick away sweat and keep you cool, but it’s best to check that this is the case before you by it.
Taking care of your sports bra
A sports bra will normally lasts 30 – 40 washes
However technical fabrics may become less effective with every wash as they tend to loosen.
-Washing it in cold water
and avoiding
-Fabric softener
-and bleach
will give your sports bra longer lifespan.
As heat accelerates elastic degradation, you should avoid tumble drying your sports bra, and should lay it flat to dry.
Once your sports bra begins to rub or chafe then it’s time for a new one.
Monday 31st January 2022
To
Sunday 6th February 2022
Planned
No plan
Done
Nothing done
Monday 31st January 2022
To
Sunday 6th February 2022
No running done this week
Hours owed from January – 2hours 11 minutes
Target for this week – 15 hours
Hours total for writing I need to do this week = 17 hours 11 minutes
Done = 18 hours 27 minutes
Because I made up the 2 hours and 11 minutes that I owed from January this week, I don’t need to add it to marches hours.
Planned
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday- 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – Rest day
Sunday – Rest day
Done
Monday – 3 hours 42 minutes
Tuesday – 3 hours 9 minutes
Thursday – 0
Friday – 4 hours 40 minutes
Saturday -0
Sunday – 4 hours 34 minutes
Monday 31st January 2022
On Monday, while I can’t sleep, during the early hours of the morning, I decide to do some writing.
I write for 1 hour 3 minutes, and work on my Wednesday posts.
Monday was the day that I was supposed to speak to the newspaper. They don’t call. Despite waiting all afternoon for a phone call that never happens, which still leaves me feeling extra unwell mentally, then needing to do other stuff, I do manage to fit in some writing.
I write for 2 hours 39 minutes, and work on Wednesdays blog post.
Tuesday 1st February 2022.
Though I don’t make a note of what I write on Tuesday, or how much of the 3 hours 9 minutes I spent working on each, it seems from my to do list that I worked on both Tuesday and Saturdays blog posts.
Wednesday 2nd February 2022
Wednesdays notes are strange, I have a list that simply says –
– wrote for two hours
– don’t remember
– planned Fridays blog post
-research was already done.
The, “I wrote for two hours,” is obvious. I believe the, “Research was already done,” means the research for Friday’s running guide was already done. This would make me believe that the post I planned was my running guide. However I have no idea what “I don’t remember,” means.
Thursday, the 3rd of February 2022
Either I made no entry for Thursday, or it’s missing, so I don’t know why I did no writing today, but regardless, I didn’t.
Friday, 4th February 2022
Friday is quite a good day for writing compared to the rest of this week, I work on a Sunday’s blog post for 4 hours 40 minutes.
Saturday, 5th February 2022
Saturday I continue to work on my Sunday post, however I do it in chunks, around other stuff I need to do. In total I spent 4 hours 22 minutes writing.
Sunday 6th February 2022
On Sunday I don’t journal, but I talk about Sunday when I journal the next day. I write – “It’s like I woke up yesterday and chose violence, because I killed it.”
Reflecting on my notes, I would say I was having a high episode, as although I did well on Sunday, I certainly didn’t kill it. I actually only wrote for 4 hours 34 minutes.
Two possibilities now occur to me about the night in the shower that never did before. The first is that, I never saw or heard the security guard myself. For all I know, he might not have even been chasing us. Personally, I can’t see any reason why he would have been, even if he had noticed us talking by the staircase, it’s not like we were doing anything wrong, either by being there or by talking. The second is that, if he was chasing us, then David’s reason for kissing me was probably to shut me up, so that the security guard didn’t hear me.
These two possibilities are completely at odds with each other. If the first is true, then that would mean that David manipulated the situation to kiss me, therefore he must have genuinely been interested in me. If the second is true, that must mean he had no interest in me, and manipulated me in order to resolve the situation.
Regardless of the fact that these two possibilities never occurred to me at the time, confliction about whether David was interested in me or not is what took our relationship to the next level.
To say we had a relationship in some form or another is true, this is not a case of my BPD blowing what we had out of proportion. Personally, I never believed that we had more than what we did, and I certainly never wanted more than we had, or to move any faster than we were. The best way to explain how I felt about our relationship is content.
That’s not to say that when it ended I wasn’t hurt and upset, I was, but I wasn’t hurt and upset because it ended. What hurt and upset me was the reality of the situation, how he had used me, and how he had betrayed everybody involved.
I admit that what happened paired with my illness might have caused me to become paranoid and delusional in the immediate aftermath, but at the time I would have had no reason to suspect that this was the case.
If you were hoping for some big romantic moment while we were in the shower, or somewhere else later that same night, I’m sorry to disappoint you but there wasn’t one. After the kiss, we waited in awkward silence for about five minutes, while I wondered how I had ended up there, in such a weird situation with David again, until he reached up and turned off the water. Then, I left without another word , or glance back in his direction, and headed off to bed, alone, which is where I had been going when he stopped me.
In the days that followed, I found myself replaying that kiss, replying all his visit to check on me while I was sick with freshers flu, over and over again in my mind, confused about his conflicting affection towards me, and distance from me. Did he care about me? Did I care about him?
Honestly, all these years later, I can see that it wasn’t David I was interested in, it was the prospect of a relationship with somebody who cared about me. As much as I had loved Matt, and as hard as it is for me to admit it, I had never truly felt loved by Matt. He said he love me, so I chose to believe him, because although I wasn’t in love with him, I thought I was, and I did love him.
One thing you might have noticed about me through my blog posts, is that I’m definitely not afraid of rejection. I’ll never be mad at a person for confessing their feelings for me once, although I have learnt the hard way that if you tell somebody out right that you’re not interested and they don’t leave you alone, that’s a red flag. You need to take a chance if you’re interested in somebody, just like you need to make it clear to them if you’re not.
That’s how I came to be at his door late one Saturday night, when it seemed as though everybody else had gone home, and it was a choice between carry on wondering or go to find out.
My mistake, was that I never actually asked him the question.
Who it was that moved in for the kiss this time I don’t remember, but afterwards he invited me in and we lay in his bed cuddled up together watching TV on his laptop into the early hours of the morning.
To describe our relationship as casual would be an overstatement, and in hindsight from that night forward it was all one sided on my part.
It was all me going to visit him now, and when I did we mainly watched TV and talked about our lives, but I suppose that’s what I enjoyed most about our relationship.
David was funny too, like my weakness for giant men, I also have a weakness for men who can make me laugh.
For example, he was messy like me, so when he recounted a story about how a cleaner has asked him how he found anything in his room and his response had been, “Easy, everything is on the floor,” I cried laughing. Especially when he described her unimpressed, unamused reaction.
Though we never had sex (because I didn’t love him) we were occasionally intimate, and it was intimate enough that when the end came I felt used and disgusted with myself.
Due to the mistake I made in never attempting to talk to him about what was going on between us, I bought into my own perception of our relationship without any doubt, as to me it appeared we were on the same page. We liked each other, we were taking things slow, getting to know each other, and whatever we had was nobody else’s business until we figure it out ourselves.
I never felt like a secret.
I never purposely snuck around.
On many occasions I strolled right past Johnny’s open door, while the entire group from the second floor and Amy were inside, on my way to David’s room, and none of them noticed me. That wasn’t my fault.
Remember when I said that there was one more good thing I haven’t spoken about the Charlie did for me, but that it was a different story, for a different day?
Today is that day.
And this is that story.
It was Charlie that brought it to my attention that David had a secret, and that secret was me.
I’m grateful for Charlie having the courage to tell me, even all these years later.
Charlie had good qualities, that’s why she was my friend, and two of those qualities were that she was both fearless and loyal.
It was the night of the dirty scrabble incident, after had Fee left, and the three of us were sat on the floor of Charlie’s room, surrounded by scrabble tiles. Amy was once again telling us how when she was old, she planned to put up photographs of herself when she was young, so that everybody would know how beautiful she had been. Amy was beautiful. Amy’s mum was a former Miss Wales. Not just a contestant, but a winner. Halfway through though she stopped, fixing her striking green eyes on me, her tone serious, “Don’t you think it’s strange that all the hot people who were single when they arrived have coupled off, but you haven’t?”
“May, and Fee, and Carol are all still single,” I pointed out.
“That’s why she specified hot,” Charlie snorted.
“You’re really hot Rach. You know that right? You should know it. And, you should take advantage of it while you are, because you won’t be hot forever,” Amy warned me.
“I’m not sure I am single,” I admitted gingerly.
There was a moment of intense silence as the information sunk in.
Then, both girls erupted, peppering me with demands to know who [he was], and why I had kept it a secret from them.
“It’s not a secret, we’re just taking things slow,” I defended my position.
“Who is he?” Amy insisted.
Taking a deep breath, I revealed to them that it was David.
“Wh –”Amy began.
But Charlie cut her off before she could finish, “Tall David?!”
At first I mistook the emotion in her voice as disapproval in regards to my choice in men. I suppose in a way it was, however not for the reasons I initially thought.
“Rachel, David is in a long term serious relationship.”
My stomach dropped. She was mistaken, she had to be, “How do you know that he’s in a relationship?”
“Because both him and his girlfriend, Lydia [insert surname] are both second year performing arts students.”
“Are you sure they haven’t broken up?” My brain was going crazy, firing one million thoughts a millisecond at me.
“I’m sure,” she promised.
Silence again, this time longer, but no less intense.
“What are you going to do?” Charlie enquired finally.
“Speak to him about it,” I answered, meekly.
“Oh Rach,” Amy sighed. “Just break up with him. You deserve better.”
“If it helps, Lydia isn’t hot,” Charlie offered.
It didn’t help.
The urge to go to confront David as soon as I left Charlie’s room that night was overwhelming, and although I both lied to myself that it was too late to go to visit David (he would have still been awake) and gave myself credit for deciding to speak to him about it when I was less emotional, the reality was that I just didn’t want what Charlie had told me to be true.
After trying unsuccessfully for hours to push it from my mind and sleep, an idea, that got me out of bed, struck me. David had convinced me to set up a Facebook page that I never used. Logging on, I was determined to investigate, but there really wasn’t anything to investigate. Though there was no concrete evidence that David and Lydia were a couple, and she was completely absent on his profile, on hers there were lots of photographs of them together. Every photograph had other people in it, yet the pair appeared to be closer than you would expect friends to be.
To me it seemed undeniable that they were a couple.
As much as I wanted to break up with David, the truth is that I don’t actually believe I would’ve had the willpower to do it.
All night I reassured myself that I was going to stand up for both myself and Lydia by ending things between us. When in reality I was hoping we would talk and he would explain that it was all a misunderstanding.
The next day, I Marched down to his room and knocked on the door. I always knocked. David’s door was usually shut, but on the latch, meaning unlocked, when he was home. What possessed me to be so rude and barge in I’m not sure. Normally I would have left and returned later.
On this occasion though, I pushed the door, and to my surprise it opened.
Caught off guard, and off balance, as I hadn’t expected the door to open, I stumbled in, sort of bursting in on the couple inside.
They were dressed in winter coats, his beige, hers black, like they just came inside from somewhere, or we’re just about to go out somewhere. They were standing, and as the door opened they came apart in a way that was obvious they had been kissing.
Startled, and feeling terrible that I had walked in on them being intimate, I spluttered, “Oh, sorry.”
Then seeing the woman properly, I almost blurted out, “You’re not Lydia,” because it wasn’t Lydia.
Lydia was a blonde, full figured woman.
This woman was slender with dark brown, or black hair.
Luckily, before I did, I caught myself, managed to somehow process and accept the absolutely bizarre situation I found myself in, turned and left.
The irony of the fact that the last words I ever spoke to a man who had not only been cheating on his girlfriend with me, but had also cheating on the both of us with a third woman, was an apology, is not lost on me.
Weeks 1-4
Welcome to my first monthly running overview.
January and February are unofficial months, so these two months we won’t be using the usual format as I had no plan and tried no tips, for this reason I want to keep the overview brief and I’m posting it along with my normal weekly posts instead of giving it its own week.
I will be making my March plans for running next week, so that plan will accompany my next weeks posts.
In January I only did six days of running total, most of which was walking. I did however start to respect my own limits and put in place boundaries for me to follow, such as not going running if I don’t feel mentally well enough.
My aim moving forward is to achieve a healthy balance of pushing myself and allowing myself not to put my health or safety and risk.
My total miles run/walked was 34.902
The majority of this was walking, but as I was experimenting the figures are all over the place and I’m giving myself a rest from calculating the specifics as I had no running planned for this month, so I have done more than I actually planned.
Planned
No plan
Done
Rest week due to “low mood”.
Trigger warning
Please be aware that today’s post references suicidal thoughts. If you are struggling with your own suicidal thoughts, or do not feel able to deal with this subject matter right now, maybe skip this entry.
It’s short anyway.
Monday 24th of January 2022
On Monday I have an opticians appointment that I wake up late for, meaning I need to get ready for it as soon as I wake up, then immediately go to it. As the appointment is between 4 pm and 5pm, it’s dark when I get back home, I still haven’t woken up properly physically or mentally from my night medication, and I’m starving because I haven’t eaten anything all day. Due to all the above, I don’t go for my run.
Tuesday 25th of January 2022
Today my “low” “agitated” mood that I have been in since at least last week boils over, and I experienced an intense suicidal episode, during which I sob hysterically.
Unlike last week, I know it’s not safe for me to go for my run either today or for the foreseeable future, so I don’t.
Although I felt and still feel guilty about not going even as I write this, I’m also extremely proud of myself for managing to ignore that guilt, fight my impulsive nature and win, and do what is best for me.
Wednesday 26th of January 2022
To
Sunday, the 30th of January 2022
Rest days due to “low” mood.
Weeks 1 to 4
Welcome to my first monthly writing journal overview. These reviews are hopefully going to follow the same format as my running journals do eventually, which are also going to 4 weekly or monthly overviews.
I want to keep this one brief and to the point, especially because I didn’t try any tips during this month.
My plan going in was to write for 3 hours, 5 days a week. I failed on this goal, even with an additional 2 days in every way. I didn’t write for 3 hours a day, I didn’t do it over 5 days, and I also didn’t meet my monthly target for hours written. With the extra two days, I should have wrote for 66 hours, and I completed 63 hours 49 minutes.
As I am writing this on the 27th of February, I’m going to add the 2 hours 11 minutes I am down to my first week in March’s total.
Due to me still struggling to keep notes, even though I am trying to rectify this, I don’t know how many blog post I have wrote in this time, but I know I didn’t miss any posts, so that something I did adequately at least.
Planned
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Done
Monday – 0
Tuesday – 3 hours 30 minutes
Wednesday – 2 hours 40 minutes
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 1 hour five minutes
Saturday – 0
Sunday – 1 hour 15 minutes
Monday 24th of January 2022
On Monday I have an opticians appointment that I wake up late for, so I get no writing done at all.
Planned writing done = 0
Extra writing done=0
(Owed = 4 hours 7 minutes)
Tuesday 25th of January 2022
Tuesday was a good day for writing, however my optimism level up might suggest I was having an “up episode”. I did 3 1/2 hours of writing during which time I worked on Fridays running guide, yet I talked about how things are getting better, and how great things would be if I could sleep and wake up at a normal time, even though nothing was any different than usual and today’s achievements weren’t exceptional.
Planned writing done = 3 hours
Extra writing done = 30 minutes
(Owed = 30 minutes)
Wednesday 26th of January 2022
On Wednesday I finish my final handwritten draft of my running guide, and write for 2 hours 40 minutes.
Planned writing done = 2 hours 40 minutes
Extra writing done = 0
(Owed= 1 hour 7 minutes)
Thursday, 27th of January 2022
The only notes that I make on Thursday are that I finished Friday’s running guide and fully wrote and dictated Charlie, although I didn’t say what part it was.
I assume from my to do list that I did 3 hours of writing, because I crossed that out, and didn’t note that I did any extra.
Planned writing done = 3 hours
Extra writing done = 0 hours
(Owed= 1 hour 7 minutes)
Completed = Running guide
Friday 28th of January 2022
On Friday I only do 1 hour five minutes of writing, but I don’t say why. During this time I complete my post titled Charlie.
Planned writing done = 1 hour 5 minutes
Extra writing done = 0
(Owed = 3 hours 12 minutes)
Completed Charlie
Saturday 29th of January 2022
I have no notes for Saturday so I know I did no writing, but I don’t know why.
Planned writing done = 0
Extra writing done = 0
(Owed= 6 hours 12 minutes)
Sunday 30th of January 2022
Today I only note that I did 1 hour 15 minutes of writing, yet I achieved an awful lot so I suspect I did more and just didn’t note it down. I really need to get better at taking notes, and start journalling every day like I promised I would.
Planned writing done = 1 hour 15 minutes
Extra done = 0
(owed = 4 hours 37 minutes)
Days = 3
Total miles = 14.58
Total miles run = 4.6813
Total miles walk = 3.1952 6627
Planned
No plan
Done
Monday – 3 laps of, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking = 4.986 miles
Tuesday = resting
Wednesday = 1/2a lap of, 1 minute 30 seconds running, 2 minutes 30 seconds walking = 0.831 miles
And
2 1/2 laps of, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking = 4.155 miles
Thursday = rest day
Friday = 2 laps off, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking = 4.96 miles
Saturday = rest day
Sunday = rest day
Trigger warning
Please be aware that today’s post references suicidal thoughts. If you are struggling with your own suicidal thoughts or do not feel able to deal with this subject matter right now, maybe skip this entry.
Wednesday, the 17th of January 2022
Once again, it’s dark when I finally manage to get out on my run today.
After waking up later than usual, and having a lot to get done, I was feeling really suicidal. I decided to prioritise my personal tasks, such as paying bills and running, and I am glad I did, as I noted that I am feeling a lot less like hanging myself thanks to my run.
I also note that I encounter an obnoxious walker, but I have no recollection of what encounter I am referring to, as I encounter people that annoy me on the majority of my runs, as well as that I was almost hit by two bikes.
I complete, 3 laps of 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking.
Tuesday, the 18th of January 2022
Tuesday is a rest day.
Wednesday, the 19th of January 2022
Wednesdays run is a bad day for near misses. I’m almost to by 2 bikes from behind, and I step on a broken glass bottle that I can’t see in the dark.
Attempting to push myself, I tried to do 1 minute 30 seconds running, 2 minutes 30 seconds walking, but I only make it 1/2 a lap.
I also complete, 2 1/2 laps of, 1 minute running, 2 minute walking.
Thursday, the 20th of January 2022
Rest day
Friday the 21st January 2022
Fridays run is much easier. However it’s still a bad running day, as this time I step in dog crap that I cant see in the dark.
I complete, 3 laps of 1 minute running, 2 minute walk in.
Saturday, 20 January 2022
Saturday is a rest day.
Sunday, the 23rd of January 2022
Sunday is a rest day.
Owed from last week = 1 hour 7 minutes
(though I thought it was 2 hours for some reason)
Target for this week =15 hours
Total target for this week = 16 hours 7 minutes
Completed = 16 hours 45 minutes
Owed= 0
Over = 38 minutes
Blogs completed =unknown
Planned
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 3hours
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Actually Done
Monday – 0
Tuesday – 5 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 5 hours 20 minutes
Friday – 0
Saturday – 3 hours 25 minutes + unknown
Sunday – unknown
Trigger warning
Please be aware that today’s post references suicidal thoughts. If you are struggling with your own suicidal thoughts, or you do not feel able to deal with the subject matter right now, maybe skip this entry.
Monday, the 17th of January 2022
On Monday I wake up even later than I usually would, and am immediately suicidal over it. As I have more urgent things to do than write, I prioritise those thing, then I go for a run, after which I’m feeling slightly better, and decide to take the day off writing and make up the hours throughout the week.
Planned writing complete = 0
Extra writing complete = 0
(Owed = 4 hours 7 minutes)
Tuesday, the 18th of January 2022
Today is good day for writing, not only do I complete the 3 hours planned, I also complete an additional 2 which makes up for the 1 hour 7 minutes I still owe from last week, and part of what I owe from Monday.
During this time, I continue my research into running shoes, and began writing my first guide about them.
Planned writing completed = 3 hours
Extra writing completed = 2 hours
(Owed = 2 hours 7 minutes)
Wednesday, the 19th of January 2022
On Wednesday I work on my rough draft of my first running shoe guide for 3 hours.
Planned writing completed = 3 hours
Extra writing completed = 0
(Owed = 2 hours 7 minutes)
Thursday, the 20th of January 2022
Thursday is another great day for writing, I complete my 3 planned hours, plus 2 hours 20 minutes, which means I am caught up to where I should be at, and am even a little bit over.
Today I finish a running and schedule, and plan some other post.
By the end of the 5 hours 20 minutes I’m physically and mentally destroyed.
planned writing completed = 3 hours
Extra writing completed = 2 hours 20 minutes
(Owed =0)
(Over = 13 minutes)
Friday, the 21st of January 2022
Friday is a terrible writing day. Due to a combination of waking up late, and my neighbours, I get no writing done, which means I am now behind for the week again.
Planned writing completed= 0
Extra writing completed = 0
(Owed =47 minutes)
Saturday, the 22nd of January 2022
On Saturday I not only write for 3 hours 25 minutes, during which time I work on my post titled Charlie, I also start uploading photographs and videos to restart my Saturday blog. However, I don’t time this and I should have, as it consumes my entire night, yet I make hardly any progress because of my phone signal.
Planned writing completed= 3 hours
Extra writing completed = 25 minutes + unknown
(Owed = 0)
(Over= 22 minutes + unknown)
Sunday, the 23rd of January 2022
On Sunday I spent the day once again trying to upload videos and photographs, but neither timed how long I worked on this, nor noted the progress I made, which isn’t much.
“Sheila!” Come and see what the little bastards have done this time!” The shouting, which came from the corridor outside my room, was what woke me. It was one of the cleaners, calling for her supervisor.
Checking my clock, I discovered that I was lucky she had woken me, as it was Friday morning, meaning I had a nine am lecture, and I hadn’t set my alarm the previous night. I was running late, but only by about fifteen minutes thanks to the cleaner.
Like everybody else living in this quarter of third the floor, I went to see what was going on, wading my way through a sea of empty cider bottles that were on my floor, which had French labels on them. I had no clue how they had gotten there.
As I stepped outside, the cleaner was already dashing downstairs and everybody, except Sam and Fee, were disappearing back inside their own rooms.
“What’s going on?”I enquired sleepily. My head was throbbing.
“You’re so funny Rach,” Fee chuckled as she too disappeared into her room.
I turned to Sam confused, hoping she knew the answer to my question.
“Don’t fucking play dumb,” she hissed angrily. “You know what’s wrong. There’s a freezer in the bath.”
Through bursts of laughter, I managed to ask why there was a freezer in the bath.
“You put it there,” Sam accused.
“No, I never,” I protested, still laughing.
“You did,” Emma chimed in. She had just stepped out into the corridor, towel and toiletries in hand. “You, David, and the American boy who was dressed like a cat put it there.”
Suddenly, I felt sick, and not from the hangover. The few memories I had retained from the night prior hit me. After assessing the damage, which there wasn’t any, either to the freezer or the bath, I hurried to gather up the cider bottles and dispose of them in the kitchen bin before the cleaner who found the freezer returned with Sheila. Then I put a do not clean post it note on my door and headed off to take a shower.
So how, and why, did a freezer end up in the bath?
What chain of events led to me, David, and “an American boy dressed like a cat” “vandalising” University property?
You could probably tie to any of the events I have already written about that happened during my first year of university. However, I tie it to an event that I haven’t written about…
I caught freshers flu, and it was bad.
During the first few weeks of university, everybody had thrown the term around. They speculated at length about how everybody had caught it, and how everybody would catch it. Yet, nobody actually seemed to have it, or have had it.
It was, I believe, December when it got me, and I was so ill it was a struggle to get out of bed. Just going to the toilet, or getting food and water were extremely difficult tasks.
Nobody, except David, came to check on me while I had it, and he not only came to check on me every day, he came to check on me every night, even after he finished his closing shift at the pub in Southgate.
He brushed off my concern that he would catch it.
He had already had it. He couldn’t catch it again, he would reassure me.
Freshers flu wasn’t the only thing I caught during those couple of weeks. I also caught feelings for David.
There was no love at first sight moment between us, at least not for me, either on the night me and Charlie did drunk laundry, or the night I saved him from the wardrobe in Sassoon.
Admittedly, giant men can be my kryptonite. As an A-sexual straight woman, my type is rigid when it comes to sexual attraction. Even as a beautiful giant, David was not my type. That’s not to say he wasn’t attractive, he just wasn’t for me. Beyond that, he was too tall for all five foot (almost) one of me.
After I had rescued him from the wardrobe at Sassoon, we spent the entire night talking, but not alone, other people, or more accurately groups of them, who recognised either me or David, came and went.
He was a second year performing arts student. One of his parents was from the Isle of Wight, and the other was French. He worked at the student union, as well as at the pub in Southgate, and he lived a few doors down from Johnny.
He had been on his way home from his shift at the pub that night me and Charlie did drunk laundry, and was struggling to get passed the people in the corridor who we he knew that wanted him to stay at Johnny’s party.
Up until writing this, I never understood why I actually became romantically interested in David. Now it seems obvious, he showed me something none of my previous boyfriends had shown me, he showed me care, compassion, and kindness.
As I started to recover, his visits became less frequent, until he stopped visiting me altogether, and I found myself missing his company.
Whatever we had, if indeed we had anything, was over, I told myself.
Until our paths crossed again, at another party.
Which brings us back to what I remember of the night the freezer ended up in the bath.
The party, which was a building wide event, had spilled out into Gubby after the student union closed. This meant that as the security guard was busy trying to stop any one of the parties going on, another four were starting.
Where I’d been, and who I’d been with, I can’t recall. What I do recall is that I was on my way back into my block of Gubby when I came across David and an American exchange student named Greg under the staircase on the ground floor, where a delivery of a mini fridges and mini freezers were being stored. They were carefully attempting to tip one of the boxes onto its side.
“What are you two doing?” I poked my head around the staircase to get a better look.
“They left all these freezers here, so I thought I’d take one,” David shrugged.
Who was the most hammered out of the three of us is up for debate, but I think we had all passed the point where we could clearly see the real consequences of us doing something as stupid as moving a box with a freezer in it from one location to another, even just within the building. That’s not an excuse for our actions, that’s just me trying to put them into perspective.
“You’re stealing it,” and gasped playfully.
“I’m not stealing it. These freezers are for student use. I am a student. I’m just going to use it in my room, which also belongs to the university, until the end of the year,” David reason.
As they finally got the box onto its side, Greg, who had been silently watching our exchange, caught my eye.
“Why are you dressed like a cat?” I waved my hand in a circle to indicate what I meant. You see, Greg wasn’t actually dressed like a cat, he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and converse, but somebody had drawn a cat nose and whiskers onto his face in what appeared to be eyeliner.
“You did it,” he replied confidently, as the pair lifted the box.
“No I didn’t,” I was sure he was mistaking me for somebody else due to how drunk he was, but looking back it probably could have been me.
“Yes, you did,” He insisted.
I moved out of their way to let them through, but David indicated with a nod of his head that I should go before them.
“We need somebody to open the doors for us.”
“Okay,” I agree, skipping up the stairs. “But if we see the security guard I am not a part of this.”
It is possible that in my drunken state it was me that led us to the party on the third floor, not because I knew it was happening, rather I automatically went to the third floor because that’s where I lived, and that’s where I had been going before I stopped to see what they were doing. However, I believe it is more likely that we met somebody else who was on their way to the party, while we were on our way to Davids room, who invited us. Regardless of how we got there, my last memories are of me being at that party with David and the freezer, but minus Greg.
Everything that follows is what Emma recounted to me the next day when, I return from my lecture.
Ironically, as the parties were dying down, it was Sam screaming in the corridor about the noise we were making that alerted Emma to the fact that something was going on, and it was only when Greg started shouting at Sam to get back in her room and mind her own business, probably because Sam had a reputation at this point for being miserable and he was afraid she would snitch on us in the morning if she saw the freezer, which honestly I’m surprised she didn’t, that Emma crept to her door to try to see and hear what was going on.
Once Sam was back in her room minding her own business, likely fuming over the fact that she had no choice but to do so, Emma heard us laughing and arguing simultaneously about what we were going to do with “it”. As what ever “it” was, was out of sight through her peephole, curiosity got the best of her and she came out into the corridor to see what the “it” we were referring to was.
According to David, I had ruined his by plan by reminding him that the cleaner went into his room every week to clean, therefore she would discover the missing freezer sooner or later.
In their inebriated state, the boys decided we needed to get rid of the freezer quickly and discreetly. To which I suggested that we take it out of the box and put it in the kitchen opposite my room, so it appeared as though a member of staff had put it there. The problem was, none of us thought to check if there was enough space to fit it in the very tiny kitchen, which there wasn’t, and once it was out of the box the boys realised it was going to be too awkward for them to move far, so putting it in the huge kitchen on the other side of the third floor wasn’t an option, even if there was enough space in there for it.
“What are we going to do with it now?” Emma said one of the boys has asked the other.
“The only thing we can do,” I had responded. “We make it look like a prank. Nobody is going to play a prank right outside their own room, so they’ll never suspect us.” (I suppose I had meant they would never suspect me.)
“How are we going to make it look like a prank though” Emma said one of the boys had moaned.
“You two are going to have to put it in the bath,” I had sighed as though it was obvious, and I was bored, as I did my part by gathering up the packaging and dragging it inside the bathroom.
Emma had followed us inside the bathroom to watch the shit show unfold, and what a spectacular shit show it had been. Emma claimed the boys took an exceptionally long time to get the freezer into the bath, huffing and puffing as they did.
Then, according to Emma, I had turned to her and informed her in a serious manner that because she had watched, she was an accomplice, and should Sam decide to snitch on the three of us, I would make sure that she got into trouble too. After which the boys suggested that we go to my room and celebrate by drinking the cider David had just brought back from France, I agreed, inviting Emma to join us, like I hadn’t just threatened to pull her under the bus with us if her best friend couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
Planned
No plan
Actual Schedule
Monday – rest day
Tuesday – 4 laps of, 1 minute running, 3 minutes walking.
Wednesday – rest day (assumed)
Thursday – rest day (assumed)
Friday – rest day (assumed)
Saturday – rest day (assumed)
Sunday – rest day (assumed)
Total days – 1
Total laps – 4
Total miles– 6.648
Total miles ran – 1 .662
Total miles walked – 4.986
Total percentage ran – 25%
Total percentage walked – 75%
Wednesday the 10th of January 2022
On Monday, even after being busy all day, I am adamant that I am going to go for a run. That changes when, on the way home from the supermarket, I slip on mud I couldn’t see in the dark. Now too afraid to go, in case I slip, I promise myself that I will never go running in the dark again.
Like most promises that I make to myself, this one won’t stick.
Tuesday, the 11th of January 2022
It’s dark on Tuesday when I go for my run.
I do four laps, of 1 minute running, 3 minutes walking, and note that I should have done only 3 laps as I was stopping to walk after every 40 seconds of running on my last lap.
Overall it was a terrible run. It was icy and slippy. I almost fell on uneven pavement. Then, as I was passing a driveway, a car without his headlights on pulled out, almost hitting me. It stopped just in time, and a bike coming towards me didn’t stop, even though both me in the car were now taking up the entire pavement. As a result it too almost hit me, forcing me into the actual road, which is an A road so I had very fast moving cars on it.
Wednesday, the 12th of January 2022- Sunday, the 16th of January 2022
Rest days (or at least I assume they are as I have no more entries).
Owed from last week = 20 minutes
(though I thought it was 25 for some reason.)
Target for this week = 15 hours
Done = 3 hours 53 minutes
Still owed = 1 hour 7 minutes
Completed = ” 2 Sunday blog posts.”
Planned Schedule
Monday = 3hours
Tuesday = 3 hours
Wednesday = 3 hours
Thursday = 3 hours
Friday = 3 hours
Saturday = rest day
Sunday = rest day
Actual schedule
Monday = 0
Tuesday = 3 hours
Wednesday = 1 hour 40 minutes
Thursday = 5 hours 10 minutes
Friday = 0
Saturday = 0
Sunday = 4 hours and 3 minutes
Monday, the 10th of January 2022
On Monday I’m supposed to get 3 hours of writing done, but because I need to go to the supermarket and pay bills I got nothing done. This is the problem with waking up late every day, and it’s depressing and infuriating and I have no control over it whatsoever.
Tuesday, the 11th of January 2022
The only notes I have for Tuesday say I wanted to do 3 hours 25 minutes of writing to make up the missing time from last week, but I only managed to do 3 hours. In this time I finished 2 Sunday blog post, but I don’t say what ones, or even if they were for the same or different weeks. I really am trying my hardest to journal and keep notes, but I find it so difficult for some reason.
Wednesday, the 12th of January 2022
Today I have to go to the hairdressers, so I only manage to get 1 hour and 40 minutes of writing done, during which I work on my phase 3 running overview.
Thursday, the 13th of January 2022
Thursday is a much better day, both for getting my writing done and for keeping notes about what I achieved.
I do
– 3 hours for Thursday
-25 minutes for last week
-the 1hour 20 minutes that I owed from yesterday
-As well as an additional 25 minutes
During this time I work on my phase 3 running overview, and the mileage details to go with it.
Friday, the 14th of January 2022
Due to the fact my hairdresser cut my fringe wrong and I tried to fix it myself (it was in my eyes and I couldn’t see, and it was hurting them) I get nothing done today, as I went into town to get it fixed.
Saturday the 15th of January 2022
There are no notes for Saturday, so I assume I did no writing, but I have no idea why.
Sunday, the 16th of January 2022
Sundays note simply say
-4 hours 3 minutes
-Research
-Still behind 2 hours
Who it was that invited me to the party at Sassoon I don’t recall. It probably wouldn’t matter if I did, because they disappeared as soon as we arrived, leaving me alone in, the crowded, unnecessarily large hallway.
Most of us at the party had come straight from the student union, which had just closed. At first I had declined the invitation. It was not long after I started fine art, not long after my birthday, and I had been keeping my distance from both Sassoon and the boys who lived there. Newcastle Dave, the only reason I had been going on the trips to Sassoon with Fee, had a girlfriend. Gareth, not only gave me the creeps, he truly scared me. This wasn’t just a result of the incident where he followed me back into my room, it was also due to the angry, hungry, looks I caught him giving me every time I spotted him around Trent Park and Oakwood. On a couple of occasions, he even tried to speak to me as though nothing had happened.
In the interest of being honest, and because I was afraid of him, I told S, Amy, and Charlie a PG version of what had taken place on my birthday.
“Don’t tell Fee,” I asked Amy and Charlie. “She can’t keep her mouth shut.”
Fee was still making nighttime visits to Sassoon, alone, even though we had all warned her not to.
I trusted Charlie. Not only did she also dislike fee, this conversation took place after Fee had blabbed to Charlie’s boyfriend about Charlie paying taxi drivers with her underpants.
Amy on the other hand, I wasn’t sure about. She was one of my best friends, however a distrust had begun growing in my mind about her. At the time, I didn’t know why. With hindsight, I realise that it was all the little things starting to build up.
Somehow, despite warning Fee not to go to Sassoon alone, I now found myself there, alone, in a sea of people.
I was turning to leave, having only just arrived, when I noticed it.
Everybody else in the huge hallway, seemed not to.
Maybe that’s a good way to sum up the parties at Sassoon that took place during the academic year. There was always something weird happening while everybody acted like it wasn’t weird, or wasn’t happening at all.
I’ll be brutally honest and admit that I almost wasn’t the exception on this occasion, where an exception was desperately required. Two boys rocking a wardrobe, as though they were trying to tip it over onto the floor, doors down, would have been easy to shrug off as just one of those things that happened at Sassoon.
What made this particularly strange, was that over the dozens of voices talking, shouting, and laughing, I was sure that I could hear somebody inside that wardrobe shouting for help, and nobody was paying attention to them.
Visions of the wardrobe actually falling face down and trapping, what I was sure would be an injured, person inside flashed through my mind. The party and everybody else melted way. In that moment there was just me, those two boys, the wardrobe, and the person inside it. Without thinking about it at all, I marched towards them.
As I got closer, the shouting from inside grew louder and clearer. It was real, I wasn’t imagining it, there was a person inside that wardrobe.
“That’s enough,” my words came out full of an authority I was sure I had no right having, surprising even me.
“Mind your own business,” one of them demanded.
“Are you fucking joking?” I shot back, still sounding confident. “I said that’s enough. It’s more than enough. Let him out.”
“What are you going to do about it?” The same boy mocked me, but the other was beginning to look worried.
That’s when the party came back into focus.
Alone, I couldn’t do anything about it.
Was I alone though?
Scanning the room for anybody I recognised, I spotted Newcastle Dave, the two Marks, and a few of the others I had spent all those nights with, standing at the back of the hallway.
“I’m not going to do anything, but my friends will if I call them. I’m here with Newcastle Dave, and the two Marks,” I pointed in their direction.
The one with the attitude paused, I could tell that he was considering what I had just said. I don’t think he believe me, I don’t think I believed me, but he seemed to decide it wasn’t worth the risk.
He signalled to his friends with a nod of his head, and the pair walked off, leaving me alone with the person in the wardrobe.
At first I couldn’t figure out how to open it, so I couldn’t fully understand how the person inside was stuck in there, finally I found the latches at the top and bottom and opened them.
When I pulled open the doors, I was shocked to find a giant of a man, he was so tall that he was standing up, but curled inside. He seemed to struggle to unpack himself.
“How the fuck did those two get you in there?” I was baffled as the two boys hadn’t been much taller than me.
“I got in myself,” He informed me, as though his answer made complete sense.
“Wwwhy?” I enquired.
“They said I couldn’t fit inside it.”
I stared at him in silence for a minute, sure he was describing the plot from a friends episode. Maybe that’s where the two boys had gotten the idea from, but I doubt it, it was probably just a bizarre coincidence.
It was him who broke the silence. “I know you!” He declared.
“No, you dont,” I insisted, certain I would remember this giant of a man if I have met him before.
“I do,” his excitement seemed too much for a guy recognising a girl he could only have met in passing. “You’re the girl from Gubby with the underwear on your head.”
“Oh, yeah, you do know me then,” I agreed, but it took me a few seconds to recognise him.
He was the man in the beige coat. The man hovering around the edges of Johnnys party that night me and Charlie did drunk laundry.
We had gone to Johnnys party later that night, but by then he was gone, and I had genuinely forgotten all about him until now.
That is the story of how the girl with the underpants on her head, met the man from Narnia.
As you’ve already probably guessed, it was the perfect recipe for disaster.
It all started with drunk laundry.
That is, my relationship with David.
I can’t imagine any story, event, or relationship that starts with those words ever ends well. My relationship with David is no exception.
It had been Charlie’s idea.
Not the laundry part, that had been mine. If I wanted to wear clothes the next day, I needed to do my washing. Charlie had admitted that she had gone beyond that point, an had been rotating the same three already worn bras all week. To say we were desperate for clean clothes would be an understatement.
The drinking part and the dare, they were both Charlies ideas.
It was still early, around six or seven pm, when Amy came to inform us that Johnny was having a party. We were already aware of this, as we could hear his signature rubbish music.
“So?” I shrugged, Johnny was always having parties.
Me and Charlie had just finished dinner, separately, and I had stuffed all my dirty clothes into a large duffel bag and dragged it to Charlies room. She was throwing her own dirty clothes into a plastic laundry basket.
“We’ll come as soon as our washing is in the machine,” Charlie promised.
To me, a night watching the top load washing machine sounded more fun than a night at one of Johnny’s parties. Dozens of people, who were mostly strangers or pricks that we couldn’t stand when sober never mind drunk, crammed into Johnny’s tiny room or gathered in the corridor to drink and dance, while Johnny sat at his computer playing his music appearing oblivious to the party happening around him.
Once Amy left, Charlie tucked a bottle of wine into her basket, insisting I go get my own, which I reluctantly and awkwardly carried in one hand as I dragged my heavy duffle bag along the floor and down three flights of stairs behind me.
Passing the second floor, we could see through the glass wall that the party was already getting crowded.
When we reach the laundry room, which was on the ground floor on the other side of Gubby, all the machines were full, so we dropped down into the chairs opposite, opened our bottles, and settled in to wait for two empty machines.
By the time we both finally got machines for our washing, we were each half a bottle deep and having much more fun than we would have been at Johnny’s party, so without discussing it we just stayed in the laundry room and continued talking.
Though I know it was Charlie who brought up the subject of embarrassing things that had happened to her, I don’t remember how she got there or why.
After sharing several of her own stories, she requested that I share some of mine.
Because I had nothing appropriate to share, that was my response.
It’s not that I don’t feel shame, I do. Is that I only feel that deep, heavy, toxic shame, the type that keeps you awake at night, and makes you genuinely hope for a swift and natural death. Also, just like I only have zero shame and full shame, the reasons that I feel shame are either completely appropriate, or completely inappropriate, such as having a full blown public BPD episode, making somebody cry, liking that blouse I like, or literally sitting in a chair, there is no middle area.
Whereas, embarrassment, is a sort abstract concept to me, and I honestly don’t believe I have ever experienced it in its pure form.
“You liar!” Charlie accused.
“I’m not lying,” I said, but at the time I had no way of explaining further due to the fact that all my mental illnesses, including my BPD, were yet to be diagnosed. How do you explain to somebody that you don’t feel emotions or experience the world in the same way as people with a normally structured and functioning brain do, because you have BPD, meaning your brain is both structurally and functionally different to a normal brain, when you are unaware that this is the case?
Embarrassment, as I understand it, is to do with how other people view you. Shame, as I understand it, is to do with how you view yourself.
Charlies understanding of what shame and embarrassment are, seemed to match mine, that’s why she dared me to put my underpants on my head and walk all the way from the laundry room (through the reception, up three flights of stairs, passed the party full of pricks which by now would have spilled out into the corridor) to my room.
And, that’s why I did it.
As we reach the landing of the second floor, I noticed him staring at me straight away. He appeared to have either just come inside from somewhere, or be about to go outside somewhere, as he was wearing a long, heavy, beige winter coat. He was hovering around the edge of the party, as though he was nothing to do with it, but was trying to decide whether he wanted to be. He was incredibly tall, the sort of tall where he must have lived his entire life with no way of not being noticed or remembered.
“What’s he looking at?” I asked Charlie, puzzled.
“A woman with a pair of underpants on her head,” she giggled.
“Why, has he never seen a woman with a pair of underpants on her head before?” I quipped.
“Have you?” She counted.
I tried to recall if I had or not, as we started up the last flights of stairs, doing what I just claimed was impossible, forgetting the incredibly tall man who was watching me.
Planned schedule
No plan
Monday
Done
– 1/2 a lap of, 1 minute running, 2 minute walking.
-5/8 of a lap of, 40 seconds running, 20 seconds walking
-7/8 of a lap walking
Tuesday – rest day
Wednesday – 2 laps of, 1 minute running, 2minute walking.
Thursday – resting
Friday – rest day
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Monday, the 3rd of January 2022
Today wasn’t a planned running day, as I had planned to take January off. However, I’ve been feeling miserable about not going. Today is the day I plan to change my approach to running drastically, but I won’t bore you with that, as I already have.
With change in mind, I head into the city centre to replace the three pairs of running shorts I had to throw away recently.
Then, when I get home, I go for a run.
Although I know my run is going to be hard, I’m surprised by just how hard it is.
When I start, I plan to do 1/2 a lap of 40 seconds running/20 seconds walking, 1/2 a lap of 2minutes running/1 minute walking, then a full lap of 3 minutes running/2 minute walking, but things don’t go to plan.
I have to stop at the 1/4 of a lap point, because I have the king of all side cramps. I can’t breathe, or move, and the pain is so bad I feel like I’m gonna pass out whenever I do either, which is a bit scary as I feel like I’m either going to burst out crying or laughing.
Blaming the 40/20 for the stitch, I start on my 2/1, I make it another 1/2 a lap before I can’t run anymore, so I try to go back to the 40/20 but that’s more difficult than it was before, so at the 1/8 of a lap point on my second lap, I stop and walk the long way home, meaning the remaining 7/8 of the lap, knowing I’m going to need to change my plan for next time.
Afterwards, I feel really shaky and my legs are aching. Plus, I was wheezing before I left the flat to run, due to the fact that I was having a bad asthma day, and now it’s worse.
I complete –
-1/2 a lap of, 2minutes running, 1 minute walking
-5/8 of a lap of, 40 seconds running, 20 seconds walking.
– 7/8 of a lap walking
Tuesday, the 4th of January 2022
Tuesday is a rest day
Wednesday, the 5th of January 2022
Today’s run is uneventful.
I’ve decided to use January as an experimentation month, to see what I can actually do.
During this run l learn I can only do 1 minute running, followed by 2 minutes walking, which works out at 33% running, 66% walking.
I complete- 2 laps of, 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking.
Thursday, the 6th of January 2022
To
Sunday, the 9th of January 2022
Rest days.
Target hours done = 14 hours 40 minutes
Extra done = 0
Owed= 20 minutes
Posts done – unknown
Not a great week for reaching my target hours or target work, and it was terrible for keeping note.
The planned schedule
Monday – 3 hours
Tuesday – 3 hours
Wednesday – 3 hours
Thursday – 3 hours
Friday – 3 hours
Saturday – 0
Sunday- 0
The actual schedule
Monday – 1 hour
Tuesday – 4 hours
Wednesday – 2 hours
Thursday – 0
Friday – 0
Saturday – 3 hours 15 minutes
Sunday – 4 hours 35 minutes
Monday, the 3rd of January 2022
Due to how busy I have been all day – I not only had to go to the supermarket, I went into the city centre to buy new running shorts and then went for a run – I have done no writing at all.
At 11pm I decided I am going to do 3 hours of writing now, as I can’t sleep, but only end up managing 1, as I am too tired. I do a plan and half a draft of writing, but I don’t make a note of what it is that I actually write.
Target done = 1 hour of writing
Extra done = 0
hours of writing
[Hours of writing owed = 2 hours of writing]
Tuesday, the 4th of January 2020
Today I manage a block of 1 hour 15 minutes writing before I need to stop for a break.
When I get back, I decide to do another 2 hours 10 minutes. It takes me 1 hour 40 minutes to finish the first draft of -remember to burn your bridges (I don’t record if this is part 1, 2 or both).
Then with the remaining half an hour I dictate- part six of the devil cares more about cars than Prada, and do a first edit on roughly half of it.
Target done = 3 hours of writing
Extra done = 1 hour of writing
hours of writing
[Hours of writing owed = 1 hour of writing]
Wednesday, the 5th of January 2022
Today I write for 2 hours – because I don’t update my journal until Sunday, I have no idea what I actually wrote.
Target done = 2 hours of writing
Extra done = 0
hours of writing
[Hours of writing owed = 2 hours of writing]
Thursday, the 6th of January 2022
On Thursday what should be a quick clean of my flat turns into a massive job, so I do no writing.
Target done = 0
Extra done = 0
hours of writing
[Hours of writing owed = 5 hours of writing]
Friday, the 7th of January 2020
On Friday I have an episode in the supermarket, which is followed by my neighbours being antisocial, so again I get no writing done.
Target done = 0
Extra done = 0
hours of writing
[Hours of writing owed = 8 hours of writing]
Saturday, the 8th of January 2022
I do 3 hours 15 minutes of writing.
Again, I don’t know what I wrote.
Target done = 3 hours of writing
Extra done = 15 minutes
hours of writing
[Hours of writing owed = 5 hours and 24 minutes of writing]
Sunday 9th of January 2022
Today I do 4 hours 35 minutes of writing.
Target done = 4 hour of writing
Extra done = 1 hour and 35 minutes
hours of writing
[Hours of writing owed = 20 minutes of writing]
Part Two
When I look back on the few months that me, Amy, and Charlie spent as such close friends, which isn’t often, it’s only ever for one reason.
If I had stayed friends with them, would the awful thing that happened to me have happened?
I know the answer is no.
I’ve always known the answer is no.
However, today, I realised that by thinking about what I needed to say in this weeks post and last weeks post, I have addressed the elephant in the room that has haunted me for all these years, and that taunts me with this question. Yes, my decision to not be friends with Amy and Charlie anymore led me down the path where I would meet my rapist, but that doesn’t mean that it was my fault, or some cosmic spit in the eye, no matter how hard it is not to believe it was, even over a decade later.
Still, I have never regretted my decision to end our friendships. The fact is that I am happy with my morals, and I am proud that I have the courage and strength to live my life by them.
Maybe there were signs that Charlie wasn’t the best of people all along, and I just didn’t see them, or I subconsciously chose to ignore them. Or maybe I now see signs that actually meant nothing, due to hindsight. Either way, the truth is that despite all her good points, Charlie had bad points, and when weighed against each other, those bad points voided all her good ones.
Personally, I believe that Charlie had absolutely no consideration for how her actions affected other people, if those other people weren’t people she cared about.
For example, there was a night out that I didn’t go on, because I was buried under a mountain of work, where the rest of the penthouse crew went into central London. The next day Fee bragged, like it was funny, that when they got off the night bus none of them had wanted to walk down snakes Lane, but they also didn’t want to pay the taxi fair for such a short ride, so Charlie had suggested that they get a taxi and when they arrived home they all just say they had no money, and she would pay with her underpants. Apparently, she had done this before, back home. True to her word, when they pulled up outside Gubby, Charlie pulled off her underpants and paid with them. When the taxi driver understandably got angry, they all shrugged and said they had no money. Accepting he had no choice but to take the loss of earnings, he ordered them out of his car, with pointless threats that they would be blacklisted, and drove away.
Charlie was very pleased with herself, until Fee bragged to Charlies boyfriends about it, even though Charlie had told them all not to mention it around him. He tore Charlie apart in front of us verbally, and when we attempted to intervene Charlie requested we leave her room. Later that night we caught her trying to sneak to the toilet without us seeing her. Her face and eyes were swollen, and red raw, from crying.
Then there was what happened on our first trip to Camden. We had gone with the group from the second floor, nearly all of who were from London, and knew Camden well. Despite them making a big performance about how they were going to show us Camden, they lost us in the Saturday chaos of Camden tube station as soon as we got off the train, and then not only refuse to come back for the three of us, but ghosted us when Amy text Adam, her boyfriend at the time, for directions to where they were.
Hovering outside the tube station, we kept getting slammed into and swept along by the crowd. Eventually, one of them lost their patience and demanded we go alone, so we should choose a direction and go. The other chose left.
We should have gone right, as we were trying to get to the market. After making several wrong turns, because we decided we must have been lost, as this wasn’t what we had expected, so got dodgy directions off tourists, we reached a different tube station and agreed we all just wanted to go back home.
If I remember correctly, this station was also on the black line, so we took it to King’s Cross Station so we could change to the dark blueline.
It was only the third time I had been inside King’s Cross Station, so I wasn’t as familiar as I would become with it yet. When we got to the centre of the two platforms there was already a train at one, with people boarding.
“That’s our train!” One of them shouted.
Without questioning it, we dashed for it like it was the last train of the day.
As we did, two tourists tried to stop us, a man and a woman. “North or south,” the man enquired, jabbing his finger at the train.
“North,” Charlie called without stopping.
Both us and the tourists jumped inside right before the doors slid closed and the train started moving.
Exhausted, me and Charlie dropped into the nearest empty seats, collapsing onto each other, completely ignoring the recorded announcement for the next stop.
Amy didn’t. She was studying the map on the opposite wall, concern creasing her features. Finally she spoke, “We’re going to Heathrow. We’re going the wrong way.”
Declaring our disapproval loudly with expletives, me and Charlie burst out laughing.
Then, so did Amy.
When we got to the next station, we hopped off and ran across the station to catch the correct train, laughing as we did. We continue to laugh, as this time we all collapse into the nearest available seats, leaning against each other.
That was until the doors slid closed, and I remember the tourists. “Shit. We gave those tourists wrong directions,” I felt terrible.
Amy stop laughing as well.
But Charlie howled louder as though it was hilarious.
Even then, I recall thinking her reaction was cruel.
Charlie also had an erratic mean side to her, that came out after she had reached a certain level of drunkenness.
In all honesty though, being the type of person that I am, were the little stuff doesn’t bother me, I never actually considered her to be mean at the time, it’s only while really thinking about Charlie in order to write this that I started to realise just how nasty she could potentially be, after a drink. In my defence, it was always subtle, up until the night it wasn’t.
For example, the drunk scrabble incident.
It was a Friday night, and I had been working on ideas for my first self planned fine art project. At around 11 pm, I hit a wall. I was too physically and mentally tired to continue working, but I wasn’t tired enough to sleep, so I went to see what Amy and Charlie were doing.
I found the two of them, and Fee, sat on the floor in Charlie’s room a scrabble board between them, and several empty, and half full wine bottle surrounding them. They each must have been a bottle deep, at least.
“What are you doing?” I asked, sitting down on the empty side scrabble board.
“We are playing dirty scrabble,” Charlie smirked. “Do you want to play?”
“No.” Fee protested. “We are already halfway through a game. She can’t join halfway through a game.”
“Of course I’ll play,” I shook my head at Amy’s offer of a drink from her bottle. I didn’t expect that we would be here much longer considering the time of night, how much they had already drunk, and their level of boredom to be playing scrabble, which didn’t seem like their sort of game.
“Great,” Charlie tipped up the bag containing the remaining letters and began rifling through them.
“No Charlie. She has to pick them out of the bag,” Fee complained.
Me and Amy exchanged a “fucking fee” look, rolling our eyes as we did.
“It’s just a game fee. Calm down. It’s supposed to be fun,” Amy gulped down a mouthful of wine, in a manner that suggested she wasn’t drunk enough to deal with drunk Fee.
“There you go,” Charlie’s smirk grew as she handed me my seven tiles.
I lined them up on the floor in front of me, while the others watched. Assessed the words that had already been played, and grinned at her.
It was obvious she had tried to give me a bad letters, as there was a J and a Z, but she had made a mistake by also giving me a blank tile and four vowels. I picked up my four tiles, then arrange them in front of a four letter word on the board. That word was tits, mine was jizz, with a blank tile for the first z.
Both Amy and Charlie snorted with laughter.
Fee began to complain again, but she was drowned out by Charlie shouting. “I don’t want to play anymore! I don’t want to play anymore!” Then she grabbed the board and lifted it up, sending the tiles flying everywhere. Unsuccessfully, she attempted to launch the board across the room, but it flopped from her hand almost hitting Fee in the eye.
“Why did you do that? I was winning!” Fee shrieked.
“No you weren’t. Rachel was winning, with a single word,” it wasn’t true, but Charlies jab at Fee hit a nerve.
Shouting incoherently, Fee picked up her half bottle of wine and stormed from the room.
Charlie also stood up and followed her, just so she could slam the door shut behind her. When she had, she launched into a rant of her own about how much she hated Fee.
It was no secret to me and Amy that Charlie despised Fee. She had a good reason to. Fee had broken into her room.
As the incident had unfolded, it had seemed like a typical argument where Charlie was joking and Fee took it seriously. That is what I now find troubling. Charlie always wound Fee up when the pair had been drinking. However, she never did it when she was outnumbered, meaning – Amy didn’t have a problem with Fee, so Charlie hadn’t acted until I joined them, as she knew I disliked Fee too. She wouldn’t have done it if May and/or Carol were there too though, as she was aware they would have defended Fee. Although Amy liked Fee, she definitely wasn’t going to defend her while it was just the four of us.
What happened on the night that mine and Charlie’s friendship ended, that angered Charlie, I don’t know. I never knew.
Maybe they had all been at the SU earlier and that’s when it, whatever it was, happened, or maybe it had happened at some other time, and the issue had reignited somehow that night. All I’m certain of is that both Amy and Charlie, as well as the people in the room next door, had all been drinking that night.
I heard the banging and shouting from five rooms away, with a fire door in between along the corridor, that’s how loud it was.
It sounded like Charlie, but I couldn’t decipher what she was saying, so I went to investigate.
If you came up the stairs to the third floor on our side of Gubby, and turned right, you would need to open a fire door into a very tiny square of corridor, the door you would be facing when you stepped into that square was Charlie’s room, to the left and right would be two more fire doors.
The room next door to Charlies on the other side of the right fire door was Fees, the one behind the fire door to the left was the room of a woman named a Ashani.
Ashani was an Indian exchange student, and that night she was in her room with three of her friends who were Turkish exchange students, two male, one female.
Charlies door was closed, so I knocked.
It was Amy who answered.
When I entered, closing the door behind me, I saw Charlie dressed in pyjamas, standing on her bed next to the wall that separated her and Ashani’s room. She was laughing hysterically.
Amy flopped down, half lying, half sitting, on the bed.
“What’s going on?” I enquired.
“Charlies upset with Ashani” Amy said, in an almost bored, matter of fact way.
Charlie turned to face the wall and began banging on it with the knuckles of her closed hand. “Ashani poppadom! Ashani poppadom! Ashani poppadom!” She screamed.
“What the fuck Charlie? Why are you being racist to Ashani?” I was horrified. I would have been horrified regardless of who she was being racist to, but I liked to Ashani, and I thought Charlie liked Ashani too, so I was extremely shocked. Plus, I’d never heard or seen Charlie say or do anything racist before.
“I’m not being racist. It’s what [insert Charlie’s boyfriend’s name] calls her,” Charlie giggled.
“Okay, but it’s still racist, and I think you know it’s racist,” I told Charlie, unamused.
“No. It’s not,” Charlie insisted, returning to her banging and shouting.
Moving closer, I tried to take Charlies hand, to guide her away from the wall, “You need to stop this right now, calm down, and apologise to Ashani in the morning.”
“I’m not apologising to Ashani poppadom,” she spat, before laughing hysterically again.
“Okay, that’s enough Charlie. I know you know that’s racist,” I glanced at Amy for assistance, but she just shrugged.
“Mind your own business,” Charlie snapped at me.
“I will mind my own business. I’ll mind my own business where you’re concerned from now on, because quite frankly I’m disgusted with you,” I said, as I turned to leave the room.
“Don’t speak to me again,” Charlie called after me.
“I wasn’t planning to,” I informed her, as a door to her room closed behind me.
Me: Hi youv asked me to dm you but the noise has stopped now its all the time tho im not well and keep being passed around you say go to the council the council say go to torus torus say go to you so nobodys doing anything
The police: good evening, if they are just making noise being loud it would not be something we could deal with but if they are violent or aggressive with each other or towards yourself then it is something we would take a report on
Me: theyv attacked me before so please give me advice what do you do when you have a medical condition that they are triggering that could kill you but no body wants to help and you cant ask them to stop yourself do I just wait for the seizures that kills me? Its a genuine question do i just wait here to die because nobody wants to take accountability?
The police: was it reported to police when you were attacked?
what noise issues are they making from the address when the incidents happen?
Me: ye and you came out to arrest me for being attacked then said if i wanted to pursue charges against her youd charge me to
The police: there will have been a lot more to it than you being arrested for being attacked you would not just be arrested for being attacked by someone.
what noise issues are they from the address, what do they do?
Me: i phone you 100 times you said you wouldnt come out like you have tonight so i went round and knocked on the window and while i was talking two men jn side she came out snd attacked me from behind she admitted she came out to “move me” i had in juries and your officers turned up and said they were arresting me so if you know what part of it im missing please do let me know
The police: for noise issues police would not attend, the officers who will have spoken to yourself and the neighbour would have advised you on who to contact about the problems but it isn’t something the police can help with. if you are unhappy about how the attending officers dealt with the incident then you can make a complaint but we are unable to help regarding the noise sorry.
Me: So thats a yes wait to die of seizure then ok thank you for the clarification that as far as merseyside police are concerned I wait here to die. have a nice night good bye
Week 5 of winter break
Week starting the 27th of December 2021
Week 5 of winter break
Week starting the 27th of December 2021
The planned schedule
Saturday= 3 hours of writing
Sunday= 3 hours of writing
The actual schedule
Saturday= 3 hours, 16 minutes of writing
Sunday= 3 hours, 35 minutes of writing
Overview
Target = 6 hours of writing
Achieved= 6 hours, 51 minutes
1x Sunday blog post completed
Saturday, the 1st of January 2022
On Saturday I got 3 hours, 16 minutes of writing done. I worked on my Sunday blog post – the devil cares more about cars than prada part 5. 3 hours it is my target so I did 16 minutes over.
Target done =3 hours
Extra = 16 minutes
(Owed =0)
1 x Sunday blog post complete
Sunday, the 2nd of January 2022
On Sunday I got 3 hours, 35 minutes of writing done.
I worked on everything from the plan to the final written draft of – part 6 of the devil cares more about cars than Prada.
This is amazing amount of work as usually the first draft takes double this entire amount, at least.
Target done= 3hours
Extra = 35 minutes
(owed= 0)
My plan for January is to try to write for 3 hours a day 5 days a week, which would total 15 hours a week.
And to just keep up with my Friday running Journals, and Sunday autobiographical blog posts, as I’ve been struggling to do so.
Part one
Charlie was my friend.
I cared about Charlie.
As a 34 year old woman writing this fourteen years after the fact, I realise, if only now, that she cared about me too. What I want to make very clear from the beginning of today’s post, is that Charlie never did anything to me, she never said or did anything to hurt me. She even made several heartfelt attempts to reach out to me after I completely and abruptly cut her off. Mine and Charlie’s falling out was completely on me. The decision not to respond to her attempts to mend our friendship was completely on me. However, I also want to make it very clear that I don’t regret my decision to end our friendship, or ignore her attempts to mend it. In fact, to me, it didn’t feel like a decision I had made at all. To me, I had just done what anybody in my situation would have done. With fourteen extra years of observing people, I now understand that’s not necessarily the case.
Charlie certainly had her good qualities. She was beautiful, smart, funny, daring, adventurous. She was a lot of fun. She was fearless. She fought of a violent sexual predator as he assaulted me, and she did it while the rest of our so called friends watched and even made excuses for him. You might argue that she only did it because he was assaulting her too. But, I would have to disagree with you, because while he was assaulting me, he wasn’t assaulting her. She told Adam off for his behaviour at Alexandra Palace, after seeing the state of my arm. She warned me to always double lock my door. I know she did other sweet, nice, kind, and good things for me. Yet, they have been lost not only to time, but anger, disappointment, and judgement, all except for one other thing, but that’s a different story, for a different, not so distant, day.
I enjoyed her company. And I valued her friendship. Until I very abruptly didn’t.
My hope is that in the fourteen years in between the last time I physically saw or spoke to her, or deleted one of her private social media messages to me, that she’s grown as a person and has seen the error of her problematic ways. After all, Charlie is no longer an eighteen year old girl, she will be a woman in her thirties today, just like I am. It is my belief that this is a good possibility, as it is also my belief that Charlie may have been reflecting the views of her family, friends, or abusive boyfriend. That’s not to say that’s an excuse for her behaviour or views, because it isn’t. If she reached out to me again today or in the future, which I doubt she would, I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same today as I did then, and just delete her message without replying. I’m not sure I’d even read it. But I did back then.
I still remember some of her words in those messages–
I miss you.
We all miss you.
I am worried about you.
We are all worried about you.
I think there might be something wrong with you.
We all think there might be something wrong with you.
I think you might need help.
We all think you might need help.
Why won’t you talk to me?
I care about you.
We all care about you.
Amy says you won’t speak to her.
Why wont you speak to Amy?
Amy cares about you.
Amy is your best friend.
If you won’t speak to me, if you wont speak to the rest of us, please at least speak to Amy, she is devastated, she’s heartbroken, that you have chosen not to be her friend anymore.
I am devastated, I am heartbroken, that you have chosen not to be my friend anymore.
It sounds so cruel to say all these years later, but Charlie repulsed me so much, Fee and May repulsed me so much, and Amy had hurt me so badly, that I had zero emotional reaction to her messages to me. It is a very rare thing for me to experience, but this is one of the occasions I was emotionally numb. I am glad I was emotionally numb back then, as it meant I did not react to what was going on. Also, because Charlie hadn’t personally attack me, I was aware even then, as a twenty year old, that it wasn’t my place to either hold a grudge against, or forgive, Charlie. I had held her accountable for her actions as much as I could, and I had made her aware of my opinion of her. I had even apologised to her victim for what had happened, even though I had been the only person trying to stop, or talk sense into Charlie that night. If you want to make excuses for Charlie, you could claim she was young and trying to find herself, like the rest of us, but the truth is that there is no excuse for bigotry, and some of us, who still haven’t found ourselves would never consider bigotry as either an acceptable behaviour, belief, or identity. As a person who struggles to understand how people feel and why, I make an effort to attempt to understand everybody and their opinion, but I’m never going to tolerate a hate for hates sake, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, et cetera, none of it is acceptable, no matter who it is aimed at and why.
One thing I feel I need to point out here though, is that I am not perfect, I am ignorant about certain things. The difference is, when made aware of my ignorance I don’t use it as an excuse, ignorance is not an excuse for ignorance, and I would never attempt to use it as one. As hard as I might find it, I do make an effort to correct my ways once I am made aware of my ignorance. It is important to me that I do.
If you feel like I have rambled on for half a post, I apologise, but I feel like I haven’t. I felt it was important for me to say what I have just said, and to say before I said anything else.
Talking about Charlie and what happened between us is hard, but I have to do it. It’s going to be even harder to talk about Amy and what happened between us, but I will also have to do that too. Due to this, I sat here for a while and really thought about what I wanted to say about Charlie and why. Then, when I finally knew, not what I wanted to say, rather, what I needed to say and why, I thought about how I wanted to open today’s blog post. Many possibilities, and relevant hookish ones at that, came to mind. They ticked all the boxes of how to capture the readers attention and keep it. It would have been easy for me to exploit her bad points for momentary and cheap personal gain. To have willingly thrown her to the wolves. But, she doesn’t deserve that no matter how awful what I am about to say about her makes her seem, and it is in no way my intention to make her seem awful. My intention is just to talk about why I cut her out, why I eventually cut out every member of the penthouse crew, and how that eventually led to the terrible thing that happened to me.
People are neither good nor bad. We are complicated morally grey creatures, every single one of us. As a sufferer of BPD, a person whose brain is literally built in a way that only allows me to view people as good or bad, a symptom known as black and white thinking, it always feels strange when I am the person asking non sufferers of BPD to please keep this in mind. Yet, I don’t actually think there’s anybody more qualified to remind people of this than a person like me. I am a person who has had many complicated and toxic relationships with people from the day I was born, a person who has loved and hated the same people in equally intense amounts.
I suppose what I have been trying to express here, in my own complicated way, is that I personally wish Charlie no ill will, and I don’t want anybody else to either. What has happening can’t be undone, all we can do is learn from it, then look at how we personally behave in the present and the future, and try to understand how that will impact both our own and other peoples present and futures.
Like me, Charlie was no stranger to a complicated, abusive relationship. It didn’t matter who told her, how we told her, or how many times we told her, she refused to even consider the possibility that her then (and possibly still) romantic partner was abusive to both her and other people, even when had he caused conflict between her and the other members of the penthouse crew. Yet, she always joined in whenever we had similar conversations with Sam, and even pointed out stuff that Sam’s boyfriend did to Sam, that her own boyfriend did to her, as proof that Sams boyfriend was abusive. None of us, Sam and Emma included, liked him.
“You don’t know what a relationship is like when the two people in it are alone,” She would tell us.
We didn’t need to know what he was like when the two of them were alone though, as we had seen enough of him when they weren’t to know he was no good. He wasn’t attractive, either physically or personality wise, but he blatantly thought he was both. He worked at a gym as a personal trainer, and for some reason he truly believed his job made him superior to the rest of us in some way. Maybe because of this, he never didn’t wear his work clothes, ever. Although Charlie seemed happy to tolerate him speaking to, or treating, her poorly the majority of the time, there were occasions after he had spoken to, or treated, her poorly, that we saw her in a terrible state emotionally, though she refused to ever admit it was because of him. If you weren’t a white, straight, middle-class, atheist, cis male, raised in southern England, who shared his rigid views, opinions and beliefs, then he not only genuinely and intensely despised you, he went out of his way to make you aware that he genuinely and intensely despised you.
His personal hatred of me really never bothered me, as he repulsed me, but also because I felt like the fact that he so openly hated me so much was a good sign that I was a decent human being, living my life in a decent way.
There was only ever one time that he tried to verbally abuse me, and that I am certain is due to how I, a poor, agnostic – probably obvious to everybody else asexual, gender fluid – woman, raised on a council estate in Liverpool, made him look like the ignorant idiot he was.
When I had enrolled on fine art, I had been given a project brief. It was the same project brief that had been given to all the other first year fine art students. The name of the project was Desire Lines, and the idea was to create work around the impressions we left, or would leave, in life.
I had three months worth of work to do in a single month. This event took place during that month.
Luckily for me, my friends rallied around to help me as and when they could, and we all had fun, or at least it seemed and felt that way at the time. Not only was I grateful to them for their help, but for the first time since I had arrived in London, I actually thought that things we’re going to get better.
This was one of the nights I needed help.
I had been exploring shadows, and I wanted to paint life size shadows of people onto the walls of my very small studio space, but I didn’t think I would be allowed to, so I altered my approach. Instead, I would put the shadows onto paper, then cut them out and stick them onto the studio walls, to give them the appearance of being painted on.
My original plan had been to hand draw the shadows, but right before I began I realised that I could get it done faster if I drew around somebody, so I went off in search of Amy.
On my way to Amy’s room, I found her in Charlies room, with Charlie and her boyfriend. The door was propped all the way open. He was sat on the bed, Charlie was sat on the desk chair opposite him, and Amy was perched on the desk. There wasn’t much conversation happening.
When I enquired as to whether the three of them were busy, Amy and Charlie said they weren’t. The expression on his face showed he wasn’t happy about this, and he made no attempt to hide it.
Ignoring his sour expression, I explained that I just needed one of them to draw around. Both volunteered to help, so for roughly the next half an hour both of them took turns in laying on taped together A1 sheet of sketch paper while I drew around them.
“What are you going to do with them when they’re done?” Charlie wondered, as I drew around Amy.
“I’m going to fill it in so it looks like it’s made of fingerprints.”
“You’re taking this project very literally,” Amy questioned.
“I think I meant to,” I agreed, although now I don’t think I actually was.
“Can we help you fill it in with fingerprints?” Charlie playfully begged, excited by the prospect creating actual art work.
“Of course you can, if you want to. It would really help me save time,” I accepted her offer.
“It’s better than what we had planned,” Amy sounded unimpressed as she sat up.
“What did you have planned?” I asked, standing and heading off down the corridor to collect some black paint and pots.
“Nothing,” she sighed.
When I returned, we lay the first set of taped together sheets of paper out in the corridor, filled the pots with paint and began working, chatting and laughing as we did.
It was then that Charlies boyfriend, who had sat watching us with that same sour expression on his face the entire time, decided to speak. “I can’t believe I’m paying for you to fucking sit around and finger paint.”
We all stopped what we were doing and looked at him. I think, at first, we all thought he was talking to Charlie. I know I did. And I know Charlie did, because she responded.
“What do you mean?”
“Not you, her,” he clarified by pointing at me.
Due to how confused I was by the accusation, my own response came out sounding soft and unconfident. “How are you paying for me to sit around finger painting?”
“I work. My taxes pay for you to be here.”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t that what he said was funny. It was that it was absurd. Then, as quickly as the laughter had overtaken me, I snapped out of it, and my tone and manner changed from amused to unamused. “You don’t pay for me to sit around and finger paint. I pay for me to sit around and finger. I don’t get a government grant. I get a student loan off the student loans company. The student loan company may be a government organisation, but I can assure you that your taxes don’t pay for my education. If you want to talk about taxes, I’ve worked in paid employment for the last two years, I’ve paid my own taxes, I contribute. But if you want to speak about student loans specifically, I have to pay that back once I graduate, that’s what a loan is, it’s when somebody lends you money, rather than gives you money. Not only that but once I graduate I will have to pay interest on that loan, as well as my taxes. So, if your argument is that you are contributing to society, while I mooch off it, you are incorrect. By me taking out a student loan, I am committing to paying interest, interest that you don’t pay, and so if the student loan company is in fact a government organisation, which I believe it is, that means my financial contribution to society will be greater than yours. And, seeing as I have already received part of that loan, I’ve already agreed to contribute more financially to society than you have.”
Never had I seen him look so angry. His face was bright red, even his ears and neck were bright red. His mouth was in set an a hard, sharp line. He stared at me with cold hatred in his unblinking eyes. In fact the only part of his entire body that seemed to be moving was his chest as it rose and fell.
All three of us waited in silence for him to reply. We waited for a good few minutes. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to reply, we got back to our finger painting, chatting and laughing as we did, like nothing had happened.
In today’s post, we are going to take a more in depth look at pronation. More specifically we are going to be looking at under and over pronation.
Pronation is the collapsing of the arch of your foot as it strikes the ground. The reason your arch collapses is to absorb the impact this has on your bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
Neutral Pronation
Neutral pronation, also known as correct running pattern, is when your foot naturally rolls inwards at around 15% to absorb the shock, while keeping your feet, ankles, and legs correctly aligned. This makes you less prone to common injuries.
There are several ways you can determine whether you are a neutral pronator.
One method is to look at the outer sole of your shoes. If you are a neutral pronator, the sole will either show even wear, or more wear in the centre of the sole.
Another method is to look at how you stand in your regular shoes. Put your shoes on and look down. If both your feet face straightforward you are probably a neutral pronator.
If you are a neutral pronator then neutral running shoes are designed for you. They tend to be lighter than other running shoes, as they contain less additional technologies to provide support. The greater proportion of their cushioning is usually in the heel. This is because it is less necessary for them to have additional cushioning in other areas of the sole, as with neutral pronators your entire foot will come into contact with the ground and your weight will be evenly distributed. You will find neutral running shoes are usually softer than other types of running shoes, therefore they allow your feet to move more freely.
Over pronation
Over pronation, also known as flat feet, is when the arch of your feet collapse excessively downwards or inwards. The heel of your foot will strike the ground first, then your foot rolls inwards onto the arch.
Most people are over pronators.
Over pronation is generally caused by flat and very flexible feet. People can be born with flat, flexible feet. However, there are certain conditions and situations in which a persons chances of developing either flat feet, or weakened arches, increases, which then leads to overpronation, such as –
-wear and tear
-Strain
-Overuse
-Taking part in activities that involve your feet repeatedly striking a hard surface for extended periods of time, such as – running
-Being pregnant
-Being overweight
There are several ways that you can determine whether you are an overpronator.
One method is to look at the outer sole of your shoes. If you are an overpronator the soles will either show the majority of the wear on the inner part of your shoe, or will show extra wear on the inside of the heal and under the ball of your foot.
Another method is to look at how you stand in your regular shoes. Put on your regular shoes and look down, if your feet spread out from the back to the front, so they make a V shape, it is likely you’re an overpronator.
You can also look at how you stand when barefoot. If there is no space between your foot and the floor where your arch should be and/or the back of your ankles appear to bow inwards, then you are likely and overpronator.
Injuries commonly caused by over pronation include –
-Heel pain
-Arch pain
-knee pain
-Hip pain
-Chronic lower back pain
-Swollen feet
-Swollen ankles
-Corns
-Calluses
-Bunions
-Misaligned big toes
-Hammertoes
-Damage to muscles
-Damage to tendons
-Damage to ligaments
-Heel spurs
-Shin splints
-Runners knee
-Plantar fasciitis
-Iliotibial band syndrome
-Stress fractures in the lower foot
-Stress fractures in the lower leg
-Patellofemoral pain syndrome
-Achilles tendonitis
-peroneal tendonitis
Over pronators are better suited to a shoe with more cushioning to help support and control the inward role of your foot. Motion control shoes are ideal for overpronators. They are designed to reduce or control the excessive rolling action of your foot, correct your gate, and provide additional shock absorption. They are often the most rigid type of shoe, and more stiff and heavy than neutral or stability running shoes. Motion control shoes provide significant support in the mid sole, as well as heel cup support.
Under pronation
Underpronation, also known as supination, is when you either have abnormally high arches, or your arches have little flexibility. This means that your heels often lean and roll outwards, putting weight on the outer edge of your foot. As your foot strikes the ground, either to land or push off, your foot doesn’t roll in far enough, which is around 15%, this causes your foot to roll outwards and put pressure on your ankle and toes.
Very few people are underpronators.
You can be born with bodily conditions that lead to you under pronating, such as –
-Having a muscle imbalance in your feet
-The length of your legs (which includes having differences between the lengths of your legs)
-The width of your foot
-Body misalignments
-Your natural level of ankle stability
-Having high arches
-Having a tight Achilles tendon
However, there are certain conditions or situations that can cause you to start underpronating, such as –
-Sedentary lifestyle
-Restricted range of motion
-Standing for long periods of time
-Stiffness due to age
-Arthritis
-Too much exercise
-Participating in high impact sports that place strain and wear on your Achilles tendon
-Constant impact on hard and firm surfaces
-Changes in gait
-Foot injuries
-Leg injuries
-Developing Achilles tendonitis
-Wearing unsupportive shoes
There are several methods you can use to determine whether you are an under pronator.
One way is to look at the outer sole of your shoes. Under pronators shoes will wear down mostly on the outer edge.
Another way is to look at how you stand in your regular shoes. Put on your regular shoes and look down. If your feet curve inwards from back to front so they look like a capital A, then you are likely an under pronator.
You can also use the method of looking at how you stand barefoot. If from behind your ankles appear to bow outwards you are probably an under pronator.
Common injuries caused by under pronation include,
-Pain through the arch of your foot
-Pain through the ball of your foot
-Heel pain
-Knee pain
-Back pain
-Sprains
-Sprained ankles
-lateral ankle sprains
-Rolled ankles
-Strained muscles
-Strained ligaments
-Overstretched tissue
-Worn tissue
-Flattened tissue
-Torn tissue
-Shin splints
-Calluses
-Bunions on the outer edge of your foot
-Heel slips
-Falls
-Less stable gate
-Build up of calcium deposits
-Plantar fasciitis
-Achilles tendonitis
-Achilles tendonopathy
-Hammertoes
-Clawed toes
-Metatarsalgia
-Iliotibial band syndrome
-Stress fractures in the foot
-Stress fractures in the lower leg
-Medial tibial stress syndrome
Cushioned shoes are important for runners who under probate. The highly cushioned running shoes are designed to reduce shock, that would otherwise be sent through your body. However, a more flexible shoe, and a broad based shoe, can also be helpful to underpronators.
Week 4 winter break
Week starting the 20th of December 2021
Week 4 of winter break
Week starting the 20th of December 2021
Part Two
It would turn out that, I had no reason to worry about missing a year at university and owing seven grand to miss it, as I got accepted on all six of the courses that I applied for.
However, not all could accommodate me that academic year. The head of the jewellery department informed, a very disappointed, me of this problem at my interview. It took a few days for both textiles and photography to tell me, and although I was equally as disappointed by textiles, I discovered I wasn’t that bothered about photography.
Both applied art and fine art offered me a place and immediate enrolment during my interviews.
“How is applied arts different from fine arts,” I enquired, as the head of that department showed me around a very small studio space, which seemed far too large for the handful of students already taking the course. The only reason I had applied was to increase my chances of getting on a new course at Middlesex without missing year.
“You can create whatever you want to,” he beamed at me, as though he was offering me the world on a silver plate.
“You can do that on fine art too,” I pointed out, unimpressed.
“We teach you to work big. Then we teach you how to scale down that same work. Things created to be small by working small look cheap. For example, imagine a diamond and all its lines and edges, not just on the outside but on the inside. Now imagine all the detail you could fit into drawing a diamond if you drew it large, compared to if you drew it small.”
“My work is already pretty big,” I said, not knowing what else to say, as he still hadn’t answered my question.
“Well then, you’re already halfway there,” he bellowed jovially.
Still not knowing how to respond to somebody ignoring the question you kept asking them, I just nodded silently.
Illustration offered me an immediate enrolment without having to interview, as the head of the department remember me “fondly” all these months later, and was “thrilled” I wanted to change to illustration. understandably, I was required to attend formal meeting with the woman who would be my tutor before I could start.
She regarded me warily, but not unkindly, when she opened her office door to me and invited me inside.
Obviously, the first thing she wanted to know was why I was leaving fashion.
I was honest about how, I doubted the course was what was advertised on UCAS at my induction, and how I didn’t fit in from day one. Then I explained how I had not only had my work, but who I was, totally trash, and that it made me realise how miserable I had been, and would always be on that course, and in the fashion industry as a whole.
“What other courses [had] [I] applied for since withdrawing from fashion?” The fact I had already withdrawn appeared to have won me points with her.
She waited patiently for me to list all six, without judgement, before she commented.
“My husband is an artist. We both have masses of work cluttering up our house. My work is it’s in my office. It’s mine to keep, for my portfolio. His work is laid out for viewing in our garage. He has to sell that physical work to make money from it,” here she paused, as though she was considering how to better word her message to me. “There is a massive difference between me and my husband, and the reason we create. I create because people and companies employ me to do so. If nobody paid me, I wouldn’t create. My husband creates because he needs to. He needs to create like he needs air, water, food. I work to a brief. He works to satisfy his creative urges . Could you not create if you weren’t guaranteed an income? Or, do you need to create, like you need air, water, food?”
Although she definitely knew that some artists, people like me and her husband, need to create to satisfy an urge, impulse, or itch, so to speak, she did not fully understand all artists, or the art world as as a whole. Like any other industry, the people involved are not all the same. Some artists do only create for money, because a person or organisation has commissioned them to do so, these artists usually work to a brief, or because their work sells well and fast enough that they are confident they can make a living from it. Some artists who create because they need to, write their own briefs.
I considered her question for a minute, even though I was already aware of the answer, then I replied honestly, even though I was aware it was the wrong answer, “I need to create.”
It’s true, I do. Even to this day.
Every job I have had since graduating, I’ve had for the same reason as before I graduated. None of them have been a career. They’ve all been a way to make money only. A way to survive. Nothing more.
Even on my most unmotivated and depressed days I have the urge to create, whether I act on that urge or not, and whether or not I want to act on it or not. I always will. It’s who I am. I am the product of two creative, though not professionally so, families. Art is in my blood. Art is in my DNA.
“It’s my opinion that you never belonged on a fashion course. It’s also my opinion that you don’t belong on an illustration course. You belong on a fine art course. You’re are an artist. However, what course you take is not my decision to make, it is yours. I just ask that you take my advice. Give illustration a week, and while you do keep it to yourself. Do not decline your place on fine art until you are sure that you belong here.”
Would she have given me that same advice if she had viewed my portfolio, I wonder?
Or would she have noticed that I lack self direction?
Self direction is a necessary trait to practice as a fine artist, never mind to succeed as one, and due to my BPD, it is a trait that I lack.
She was right though, I didn’t even make it a full day on illustration, never mind a week.
Luckily, I was smart enough to take her advice, and not dismiss her concerns. She was the tutor, and I was the student. I trusted her. I had gone to the fine art department the same day as my meeting with her, and told them I had also been offered a place on an illustration degree, and that I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. I’d requested a week to make my decision. It was the rest of my life after all. They had agreed that I should take some time to think about it. However, they warned me against taking too long, as we were now almost two months into the academic year.
After my formal meeting, she took me on a tour of the department, which was huge.
“We try to encourage our students to find and develop their own unique style of working,” she told me, with a roll of her eyes, as though the trying was futile.
This was both advice I was already aware of, and a skill I had already mastered, or at least I thought I had.
The reason I was unsure is because I do have my own styles, plural, but not my own style, singular. This is again due to my borderline personality disorder, and how it means I am several different people either at different times or simultaneously. All these versions of myself have their own style.
“Good. All everybody seems to want to do at the moment is draw manga. They refuse to understand that manga is just a trend, and that it’s a trend they are purposely ruining their education to follow.”
I’m not actually sure if she was correct on this topic. Like realism in all its forms, manga seems to be here to stay.
When I arrived at my new classroom the next day, it wasn’t her taking the mornings workshop, it was a “print technician”.
Illustration was the complete opposite of fashion, but not necessarily in a good way
The classrooms were, as I had seen the previous day, large open studios, containing all the technical equipment and utilities that might be possibly required at some point, rather than the bare minimum equipment being housed in a separate room miles away.
The member of staff was constantly present the entire morning.
The other students embraced both me, and each other, to the extent that it was suffocating. With the hundreds of voices already screaming at me inside my own head, it made it impossible for me to think. Bodywise, minor functioning became difficult, so much so that I was unable to carry out our brief. It was almost impossible for me to keep my attention on the task we were supposed to be concentrating on, with so many other people fighting for it. On noticing I was struggling, instead of giving me space to pull myself and my thoughts together, the other students tried to “come to my rescue” and either attempted to, talk me through a process I was already familiar with, or snatch my tools and medium from me to do my work themselves.
The task was one that I hated, and injured myself doing at the best of times, carving stamps out of blocks of wood and lino tiles.
As a result of the severe episode I was now balls deep in, I cut my hands, fingers and arms dozens of times.
The speech she had given about encouraging individuality now seemed false, and the reasons everybody’s work looked the same seemed obvious. We had all been given the same photocopy a king from a deck of playing cards and order to replicated it as accurately as possible. When I enquired as to whether this was standard practice, instead of simply saying yes or no, the other students began running around to unpack their “portfolios” in order to show me they were identical.
This was the point the technician snapped at me, losing his patients at me for “constantly interrupting his workshop.
I think his intention was to frighten me.
Instead, it had the opposite effect.
His reaction was so weird, I found it hilarious. I mean, I was the only student sitting still and practically silent as I struggled desperately to do my work. It was everybody else chattering, trying to fight me, and running around spreading work everywhere.
I felt like I was Alice and I had fallen into Wonderland. The entire experience was bizarre.
By now, I knew I wouldn’t be staying on illustration, so I gave in. The others could waste their time doing my work if it was that important to them. When I didn’t return from lunch, it might teach them a valuable lesson about respecting other peoples boundaries and minding their own business.
Do I regret what happened next?
Do I regret what I did?
No. It taught me a valuable lesson of my own that I took into employment afterwards, which is once you leave, never go back. Accept, no matter how hard it might feel at the time, that you left for a good reason and move on.
My only regret is that I wasn’t capable of applying this rule to my friendships and relationships for another decade, until I was twenty nine.
At lunch, when they all insisted that they went to lunch as a group, and so I had to join them, I firmly informed them that I did not. They had expressions like I had physically slapped each of them afterwards.
Usually I would meet Amy in the Cafe or lunch area and we would eat together. Today we had agreed that she shouldn’t wait for me in case I ate lunch with people from my course. She had excitedly encouraged me to make new friends on my new course, most of the time her friends, or now Laura, joined us anyway, so she wouldn’t be alone.
However, I wasn’t planning on eating at all.
What I was thinking in the moment, I can’t be certain, but I believe it was something along the lines of getting through my first year at Middlesex, then applying to transfer to JMU in my second year.
Since I had gone straight from the illustration department to the fashion department the long way, through the back corridors, in order to avoid the lunch crowd, I didn’t pass any mirrors or strongly reflective surfaces.
Looking back, I’m not sure how nobody, especially the staff, realised I was mentally unwell and having an episode.
Whatever I was thinking, I wasn’t thinking logically, I know that for certain, as I went looking for my fashion tutor thinking I would find her in my old classroom, even though I knew she was never in there at the beginning of lunch.
As luck would have it, I found her on my way there, halfway up a flight of stairs, on the platform that was positioned mid story, so the flight could change direction. She was sticking leaflets to into a rack, and pinning posters to the wall.
I was, and still am, glad nobody else was around.
“Can I come back?” I couldn’t bring myself to say that I wanted to come back, because I didn’t.
“I don’t know, it’s not up to me. It would be up to [insert the head of the fashion departments name]. I’m not sure she will allow you to come back after how rude you were to her in front of other students.”
In the moment, it didn’t occur to me that I had been nothing but honest. If I had touched a nerve because she genuinely wasn’t happy and didn’t like her job, as I suspected, that wasn’t my fault. It also didn’t occur to me that in front of other students, must have meant the eavesdroppers, who I had no idea were outside the office listening in.
“You’ve missed an awful lot of work, she continued.
I didn’t doubt that based on the amount of work I had been set during the four weeks I had been a fashion student.
“We might be able to use some of the work you’ve done wherever you’ve been towards it, but you’ll have to make the rest up.”
Despite being balls deep in an episode, I actually realised this woman was not completely in touch with reality if she believed changing courses was as simple as walking out of one classroom and into another.
“What other work? It took me all this time to get on a new course. I only started illustrations today. I don’t have any other work.”
“Aw, your workshy,” she cooed, as though she was telling a kitten it was adorable. Then, she smiled that smug fucking smile.
It made my blood boil.
“Are you serious? I did at least a hundred projects on fashion –” I stopped myself. What the actual fuck was I doing back here speaking to this bully. It seems that her attitude had gotten worse while I was gone. Her boss must have been rubbing off on her. “Forget it. I remember why I left. I was absolutely miserable. I’ll be absolutely miserable if I came back. I’m not putting myself through that again. I made the right decision leaving. Asking to come back is my mistake,” I turned and ran down stairs toward the toilets. I needed a private place to cry.
When I walked in and caught my reflection in the mirrors above the sinks, I was shocked to see my hair and clothes were dishevelled, and the skin on my face and arms was covered in thick smears of my own blood.
Nobody had cared enough about me to notice the state I was in.
I hid in a in a stall and sobbed silently, as people came and went, for a good half an hour to an hour, before I cleaned myself up, and headed to the fine art department to enroll.
Finding The Right Running Shoes
Part 1
Finding The Right Running Shoes For Your Body Type
Welcome to a new year, and a new approach to getting started running with the psychotic girls guide.
This year, we will be ditching the professional guides to getting started running and writing our own.
As always, the aim of these guides is to serve as a place for you, the reader, to start your own research into the topics we cover.
As you all know, I failed to achieve my running goals last year, but not through lack of trying. A combination of things contributed to my failure; my poor mental health, injuries I sustained both running and during every day life, and of course the guide I used.
What I did find useful though, was doing my own research.
With this in mind, I asked myself –
If I was writing a beginners guide to running, how would I start it?
My answer was –
I do sort of write beginners guides to running.
This was obviously not the answer I wanted, but it was the answer I needed.
I feel as though I didn’t take my running serious enough last year. Therefore, I had no business writing a running journal, never mind running guides. If I want to not only continue writing running journals and guides, but am also serious about succeeding in my own running goals, as well as helping you succeed in yours, then I need to take both my running and research more serious this year, especially if I am determined to do it my own way.
As a result of this realisation, I reset my frame of mind and ask myself and admittedly weird question –
With the hindsight of a failed runner, where would I start if I wanted to get into running but I had never run before?
The answer was –
I would need to buy running clothes, and equipment.
When I planned my research for this weeks post, I expected to be writing about all running clothes, from bras, to jackets, to shoes. Yet, I have since learnt that I can’t even write a single guide to running shoes and do it justice. Although shoes seems like the obvious place to start, I now understand why every guide I have read since last year doesn’t even attempt to address this topic, running shoes are a complicated subject. The way guides ignore them does sort of give new runners the impression that you can throw on any old shoes and go running though. I could have chosen to do the same, to ignore them, but I don’t believe you can throw on any old shoes, trainers, or other type of sport shoes and go running, I actually believe the opposite, which is that the shoes you choose to go running in have the power to either make or break you as a runner, so I’m not going to. I’m going to give running shoes the time and space they deserve.
How do I plan on doing this when it’s such a big and complex topic?
I plan to start with a post today about finding the right shoes for your body type, then build on the topic through future post, as and when they are appropriate, as we all learn and progress. What I want to do is make the subject as easy to understand as possible, so I don’t want to bombard you with too much information at once.
Every source I found while doing my research suggested that running shoes are the most important piece of clothing and/or equipment a runner needs, to the extent that they make it sound like shoes are the only piece of clothing or equipment runners need, and though I don’t fully agree with them, I agree that buying an appropriate pair of running shoes is the best place to start.
Personally, I’ve tried running in any old shoes, though it was around a decade decade ago, and honestly I didn’t do well. By the time I began running in 2016 -2018, I knew a proper pair of running shoes was required to go running, otherwise I was risking injuring my joints, or suffering from joint overuse, as running shoes have built in shock absorbers to absorb the huge impact that striking the ground while running has on our joints.
What I did not know, was just how massive that impact is.
The force of your foot strike against the ground as you run, is 2 -3 times that of your body weight. If you are 10 stone, that’s 20 -30 stone of impact. If you’re 15 stone, it’s 30 -45 stone of impact. The more your weigh, the more protection you need from your running shoes, which means you require more cushioning.
Honestly, if you would have asked me what I have learnt about running shoes since, I would’ve said nothing, and thought there wasn’t anything more to know. However, while doing my research, I found that what I was reading not only matched my own experiences with running shoes, but also the experiences of others who have told me stories over the last year about their own running shoes. Think a wrecked ankle on my part, due to broken running shoes: and a collapse outer soul on somebody else’s, due to their particular gait.
And, I certainly was not aware of the extent to which you can cause yourself short and long term injuries by–
– not wearing running shoes at all
– not wearing the correct shoes for; your body type, terrain, or goals
– or even wearing broken or worn down running shoes.
Running injuries caused by wearing incorrect or inappropriate footwear, can range from foot and ankle injuries, all the way to knee and spine injuries – apparently.
The most common injuries are
– blisters
– hotspots – blisters in waiting but deeper and more painful than regular blisters
– cuts
– corns
– bunions
– ankle sprains
– ankle fractures
– Metatarsalgia– pain and inflammation in the ball of your foot
– Shin splints – pain along your shin bone (tibia)
– plantar fasciitis Inflammation of the plantar fascia (the part of your foot that connects your heel to your toes)
– tendonitis– swelling of a tendon (a thick cord attaching a muscle to a bone) causing joint pain and stiffness.
It’s not all about protecting your body though, there are benefits you can gain from wearing the correct running shoes, which include –
– making your work out more pleasant and comfortable
– and improving your performance.
In fact, surprisingly, a lot of the sources suggested that comfort was the most important factor when it comes to picking out a pair of running shoes.
One even claimed that you should feel comfortable in your running shoes from the second you try them on in the shop.
I disagree. Not that comfort is important, but that putting them on and deciding to buy them based on the fact that they are comfortable is the best way to make your decision.
Everything about picking running shoes is complicated. Take for example the length and width of the shoe, in particular the toebox, which is the front of the shoe, or more specifically the part that houses your toes.
Maybe you know your shoe size.
You might even know you need a wider fit than regular shoes give, but this is only going to get you so far.
With running shoes –
– your toes should never touch the end of the shoe.
One source that I read advised that there should be a distance equal to the length of your thumbnail between the end of the shoe and your longest toe. Another said that distance should be equal to the width of your thumb.
– Your feet shouldn’t feel too cramped
– and there should be enough space to wiggle your toes and allow them to move.
– Equally there shouldn’t be too much spare room.
And you want to make sure your heel isn’t slipping.
– However, if you’re running off road it’s better to purchase a shoe with a snug fit, in order to reduce as much movement as possible inside the shoe when running on uneven ground and unpredictable terrain.
– Alternatively, if you’re planning on running long distances a slightly roomier shoe might be a better option for you, as our feet are prone to swell after a few hours of running, or just when running at all. This means that a shoe that feels just right, so possibly comfortable, in the shop, will most likely feel too small during your run.
You want to lace your shoes tight enough that your foot doesn’t move around, but not so tight you cut off your circulation.
Finally, you need to take into consideration your particular –
-biomechanics
-gait
-and pronation
which all seems to boil down in the end to your pronation.
To put it simply, pronation is the collapsing of the arch of your foot as it strikes the ground. It collapses to absorb the impact, in order to protect your knees, spine, et cetera from the force of that impact, as best it can. Yet, not everybody pronates the same, some peoples arches don’t collapse at all. How you pronate effects how your foot rolls as it makes contact with the ground, and as a result it can affect how you run and therefore what type of shoe you need.
There are three categories of pronation
– neutral pronation
-over pronation
-and under pronation -also known as supination.
Neutral pronation, is when your foot naturally rolls inwards at about 15% to absorb shock, while keeping your feet, ankles, and legs properly aligned. This makes you less prone to common injuries.
If you are a neutral pronator, you will generally notice more wear and tear in the centre of the shoe. You would want to choose a neutral shoe, which allows for your standard running gait.
Overpronation is when the outer edge of your heel hits the ground first, then your foot rolls inwards onto the arch.
Most people are over pronators.
If you overpronate, your shoe will tend to show extra wear on the inside of the heel, and under the ball of your foot. Overpronators are better suited to a shoe with more cushioning, to help support and control the inward role of their foot.
Underpronation, is when you either have an “abnormally” high arch, or you arch has little to no flexibility. This means that your heel often leans and rolls outwards, putting weight on the outer edge of your foot.
The shoes of under pronators wear down mostly on the outside. It is often better for under pronators to wear more flexible running shoes, so they are better suited to a neutral shoe, but cushioning is helpful to protect the “lateral” area of the foot from stress, and abroad base is also recommended.
I appreciate that it can be tempting to, so, if you are considering going running in inappropriate and/or incorrect shoes, please remember that it’s not only not worth it, it’s counter productive, as even short term injuries will derail your goals, whether they are weight loss, fitness and health, or race and event goals.
Overall goals
Start date is the 31st of January 2022
End date is 27th of February 2022
Length is 4 weeks
Lowest running to target for days is 8 days
Highest running target for days is 16 days
Lowest lap target is 24
Highest lap target is 48
Lowest mile target is 39.888
Highest mile target is 79.776
Specific goals
1. To do 3 laps
2. At least 2 days a week
3. At most 4 days a week
4. Of 1 minute running
5. 2 minutes walking
6. With no stopping at all mid run or walk. -If I am struggling to run for the full length of time, rather than stop I should change my run walk time or percentage
7. With no stopping mid lap.- If I am struggling to complete a lap, then I must change my lap amount
8. On alternating days
9. Ignoring any days I have a reasonable reason I can’t go.
10. No doing multiple days running in a row.
11. No taking calls while I’m running
12. No checking my social media while running
13. Avoid checking my remaining run time
14. Add or change goals one at a time
Week 3 winter break
Week starting the 13th of December 2021
Week 3 of winter break
Week starting the 13th of December 2021
Part One
“Middlesex have refused to transfer your tuition fees to us,” the man from Stockport notified me as soon as I answered my phone.
“What happens now then? I really don’t want to miss a full term, but I am sure I can catch up on the work if I need to.”
“It’s not that I doubt your ability to catch up on any missed work, you have misunderstood what I am telling you. Middlesex have refused to transfer your full first years tuition fees, minus the money for the weeks you have already spent there, to us,” he broke the news to me in a manner that suggested I should have been able to decipher this from his previous statement, therefore I was not intellectually meeting his low standards.
Was he mad at me about this?
Did he feel as though I had messed him around?
Or that I, the student, should have somehow known this would be the case, rather than him, the head of a university department?
I was silent for a minute, as I both tried to understand his sudden change in attitude towards me, and turned over the information he had just given me in my mind, waiting for its meaning and how it was going to affect me to sink in.
When I finally responded, it was with a question that only formed as the individual words left my mouth, “Is it standard practice for the student loans to pay the full years tuition fees upfront? For example, if I decided now to drop out altogether, after only five weeks, would I have to pay a full years worth of tuition fees? Would Middlesex not be required to reimburse the money for the months I wasn’t here to them?”
“I’ve no idea, I don’t deal with finances at all…” He began.
But I was no longer speaking to him. Instead I was thinking out loud.
Now I am aware that I suffer with racing, disorganised thoughts, I wonder if this was an unconscious technique to try to follow a single thread of thoughts, particularly during episodes, as I was definitely having an episode during this conversation, once he had broken the awful news to me.
“If they are refusing to transfer my tuition loan to you, I suppose they also won’t reimburse my accommodation loan to me, for the months I won’t be living here. Do the student loans also pay the full years accommodation fees upfront?”
“No, I don’t imagine they will,” he agreed with me, ignoring my question.
“What am I going to do now?” I continued my line of thought.
“Pay our tuition fees yourself,” he suggested.
Somehow, I managed not to reply that I would just pull three grand out of my arse for their tuition fees, as well as the additional money I would need to pay for privately rented accommodation in Stockport. He had been nice to me up until this point, but his attitude today was really rubbing me the wrong way, and the news he had given me was stressful.
Now that he had reminded me that he was still on the phone, with his ridiculous suggestion, I explained bluntly that I could not afford to move to Stockport, minus my tuition and accommodation loans (what student could?) and that I would try to talk to somebody from Middlesex about it that day.
Then, I hung up and headed across campus to the mansion.
It was the last time I ever spoke to him.
The woman on the reception, who was wearing the same pair of green and yellow plastic framed glasses as me, and went out of her way to point it out, like encountering a person who was wearing the same glasses as she was, was the most interesting thing that has ever happened to her, informed me that it was indeed possible for me to speak to somebody about my issue that day, however it was first come first serve, and there were already a few people in the queue before me. Then, she pointed me in the direction of an open door, near the entrance of the mansion.
Thanking her, I made a mental note to wear my red glasses if I had to come here again.
Through the open door was a very small waiting area, that was three chairs in length, and much smaller in width. There was one girl already sitting in there, but nobody else.
Sitting down myself, afraid that she might attempt to interact with me and not feeling up to that particular task, I made a show of busy myself by reading the posters and leaflets on the wall opposite, all of which were about dropping out or student finance. None of them actually had anything helpful or valuable to say.
It was a long awkward wait for the person who was already in with the advisor to finish, but once the girl in front of me in the queue went in, she was quick.
While the other person had been in there, I hadn’t heard a word either they or the advisor had said, so I was glad that I had done my best to avoid interacting with the girl before me when she started shouting.
She was adamant she was dropping out.
University wasn’t for her.
She had a job.
She stormed from the room, slamming the office door behind her as she did.
A minute later, the advisor appeared in the doorway with a smile on her face, as though she hadn’t just been screamed at.
My meeting with this woman, who was part of the retentions team, was equally as short, frustrating, and infuriating.
“No Middlesex would not transfer my tuition loan for the remainder of the academic year to Stockport College.”
“No Middlesex would not reimburse my accommodation loan for the months I would not be living there.”
In fact, the only option for me, other than dropping out, and owing thevstudent loans a total of seven thousand pounds for a wasted year, was to stay at Middlesex, even though she, “didn’t like my chances of transferring to another course in house this late in the academic year,” and I had already withdrawn from fashion.
This seemed unfair. The three thousand pound for the first terms tuition, rent, and maintenance was fair, but the other four thousand pound was not, especially considering the degree I had signed up for was not what was advertised on UCAS, and their staff were abusive.”
When I enquired as to why nobody had bothered to make me aware of all of this before I withdrew from the fashion course, she stared at me blankly and shrugged like she couldn’t even be bothered to do that.
Regardless of her pessimistic prediction, and fuelled by both stress and rage, I left that meeting determined to secure a place on another course at Middlesex, and armed with the instructions I needed to start applying.
That afternoon, I applied to six courses; textiles, illustration, jewellery, photography, fine art, and applied art.
While I waited, and I hoped, for a response, I busied myself with putting together a new portfolio of work.
As you can probably imagine, applying, putting together a portfolio, and even interviewing didn’t fill much time.
Due to how overwhelmed and worried I was about my academic and financial future, I filled the rest of my free time with parties in a desperate and not smart attempt to drink away my problems, much like I had done during the worst summer of my life.
Matt had saved me from losing myself in the bottle the autumn that followed that terrible summer, and I found myself reaching out to him, possibly hoping he would do the same again, but he was firm with me that we were over, and I couldn’t blame him.
During the two or three weeks I was officially a student without a degree, the myth of me spread faster than fire, and at every party I found a crowd of people fighting each other to speak to me, all wanting to know how I had done it, as though I had achieved some sort of coveted, unattainable goal by gaming the system.
Not surprisingly this had its downside. Strangers, who were obviously students, and usually women, would approach me constantly; at the Trent Park campus and the student union; at the CatHill campus, in the lunch area, and the Cafe; at the bus stops and tube stations; even in the local supermarkets and shops.
I remembered none of these people, but they all remembered me.
“Rachel!” They would call excitedly, as if to prove that they truly did know who I was. “Are you going to the SU tonight? It’s karaoke/the traffic like party/school uniform night. Will you be at [insert students name’s party] tonight?”
At first I was honest.
I didn’t remember them. I was sorry. I must have been hammered when I met them.
Some laughed. “That [was] typical Rachel.
Most pouted, and tried to jog my memory.
The entire thing was embarrassing for them, and exhausting for me.
So, I tried just not mentioning that I didn’t have a clue who they were, but this was even worse. I pulled it off so successfully, without lying, that I had to go back to admitting I didn’t know who they were, after several of them ditched their own social plans to come to mine, or tried to hug me or touch me in some other way – my dress, my hair, my face.
At the time this was happening, I felt optimistic that if I got on a new course things would be better. With my newfound ability to be more social, now that I wasn’t buried under a mountain of work constantly, I was making new friends. Not just one or two either, but entire groups of new friends.
Exactly where and when I met Laura and her group of friends, I don’t recall. In fact all I recall about how we met, is standing in the outer circle of a group while one of the girls in the inner circle regaled us with anecdotes from past parties.
“… Me and Amy,” she said launching into another story.
“You know Amy! I know Amy! How do you know Amy?” I hadn’t meant to interrupt her. The words were out of my mouth before I realised, as I was so shocked that neither of us had recognised each other, as we were both present during the story she was currently recounting.
“I’m a printed textiles student, so we sometimes have lectures and classes together, even though we aren’t on the same course, because we’re on the same department.”
For anybody who is wondering what printed textiles is, because I was and I later asked that question, it is actually exactly what it sounds like, which is designing the patterns to go on fabric and then creating that patterned fabric.
“How do you know Amy?” Laura seemed to have completely forgotten the story she was in the process of telling.
“We’re best friends,” I told her, although I suppose at this point S was my best friend, but I already thought of him as the brother I never had, and so me and him had a bond deeper than just being best friends.
“How did you two meet?” Laura enquired, now fully invested and immersed by the potential of what strange meet cute might have brought two polar opposite but equally as fascinating people like me and Amy together, and although I thought I was, I wasn’t about to disappoint her.
“I don’t remember meeting her. It was my first night here, and I was so hammered that later that night while I was in bed, I heard somebody violently vomiting in the toilet across from my room and thought, “That poor person,” but when I woke up covered in vomit the next morning I realise I must have been the person I was hearing. So, I only know what Amy says happened.
“Oh my God! That was you,” Laura laughed. “”What does Amy say happened?”
“That I tried to kidnap pebbles.”
“Oh my God! That was you,” Laura howled.
As easy as that, I had gone from the outer circle to the inner circle.
Laura and her friends, now my friends too, would be the main group of new friends that I made that would outlast my near month as a course less party girl, at university.
Little did I know, that they would turn out to be my worst nightmare.
Total length should have = 7 weeks
Total length= 21 weeks
The total length was 3x as long as it should have been
Total miles= 165.396
Total miles run= 106.189
Total miles walked = 59.1672
Total percent run= 64.213365
Total percent walked= 35.778894
Phase 3 was an epic failure in every way, to the point where it has left me in a much worse position than I was this time last year, when I began using the guide. Not only am I now only capable of doing 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking, which is roughly 33% running, 66% walking, I have gained half a stone, which means I am now 9 stone and need to lose 1 1/2 stone to reach my target weight.
In the interest of being fully honest, I’ve struggled for the best part of 3 days to even start writing this overview. It is Thursday as I write this, and it needs to be complete for tomorrow. I spent 3 days trying to convince myself that phase 3 being a complete failure was fine, because I have learnt something from it, which I haven’t, as I knew everything I know now when I started phase 3, as well as attempting to lift my spirits with empty sentiments about it being- a new year, a new approach, a new plan, and a new me, none of which helped.
For these reasons today’s overview is not going to be the same as the overviews for phase 1 and 2, as what I really need to do is just dive in and write about how I feel, in order for me to be able to create a new plan to move forward.
So, here goes…
1. If advice doesn’t feel right, don’t follow it
Having lost count of how many times I accused the guide of being elitist, ablest, or purposely trying to sabotage its users (maybe so they blame themselves for their failure, so they buy future episodes of the magazine to try to improve) I am bored of hearing myself talk about it. Yet, I need to, because it’s played such a major role in my failure.
To follow it, you realistically need a lot of money, to either pay for a gym membership, or buy expensive equipment.
I might be wrong, but I am sure the reason a lot of people decide on running as their exercise of choice, is because they don’t have access to lots of disposable money.
These issues and attitudes are also present in all the phases, especially as they progress, as you both need to live in a place unaffected by weather, and have no other commitments on your time, as getting outside to run 4 or 5 days a week, every week, just isn’t realistic.
Then there is the very short time period phase 3 gives you for progression (after giving unnecessarily excessive amounts of time for phase 1 and 2), which they simultaneously say you can lengthen to suit yourself, and warn you not to lengthen, but give you no particular reason as to why you shouldn’t lengthen it.
Since I’ve begun using this guide, I have found myself stopping often–
-to gasp for breath,
or because-
-I’m hallucinating,
-think I’m going to vomit,
-have a stitch
-have aching legs
-just cant run any further
on almost every run, and I used to run for 30 -45 minutes on a 15 incline 3 days a in row, most weeks.
This is to say, the pressure this guide put me under was immense.
My solution to this, which you’ve probably already guessed, is to ditch the entire guide, including phases.
What I am going to do, is set myself monthly goals, which will roll into the next month if I haven’t achieved them for any reason.
I’m going to do my own research, as that has been more helpful.
And, I’m going to write either monthly, or goal related overviews, instead of phase overviews.
My hope is that, this will lift the pressure I have been under, and help me to make steady, meaningful progress, as well as not tapping out whenever I know I can’t reach the guides ridiculous standards and rules, due to circumstances beyond my control, which is what I did over Christmas.
Which brings me to my next point…
2. Accept the things that you cannot control
There are of course universal factors that none of us can control, such as, the weather – will there be torrential rain, hail stone, or snow, or will the pavements be icy.
I forced myself to go running outside in these conditions last year, and it’s neither productive nor safe.
No more will I risk my health and safety for, to put it frankly, a half arsed run.
However, we all have our own individual factors that we can’t control, mine are my neighbours and my mental illnesses, as well as the medication I take for those illnesses.
I must accept that if-
-I haven’t slept
-I have, or I feel like I’m going to have, a seizure
-I have a migraine
I think I might try to harm myself if I leave the flat
then I just can’t go for a run.
Is it hard for me to accept?
Yes. I find myself pushing against this acceptance even as a force myself into it.
What’s harder to accept is that I shouldn’t go running in the dark. Running outside is massively unsafe for anybody who lives in the area I do. For a start it’s just a bad area, full of crime and idiots – people driving cars, bikes and electric scooters along the pavements, and fast at that, and they do this at night too, minus their lights or high visibility clothing. Then there are the people who take up the entire pavement and refused to move, some people do this while walking their dogs on outstretch leads, and I have encountered several people doing this in the dark with dark dogs on dark leads, some of them jogging themselves. For me though, I am already at a disadvantage, being that I am shortsighted and have keratoconus, and I can’t run wearing my glasses. The roads are in terrible condition – uneven, paving stones sticking up, potholes, open grids with their lids either completely missing or facing up. Plus, I live around a lot of Parkland and A-roads. Not to mention, I am a very small woman.
Due to the combination of my neighbours and illnesses, I don’t get to sleep until a time in the morning that most people are getting up, so by the time I get up it’s already early afternoon, and it takes me a couple of hours to then actually wake my body and mind up because of the medication I am on, which means by the time I’m ready to go running its already dark outside.
Then there are other factors that can sometimes be a problem, but not always, such as doctors appointments.
In the past I have changed the days I run to accommodate all of these factors, which has led to not only mental stress, but physical stress. For example, going for a run 3 days in a row, when you can’t even manage 2 days in a row, leads to injuries, but it also means the effort you are capable of putting into the final days run is minimal, therefore it’s a pointless exercise session. As a result, on the occasions you know you are going to have to do 2 or 3 days in a row, you lower your effort on day 1 and 2, so you are physically capable of running on day 2 and 3, which then also makes those exercise days pointless.
Despite me insisting that both you and I must accept the things we cannot change, I do have some solutions to, at the very least, attempt to solve these problems.
Moving forward I’m going to trial running every other day. For example – if Monday is an exercise day, then Tuesday must be a rest day (even if I know I can’t go running Wednesday) and if I can’t go running Wednesday then Thursday will be my exercise day and Friday must be my rest day.
It is my belief that this is a more sensible, realistic, and achievable exercise routine, and I by following a more sensible, realistic, and achievable exercise routine, I might solve these issues and several other issues I have been struggling with, such as-
-constantly checking how long I still have to run for, because physically I can’t run any further
-getting constant injuries.
3. If its not broke, don’t fix it
Another reason that I despise the guide, is because it was constantly messing up my progress by insisting that the way I did everything was wrong.
My comfortable “fast” pace and strides were wrong. I was never going to successfully be able to run for 30 minutes non stop unless I was running at a pace where I could hold a conversation with another person.
When I slowed my pace and adjusted my stride, it was more than just uncomfortable, I was in pain during and after my runs, and was struggling to actually run at all.
Then, when I tried to change it back, I couldn’t.
It micromanaged everything down to the minutest detail, like what angle and position you held your elbows.
It’s not that I don’t understand that correct posture is both necessary and important (from the beginning) or that I don’t want correct posture. It is that when you’re just starting isn’t the time to be trying to correct every issue at once. You are better to concentrate on one thing at a time, and if that one thing is running for a full minute, then your attention is fully assigned.
4. Change the things you can
I am the first to admit that I begun last years exercise routine allowing myself to indulge in 2 really bad habits, and as a result, rather than shaking them as I progressed, I allowed them to get worse.
This year, I’m stopping them from day one.
I am not allowed to stop mid run. If I find myself needing to stop mid run often, then I have bit off more than I can chew too soon, and I need to readjust my goals.
I am not allowed to take calls or use social media while out exercising.
5. Only compete with your current self
To me, this feels as difficult as accepting the things you cannot change. Even though I have been telling myself I have been successfully managing to do it for months, I now realise I haven’t.
You should only be competing with yourself. It sounds simple enough. Don’t compare yourself to an Olympic athlete. But, also, you need to remember not to compare yourself to that woman you kept seeing running in the dog park all December. Where was she the rest of the year? Maybe, she has perfect vision. Maybe, she doesn’t have severe asthma. Maybe, she doesn’t have 3 mental illnesses.
The same goes for not comparing yourself to your past self. That girl that ran on a full treadmill incline for 30 -45 minutes 3 days a week, as well as going to 2 Thai Muay and 1 Brazilian Jujitsu class every week was spending money she didn’t have. She was also on 4x the dose of antidepressants she should’ve been on, meaning she never slept and still had too much energy… And was in the constant grip of some form of hyper mania, and pseudo psychosis.
6. Keep your promises
How long have I been promising to keep better journal notes, then write those journals as soon as I can?
I believe, for as long as I have been using the guide.
(And, no, the weekly journal entries are going nowhere. They are here to stay.)
Well, journalling is now a “resolution” for this year. It is Januarys resolution. And although I am currently still not a succeeding at it, I’ve given myself until the end of January to get on top of it, no excuses.
I need to, because getting back into running (although I’ve already started) is Februarys “resolution”.
“The purpose of the project is to get you acquainted with London,” the head of Middlesex University’s fashion department explained.
It was our first day on our fashion degree courses. Every first year fashion student was present, regardless of what fashion degree courses they were taking. I remember looking around the huge lecture hall and noticing how empty it was. I remember wondering whether I had made a mistake coming to Middlesex University. I had wanted to take a double major in, fashion design and styling and promotion. Middlesex had been the only university to offer the course that year.
A list of pieces of work we were allowed to produce was passed out.
“You must pick something off the list to show you can work to set instructions,” she warned us.
“What are you thinking of doing?” My teacher and ask me, when I had my first meeting with her.
“I want to keep it on theme with the projects you have set us,” I told her. “I thought maybe a map, so I could layer my notes, photographs and sketches on top.”
All our tasks had been collage based, design ones, so far.
“Styling is just collage,” my teacher had insisted.
“I think that’s a fabulous idea,” she beamed.
I cut up my notes, photographs and sketches, then made them into miniature flip charts. I added a store label to the top of each and sewed them on to my map. My mistake was not sticking the map to a cardboard base. On the day of the presentation I was the first student into my morning lesson. Little did I know my punctuality would change my life’s path.
“It’s ruined,” I complained, as I tried to stick bits of the torn up map together. It had ended up on the bottom of the pile, and pieces of it were everywhere.
“It’s fine,” my teacher reassured me. “You have found all your presentation notes, and the project is all about the research.”
“Seeing as I told you all not to do a map for this reason, I’m going to make an example out of you,” the head of fashion said, once I finished my presentation.
I wanted to point out that she had put map on the list, and that I hadn’t seen her since that day.
Her example making was not limited to my broken project.
“This is how not to dress… This is how not to speak…” She advised everyone.
“Take her advice, she knows what she’s talking about. It’s only a style. It’s only an accent,” my teacher had suggested.
“Yes, it’s only who I am,” I pointed out sarcastically.
“I’m leaving the course,” I told the head of fashion as I sat down in her office.
“You’re dropping out,” she laughed.
“No I’m not,” I corrected her. “I’ve been accepted on six other courses at this university, and three more run out of Stockport College.”
“Think about what you’re doing,” she advised. “I have a very large house in the… Countryside. I driver a…I bought that house and that car with fashion money.”
The details were lost on me. It was my turn to laugh. I had thought about it, long and hard. I had decided all I wanted was a job that made me happy, and I realised somethings are more important than money.
Part Six
As my tutor led me through the maze of makeshift single major classrooms, I was surprised to see that all the rooms, including the one that housed my own year group, we’re all full of students hard at work. They all appeared to have been there quite a while. There were no signs that they might have just returned from, or were even planning to take, a break. What shocked me more than this though, was that my entire year group, who were taking the single major course, were crammed around that large table, which was made up of smaller tables pushed together, that was far too tiny to fit them all around it comfortably.
Despite everybody being engrossed in their work, the head of the fashion department was nowhere to be found.
Probably aware that I had no chance of convincing her boss to speak to me without her intervention, my tutor recommended that we wait for her outside of her empty office, which was mere metres from that single large table, so that is what we did, neither of us murmuring a word to one another.
Nobody else in the room seem to notice that we were there.
When the department head finally materialise from behind one of the partitions, a paper cup from the onsite cafe in her hand, she was heading in the direction of her office. However, when she saw us, after eyeing us coldly, she immediately changed direction, stopping in front of the large table. Then, obviously wanting to make it clear to us that she was purposely ignoring us, she made a performance of turning her back on us, by slowly spinning on her heels at the last moment, and drawing out her rotation for as long as it was physically possible.
“[Insert the head of our department’s name], Rachel needs to speak to you,” my tutor announced, so loudly that a couple of students looked up.
“I’m busy,” she replied.
“It’s important,” my tutor pressed.
“I’m sure you think it is,” she quipped, sounding very pleased with herself.
“I don’t actually need to speak to you. I just need you to send information about my grades to the administration department, and do whatever else needs to be done, so that I can transfer. I’m moving to Stockport, to take a double major in textiles and illustration, so the sooner you get it done the better it will be for the both of us. I can get on with moving, so I don’t miss, or have to catch up with, any more of the course, and you will be rid of me faster,” I clarified. I didn’t want to talk to this woman if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
This got her attention. She turned to face us, an emotion that seemed somewhat similar to anger in her tone, “You’re a first year. The only grades you have, are predicted grades.”
“Well, can you tell the administration department that please, so we can start the transfer process?” I requested.
There was a moment of tense silence, before she aggressively address my tutor, in a manner that accused her of doing something wrong, “You, leave,” she flicked her thumb in the direction of the closest exit.
It was not the door we had entered through, it was to the left, passed the table. I now know that it was a longer route to our own set of classrooms, but my tutor followed her bosses orders, hurrying off towards that particular exit.
“You, inside,” she barked at me, as though she was chiding a disobedient animal, pointing at her open office door.
Reluctantly, I stepped inside, hovering by the door.
A couple of seconds later she charged inside almost, slamming into me. Unfazed by our near collision, she stormed around her desk taking a seat opposite the door, gesturing for me to join her on the other side.
Again, reluctantly, obeyed.
“You’re upset over our conversation yesterday,” she wore a similar expression to the one my tutor had when she thought I was dropping out, a slight upward curling at the corners of her mouth, which threatened to break into a grin.
“No,” I shook my head, surprised by how calm I managed to sound. For some reason, I was terrified.
“No?”
I didn’t understand the question, so I shook my head and repeated myself, “No.”
“So, then why are you leaving us to go to Stockport?” She spat the word Stockport like it tasted bad, which gave me the impression she didn’t think much of the place.
“I’ve change my mind about wanting to work in the fashion industry,” I’m not sure even now why I entertained this conversation, as I knew I was about to lose my patience with this woman.
“I would strongly advise you to change it back. Look at me,” She leaned back in her chair smugly. “Look at what I have here. I have my own little kingdom within both the fashion and education worlds. I could have retired altogether after just a decade of working in the fashion industry, and I would have been more than comfortable financially. Instead, I decided to give people like you,” she spat the words people like you, the way she had spat the word Stockport “A chance to make something of themselves. I own a nice large home in [insert an expensive area of London, which I don’t recall], and another in [insert city outside of London which is expensive to live in, which I don’t recall], and a holiday home in [insert part of the UK that I don’t recall, which I remember I wasn’t impressed by]. Do you know I drive a [insert a brand of car I don’t recall]? I bought all of that with fashion money.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t even realise she was expecting me to.
“Did you hear me?” she bellowed.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“I drive a [insert brand of car].”
“I heard you,” I confirmed.
“Wouldn’t you like to drive a [insert brand of car]?”
“I can’t drive,” I answered, not really sure what else to say.
She snorted as though I had made a really unfunny joke, “You wouldn’t want to drive a [insert brand of car] or own a holiday home in [insert part of the UK], to own two large homes, or have your own little kingdom, or lots of money in the bank?”
“Honestly, I’ve never thought about it,” I wasn’t lying. I genuinely hadn’t. Yes I thought about owning my own home, but I always imagined a regular, modest home.
“Think about it and get back to me,” she offered.
“No. I don’t need to think about it. I need you to speak to the administration team today, so they can start my transfer,” I insisted
“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped, that emotion that had remind me of anger in her tone once more.
“I’m not being stupid,” I must have shrunk back into my seat when she snapped at me…
“You are…” she began.
… Because I leaned forward, holding my hand up to stop her.
I think she was more shocked by this than I was, as she actually stopped talking mid sentence.
“You didn’t include liking your job or being happy on your list, I assume that’s because you don’t like your job and you’re not happy, or I reckon they would be at the top of your list. That’s what I want, a job I love, or at least like, and to be happy. That is what I was thinking about when I applied for this course, getting a job I enjoy doing. I wasn’t thinking about buying expensive houses and cars. It’s obvious now thar I’m not going to enjoy working in the fashion industry. I haven’t enjoyed a minute of my time here. I’m not going to be happy working in the fashion industry. I’m not going to be happy if I stay here. And that’s all I want, to be happy, so please speak to the administration department so I can get out of here as soon as possible.”
Her face had fallen pretty much as soon as I launched into my rant. She didn’t even try to respond, she just stared at me, rage contorting her features.
“Please,” I asked again, but it didn’t sound like a request this time, it sounded like a command.
“I’ll do it right now,” she muttered. On reflection, as a person who knows what it’s like to feel deeply mentally unwell, she didn’t look like she felt mentally well.
“Thank you,” I stood up and made my way to the office door, almost tripping over two other students who were standing outside as I left.
At first, I assumed they were waiting for me to leave, so that they could speak to their tutor, but they hurried back to their places at the large table.
It was then that I noticed every person in the classroom was watching me.
Nervously, I began to walk past them to the nearest exit, which was the door in the far corner that my own tutor had gone through, even though at this point I had no idea where it lead, I was so desperate to get out of that room, to get away from the eyes boring into my skin, but as I did a wave of chatter followed me.
They’re all laughing at me, I thought. My skin burned and tears began filling my eyes. I blinked away the tears, but I couldn’t blink away my red skin.
I had almost reached the door when one of the other students, an Irish man who appeared to be slightly older than the rest of us, but probably wasn’t, called out, “Rachel.”
His acknowledgement of me caught me off guard, as I had never spoken to him. I hadn’t spoken to another fashion student this entire month. Unintentionally and automatically, I turned to face him. Turned to face all of them.
“Have fun in Stockport for those of us who are stuck here” he smiled. To me smile his seemed genuine. Friendly even. It made me want to enquire as to why the rest of them were staying if they also weren’t happy, but I couldn’t find my voice. Staring at him like an idiot, I regained control of myself just in time. Nodding, I spun away and dashed into the corridor, where I burst into tears.
Week 2 of Winter Break
Week starting the 6th of December 2021
Week 2 Of Winter Break
Week starting the 6th of December 2021
Part Five
What was I thinking when my mind wandered as I was being abused by a woman who was supposed to be responsible for my safety while I was on campus?
What could have possibly been more important than what was happening to me in that moment?
I was thinking about everything I had written about in that post (obviously excluding the lessons that I learnt later, while I was studying fine art) as well as in post one, two, and three of The Devil Cares More About Cars Than Prada, and in my post Reynards, Rapunzel Had it easy, and The Day I Dyed My Hair Blonde.
I was also fighting an internal battle that I am not sure a non borderline person can understand, but this is just an assumption based on comments from non borderline people and conversations I have had with non borderline people in between then and now, about how very specific and contradictory symptoms of my illness effect who I am and my decision making process, which didn’t even make sense to me until I got my diagnosis and discovered the ways in which my illness has shaped both me and my life. The first of these symptoms is that we are chameleons, meaning that who we are shifts in the moment, based on factors such as – where we are, for example, at home or work; what we are doing, for example, working or socialising; or who we are with, for example, colleagues, friends, family, our partners, strangers: but it can also mean we change completely, drastically and permanently over long periods of time, or overnight. The second symptom is that we can’t be anybody but who we are. We are incapable of not being true to the version of ourselves that we are at that particular moment. I am no exception to this trait, nor would I want to be, in the sense that I wouldn’t want to be capable of not being true to myself and who I am. However, I do wish I was the exception to the first trait, the being a chameleon one, as I would love to have a set self, to never have to endure the shifts between the many different versions of who I am.
When she sent me back to my seat, I genuinely tried to shake off what had happened, and if she had only attack my work, or even my physical appearance in a way that didn’t cut into who I was as a person, meaning if she had insulted the shape of my nose or my height, I probably could have shaken it off. As it was though, she had targeted things that made up my identity, things that could be changed if I indeed did want to change them, and that left me with a set of difficult questions to answer –
Did I want to change them?
Did I want to change who I was?
What was more important to me, who I was, or the career I wanted?
All this is not even to mention the chorus of voices screaming at me inside my own head that I was desperately trying not to pay attention to.
I managed to ignore them just long enough to hear an anecdote that was another major factor in why I was about to do what I did, an anecdote which in my opinion now was actually a very unsettling fantasy that our department head had. It was about how she had travelled the world, and no matter where in the world she was, she could always identify the fashion designers. The reason that I now personally find this anecdote to be unsettling and believe it was a fantasy is due to these people she had guessed were fashion designers, as she had no actual proof that she was correct, all being very young men. The reason that she claimed she could always identify them as fashion designers, was due to them all being clones of each other, my words not hers, based off her single description of them. With hindsight, this description makes my skin crawl, as these men weren’t much older than the teenage boys in her class. She gushed about how young and beautiful they all were (“Fresh out of university,” was how she described their age) and the care and pride they took in their appearance. They all wore the same perfectly groomed hairstyle, expensive figure hugging suits, and smart shiny shoes. Their accents were “velvet”. They all held themselves in a certain way, were graceful in their movements, glided as they walked, and showed no emotion.
To 34 year old me, these men don’t sound like fashion designers, they sound like businessmen and upper management. In the moment though, her description didn’t raise any red flags, which shows how naive I was at nineteen, as does the fact that I didn’t need any hard evidence to trust her judgement. To me this story told me that everything I thought I knew and loved about the fashion industry was wrong, that it wasn’t about self expression or individuality, rather it was about losing who you were, losing everything that made you uniquely you, and becoming a copy of everybody else.
Do I regret my decision, or find it ironic, now I know that nineteen year old me, who had never worked in the fashion industry, was an indicator of the direction the fashion industry was heading in?
No. This woman hadn’t worked in the fashion Industry for decades, and seem to have purposely isolated herself from anybody who had, and teenagers are always an indicator of what is or will become “trendy”…
And, those voices in my head that were screaming, the ones I had tried my hardest to ignore, well they were making a lot of sense, which was why I finally chose to listen to them. This grown woman in a position of power and authority had purposely chosen to make an example out of me for no other reason than she personally disliked my appearance and accent. I suspected that she constantly needed somebody to make an example of and bully, not only to prove how powerful she was to a group of vulnerable teenagers, but prove it to herself. Therefore, even if I chose to pursue a career in the fashion industry, over who I was, and even if I changed everything that made me me, I was sure that she would continue to bully and make an example out of me. It seemed to me that, regardless of whether I did or didn’t change everything about myself, I could never pass this course, as the woman responsible for deciding whether I passed or failed had already decided my fate.
Even though I am glad I didn’t, part of me wishes that I had stood up and walked out as soon as I realised this, or even better, had just walk straight out of the door when she sent me back to my seat, as I am convinced it would of derailed the entire charade of a day, but I didn’t because I really wasn’t upset or ashamed by what she had done to me. Yes I was angry, I admit that, but I was angry for the right reasons, and as a result I was calm, rational and measured in my decision making, all of which I am not capable of being when I am emotionally hurt, or having a mental illness related episode.
Not only did I not walk out, I voluntarily returned that afternoon, after I had not only made my decision but I’d already put it into a motion. When the end of the day came, and not everybody had done their presentation, the head of department announced that there wouldn’t be a second day of presentations because, “The purpose of The Exploration Project hadn’t been to do a presentation, it had been to visit all the stores so we had a better knowledge of London, and to demonstrate that we were able to work to strict instructions,” even though she had praised at least two students who didn’t or couldn’t do these things. This confirmed that I had made the right choice.
If you’re wondering how I put my plan into action during my lunch hour without leaving the CatHill Campus, it was easy. Much easier than I had expected it to be. All it took was two brief phone calls. Both of which started with me apologising to the people on the other end for bothering them, and potentially misusing their personal mobile numbers which they had given me in good faith.
If you had been listening in on only my side of the conversations, it might of sounded like I was distressed or having a mild episode, due to what I said next which was –
-In the first phone call, “I have made a terrible mistake.”
-And in the second phone call, “I just don’t know who else to speak to.”
However, I had suspected that I had made a terrible mistake from the day I had arrived in London, and I still had the phone number for the administrations team that dealt with applications, and even if I hadn’t of had it, they were based at the Trent Park Campus, where I lived, meaning I could just walk in if I wanted to.
“I am glad to be speaking to you again,” the first person told me, before I had even explained why I was calling.
The second person booked me the appointment I needed, for the next morning.
Due to my appointment, and the fact I didn’t inform anybody about it, the next day was one of those rare exceptions when I’m late. When I strolled into our little makeshift classroom, it was fifteen minutes to the start of our afternoon lessons, and I had use the knowledge I had gained through being obscenely early the majority of the time, to coordinate my arrival to almost perfect match up with my tutor arriving back from lunch, so I could speak to her alone.
“You’re in trouble young lady. Where have you been all morning?” She greeted me, with a smug smirk and an upward jerk of one eyebrow.
“That’s what I need to talk to you about,” I was so proud that my response hadn’t been to laugh and tell her I certainly was not in trouble, as she was no longer my tutor, therefore she no longer held any power over me.
“Well, talk then.”
“Can we go on to your office please?” I could hear the low murmur of students behind the partition, as they worked through their lunch hour, which alerted me to the fact that they could also hear us, and as I have already mentioned, I wanted our conversation to be private.
“Right here is good for me,” her smug smirk grew wider.
I had never seen this nasty side of her, and it struck me as odd that she had been nice to me up until this particular point.
Did she think it was okay to bully me now because her boss was?
Or was she really only bothered that I had missed the morning lessons?
Other students had missed full days without notifying her, and she hadn’t behaved this way towards them.
“Well, for a start, I’d like to know why were you such a coward yesterday,” it wasn’t what I had intended to say. I hadn’t even thought about saying it. Immediately after realising what I had done, I felt my face begin to burn, but the heat quickly faded. What I had said was rude, but it was true. Also, she was no longer my superior, and I really did want to know why she hadn’t confessed to our head of department that she had encouraged and approved my map.
I watched as her face flushed red, and her lips twisted into a sneer.
We stared at each other for a good minute, me waiting for a response, her wearing an expression that dared me to repeat myself, even though it was obvious she had heard what I had asked her.
Eventually, I shrugged, accepting I wasn’t going to get my answer, “You can tell the admissions team if they care enough to ask you, I suppose, as it’s one of the official reasons I listed for withdrawing from the course.”
“You’re dropping out?” If she was bothered about getting into trouble she didn’t show it. The opposite was true. The corners of her mouth twitched, threatening to break into that smug smirk again.
“No. I’m transferring to a double major in textiles and illustration at Stockport college. They do JMU courses there.”
“My office,” She ordered, as a group of students returning from lunch appeared.
“No,” I shook my head. “I’ve said what I came to say. I didn’t have to let you know, only [insert the name of the department head] but I thought it was the right thing to do.”
She nodded thoughtfully, her attitude softening, “Stockport might not even accept you this late into the year.”
“They already have,” I informed her “I phoned them yesterday. I had my appointment to officially transfer this morning, all I need now are supporting documents about my grades from [insert the name of the head of the department].”
“Are you sure textiles is really what you want to do? It’s big, it’s bulky… It’s very you,” she sighed as she stood up. “Come on we’ll go to speak to [insert the head of the fashion departments name].”
Week 1 Of Winter Break
Week starting 29th of November 2021
Week 1 Of Winter Break
Week starting 29th of November 2021
Part Four
“You,” the head of the fashion departments finger landed on me.
It was the day of the exploration project presentation and I was terrified, not only because I had to stand in front of my entire academic year group and speak (none of whom were my friends, even a month after being on the course) but also because disaster has struck that morning.
As usual, I had been early. With the rare exception, I am always extremely early for everything, a trait which I suppose is caused by my chronic worrying, stress, and paranoia. It is so obscene to be as early as I am apparently, that people can’t help but make sure I know that they have noticed it, sometimes in a manner that suggests it would have been less rude if I had been late. My mum, to this day, still jokes about how I was even early for my own birth, by five days.
The presentations were scheduled to start first thing that morning and go on all day, so I was surprised when, as the first person to arrive, my tutor instructed me to put my work out of the way on one of the unused desks next to the window and take a seat. She gave everybody else the same instructions as they arrived, checking her watch impatiently as she did. When she was finally satisfied that everybody had arrived, she launched into what she called a presentation workshop, which with hindsight I realise should have sent us all running for the door, as none of it was about how to present our work, rather how to present ourselves.
“Stand up straight. Keep your shoulders back and your head up. Avoid looking at your notes. You’ve had a full month to memorise what you are going to say. Look at the audience. Look at [insert the head of departments name] but do not stare, or hold your gaze for too long. Annunciate your words correctly. Don’t use slang. Project your voice, don’t shout…”
At this point, her advice sounded normal, at least to me. Maybe it was because I had done everything the brief had told me to, and I had done it to the letter. I had visited every store, taken notes and photographs as proof I was there, completed all of the art work, planed the presentation, and created a visual aid to go with it, which I chosen from the list provided, just as we had been strictly ordered to do. Or, maybe it was because my tutor had read my presentation notes and view all the artwork I had done for the exploration project, including my map, and had given it the green light.
Now, I believe that, as an ex student of our head of department herself, our tutor knew exactly what was about to happen, she just didn’t know who the target was going to be.
Personally, I feel like the exploration project was a trap, set up so that the head of department could build up or tear down who ever she wanted, while using the same reasons.
If I had to do the exploration project again, there are only two things that I might do differently. The first thing, is that I would definitely stick it to a harder, stronger surface, such as cardboard or wood. The second thing, is that I might draw the map, rather than buying one.
What I have just done above it’s called constructive criticism, and it is the only type of criticism that matters. The problem with this advice though, is that whoever is doing the criticising will probably always claim that it is constructive, and then how do you decide whether it is or isn’t?
Truthfully, not only is it hard to tell whether what somebody is saying to you is constructive criticism, it is also hard to know whether criticism you are giving somebody else is actually constructive.
There was a time when I was incapable of deciphering whether criticism was constructive or not. Now though, I am good at deciphering this, as well as giving and receiving constructive criticism.
This is because, despite how today’s story ends, I got my bachelors degree, and I got it in fine art rather than fashion. A big part of a fine art degree is learning how to professionally review art work. It was such a large part of our degree that, we had lectures with a member of staff who was a professional art critic. We also reviewed each other’s work about once a month. We would be assigned a group, which I believe was decided by who your tutor was, then with the oversight of our tutor, we would walk around and review everybody in our groups work. Don’t get me wrong here, we weren’t polite, far from it, we often tore each other’s work apart metaphorically. We had to. To be an artist, you need a thick skin. Then we would have a discussion about why a comment was or wasn’t constructive. Nobody ever got upset, or if they did they didn’t show it. However, as both the tutors and the other students encouraged each other to do their worst, I have to assume that nobody really did get upset. Honestly, even I encouraged the other students to do their worst, as I preferred it when my work got metaphorically trashed rather than praised, as you learn far more from the brutal comments than you do from praise. Still, you always try to balance your assessment of the work to include both negative and positive observations.
One thing we never did during these sessions was criticise each other. When reviewing a piece or body of work, it’s unprofessional to go after the artist themselves, unless you have a very valid reason to do so, which relates to the work being reviewed.
However, during my month as a fashion student at Middlesex University, all this knowledge was to be gained in my future.
Looking back at and talking about how bad my way was is easy for me. It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t great, and neither was anybody else’s in my academic year group. All of us had a lot to learn, and a lot of improvement to make, but that was the reason why we were all there.
Looking back and talking about why I left the fashion course isn’t easy, as there wasn’t just a single reason, but it certainly isn’t difficult, at least not anymore, though I’ll never be ashamed to admit that for a while it was.
This is because what happened to me wasn’t criticism, constructive or otherwise, it was bullying, plain and simple.
As a younger teenager, although I didn’t completely loath the way I looked, I certainly hadn’t been confident, and like many girls that age probably are, I was bullied about my appearance. As a result of this bullying, I had grown a fairly thick skin when it came to people commenting on my appearance. What’s more, at this point in my life I was happy with both how I looked and who I was as a person. The reason I was so upset and/or angry wasn’t because of how it made me feel about myself, but because it made me choose between who I was, and following my career dreams.
Genuinely, I believe it didn’t matter how good or bad my work was that day, or that things would have worked out differently if disaster hadn’t struck. What mattered was who I was, and how I looked. It is my belief, that the head of the fashion department had planned what she did to me since the day I walked into that lecture hall for our induction, and she firstly laid her beady little eyes on me. I imagine, she wondered who had the audacity to allow an outsider onto her course.
I imagine, she had been waiting for her opportunity to publicly tear me down. To make an example out of me.
Due to the fact that I had been the first to arrive, my floppy, heavy, far too big, bulky map, with all its layers, flaps, and folds, had ended up on the bottom of the pile, and once everybody had collected their visual aids from it, mine was in pieces.
Of course, on discovering this, I began to emotionally meltdown, if only on the inside, “what am I going to do? It’s wrecked,” I wonder desperately, out loud.
“There’s nothing you can do,” my tutor answered coldly. “Now come on we have to go.”
Grabbing the remains of my map, I followed her and the rest of the group, out of the maze of makeshift classrooms that was the home of us double major students, and into the maze that was the home of the single major students. The head of our department, who did not look please by our slightly late entrance was waiting for us of at the end of a table that wasn’t even big enough for her class of students to fit around it, never mind ours too.
She gave the cliched “Now they have decided to join us, we can start,” complaint. Then, without any obvious order or pattern, she began pointing at random students and beckoning for them to join her at the front of the table.
Now, it was my turn.
I’ll admit that I trudged up there as though I was a Ye Olde criminal on my final walk to the gallows, regardless of how well received everybody else’s presentations had been. She had praised – a girl who had made a set of clothing labels for her visual aid, which had not been on the list, for her creativity; a boy who admitted that he didn’t visit all the stores, just a handful, for his honesty; and another map maker, for, “transporting us back to those specific locations.”
Yet, I was reluctant to get up there, and not just because my work was destroyed, but because of how she had spent the last couple of hours eyeballing me.
“I’m sorry,” I apologised, as I awkwardly struggled to hold up my map, as it was wider that my arms could comfortably stretch. “My map is falling apart.”
Before I could even register her grunt of disapproval, she had snatched the map from my hands, and was shaking it as she bellowed, “This is why I told you all you better not make a map.”
Stunned by what she was claiming to have told us, I turned to my tutor for support. I’d only ever been in the same room as the head of department once before, at our induction, and she definitely hadn’t told us not to make a map then, in fact she had done the opposite by ordering us to choose an item from the list. Why had she added a map as an option if she didn’t want us to choose it? Mainly though, I was thinking about the two rushed meetings that I had with my tutor about the project, the first where she had actively encourage me to make it, and the second where she had approve the work I had done.
Like a coward, she avoided my gaze and bowed her head to stare at the floor.
With no other choice, I watched calmly, as the department head verbally and physically tore my work apart. Although I had never experienced or witnessed aggression of any sort during the review of mine or anybody else’s work, and it seem completely inappropriate, I wasn’t about to question her judgement, even when she made what felt like nasty, unjustified comments that weren’t true, like I was lazy and obviously disinterested. If that was her opinion based on my performance, that was her opinion and she was entitled to it.
Whether it was because of her (where the single major students were concerned) or their previous tutors (which I expect it was, due to the double major students reacting exactly the same way) nobody around the table seem fazed, which makes me think they were accustomed to this sort of behaviour.
She didn’t stop there though. Tossing my map on the floor, she pointed directly at me, “You, young lady, need to change that accent and fast. Nobody in their right mind, in the fashion industry, is going to employ you with an accent like yours.”
I felt my face begin to burn with rage, but all I could do was hope that nobody interpreted my red skin as shame, and that is probably the only reason that I managed not to cry or shout, and remain completely calm on the outside.
“This,” she addressed the room. “Is how not to dress, how not to have your hair, and how not do your make up, if you want to be taken serious in the fashion industry. Look at you,” She tutted. “Why do you feel the need to present yourself this way? You can’t think you look good. You can’t think those clothes, that hair, that make up, all that metal in your face, is flattering. You look like a boy. You look like a boy in make up. You look like a boy, dressed like a girl dressed like a boy. Who is going to want to hire you? Who do you think is going to hire you? Would you hire yourself? Look at your peers… LOOK AT THEM!”
When I finally did, I was shocked to see that students from the other academic years had come around the partitions to watch.
“Do you think they dress the way they dress because it’s comfortable, or practical, or because they like it? No, they dress that way because it’s fashionable.”
Here, I almost laughed, because here is where I decided that if this woman believed what she was saying was true, then she was insane.
Her abuse didn’t stop with this, she continued to verbally abuse me for a few more minutes, but I have no recollection of what she said, as I was no longer listening to her, but not as a conscious choice, my brain had move forward, and she hadn’t, it was as simple as that. This meant it was impossible for me to keep my attention focused on what she was saying, and when she realised I had checked out of the conversation mentally, so she was getting no reaction, she sent me back to my seat with a final jab that I wasn’t bothered, or taking this seriously.
Maybe my tutor had known what was destined to play out that morning. Maybe my peers had expected it to some extent. But neither predicted what would happen as a result. Having looked her in the eyes as she found out the result of her actions, I can say with confidence that our head of department didn’t either. And I certainly didn’t expect to react the way I did.
Phase 3 – week 21
Monday – Haven’t slept
Tuesday – Rain
Wednesday- Got up late
Thursday – Got up late
Friday – Didn’t sleep
Saturday – Snow
Sunday – Snow
Phase 3-week 21
Day 140: Monday – 22 November 2021
Once again, come Monday, I haven’t slept.
Not sleeping on Sunday nights has become a pattern, and I believe this has happened for a reason. When you have an illness that means your brain can’t regulate its own emotions, like BPD, you need a strict routine, meaning that you need to do the same things, at the same times, on the same days. If you don’t have structure you become erratic, and then unhealthy patterns start a form by themselves, or at least they do in my case.
I spend the day laying in bed, unable to function physically or mentally, but also unable to sleep, even though I don’t take my morning medication, and I take my night medication early.
Day 141: Tuesday – 23 November 2021
On Tuesday, it’s raining.
Day 142: Wednesday, 24th November 2021
On Wednesday, I wake up too late to go on my run.
Date 143: Thursday – 25 November 2021
Today is a repeat of yesterday.
Day 144: Friday – 26 November 2021
Friday is the same as Monday, meaning I didn’t sleep at all on Thursday night.
Having two sleepless nights in a week is very worrying, as it’s an indicator that my mental health is deteriorating even further. I’m afraid I’m going to stop sleeping all together again.
Day 145: Saturday – 27 November 2021
And
Day 146: Sunday – 28 November 2021
It snows over the weekend, and I find myself relieved. I decide that I have no choice but to pause my running for the winter, as I can only run outdoors at the moment, because I can’t afford a gym membership or treadmill.
The relief comes from knowing that, if I try to continue running during the winter I would not have been able to go running more than I would have been able to go running, and I would’ve blamed myself for that. Also, I am aware that my mental health is extremely bad at the moment and I have far too much on my plate.
Part Three
The project that would ultimately seel my fate, was perhaps ironically the project that I spent the majority of my time and money on – “The Exploration Project”.
“The purpose of this project is to get you acquainted with London. It is a casual project, so have fun with it,” the head of the fashion department explained. “When you get your brief,” she held up a sheet of A4 paper, as though we were close enough to see the tiny computer printed writing on it. None of us were. “You must pick a piece of work to create that is on the list, in order to demonstrate that you can work to strict instructions.”
When I picked up a brief, before leaving the lecture hall to enroll, I discovered that it was just a set of three different lists.
The first was a list of places we had to visit, which she had told us were famous fashion stores. With the exception of maybe 10 (which was roughly around ten percent of the list, to give you an idea of just how long it was) nobody I asked for directions had heard of these stores.
The second was a list of tasks we had to complete, which started with taking notes about, and photographs of, every store to prove we were there, and included doing things like sketching. It concluded with putting together a fifteen minute presentation, and a visual aid to go with it.
The final was a list of pieces of work we could choose to make for the visual aid. It was so short I can only recall one of the options, which is the one I chose to make.
“What are you thinking about creating for The Exploration Project?” my tutor enquired, at the only one to one I had with her, which took place at the beginning of our second week, and was around ten minutes long.
“I want to keep it on theme with the other projects you have set us,” I suggested. “I thought maybe the map, so I can layer on my notes as flipcharts, and collage on my sketches and photographs.
“I think that’s a fabulous idea,” she beamed.
A week prior, she had stood in front of our class and declared that, “Styling is just collage.”
This was after the first of many design workshops she put us through that week, and in my opinion the only workshop that was any good.
She had given us a stack of magazines to literally fight over, and ten minutes to rip out five different colours and/or patterns. Then she gave us sheets of A4 paper with outlines of people printed on them, and instructed us to stick on our torn up bits of paper to design clothes.
Honestly, in my opinion, I don’t believe this particular exercise proved the specific lesson she was trying to teach us. Personally, if I was using this type of activity to illustrate this lesson, I would have gotten us to rip out items of clothing and accessories to create different outfits.
From here, her workshops and the lesson they were supposed to teacher us grew more childish and abstrsct, so much so, that I haven’t even bothered to remember them. Yet, at the time, despite thinking they were useless exercise, I threw myself into taking part, determined to make the best of them.
As you can probably imagine, as a person with at least two serious (undiagnosed, at the time) mental illnesses, walking around a city I was unfamiliar with, on my own, having to rely on strangers for directions (as this was the mid two thousands) was extremely stressful, scary and anxiety triggering. On top of this, is the fact that I had several vulnerabilities. Like most of the other students attending the fashion course at Middlesex, I was a (very small) teenage girl. Similar to maybe half of the other students (it was obvious because of my accent that) I wasn’t from London, meaning not only could I have easily been led into a trap (and potentially robbed, assaulted, kidnapped and/or murdered) nobody would probably have realised I was missing for quite awhile. Plus, once the alarm was raised, even if the people searching for me had a copy of our brief, they would have no idea where to begin looking for me, due to there being roughly a hundred places on that list. Then, though, with me, I was also vulnerable because of the symptoms of my mental illnesses. BPD (or borderline personality disorder/EUPD– emotionally unstable personality disorder) has been put into the cluster B family of personality disorders, which means people suffering from BPD can also suffer from symptoms of the other personality disorders in this family. Since being diagnosed with BPD around five years ago, I’ve told by one psychiatrist that I suffer from some symptoms of NPD (narcissistic personality disorder – although I don’t have NPD itself). The BPD symptoms that would have posed the greatest risk to my safety in this situation would’ve been intense pressure and stress that I felt both mentally and physically to complete the brief, the paranoia over the consequences if I did not (perfectly) complete this brief, and my impulsive decision making. The NPD symptoms that would’ve poses the greatest risk to my safety in this situation would’ve been my ability to occasionally feel indestructible and/or fearless, as well as my inability to empathise (which I personally would say is the most accurate way to phrase it). This doesn’t mean I am unsympathetic, or not compassionate, and actually the opposite is true. A symptom of BPD can be having high levels of compassion, which is something I also have. To me the inability to empathise means I struggle to understand how you are feeling and sometimes why, unless you tell me. Therefore, I can’t always decipher what you are thinking, or your intentions, which puts me at a much greater risk of being used, abused and victimised. With all this in mind, I am shocked that this project didn’t end worse for me.
To give you an idea of how The Exploration Project was dangerous, despite my disability I still managed to encounter a large amount of people who rang alarm bells with me, this blatantly means that they were extra creepy. Lots of these men offered to help me search for these places, some of them even offered to me drive around in their cars, or suggested we flag down taxis or get on buses or the tube. This seems odd to me, as how would we know what bus or tube we need to get on, or the directions once we were in the car or a taxi. I declined all of these offers, as I am disabled, not stupid. After my encounter with the man who offered to drive me around in his car, I stopped asking men for directions, unless they appeared to be working, which was obviously very naive of me, as women can be just as dangerous as men, and men can be just as creepy when they are working as when they aren’t.
The bizarrest encounter I had was with a man who must have only been in his early twenties. Appearance wise, he looked like a normal guy, which was why I approached him. He was wearing jeans, a hoody, and converse, and was holding a sign that advertised a waffle restaurant. Since this incident, I’ve heard you can literally just turn up on the day and get paid cash under the table to hold a sign for a few hours.
It was a weekend and the end of the project was closing in, meaning that I had just days to complete it, and I still hadn’t visited all the stores. I was on Oxford Street, and had spent the last couple of hours walking in circles searching for a single store.
“Excuse me. Do you know where [insert store name] is?” I asked
“Not a clue, but you can wait here with me for…” he glanced at his watch. “Forty minutes. I’ll buy you a waffle when I get off work,” He nodded towards the sign he was holding.
“No thanks. I don’t want a waffle, and I have some where I need to be,” I informed him, even though to me it seemed obvious I was busy, as the only reason I was speaking to him was to get directions.
As I moved to walk around him, he blocked my way, “Come on, you can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“I’m not,” I pointed out calmly, But on the inside I was already starting to feel uneasy. “I don’t want a waffle, and you’re not the only one working right now, so am I.”
“Then after you’re done,” he haggled.
Without responding, I tried to move around him again, but again, he blocked my way,. “You don’t even know where you’re going.”
Ignoring him, I successfully passed him, but to my horror, he started shouting after me. Panicking, I dashed around the next corner and into the nearest shop, where, afraid, I waited for over an hour, hoping that when I left he would be gone and I wouldn’t bump into him again.
Looking back at the month that I spent as a fashion student at Middlesex University, with the perspective of a woman who is almost twice as old as I was then, I’m horrified by the things that happened on that department.
Although I do somewhat understand the reasons for this project, I don’t agree that those reasons were relevant in relation to our course, or at least not until our final year, which also would’ve been a much safer time to set us this project. Truly, my overall opinion of The Exploration Project is that it was a dangerous, inappropriate and, irrelevant project.
With hindsight, I understand that the issues I was aware of during that month where much more serious than I appreciated back then, but there are also issues that I completely missed, which were far worse.
For example, although it was only by a year, I was actually older than the majority of the other students in my academic year group. Meaning not only were girls younger than me being sent out to undertake the same dangerous tasks as me, they were also at the mercy of the same abusive woman. Who, there was nobody to challenge, which I am certain was a purposeful power move on her part.
While I knew there was nowhere near enough staff to run the first year courses, it never occurred to me that they were simultaneously running the second and third year courses too, which they obviously were. After all, they had admitted they were the only two members of staff on the entire department, but there were also other signs I never noticed at the time. One of these was overhearing other students, from both the courses and all three years, complaining about the lack of support, as I passed them in the corridor, or was sat at a table by theirs in the lunch areas. It was true. Every student on the fashion department had to be in university Monday to Friday nine to five. Yet, most of the day we would be left unsupervised, which was obviously because our tutors were flitting between classes. This resulted in us not getting suitably timed or supervised work set. We were either given rushed micromanage workshops, or long poorly explained projects. There was never enough one on one time available with our tutors, and I don’t just mean actual one to one meetings, I mean even simple things that you usually take for granted as a student, such as being able to ask a question about a brief, workshop, or project that you don’t fully understand.
The responsibility for there being an inadequate amount of staff seems, to me, to be a problem that both the department and university management were equally at fault for. Surely, deciding how many members of staff a department requires, at minimum, was the responsibility of the University. Maybe I’m wrong, but I genuinely don’t believe I am, because even if the university management wasn’t responsible for setting department guidelines, and played no part in the process of hiring staff, I would assume that they should have occasionally been checking up on the heads of departments to make sure they were running their department correctly, were doing their jobs properly, and not abusing their power.
To me, it seems like the head of the fashion department had made the purposeful decision to hire as little staff as possible, and was only hiring those she believed she could fully control through fear or abuse. For example, hiring an ex student, who clear had very little experience either in the fashion industry or teaching.
What I suppose I’m trying to express in this post is my opinion of how both tutors, especially the one who apparently had at least two decades of teaching experience, and not just the self confessed new starter, were unprofessional and should not have been employed as teachers, or even allowed authority over anybody, never mind young adults and teenagers.
Yet, none of this even touches the service of the problems that I personally had with these two women, or even with Middlesex University itself, due to their negligence when it came to overseeing staff behaviour.
Phase 3– Week 20
Monday –
-I complete 2 aps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles.
-And 2 laps of walking =3.324 miles.
Tuesday –
⁃ I complete 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
-And 2 laps of walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday – Rest day
Thursday – Rest day
Friday – Unwell
Saturday – Unwell
Sunday – Go up late
Total miles = 13.296
Total miles run = 3.9888
Total miles walked = 9.3027
Total percent run = 30%
Total percent walked = 70%
Phase 3 – week 20
Warning: Today’s running journal discusses suicidal thoughts. If you are suicidal, or you do not feel like this is something you can handle, please do not read this entry.
Day 133: Monday – 15 November 2021
Today is the first Monday in two months that I have managed to get out for a run, and doing so really motivates me, especially because I could’ve made a million excuses for why I shouldn’t go, or why I should’ve stopped. I’ve had a busy day of paying bills, shopping for essentials, Christmas gifts and decorations, so it’s getting dark by the time I’m ready to go for my run, and as I am starting my first lap it’s beginning to rain.
Like on Wednesday, I am struggling to breathe with my snood on, so eventually I have to take it off. Maybe, I should start checking the temperature before I leave my flat, then afterwards make a note of whether it was too warm for my snood. Once I finish my run, I go for a 2 lap walk.
I complete
⁃ 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3. 324 miles
⁃ 2 laps of walking = 3. 324 miles.
Day 134: Tuesday – 16 November 2021
Tuesdays run is absolutely awful.
Remember that paperwork that I ordered last week?
Well today I get a text message notifying me that there is a problem with sending it to me because I have changed my address, even though I haven’t changed my address, so this causes my already low mood to plummet.
When I phone my mum to inform her about the message I’ve just received, and to try to arrange a day I can go to her house so she can help me with it, she insists that it has to be now.
I explain that I can’t do it now as I don’t feel well enough to deal with it, and I am trying to keep my mood as stable as possible by sticking to my plans.
“I’ll do it on my own then,” she tells me, sounding angry at me.
Before I can ask her not to, because not knowing what’s happening is going to cause me more stress, she hangs up on me.
In the few seconds it takes me to call her back, due to my bad signal, she is already on the phone to them, so I can’t get through to her, and to make things worse her landline doesn’t allow you to leave a message if she is using it.
For an hour, I sit and press the redial button, growing more frantic, upset, and angry as I do. The entire point of her helping me is meant to be so I don’t get myself into this state, so I can’t understand why she’s done this to me.
After the hour, I force myself to go for my run anyway, attempting to convince myself that it will take my mind off the problem.
It doesn’t.
With hindsight, I appreciate what an awful idea this was. However, it really does prove the point I’m forced to repeat constantly to my doctors, when they frustratedly demand that I do things that I know I can’t cope with, or which will exacerbate my illness, as this could have resulted in me committing suicide.
During two unsuccessful laps of running, I stop around 200 times to try to phone my mum back, the constantly stopping only makes my mood worse, as I chastise myself repeatedly for this.
By the time I complete my second lap, I’ve completely lost control of myself, yet for some reason, unknown even to me, I insist on pushing forward, starting the two laps of walking I promised myself I would do.
While I walk, I decided to phone the place that sent me the text message myself, which results in me having a meltdown at their automated system, absolutely screaming at it. It’s at this point that my call waiting notifies me that my mum is phoning me. I abandon the call I am on, and answer my mums call. Then we have a heated argument where we both shout over each other and accuse each other of being out of order.
By the end of the argument Mork is back, and I have the overwhelming urge to step in front of the vehicle. Somehow, I managed to fight this urge off. However, when I reach the bridge at the end of my third lap, I begin toying with the idea of jumping from it, but I can’t see a way up to it, and while I look, I realise that I’m probably not going to die from the fall alone, due to the bridge only being about three stories high. Still I think about jumping for my entire fourth lap, but make it home without incident.
I complete
-2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3. 324 miles
-And 2 laps of walking = 3.324 miles
Day 135: Wednesday – 17 November 2021
Wednesday is a rest day.
Date 136: Thursday – 18 November 2021
Although Thursday should be an exercise day, I’m absolutely exhausted from the 13.296 miles of exercise I did on Monday and Tuesday, so I decided to have two rest days in a row, and plan to exercise on Friday and Saturday.
Day 137: Friday – 19th November 2021
On Friday I’m still not feeling well, and I have no choice but to pick up a prescription, which I need to do before my run, as the pharmacy will be shut after I finish.
On my way there, I speak to my mum, who makes me aware that there is another problem with the forms I’ve ordered. Then I have my encounter with the queue jumper, and the sexist security guard, in the pharmacy.
By the time I get home, not only am I having suicidal thoughts again, I have terrible abdominal pains, which I later find out is my period. Seeing as I don’t think it is safe for me to go outside in the mood I am in, and I wouldn’t be able to run if I did due to my pains, I take another rest day, hoping I will feel better tomorrow.
However due to my antisocial neighbours, my day gets worse, until I feel like I’m on the verge of a seizure. I also don’t manage to get to sleep until the late early hours of the morning.
Day 138: Saturday -20 November 2021
When I wake up late, I feel too physically and mentally unwell to go for my run again.
They 139: Sunday – 21 November 2021
On Sunday, I wake up too late to go for my run.
Part Two
The red flags that the course I had chosen might not have been the course it was advertised as being, and that the staff might be unprofessional, were immediately obvious.
Immediately, meaning they were present at our induction on our first day. They began rising as soon as the head of department started speaking, and got worse as the only other member of staff on the department joined in.
And yes, the fact that the entire fashion department only had two members of staff is red flag number one.
Entering the lecture hall, where the induction was being held, was intimidating.
As you entered, you came in at the top of a very high flight of stairs that lead down to a huge open space, with several pieces of equipment, such as, podiums with microphones attached, a giant projector screen with a couple of whiteboards on the either side, and a few tables which were clearly to put items like laptops on, were located.
Along every stair, there were several rows of wooden benches built in, which were already full of students.
I had been determined to push aside my worries that I smelt like vomit, in order to try to make some potential new friends on my course that day, but as I scanned the room my anxiety grew. There was nobody who appeared approachable. Every student in that room was eyeballing every other student in a way that suggested that they were sizing up their competition, which was an attitude I wasn’t used to. What made it even stranger though, was they all seem to be judging each other, despite looking like they had all just stepped off the same production line. They were pre hipster hipsters, very mid noughts fashion student. Imagine lots of wet look leather leggings and bright, bold colours and patterns.
Changing my mind, I slid onto the nearest bench, which was empty, and waited for the induction to begin. When it did, I felt as though I was watching an intentionally weird, abstract, satirical performance. I thought the two women must have been joking at first, but I soon realised that, unfortunately, they were both being completely serious
The head of department, who was dressed from head to toe in black, and wore a hard, mean facial expression throughout the entire thing, must have been in her fifties. She explained that she was also the teacher of the single major, which was the course three quarters of the people in the room where about enrol on. Then she introduced the second woman as the teacher of the double major, indicating for her to address us.
She was a tall, thin, woman, who I would guess was in her forties. Her dark hair was styled into a pixie cut, and the skin on her face had blatantly purposely been over oiled, as you could see it shining from the top benches. To say her clothes were loud would be an understatement, and they were certainly uniquely styled.
After admitting that this was her first proper day working for Middlesex, and as a teacher, she informed us that she had once been a fashion student at Middlesex herself. Without pausing, she launched straight into an, inappropriate, anecdote about how lucky she was that her job was to do what her five year old did every day at school.
Red flag number two, the tutor describing her job as, doing what her five year old does every day at school. Definitely not what anybody, getting into thirty thousand plus pounds worth of debt to get an education, wants to hear. But, also, anybody who has taken a national diploma in clothes and fashion design, like I have, knows that designing and making clothes is a complicated technical process, that requires technical knowledge and skills. Therefore her attitude, and potential lack of knowledge and/or experience, was concerning.
What you want to hear even less, as a person taking a double major, is that your entire degree is going to be spent being a lackey to, a specially chosen student, who is taking the single major, which is what the head of department went on to tell us though not in those specific words.
If I remember correctly, I believe what she said was, “The sole purpose of you being here is to assist a design student with their projects.”
That’s red flag number three.
This was the thing that concerned me the most.
So much so, that before I enrolled, I had a conversation with my mum that mirrored the one we had the day prior. I complained that I was sure I had made a mistake coming to Middlesex, and she advised me to give it a month, at least.
We had already been set two projects to do in our own time, meaning outside of university class hours, that day.
Determined to work extra hard, not only on the projects I was set by my tutors, but setting myself the goal of also doing any projects the single major students were set that we weren’t, for my portfolio and the experience, I got to work planning both projects that same night.
We would be set another project to do in our own time every day that week, then at least another two every week for the next three weeks, all with the same deadline, which was a month from that first day.
I set about tackling all these projects, as well as the projects we did during university hours, with the same determination, unaware that no matter how hard I worked on all of them, my fate was already sealed, not because of lack of effort, or dedication, on my part, and probably not even really due to the work I produced, but because of who I was.
Part One
The one question I always get asked when I mention that I attended Middlesex University, probably because nobody has ever heard of it up until that point, is why I chose to go there.
The short answer is that, I wanted to do a double major in clothes and fashion design, plus styling and promotion, and Middlesex was the only university offering that combination of majors, at least that year.
However, as with anything in life, the short answer is not the only answer, and although it satisfies that specific question, it falls very short of explaining how the story began, so that you will understand why it ends the way it does.
As you probably know, if you follow me on social media, I took my national diploma in clothes and fashion design at, what was then, Liverpool Community Collages Arts Centre. By this point in my life, my directionless nature was already becoming apparent. While other students on my course were applying to universities, or preparing to enter full-time employment, during our final year, I was making a business plan with a business advisor, in order to open my own fashion label. When I started making my business plan, I was sure that it was what I wanted to do, and that I could make it a successful company, but as the end of the academic year drew closer, I not only began to doubt that I could make the company a success, but that it was what I really wanted to do. The more I thought about my future, the more convinced I became that I would rather get into debt to pay for an education than to fail in business.
By the time I decided to apply for university, I had missed the opportunity to apply through the standard UCAS process, so I had to apply through clearing instead, which is where you can only apply for courses that still aren’t full.
Despite most of the course being closed to new applicants, all the universities and their courses still appeared on the clearing system. That is how I found the only course I was truly interested in taking, which was the double major at Middlesex, that was already full.
Never a person to let metaphorical closed doors prevent me from trying to achieve my goals, I found the contact details for the admissions department at Middlesex University and phoned them. Whether it was luck that I got through to the particular man that I did, or it was just that Middlesex was desperate for money (as unbeknownst to me, at the time, Middlesex was on the verge of bankruptcy) he advised me to fill out the clearing form, putting the course that I wanted to take at Middlesex as my first choice, then phoned back and ask to speak to him personally.
I did as instructed, also applying for three JMU courses, that were being run out of stockport College, that were all double majors in different combinations of textiles and/or illustration.
When I got back to him, he gave me his personal mobile number, and informed me that he was going to speak to the head of the fashion department on my behalf, and that I should phone him every Friday, if he hadn’t already phoned me that particular week, to update me on his progress. He expected that it might take him a few weeks to get me an interview, but was confident that he would be able to get me one.
While I waited for him to arrange my interview at Middlesex, I went about organising my interview at Stockport College, and after just one visit to show them my portfolio of work, I was accepted onto all three of the degree courses I had applied for with them.
Just days after I notified the man at Middlesex admissions department that I had been accepted onto the three courses at Stockport College and really needed to give them a response, I got my interview at the Middlesex Cathill Campus, with the head of the illustration department, because the head of the fashion department was on holiday. However, nobody told me it would be with him, until I turned up and it caused quite a bit of confusion. I have no doubt that if I had met the head off the fashion department that day, instead, I would not have been offered a place on the course.
The head of illustration liked me, and loved my work. Honestly, I liked him too. The meeting was very informal, and we chatted casually as he flipped through my portfolio. We seem to have an awful lot in common, despite the huge age difference. He was definitely old enough to be my grandad. Maybe, oddly, for a man I just met, he saw my major flaw, a symptom of my then undiagnosed BPD, that should have already been obvious to my friends, family and teachers, but which had gone unnoticed, and would continue to go unnoticed, by anybody else, for another decade.
“You remind me of scrambled eggs,” he laughed. “You are wonderful, brilliant even, you have so much artistic talent and potential, but I can tell from your portfolio that you are directionless. I’d love to see what you could do with a little bit of direction.”
Then, he offered me the place.
Truthfully, and maybe not understandably, I left the Cathill Campus that day without accepting the place.
The reality of the situation had only just hit me. If I moved to London, I would be over two hundred miles away from everybody, place, and thing, that I knew and loved.
And, I was afraid.
On the train ride home, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life, I was going to go to Stockport College.
I moved through the next few days, and the haze of congratulations and excitement, wondering how I was going to break the news to everybody.
Though I had problems at home, I loved my family, and Stockport was a quick train ride away. Maybe, because I would be taking JMU course, I could transfer to JMU, even if it was the following year, and live in Liverpool again. While I was in Stockport, I would be going to college with my friend Sarah, who had already accepted a place at Stockport College, and my friend Kate would be just down the road in Salford. Maybe, subconsciously, I also knew that my relationship with Matt wouldn’t survive the distance.
Though Kate was my best friend, it was Sarah who I eventually confided in.
I’m not sure what reaction I expected from her, but it certainly wasn’t the one I got.
“Rachel, you’ve been accepted onto a fashion course in London, you would be stupid to stay here, and even stupider to go to Stockport. Accept the place Middlesex, and do it today. I promise you, you’ll only regret it if you don’t.”
Later that day, I accepted the place at Middlesex, but it took me a good week to contact the man from Stockport to decline his offer.
“Here, take this number, it’s my personal mobile number,” he insisted. “You don’t sound sure about your decision to me, and we’d love to have you here, if you change your mind.”
He was correct of course, I wasn’t sure about my decision, so, I did as he asked and saved his number in my mobile.
Never during this period of uncertainty though, did it cross my mind, that going to Middlesex would destroy my dreams of working in the fashion industry.
Phase 3–Week 19
Monday: Meeting
Tuesday: 2 laps of, 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: 2 laps of, 3 minutes running, two minutes walking =3.324 miles
Thursday: busy
Friday: Missing notes
Saturday: Raining
Sunday: Got up late
Days= 2
Laps =4
Total miles =6.648
Total run =60%
Total walk =40%
Total miles run =3.9888
Total miles walked =2.6592
Phase 3 – Week 19
Day 127: Monday
Today, I had meeting with someone from my HA, and it was dark, so too late to go running, afterwards.
Day 128: Tuesday
Last week, on Tuesday night, I was thinking about the bandanna situation, wondering if you could get a face covering specifically for running outdoors, in cold weather, and imagining what they would be like, when I remembered I had seen something around 90% similar to what I was picturing. In 2020 when face coverings became mandatory, my mum bought me these fabrics snoods, which I gave back to her, to use, because:
1. I didn’t think they actually worked like the real masks, or at all, to stop the spread of Covid
2. (And) I couldn’t wear them anyway, as every time I breathed out they fogged up the lenses of my glasses so badly that I couldn’t see through them at all.
However, my mum never wore them either, so I was surprised she still had them, when I phoned her to ask her where she bought them.
Today is the first day since she brought them back to me, on my birthday, that I have been for a run.
Although it takes me awhile to get the mask on and right– meaning it will stay up, cover my mouth but not further obstruct my vision, which I achieve by double layering it, even though I am worried this will make it too hard for me to breathe once I get out and running, it stays up and works great – meaning it makes breathing in the cold air through my mouth much easier.
Apart from a group of grown men shouting at me from a moving car, that passes me as I am crossing the road that separates my block of flats and dog park, which frightens me so much I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack, the rest of my rub is uneventful. Still, I wish I had a treadmill.
I managed to do 2 laps, without stopping once.
While I am running, I think about how I have struggled to get out to exercise over the last four weeks, and why. Both my current very severe depression and the weather is to blame, and the weather is definitely going to get worse over the next few months. For these reasons, I decide to do two things that I haven’t done before.
1. I am going to end phase 3 as a failure. Honestly, I’m okay with this. I hope that by doing this, I learn where I went wrong and what mistakes I made.
2. I’m going to start phase 4, but make it a sort of maintenance phase, so that I don’t lose all the hard work I’ve put in, rather than making goals to progress, and will continue phase 4 indefinitely until the conditions are right for me to attempt to progress again.
My rough for phase 4, which I will sit down and plan in detail at a later date, are
1. To get back out of the flat four times a week to exercise
2. (And) to get back to doing 2 laps of 3 minutes running – 2 minutes walking without stopping
3. (Also) I’m not going to put any pressure on myself to do more than this during November, December, January and February.
I complete 2 laps, of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, which totals 3.324 miles.
Day 128: Wednesday
Today was only slightly warmer than yesterday, but I had to remove my snood at the halfway mark of my first lap, due to difficulties breathing, and hallucinating. This happens after I was forced to stop 2 out of 3 run/walk cycles to rest. Once I removed it, I was able to breathe easier and my hallucinations lessened to the point where I managed to run non-stop until I reach the 5/8 mark of my second lap. At this point I felt close to collapsing, so I had no choice but to stop running and walk home.
Day 129: Thursday
On Thursday, I need to order some paperwork. As I’m too ill to do this by myself, I go to my mums house, so she can help me.
Day 130: Friday
Fridays notes are missing, and I don’t know why.
Day 131: Saturday
On Saturdays its raining
Day 132 :Sunday
On Sunday, I once again get up too late to go for a run. I promise to make a note of this as something else to try to tackle during phase 4.
Growing up, I had a very bizarre life. One of the factors that made my life so bizarre was the control, and lack of a control, that I had over my own body.
Most children, and teenagers, probably do have very little choice over what they do with their own bodies, and I do appreciate and agree with that when it comes to making permanent changes to their bodies, such as getting tattoos. My problem with it in my case, is that I was given control in, and had my control taken away in, the wrong areas. This resulted in me making changes to my body as a teenager, which have left me permanently scarred and which I deeply regret as an adult.
My mum was not allowing me to make decisions about what I did to my body based on whether I was old enough to make these decisions, she was making them based on her own personal preferences of what she liked and disliked.
Honestly, I can’t say why my dad allowed, or disallowed, me to make decisions about my body, beyond that all his decisions were based around controlling us, or causing conflict between us.
From a young age, I hated my hair. It was long, at least down to my bum, so not only did it regularly get in the way of me doing things, it caused me physical pain at times, like if I accidentally sat on it, or got it caught on something. Hair that long isn’t practical, and my personal opinion is that it’s not safe for a child, especially an accident prone child, like I was. To me, it also felt and looked disgusting. I also hated the colour of it, it was brown, and although there’s obviously nothing wrong with brown hair, I despise the dull grey shade of my particular brown, and felt like I didn’t suit me at all.
Other children at school seemed to pick up on how much I disliked my hair. As a teenager, I did not have the self confidence that I do today, and my hair played a massive part in how I felt about myself. Most insults didn’t upset me, because I knew that they weren’t true, but the comments about how disgusting the length of my hair was did, because I also thought it was disgusting, but I didn’t have the power to do anything about it.
There was even an occasion in year seven or eight (at Saint John Bosco, the all girls catholic school that I attended during those two academic years) when another student tried to cut a chunk out of my hair.
We were in our art class, and I was sat with my head down, doing my work. Halfway through the lesson I got that sensation you get when you know somebody is behind you, and when I looked up, all the girls who were sat at the same table as me were staring at something over my shoulder. As I turned around, I caught one of the other girls, Sophia, tiptoeing towards me, with a pair of scissors in one hand, and the other raised to her lips in a shushing signal. My eyes met hers, and she slowly, almost deliberately so, lowered the hand at her mouth, and tucked the hand holding the pair of scissors behind her back.
Convinced she been about to stab me, I called the teacher over and told him what had happened.
Her friends came to her defence saying she bragged that she was going to cut my hair, yet she never got into any trouble for it.
Should I have been able to dye my hair, certainly not, but I never asked to. What I did asked to do constantly was to cut it, but I was never allowed to. This felt like torture. We all know what it’s like to have that thing that harms or self confidence, be the thing that draws attention to us. There was only one girl that I ever saw with hair longer than mine and my sisters, and it was down to her knees. We were anomalies, in a way a “freak show” “exhibit” is an anomaly, or at least, that’s how it felt.
Let me make this as clear as possible, my mum didn’t stop me from getting my haircut short because she thought I would regret it, she stopped me from doing it because she likes long hair and dislikes short hair. It is my opinion now, as an adult, that I should have been given permission to get my haircut, as it would have grown back if I had regretted it. It wouldn’t have been a mistake that I would have had to live with for the rest of my life, and if I had regretted it, well, it would have taught me the valuable lesson of not making any changes to my body without really being sure that it was what I wanted.
Before I was even in senior school, my mum had allowed me to get three pairs of piercings in my lower ears. During senior school, she’s allowed me to get my bellybutton, eyebrow, nose and the top of my left ear pierced. Personally, I wouldn’t let my child get any of these piercings, except a single pair of earrings in their lower ears, if my partner agreed, and only when they were a teenager. It is my belief that, children should not be walking around with metal studs, bars, or hoops through the face or body that could be pulled out.
To further put the piercing issue into perspective, my mum wouldn’t allow me to tweeze my eyebrows, which I begged her to let me do, more than I begged her to let me cut my hair, I despise my eyebrows, and I was bullied about them too. They were dark, thick, and bushy, differently and wrongly shaped.
Eyebrow piercings were obviously against the school dress code.
All the other girls my age tweezed their eyebrows.
I actually wonder if my reason for getting my eyebrow pierced was, subconsciously, to draw the attention away from my actual eyebrows and to my eyebrow bar instead.
The worst thing that my parents ever allowed me to do to my body, was to get a tattoo. However, I do think my mum must not have been one hundred percent on board with me getting a tattoo, as my dad paid for it, and the only reason my dad ever seem to pay for anything was in order to cause conflict. The tattoo is a small, and very simple, butterfly on my lower back, it was intended to be part of a larger tattoo of flowers and butterflies, either going up one side of my back or down one leg. I was only 16 when I got it, and the tattoo artist was aware of this.
Today, I hate tattoos, but I can’t get rid of mine, as I know it’s scarred me, because although I can’t see it, I can feel it if I run my fingers over my back, as the skin on it is raised, like goosebumps.
If I had waited just a couple more months, I probably wouldn’t have gotten it. A few months later, I enrolled on a hairdressing course, which made me realise (before I started the course) that I was old enough to get my hair cut without my parents permission.
The first time, I got it cut up to my shoulders.
The second time, I got it cut up to my chin.
During the couple of years it was short and brown, I had it in many different styles, and even had pink streaks in it, but I don’t think I ever had a fringe.
Honestly, I really do believe that, I would never of gotten my tattoo or piercings if I had been allowed to cut my hair and tweeze my eyebrows, due to the fact that I never got, or even wanted, another tattoo or piercing after the day I got my hair cut.
Today, I only have a single pair of piercings in my lower ears, the one in the top of my ear, and my belly bar.
Whether I have ever mentioned that I was bullied a lot of during junior and senior school, I’m not sure.
I’ve definitely mentioned being constantly let down by the NHS in general, but severely by the GP practice that I was a patient at for my entire childhood, as well as most of my adult life, though.
One of the illnesses that I was let down by them with, was used by other kids to bully me.
Although the GP diagnosed me as having Raynaud’s, they never told me that I had this medical condition, what caused it, or how to treat it. They simply told me, as though I was a hypochondriac, that it was just poor circulation, which I am not sure is fully true. Then, noted on their system that I had Raynaud’s. I only found out that I had it, after requesting my medical records, through a subject access request, in my thirties.
The condition mainly affects my hands, feet, nose and ears. It is my hands and nose that it affects the worst. My hands have always been very cold, which can make using them at times difficult. The skin on them has always been very dry, and cracks easily, a symptom that gets worse in the winter, and has gotten worse since I moved into this flat and develop cleaning OCD, as my hands are constantly in soapy water, either to clean them, or to clean something else. My nose also gets dry skin on and around it, but mainly it gets very red.
As you all know, I go by my middle name, Pixie, and my first name is Rachel, which fits into a certain Christmas song really well, so amongst all the nasty comments about what my Raynaud’s did to me, I was also subjected to having my name inserted into this Christmas song as a way to taunt me.
As an adult, none of this bothers me, but as a child, it was quite upsetting, especially as what I was being bullied about, in terms of the Raynaud’s, made it difficult for me to do things, and caused me pain and discomfort.
In my early teens, I began begging my mum to let me wear foundation and concealer to cover up the redness, but she always refused.
Eventually, it was my dad who agreed that I could wear it, and bought me powder foundation and concealer. He made me promise that I wouldn’t tell my mum, then immediately did this himself.
As an adult, I understand that he agreed to let me use the make up, and bought me it, as another way to control us all and cause conflict between us. He never bought any of us anything, or gave us money. He was abusive in many ways, and one of those ways was financially.
However, after the argument this caused, both me and my sister, who was far too young to wear make up, we’re both allowed to wear whatever make up we wanted. Yet, nobody bothered to teach us how to apply it, which seems strange even to me, who doesn’t want kids. If I had a little girl, or boy, who wanted to wear make up, I would love to teach them how to wear it properly, when they were old enough. The only person who ever taught me to do any part of my make up was my friend Chip, who was slightly older than me, and a goth, when I said I wished I knew how to do eyeliner, which was something she wore all the time.
As a teenager, I wore a lot of bright lipstick and eyeshadow, which probably looked awful, and was against the several schools that I attendeds dress codes, but no matter how much the teachers threatened to call my mum about it, or acted on those threats, nothing ever stopped me from wearing it, as we all simply pointed out that I was being bullied about my skin condition, and until they did something about the bullying, I would continue to cover up my red skin with make up.
As you probably guessed, the make up didn’t stop the bullying, as it was never actually about my skin. The kids simply shifted their focus to my bright make up, like it was it wasn’t a choice I was purposely making, which just made me laugh.
If I remember correctly, the best insult I ever got about my make up was, “You’re just a little rat in make up.”
“Oh right,” I laughed. “But I’m a little rat in make up thats much prettier than you.”
That was true, so it earned me threats of physical violence, as though threats of physical violence bothered me, which they didn’t, as I got at least a dozen of them a day.
Phase 3 – Week 18
Monday: 2 laps of, 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking =3.324 miles
Tuesday: Rain
Wednesday: Dental hospital
Thursday: My birthday
Friday: Bonfire night
Saturday: Bonfire weekend
Sunday: Bonfire weekend
Days=1
Laps =2
Total miles =3.324
Total run = 60%
Total walk =40%
Total miles run =1.9944
Total miles walked= 1.3296
Phase 3- Week 18
Day 120: Monday
This week, I have decided to follow tip 3, from part 1 of ways to improve your breathing during runs – simple tips to help you breathe easier and avoid lung damage, which is to wear a scarf or bandanna loosely across your face while running. I choose one of the biggest bandannas I own, as I think the bigger it is, the easier it will be to cover my face with it and keep it tied up. Then, I spend absolutely ages trying to get it on, before I even leave the flat.
As you can probably imagine, it is impossible to keep up while I’m running. As soon as I start it falls down, meaning I keep having to stop to fix it. After 3/4 of my first lap, I decide it’s impossible to use and take it off. If it would have stayed on, I believe that it would have made it much easier to breathe in the cold air, so I am frustrated that I had to give up on using it.
Maybe because of the banner fiasco, it’s not until I take my clothes off to get in the shower, that I noticed my heel is badly cut and bleeding heavily. I wore thin socks, that sat below the top of my running shoes today, so I blame them and promise to remember to only were thick, high socks while running in the future.
Day 121: Tuesday
On Tuesday, I go for my run, minus my bandanna.
However, as I leave the flat, it begins to rain.
Because even with my high thick socks on my heel is really hurting, I am actually relieved that it is raining, as my shoes rubbing against the sore would have made it too painful to run.
Day 122: Wednesday
On Wednesday, I have a dental hospital appointment, and by the time I get home its dark
Day 123: Thursday
Thursday is my birthday, so as I am seeing my family, I don’t go for a run today.
Days 124, 125, 126 – Friday, Saturday and Sunday
Friday is bonfire night, so I take the weekend off, as I don’t think it’s safe to go running.
“Remember the time you got your haircut like that?” Steve said.
It wasn’t that what he said was hugely inaccurate, it just wasn’t completely accurate. I hadn’t had the exact same haircut, but I could see the resemblance to the style he was pointing at. It was that initially I felt like his joke was a little bit mean-spirited even for him, even for us, but it probably wasn’t. I’d probably said for worse to him many times before. Wasn’t that a huge part of our relationship, pushing each other’s buttons?
Wasn’t that partially why I loved him so much in a brotherly way?
He wasn’t my actual brother, but he was certainly the brother I never had, and isn’t that what brothers and sisters did, push each other’s buttons?
I was too drunk when I met steve to remember actually meeting him, but I did remember him afterwards. It was the day I arrived at university, and I somehow ended up at the student union amongst a group of first year students who were all excited to start their art related degrees. I quickly realised they weren’t my type of people. When I managed to slip away and sat on the windowsill, it was steve, a second year film and journalism student that I sat next to.
Steve would recount the stories to people like it was the funniest story. I suppose it was. He’d boom with laughter as he told people how after only five minutes of conversation, I had leaned in and said, “You and me are going to be best friends.”
It wasn’t just funny because it was true, or because he was thinking the same thing. It was funny because the qualities that bonded us are the type of qualities you usually have to dig long and hard to find in a person, the qualities people on their best behaviour don’t usually reveal to each other. We both had deliciously, dark, dry, senses of humour.
The haircut was a particularly sore spot for me. I’d had a blue streak in it that I needed to get rid of. My previous haircut had been layered. The blue streak was only visible in the bottom layer. when it hadn’t fully come out I told the hairdresser to cut it up to the highest layer, which was just above my chin. I’d had shorter haircuts. The length wasn’t the problem. It was my full fringe, it made it look like a bowl cut.
Me and steve were sat on the outside of our group of friends, as we always were when we went to the cinema. We talked a lot throughout the film, we couldn’t help it, it was another thing we had in common.
The person sitting next to us, I don’t remember who it was, laughed.
“What did he say? Somebody else asked.
“He asked if she remembered the time she got her haircut like Spock,” they replied.
Then they were all laughing, and they couldn’t stop laughing.
I thought he was a neighbour. I felt dread at the thought of having to interact with him, having to act normal, having to answer questions and ask him questions in a way that didn’t give too much away, didn’t pry, and didn’t encourage further interaction. I had only been living in the small block of flats for a couple of weeks. I thought about dashing back into my flat but he had seen me through the glass building door that he had almost reached. It was far worse.
I locked my front door and decided I would beat him to the building entrance. I would pass him before he entered and hurry off with at the worst a hello. That was my first mistake. I made it to the door and opened it just as he reached the other side. He entered the block forcing me backwards inside and the stopping so I couldn’t leave.
He introduced himself and asked me my name. I cringed internally and answered him.
He asked me. “Do you live there?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“With your boyfriend?” He continued.
“Just me,” I added, reluctant to let him know I was a woman living alone. “But my mum’s always here, always dropping by, she doesn’t live far, she even has keys.”
I edged around him, and was thankful when he moved and headed up the staircase towards the only other floor.
I turned to leave. He started knocking loudly and insistently on the only door out of the three upstairs that I was able to see.
Nobody answered.
“Hello!” He yelled. “Is anybody home. I need to charge my phone.”
My bloody ran cold. I froze partly in, but mostly outside. My anxiety grew.
“What flat do you live?” I said, trying to keep my voice low and calm, it was hard, I knew the answer, and I could feel the panic attack threatening to take control of my body.
He moved out of sight and started knocking on a different door.
“I don’t live here,” he confirmed. “I’m staying with a friend. I live just down the road. I was here last night at the party, and I just need to charge my phone.”
There were a lot of parties here, they kept me awake at night, however last night had been quiet. Hadn’t it?
“Maybe it started after you went to sleep and your medication knocked you out,” I suggested to my nerves.
“You know that didn’t happen,” they answered back.
“He’s going to ask you to let him into your flat,” a little voice in the back of my mind whispered. “Then he’s going to rob you.”
He was back knocking on the door I could see.
“You know I’m right. He could charge his phone at his friends, or at his house. If he had one,” That little voice whispered.
It was right he had no phone or charger.
In response I slipped outside and away from the man.
I walked to the edge of the street and around the block out of sight.
Outside, away from the chaos, I convinced myself it was fine. He hadn’t been knocking on all the doors just the two. Other people had to be home, the girl who lived opposite me who never left her flat, the man who worked nights who lived above me. Maybe his phone and charger were in his pocket. I forced myself to continue onto the shop down the street, but when I got there I roamed the aisles aimlessly afraid of the consequences of what I had done.
He knew there was nobody in my flat. Panic gripped me. He was probably robbing me right now.
I abandoned my plans and dashed back to the building going in the back way so that I could see the door to my flat before I entered the building. It was just as I had left it but the flats weren’t, they were quiet now and the communal hall was empty. He was gone.
“You and your nerves, that little voice laughed. “You make mountains out if molehills.”
Phase 3 – Week 17
Monday: Write off
Tuesday: 2 laps of, 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: 2 laps of, 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324miles
Thursday : unknown reasons for not going for a run
Friday: unknown reasons for not going to run
Saturday: Mischief night
Sunday: Halloween
Total days= 2
Total laps= 4
Total miles =6.648
Total run =60%
Total walk = 40%
Total miles run =3.9888
Total miles walked = 2.6592
Phase 3 – week 17
Day 113: Monday
This Monday, is literally a repeat of last Monday -meaning I couldn’t sleep on Sunday night, then due to my antipsychotics could do nothing but lay in bed until I fell asleep. The only difference is that it was late evening when I fell asleep today.
Day114: Tuesday
On Tuesday, I actually get out for a run again!
It’s hard, which is obviously because I’m out of practice. However, it is much worse than Thursday’s run, as I am stopping every 30-60 seconds, as I am hallucinating and can’t breathe.
At the 5/8 mark on my last lap, I feel as though I’m going to collapse, so I have no choice but to stop and walk home.
I completed 2 laps of, 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, which totals 3.324 miles.
Day 115: Wednesday
On Wednesday, I managed to go for a run again.
Usually, my second day of exercising in a row is much harder. Yet, today is much easier than yesterday, and I only stop once per run/walk cycle (during the run part) this seems to be because I am both breathing better, and hallucinating less.
where I fail in my improvement, is that I once again can’t continue past the 5/8 mark on my second lap.
At one point, while I’m stopped trying to catch my breath and bat away the black snow that only I can see, with my headphones in, an older man actually tries to start a conversation with me. It isn’t even that he is concerned about me, because he keeps chuckling to himself after everything he says.
Am I wrong in thinking his behaviour is inappropriate?
I completely ignore him, but he refuses to go away, which forces me to start running again before I’m ready.
I complete 2 laps of, 3 minutes running, 2 minute walking which totals 3.324 miles.
Day 116: Thursday
I have no notes for today, so I don’t know why I didn’t go for a run, as I knew I couldn’t go on Saturday and Sunday, as it is mischief night and Halloween.
Day 117: Friday
Today, is the same as yesterday.
Day 118: Saturday
Saturday, is mischief night.
Sunday 119: Sunday
Sunday, is Halloween.
Part 2 (of)
Don’t bother calling for help
(and) the boys from Sassoon
Today, I’m doing something I’ve never done before, I am writing a post that is part two, of two different posts. Those posts are
⁃ Don’t bother calling for help,
https://pixievannucci.wordpress.com/2021/10/31/dont-bother-calling-for-help/
⁃ (and) the boys from Sassoon,
https://pixievannucci.wordpress.com/2021/11/14/the-boys-from-sassoon/
For this reason, I have given it a completely different title.
Regardless of this, today’s post picks up where last weeks left off.
It was my birthday, which is the day before bonfire night, and the penthouse crew had thrown me a surprise birthday party in the common room, which if you know me, you would know was the worst thing they could have done. The common room was a place for everybody, and it was the only place students without a TV who wanted to watch TV, could go to do it, so I didn’t feel right about taking up the common room for my party. Also, being that it was the common room, strangers kept coming in. It was terribly awkward, and the type of weird thing that sets off my BPD anxiety and stress. Though I experienced toxic levels of guilt often, with the rare exception, I usually really only feel toxic shame about weird things, this was one of those sort of things.
Even if you didn’t take everything I’ve just told you into consideration, it would still have been obvious, if you weren’t me, that the party was for the penthouse crew rather than for me. You see, the only people there were the penthouse crew, and the group from the second floor, who it was quickly becoming clear really did not like me, as they took every opportunity that presented itself to accuse me of spoiling their fun. None of my friends, that were not friends with the penthouse crew, where there.
Instead of a cake, which you are all probably aware I love, there was a homemade vegetarian vodka jelly, which I tried my best to fake interest in and gratefulness for, but, again, if you know me, you know I didn’t (because I no longer drink alcohol) like consuming alcohol that I hadn’t taken my eyes off, or eating food that might not have been made in sanitary conditions.
At the time, as much as I appreciated the thought, the entire thing just didn’t feel right to me, so when Johnny suggested the group from the second floor go to set off fireworks he had bought for bonfire night, and Amy pleaded with me to join them, I reluctantly agreed.
On this occasion, my reluctance didn’t come from the group’s dislike of me, it came from my concern that these particular people plus fireworks couldn’t end well.
My opinion of these people was far too high though, because it didn’t even start well.
Rather than taking us to any of the large open spaces on campus, Johnny and Eric began leading us into the woods, to a spot they claimed to have pre picked for the fireworks.
To me, the woods seemed like an obviously stupid place to set off fireworks, as they could have caused a fire. Yet, when I pointed this out, I was accused of being a miserable killjoy and order to go back to the party if that’s how I felt, which I could not do, because only Johnny and Eric knew the way back.
When we arrived in a very small clearing of trees, I position myself as far away from Johnny and Eric as I possibly could, while the others huddled together a couple of feet away from the two men.
Johnny unpacked one of the fireworks, took out his lighter, and lit the wick on it while he was holding it.
“Johnny, drop it!” I shouted, repeatedly, absolutely horrified and panicking.
There was a commotion from those huddled together, but none of it was aimed at Johnny, all of it was aimed at me.
Despite this, Johnny continue to slowly try to stick the firework into the soil, before it exploded while it was still in his hand.
I remember an occasion, when me and Amy were on the Trent Park shuttlebus together, while she was talking at me, I took my mirror and lipstick out of my bag, applied my lipstick to my bottom lip and rubbed my lips together.
“How did you do that?” She marvelled
“Do what?” I put the items back into my back.
“Get your lipstick perfect by rubbing your lips together like that?”
“Isn’t that how everybody does it?” I asked.
“I don’t,” she said, staring at me with an odd expression.
“What’s that face for?” I laughed.
“You’re so strange,” she marvelled again. “And you have the strangest luck as well.”
“You mean the strangest bad luck,” I corrected
“Luck is Luck. If I were you, I’d play the lottery. I bet You’d win.”
Amy’s view of me having bizarre luck is how I viewed Johnny. The difference was that Johnny’s luck was always good.
There was a day, when after I arrived home from university, Amy text me, requesting that I come down to Johnny’s room, which was where she was.
They had been there all day, skiving their university lessons and watching the clangers. Like always, Johnny’s door was open. When I entered, he was chasing a fly around the room, with an actual flyswatter.
“Tell Rach what Johnny did,” Amy encourage Hannah.
“He hung Georgie (a teddy bear, that like pebbles, had haunted machine wash eyes, that Hannah had owned since childhood) from the light in the kitchen last night, as though he had committed suicide, so that when I went in there to make us breakfast this morning, that’s how I found him.”
Johnny slammed down the flyswatter, triumphantly announcing that, he had, “gotten the little bastard.”
“How can you kill anything that easily? We all only have one chance at life, and you just fucked up that flys one chance,” Ami accused.
“Why are you watching the clangers? Why are you all in pyjamas? Have none of you been to uni today?” I enquired.
Ami shook her head, “Hannah was upset about Georgie, so Johnny convinced us to take the day off. Tell Rachel your story Johnny.”
He sat down on his desk chair, “I woke up for college one morning, and I just couldn’t be bothered going in. It was coming up to the end of the year, and I hadn’t missed a single day, so I decided to take the day off and went back to sleep. When I finally got out of bed and turned on the TV, it was all over the news that a tube train had blown up. It was the train I would’ve been on if I’d gone to college.”
When the firework exploded in Johnny’s hand, there was a blinding flash of light, sparks and a puff of smoke. Everybody screamed, except me, who was frozen in shock, and all the attention that had been on me was suddenly on Johnny and Eric.
Unbelievably, when we could all see properly again, we discovered that neither of the two men, or anybody else, was seriously hurt, but the accident had ruined the event. Everybody just wanted to call it a night, and go to bed. We were all silent on the walk back to halls.
As we approach Gubby, I could see into the entrance, where (Manchester) Gareth was loitering. He seemed to be waiting for somebody, as he was pacing around, and because he kept peering inside the security office, which was next to the common room, I assumed that it was the security guard he was waiting for.
A quick note: Inside the security office, there was a wall of passport photographs of all the students, except me, who lived in both Gubby and Sassoon, next to their room number. The staff claimed that it was so they knew who lived in which room, so that they weren’t letting people into rooms that weren’t theirs, when opening doors for those who said they had locked themselves out. My opinion, was that the wall was dangerous, as it was visible to the public, meaning people with nefarious intentions could use it to find out where anybody they wanted to lived. Even if they did need this wall of photographs for that reason, it should have been out of public sight, but they didn’t need it. After arguing with the security guards about why my photo wasn’t on the wall, every time I locked myself out, they would simply demand my ID from inside the room before they left me there alone.
It is now my belief, that Gareth was attempting to find out what room was mine.
He stopped me, as soon as I stepped inside the building. The group from the second floor, and Amy, continued on without me.
Gareth explained that after we had gone to set off fireworks, Fee had text several of the boys from Sassoon to invite them to the party.
Honestly I didn’t care. I also don’t think I understood, and still don’t understand, whatever message he wanted to convey to me, as to me, it sounded as though he was requesting my permission to be there.
I replied, that was fine, and that I wasn’t even going back to the party, as I was tired and wanted to go to sleep.
It caused me instant unease when he offered to walk me back to my room, like I was about to walk through a rough part of town.
Unsurprisingly, I declined this offer, but he refused to listen to me and began following me up the stairs.
Due to the fat that, I repeatedly demanded that he leave me alone on my way up the stairs and he ignored me, by the time I reached my room I was sure that he was going to attempt to force his way inside and had decided not to open the door until he left.
Stopping outside my room, I told him, “Good night,” and “Goodbye.”
He stared at me hungrily before speaking. What he said made my blood run cold. “Don’t you want birthday sex?”
Now upset as well as afraid, I informed him firmly and loudly that, “No, I [did not] want birthday sex, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be with him.”
Immediately, his mood flipped. He pushed me, and pin me against the door, and began trying to pry my keys from my hand. At this point, I was yelling for help. Managing to get my hand with my keys in it behind my back, prevented him from being able to pull them off me, but it made it harder to fight him off as well. He took advantage of this and tried to kiss me. Turning my head to the side, I switch from yelling for help, to scream at him to get off me.
This went on for minutes.
Eventually, Sam flung open her door and stepped out into the corridor. My initial thought was, thank God somebody had finally come to help me, but I was wrong.
She started shrieking at me, aggressively and hysterical, the way she had at the driver of the car who stalled that day we went to the supermarket together, swearing, calling me names, and telling me to, “Shut up. [She] [was] trying to sleep.”
This didn’t scare Gareth off. He simply watched, confused but unphased, until I began screaming back at her that I was being attacked by a man who seemed intent on raping me. This is when he got off me, turned, and calmly walked away.
I waited until he disappeared downstairs, before I opened my door and hurried inside. Ignoring Sam, who was now banging on my door as she continued to shriek, I collapsed onto the floor, bawling, while having a panic attack.
Phase 3- Week 16
Monday: Write off
Tuesday: Write off
Wednesday: Write iff
Thursday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking =3.324 miles
Friday: Write off
Saturday: Write off
Sunday: Write off
Total exercise days: 1
Total miles: 3.324
Total run: 60%
Total walk: 40%
Total miles run: 1.9944
Total miles walked: 1.3296
Phase 3 – week 16
Day 106: Monday
Monday was supposed to be my first day back exercising after my black out in the street two weeks ago. However, I was unable to sleep at all on Sunday night, meaning that I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed today, because of my antipsychotics. Although I wanted to spend the afternoon and night sleeping, I didn’t actually manage to fall asleep until the early evening.
Day 107: Tuesday
Due to my lack of sleep over the last two days, I didn’t wake up until 2 pm.
No matter what time of day I wake up, I always need a couple of hours before I can function properly, because of the medication I take at night. Another thing I need before I can do anything else is breakfast, meaning food and a cup of coffee. By the time I was ready to go running today, it was already getting dark, making it too late for me to go.
Day 108: Wednesday
My notes say that I saw my mum on Wednesday. As I can’t remember this day, being that it was almost a month from the day I am writing this, I can’t expand on it.
Day 109: Thursday
On Thursday, I finally managed to go for a run!
Not only am I clock watching, which is dangerous, as I am taking my eyes off the road and not concentrating on what I am doing, I keep stopping mid run around the 1 minute and 30 seconds mark, because I’m struggling to breathe and I’m severely hallucinating.
In between the three quarter point and the end of my first lap, I’m almost hit by tools that a workman is throwing out of a garden. He is sat on the ground, so he cant see if there are any pedestrians nearby, and this is a main road.
On the same stretch of road, there are a lot of wet, sleepy, leaves. When I try to think of a way to avoid slipping on them, all I can think of, like about when it gets icy in a few weeks, is go to the gym or buy a treadmill, neither of which I can afford, so this really depresses me. Plus, even if I did have extra money, I’m desperate for new running clothes, as I have just had to throw away three pairs of running shorts, and I have no running rainwear, or high visibility clothing.
Day 110: Friday
Friday is meant to be an exercise day, but I don’t go for my run due to a BPD episode I have which is triggered by a letter from my landlord, about the antisocial behaviour I’ve been reporting for the last three years, that basically accuses me of lying. I wont say more here, but I may write a post about this in the future.
Day 111: Saturday
On Saturday I’m still struggling with the episodes that started yesterday, so, again, I don’t go for my run.
Day 112: Sunday
On Sunday I have a ton of washing to do, and I’m running out of clean clothes, so I have no choice but to stay in and get a couple of loads what I most urgently need done.
Gubby, or Grubby Gubby as we called it, due to how run down it was, and how disgusting its communal areas were, wasn’t the only halls of residence on the Trent Park campus, though you would be forgiven for thinking it was, even if you studied and/or lived on the campus. This is both because of its large size and prominent location. The H shaped building, which was made up of two, four story towers, connected by a flimsy looking glass and plastic entrance, was facing the mansion building, which was where classes were held.
If you exited Gubby, turned right, and walked straight past the student union, you would come to the stables. These were indeed real, but long abandoned animal pens, housed in the bottom story of two buildings which faced each other. Due to the path that led to the stables being cobblestones, once you enter, you felt as though you were in an enclosed space. The stables were eerie during the day, so at night they were beyond unsettling. I will happily admit that people like me and Fee, who voluntarily ventured into the stables during the late night and early hours of the morning, were stupid, as anybody could have been hiding in there. However, there were people, meaning the residents of Sassoon, which was the other halls of residence on the Trent Park campus, who had no choice but to enter the stables, because once you emerged on the other side, Sassoon was where you were.
Sassoon, a two story, square shaped construction, was much smaller than Gubby, so it did not have a security guard posted in it. Due to its size, it only had a single kitchen, which was within a large common area, meaning all its residents knew each other. As you can probably imagine, all this earned Sassoon a reputation for being a bit of a party house, despite the fact that more parties were held in Gubby on a single night, than in Sassoon across the entire week.
On the nights that there wasn’t a party at Sassoon, you would find a large group of men socialising around the giant common room table. Very rarely would you find women amongst them, and when you did, it would be me and/or fee.
How and when I was officially introduced to the boys from Sassoon, I don’t remember, but it was definitely after the night when Fee hit me in the face with the glass bottle. This makes me wonder why she chosen me to be her Sassoon visiting companion, being that we already despise each other. Had the boys mention me in particular, or had they given her some sort of description of their type, which brought me to mind?
At the time, my impression was that they liked Fee, and tolerated me. With hindsight, I now understand that they tolerated both of us, yet it was me that they wanted around, not because they like me, but because they wanted, or expected, sex from me. That is why she needed me, I was her way into the group, and she needed a way into the group in order to attempt to get close to one of the men who she was interested in.
This is not to say that I am judging her for this, as after the first visit, I kept returning for a similar reason.
Out of over a dozen men, I can only recall four of them – Newcastle Dave, (Manchester) Gareth, Marc with a C, and Mark with a K. Out of these four, I only recall one of their degrees– Newcastle Dave was a photography student, who also studied at Cathill.
As an asexual person, I have already addressed the two types of relationship that I would become accustomed to over the next decade of my life – relationships with abusive men who wore me down because they refused to take no for an answer, and those who I only had a romantic interest in. There is third and very rare category though, and I had just broken up with a man who fit into this category – men who I was sexually attracted to.
As previously promised, I will talk more about being asexual in the future, but all you need to know for this story is that Newcastle Dave would have fallen into this third rare category if anything would have come of my feelings towards him, although looking back I can’t figure out why. He wasn’t ugly, but he certainly wasn’t beautiful. I can’t say that I’m sorry that nothing ever came of my short lived interest in him, as I am actually glad it never. What is important here, is that it was his rejection of me that finally ended my nighttime trips with Fee to Sassoon, therefore ending my usefulness to her, and my association with the men.
There really wasn’t a massive event during which Newcastle Dave rejected me. We simply found ourselves alone in his room somehow one night, and when I took the opportunity to reveal my feelings, his response was that he had a girlfriend is back at home in Newcastle.
As with the boys themselves, I have very few memories of the nights we spent with them, but the three memories I do have will be forever burnt into my mind.
In today’s post, I’m going to tell you about two of these occasions. The third one, I will tell you in next weeks post.
The first, was one of the many occasions where we all sat round the huge kitchen table socialising.
Halfway through the night, one of the boys disappeared, returning with a bottle of alcohol. When he put it on the table, everybody stopped talking.
“What is it?” Either me or Fee enquired.
“Your initiation,” the bottle owner laughed, but there was still silence from all the others.
He pushed the bottle into the middle of the table, “Take a sip.”
Now, everybody’s eyes were on me and Fee.
I could sense, and see out corner of my own eyes, Fee staring at me.
“We all did it,” he reassured us.
“We did,” somebody else confirmed, but they didn’t sound happy that they had.
“Just a sip,” the bottle owner urged.
Aware that I should have refused, and that drinking from this already open bottle was idiotic, I picked it up curiously, put it to my lips, and took a mouthful of the liquid inside.
Immediately, on tasting it, I knew I had made a colossal mistake in taking a mouthful, and exactly why.
It burned like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It burned all the way down. It moved through me like liquid fire. Blinking away the water that the heat brought to my eyes, while managing to somehow stop myself from grimacing, or making a noise, purely because I knew a reaction was what they wanted from us, I placed the bottle calmly back down onto the table.
The boys, who had been watching me eagerly, all appear to be stunned. Some of them gawped at me open mouthed, as though they couldn’t believe what they just witnessed, but overall, their expressions conveyed a sort of impressed awe.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. When I turned to Fee, she was scowling at me angrily, like she understood I had passed their unpleasant test, and so now she had no choice but attempt to pass it to, as she blatantly didn’t want to be bested by me in her own mind. Reluctantly, she picked up the bottle, put it to her lips, and hesitantly took a swig.
Her reaction almost match my own. She winced slightly, her face twisting more in disgust than pain. Blinking a couple of times, she slowly placed the bottle back down, before reviewing the alcohol inside, “Yuck.”
“What the fuck!” Somebody exclaimed.
Then the room erupted with laughter.
“You two are hardcore. That’s Stroh rum it’s 80% alcohol,” the owner of the bottle informed us, producing his mobile phone to shows a very low quality video he had filmed on it. In it, the boys were all sat in a circle on the common room floor, dressed in their pyjamas, or underwear, as they passed the bottle around. Their reactions varied from moans and squeals, to sobbing and wailing.
I assume he expected us to laugh, but we didn’t.
Neither did we ever speak of the experience, even when we were alone.
The second, happened at a party, after everybody except me, Fee and the two marks had gone to bed. Fee had wanted to stay, to listen to music, with the two best friends, in Marcs room, so I had stayed with her, to make sure she was ok. Although Fee had never admitted it, she obviously had a romantic or sexual interest in Marc. Honestly, I don’t know why, as she was far too good for him. He was creepy, misogynistic, and looked like a really ugly version of Richard Hammond. If she had requested that I leave her alone with him, I would have, because she was a grown woman, but I wouldn’t have felt good about doing it, and I would have stayed very close by, within ear shot for if she needed or screamed for help for sure.
It had been a bring your own beer situation, and I had completely run out of whatever low percentage alcohol pops I had been drinking, and was still sober.
Fee had run out of whatever she had brought, but had more in her room, as did the two Marks.
Prior to being at the party, we had been at the student union, so I had money on me.
“Can I buy a beer off you?” I asked Marc, pointing to the stack of boxes in the corner.
“You can, but it will cost you a blowy,” Marc haggled.
He was lying on his bed, which I was standing near, due to how small the rooms were, and my general unease of being alone in the room with them. My position put me close to his open door, in case I needed to escape quickly, but it also put me within his reach, which I didn’t realise, until, as he was propositioning me, he grabbed my clothes and attempted to tug me onto the bed.
“Fuck off!” I shouted as loud as I could, pulling away from him. “Not a fucking chance. You disgust me.”
He shrugged. “You disgust me, but business, is business.”
What the fuck is that meant to mean, I thought. I was just about to tell Fee I wanted to leave, when she spoke.
“I’ll give you a blowy for a beer.”
“Fee, you have drinks in your room,” I reminded her, turning so that only she could see me mouth the words, “please don’t.”
“I don’t want to walk back to my room,” She continued, ignoring me.
“You’re a fucking [insert insult I don’t remember]. I wouldn’t let you blow me, if you were going to give me the beer after,” he sneered.
“Let’s go Fee,” I pleaded. As much as we hate as each other, I felt awful for her.
Yet, she insisted on staying, so I went to sit in the corridor opposite his room, where I was able to see still inside.
Phase 3- Week 15
Rest due to injuries.
Phase 3 -Week 15
Monday- Sunday: Rest days due to injury.
Fee was the first person that I truly came to dislike at university, or rather, she was the first person who came to dislike me
That didn’t make me special by any means. It was obvious, from the beginning, that the only members of the penthouse crew that she did like were May and herself. She was clearly of the opinion that the two of them were above the rest of us in social standing.
Carol took the brunt of a distain, being treated like a third wheel at the best of times, and a public emotional punching bag at the worst.
When I started writing about my experiences at university, my memories were hazy, so I couldn’t recall what degrees everybody was taking, I still can’t, but the more I force myself to think about this era of my life, the more details I remember. I’m now sure that both Emma and Carol were drama students, along with Fee and Charlie. Whether an event took place during their classes that resulted in the coldness between them I can’t say, as none of them ever mentioned anything that would suggest this, but I do wonder about it now. Considering they lived and studied together, I would expect the four of them to have been much closer than the rest of us.
However, I do know that there was a “disagreement” between Charlie and Fee, at halls, that understandably caused Charlie to distrust Fee. I know this because Charlie told me about it the day we met, which wasn’t the day Amy officially introduced us and we became friends.
The day I arrived in London, the member of staff who showed me to my room, accidentally took me to Charlies room first. After a couple of minutes of him struggling to open the door, Charlie did, half dressed, half asleep, and fully furious. Eventually, he showed me to the correct room, leaving me to bring my suitcases up to my new home.
On my first trip up, Charlie was waiting in the doorway.
“Excuse me,” she called, still sounding angry.
Unable to deal with an argument, due to being emotionally worn down by the ordeal the taxi driver had subjected me to, I turned to face her opening my mouth to apologise.
Surprisingly though, she cut me off to apologise, her tone softening. Then without pausing, she launched into an explanation about why the incident had upset her.
A couple of days earlier, while she was out, her room had been broken into. The only reason that she was aware of this was because Fee had excitedly bragged to Charlie (as she would later to me, and anybody else she met that would listen) that she had taken part in the break in, as though the normal way to handle witnessing a break in was to request to take part in it. According to Fee, she had heard strange noises in the corridor and had gone to investigate. Finding a woman she didn’t know breaking into Charlies room with a bankcard, she had enquired as to what the woman was doing. The woman informed Fee that she had lived in this room the previous year and wanted to see who was living in it, and what it was like, now. She taught Fee how to open the doors to the rooms using a bankcard, stating she had learned the skill because her and her friends had gotten fed up with both needing to wait for the security guard to let them back in, as well as the lectures the guards gave them? whenever they locked themselves out (just like the rest of us would soon come to be). Once the door to Charlies room was open, the stranger, and Fee, entered the room and snooped around.
“Always double lock your door,” Charlie had warned me, before disappearing back into her room.
As you can probably guess from the above story, Fee seem to have no models.
Not only did Fee have a bad habit of lying, she had a bad habit of lying in order to attempt to bribe or manipulate people, which she wasn’t good at. She had no idea how to read people, and no idea that she even needed to be able to be people for her attempts to work.
An example of this, was how she claimed her family home was opposite the fields that Glastonbury music festival was held in, and that she could get unlimited free tickets because of this. She promised people these unlimited free tickets, without providing any proof she could actually get them, whenever she wanted them to give her something, or do something for her.
Often, she would try this on me, despite me making it clear to her on several occasions that I had no interest in going to Glastonbury, or any festival.
You might think what happens in my next story caused the bad feelings between me and Fee, but it didn’t. She was already showing signs she dislike me, in particular, prior to this incident. Yet, for reasons I will address in my next post, she insisted on acting like we were the best of friends, but unfortunately when you consider that she was a drama students, she wasn’t a gifted actor.
There were so many nights out in London during our first month at university, that were so uneventful and unmemorable, I suppose due to how the reality of them was so disappointingly anticlimax compared to our excitingly high expectations, that the only parts of these nights that I remember are the parts where they turned bad. For this reason, I can’t tell you what area of London we were in, what clubs or pubs we had visited, or everybody who was there.
What I recall is that somehow me and Fee had ended up at the bar together, which was on the ground floor of the pub we were in buying drinks, while the rest of the people we were with were on the first floor.
We were on our way towards the stairs, when without any indication she was about to do so, Fee stepped directly in front of me, in order to cross from being on my left side to my right side, swinging her arms up dramatically and quickly, smashing me in the face with her glass bottle.
Dazed from the force, I staggered backwards, swaying on my heels. During those first few seconds, my mind was foggy. When I finally caught my balance and snapped back to full consciousness, I was immediately aware that there was something sharp and jagged rattling around inside my mouth. That was the moment I lost it and began hysterically crying. Because I never would’ve thought that teeth were strong enough to not only break a glass bottle, but also withstand the impact themselves, I assumed that it was one of my own teeth, until I spat it into my hand and found that it was a fairly large chunk of glass. Seeing the blood in my hand was what made me realise that my mouth was full of, and my lips, chin, and throat, were all covered in, blood. Although my clothes were also wet and sticky, that was because they were soaked with beer.
Wiping the blood off my face, I looked up at Fee and was shocked to see her scowling at me. Whether she was pissed off that my teeth had broken her bottle of beer, or that I had spoilt her reunion with what I later learned to have been some of her friends from home, I don’t know, I just know that she was blatantly pissed off at me.
Unsurprisingly, when you consider she refused to admit it was her who had hit me, I never got an apology from her.
It wasn’t until she turned to face her friends and saw their horrified expressions, that it seemed to dawn on her that she done something wrong. She began pretending that she had witnessed a woman hit me in the face and run off. This was impossible as not only was Fee directly in front of me, meaning he was physically preventing that from happening, she was facing away from me when it did happen. To make matters worse, she was still holding half the broken bottle, as she told her unbelievable lie.
Her friends watched awkwardly, saying nothing to either defend or incriminate her.
Although our brief exchange about who was responsible for causing my injuries wasn’t technically an argument, it got so heated that I had no choice but to walk away, as I was so upset.
However, Fee raced ahead of me, abandoning what was left of the bottle as she did, in order to tell the others her version of events, before I could tell them the truth.
When I reach them, I begged Amy to check I still had all my teeth and hadn’t swallowed any of them, then I sobbed about being worried that I had swallowed glass, while calling “the woman who did this to me,” a coward, stupid, an idiot, and complaining about how she’s refused to apologise, or even admit that she was the person responsible.
If Fee was pissed off at me earlier, she was furious at me now. She sat quietly, but she was obviously seething, as I said all this, then as Amy and Charlie expressed their own unfavourable opinions of the perpetrator. She probably wanted to defend herself, but felt she couldn’t, which was her own fault.
I begged to go home, but the people from the second floor, who were with us, insisted on staying. None of them showed any concern, and in foreshadowing of what would happen at Alexandra Palace just weeks later, all blamed me for ruining the night.
Phase 3- Week 14
Monday to Sunday: Rest days due to fall.
Phase 3- Week 14
Week off due to fall.
Phase 3- Week 13
Note: The day that I am writing this entry is Wednesday, the 20th of October, which is 17 days after my black out in the street. The fact that 17 days has passed, means that my memory is not as good as it would have been if I had een writing this entry two weeks ago. The reason that I’m only just getting round to writing it, is because I have been struggling to keep up with my Sunday autobiographical blog posts, and they come first. Plus, I was a month ahead with my Friday running posts when I blacked out in the street. However, I actually made very few notes during this particular week, which I suspect is because I was struggling to recall my runs, even after just returning from them, either due to missing time, or generally being mentally unwell. I wanted to address this here, both to explain the situation and potential reasons, as well as so that I don’t have to keep repeating that I have such a small amount of information to work with.
Day 85: Monday
On Monday, I woke up early, so I went for my run early. My notes say it was uneventful and a good run, with no breaks, so I don’t know whether this includes the 3, 1 1/2 minute breaks I promised myself, for the first two weeks of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minute walking, 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 of my run.
I complete 2 laps, of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 86: Tuesday
Tuesday should have been an exercise day, but it was raining heavily, so I had no choice but to make it a rest day.
Day 87: Wednesday
Wednesday should have been a rest day, but I am a day behind this week, so I make it an exercise day.
Today, I take all 3, 1 1/2 minute breaks.
I believe it is on my second lap, when an incident that is shocking, and leaves me slightly shaken, happens.
As I am coming up to the half a lap point, I noticed a group of three very young, very small children, up ahead.
Two of the children are most definitely toddlers, and the third can’t be older than five, as if he wasn’t wearing School uniform he could easily pass for a nursery child.
As I approach, he begins to aggressively scream at me, “Stop slut,” repeatedly, so loud that I can hear him over my music.
Then, as I’m about to pass them, he jumps in front of me, trying to force me to stop.
I don’t.
I’ve no intention of stopping.
I’m glad that I didn’t stop, as I am sure if I had he would’ve physically attacked me.
Instead, I run up onto the grass verge, that is in between him and the road, and past him, before jumping back down onto the pavement.
Enraged, he begins to shout, “Come back bitch,” repeatedly, much more aggressively than when he was screaming, “stop slut,” but now he’s also chasing me.
Obviously, I’m much faster than a five year old child, and when he realises he can’t catch me, he throws his bottle of juice, which looks like a fruit shoot, at me, but I’m too far away for it to reach me.
I complete 2 laps, of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 88: Thursday
On Thursday, despite the fact that it has been raining heavily and the weather forecast predicts rain again in a couple of hours, I go out for my run, hoping to beat the next down pour.
The first 1/2 a lap is fine. Yet, the next 8th of a lap is so slippy, I decided it’s not safe to carry on, and not worth risking an injury.
As I am walking the remainder of the lap home, it begins to rain. I’ve just walked into the flat when the heavens open.
Day 89: Friday
It looks like it is going to rain again on Friday, so instead of risking another wasted run, I make the decision to stay in today.
By 8 pm it still hasn’t rained, and I regret not going for my run, but it is too dark to go now.
Day 90: Saturday
On Saturday, it rains.
Day 91: Sunday
It’s last day of the week. Therefore, my last chance to make up for my missing exercise day (not counting Thursdays wasted run).
Because it’s Sunday, meaning the shops close early, and I need to go to the supermarket, I have no choice but to go there first.
I am on my way home, when one second I am walking, and the next, I am plummeting toward the ground, feeling like I am missing time.
It’s as though I have simply leaned forward, but fast and with force. As I hit the ground, hard, I hear my glasses clatter to the ground in front of me.
Luckily, they aren’t damaged, but I am. Thankfully, I managed to put my hands out to break my fall, preventing my face from smashing into the pavement, which has resulted in both my palms being torn apart. My left knee, which the doctors suspect has cartilage damage from my 2020 seizure on the same street, seems to have taken a lot of the impact and is injured and hurting badly.
Due to my injuries it will be two full weeks before I can go for a run again.
This post is another interlude of sorts, I suppose, as it is both slightly off topic, and happened several years after the story I’m currently building up to – during the period where I was living with my most recent exnoyfriend– T, in the house we owned together, while I was working at the Santander CallCenter, in Bootle, as a personal banking and ISA, call handler.
The reason I’m writing about this story now, is because it involves a very scary incident, with a creepy taxi driver, from the same company as the one in – Conditioned To Expect And Accept It, part 1, The Taxi Driver.
https://pixievannucci.wordpress.com/2021/09/26/conditioned-to-expect-and-accept-it/
The reason why I was still using the same taxi company- Delta- at this time, is the reason that I still use them today – Delta, is the largest taxi company in Merseyside, and despite it having thousands of vehicles on the road, you still have to call them multiple times, usually over the space of an hour, before a taxi becomes available for you to book, due to how busy they get, so as you can probably imagine, it is near impossible to book one from a smaller company, some of which will only pick up and/or drop off within certain areas in, and around, Merseyside.
On this particular day, I had worked a very stressful 8 am to 3:30 pm shift, which had left me feeling mentally unwell, on top of physically unwell (as at the time I had both undiagnosed mental illnesses and digestive issues) and needed to go to the supermarket around the corner from work, before heading home. Aware, that I was feeling too bad to get the bus, or walk, which both would’ve taken me over an hour to get home, I ordered a Delta.
Being that I felt so awful, and am not the most sociable person at the best of times, I wanted to sit in silence for the entire journey, which was taking far longer than it would have done if it wasn’t rush hour, but the driver was determined to have a conversation with me, whether I liked it or not, even though I was pretending to be busy texting on my mobile. In reality, I was on Facebook, replying to Dms and complaining about the journey. He waffled on about how he had only started working for Delta a couple of weeks prior, doing double shifts during the evenings, nights and weekends, because he was a full time PhD student, studying some subject that was a combination of science, engineering and medicine, moving straight onto his hobbies and interest which included him go in the gym five days a week, studying martial arts on the six, and playing football on the seventh. Though I knew none of this was true – there weren’t enough hours in the week never mind the day, and he was medically obese (I’m not trying to body shame him, I am just stating the weight category he was blatantly in, and why this made what he was saying unlikely to be true) I didn’t challenge him, I just repeated “right,” every time he presented me with a new lie. He wasn’t happy with this though, he seemed to want my enthusiastic engagement, as he began probing me with questions, which I gave short, blunt, vague answers to –
Question: I’m obviously single, because I’m just too busy to meet anybody. How about you?
Answer: I’m in a serious relationship.
Question: How long have you been with your -boyfriend?-?
Answer: [Insert number of years.]
Question: Are you on your way home from work?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Do you work at the supermarket?
Answer: No. [I blatantly worked in an office, as I was required to work “businesswear” to work, and was dressed appropriately.]
Question: Where do you work then?
Answer: Santander.
Question: What do you do there?
Answer: I’m not allowed to say. [It was true, but honestly, I just didn’t want to tell him.]
Question: *Laughed* Top secret is it?
Answer: It’s to prevent anybody trying to coerce, threatened, blackmail, or bribe me into committing crimes against Santander, their clients, or their customers.
Question: Oh…right… *Long pause* Do you live with your parents?
Answer: No my boyfriend.
Question: How long have you lived together?
Answer: [Insert number of years.]
Question: That’s almost as long as you’ve been together isn’t it?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Whats the rent like in [Insert area]?
Answer: I don’t know. We own the house.
Question: You look too young to own a house. How old are you?
Answer: [Insert age.]
Question: I don’t believe you! You look [Ten years younger than my actual age.]
Answer: *Silence*
Question: So, what are your hobbies?
Answer: I don’t have time for hobbies.
Question: Everybody has time for hobbies. Who doesn’t have time for hobbies?
Answer: Me.
When we finally arrived at my house, I was so desperate to get out of his car, and so distracted by juggling and struggling with bags, that I didn’t notice my mobile slip out of my hand.
However, I did realise it was going to soon as I stepped into my hallway. I closed the door behind me, put my supermarket bags on the floor, and went to phone my mum, only discovered that my mobile wasn’t in my handbag.
Panicking, I raced to the landline in my living room, and phoned her from that. “I’ve lost my mobile. I think it’s in a Delta. It’s just left. Please call it.” I blurted out, before hanging up and dashing back outside to check that it wasn’t in the street, or my garden.
I only stop searching when I heard my landline ringing. It was my mum. She told me that the taxi driver had my phone and had agreed to return it, if I paid for the journey back to mine, which seemed fair. He had just picked up another customer though, who wasn’t going far, so he would bring it back once he dropped them off. Again, this seemed fair.
Stressed out, but glad he had agreed to return it to me, I got on with unpacking my shopping, after which, I decided to wait for him to come back, before doing anything else.
Ten minutes passed.
Twenty minutes passed.
Thirty minutes passed.
Wondering what was taking him so long, I asked my mum to speak to him again.
This is where things begin to get weird.
He answered the call again and informed her that he had picked up a second customer (since me) and was on his way to John Lennon Airport, so he would be a couple of hours, but he would definitely return my phone once he finish this job.
John Lennon airport was roughly half an hour away from my house by car, so a couple of hours was a massive overestimates. Plus, I was convinced he had taken this job so that he could charge me for the journey from the airport to my house, instead of a closer distance.
Getting the number to the Delta call centre off my mum, I phoned them to enquire as to whether he would be allowed to do this, as I felt like I was being taken advantage of.
Delta’s response was that he was self-employed, so it was nothing to do with them, they just rented in the device that allowed him to accept jobs through Delta.
Unsurprisingly, my argument that he represented their company went nowhere.
All I had was a ten pound note, and some change. I thought about going to the cash machine, but I had no idea how much money I would have to take out to pay him. Deciding that if it came to more than the money I had on me, I would just have to add the cost of the taxi ride to the ATM on top, I attempted to do some housework, but was unable to concentrate on it.
Really, I should’ve thought to let T know that I didn’t have my mobile, as I had texted him when I got into the taxi, to say I was on my way home in a taxi.
I had just sat down when the landline began to ring, this was odd, but I assumed it must have been my mum.
It wasn’t. It was T, who sounded uncharacteristically worried.
This is how our conversation went –
T: Who was that guy who just answered your mobile?
Me: I left it in a Delta, I’m waiting for the driver to bring it back to me.
T: Are you sure that’s what he’s planning on doing?
Me: He said he would. Why?
T: When he answered, he kept demanding to know who I was. I asked him, “Why do you have my girlfriends phone?” He hung up. Now, he keeps texting me, demanding information about us.
Me: Like what?
Terrifyingly, it was very personal information, paired with questions like, where he was right now, when he’d be home, and who I I might be with right now.
This was even more scary for me, because T was working an extra long shift that day, so he was going to be at work for the next few hours, and I was alone.
Obviously, scenarios of the driver attacking me played on my mind, but I had no idea how best to handle the situation.
This man had my mobile, and I needed it back.
Delta knew that he had it, and had agreed to return it, and they knew who he was.
Surely, this was enough to deter him from attacking me.
What if it was only enough to delay an attack though?
What if T was right, and he had no intention of returning it?
What if he was planning on waiting, days, weeks, or even months, while he attempted to figure out our routines, then using the mobile as a ruse, came back to attack me?
With my anxiety growing, I thought it was best to both try to distract myself, and make as many people aware of what was happening as I could, so I turned on my laptop and logged into Facebook.
Little did I know, I was about to discover that the situation was already much worse than I was capable of imagining?
Up until this experience, which taught me why devise locks are so important, I’d never bothered to set one up. As I always had my mobile with me, I never understood the importance of locking a devise.
Logging into Facebook, I was shocked as to see I had zero notifications, as I had been on it not long ago. Yet, when I began opening up those DM conversations, I found new messages I hadn’t read, that were market as read. Realising that he was on my Facebook, I checked the public posts I had made while in his car, and discovered they had been deleted.
Quickly, I typed up a new public post, warning everybody what was going on. Then, aware it too would likely be deleted, I began individually DMing my friends to warn them.
To my horror, my friends whose numbers were saved in my mobile, immediately began responding that he was harassing them.
The girls were receiving texts, written as though they were coming from me, again attempting to get information about me, under the pretence that I had forgotten this information. Luckily, they could tell that it wasn’t really me, so they weren’t replying. This isn’t a surprise as the information was asking for was pretty basic, and he didn’t even attempt to write like I wrote.
The boys were getting messages similar to T, demanding to know who they were, and personal details about our relationships.
During the following hours, as I watched him read my private messages and delete any public posts I made about what was happening, I contacted Delta several times, to discuss what was happening, but every time I got the same response – it was nothing to do with them, because he was self employed. While I did this, my mum was repeatedly calling my mobile, but he was refusing to pick up now.
Once he got off work, T got a taxi straight home, and also began repeatedly calling my mobile.
At this point I was done with Delta claiming they had no responsibility to intervene, as I was sure his behaviour must have been breaking whatever contract he had with them, if not breaking some sort of harassment laws. So, I phoned them again, and insisted on speaking to a manager as soon as a call handler answered.
The call handler was adamant that no manager was going to speak to me, and even threatened that my constant calls to them we’re going to result in me blacklisted.
“That’s fine. If your manager wont speak to me, then they can speak to the police, because I am afraid for my safety, and so is my boyfriend, my family and my friend. This is the last chance I’m going to give you to deal with the situation. My next call will be to the police,” I advised.
“Wait while I go speak to my manager,” He huffed, then put me on hold.
When I was eventually taken off hold, about fifteen minutes later, it was by his manager.
After I insisted on explaining everything that had happened since I got out of the taxi, because I didn’ trust the call handler to tell him anything, or that he would read any notes, if notes had even been made, he agreed that the situation was serious. He promised to get a manager, on the morning shift, to contact him and tell him to return my mobile immediately and without charge.
“Why in the morning? Why not now?” I pressed.
“His machines off, so we have no way of contacting him until it’s back on,” he explained.
“What do you mean it off? Isn’t he required to keep it on while he’s working?” I enquired.
“It’s off because he’s not working. He probably just told you that so he had a good excuse not to bring it back.”
The managers words made my blood run cold, but not because of his theory, rather because I knew his theory couldn’t be correct. Due to this, I began rambling about all the personal details he had told me about himself, while I had been in his car. I didn’t stop there, I also repeated all the questions he’s asked about me.
“You know he was lying to get into you, don’t you?” T kept saying, but I ignored him.
“I’m not supposed to tell you anything about our drivers, but this situation is so strange, and I’m also worried about your safety. This driver has worked through us for [insert amount of years over twenty and lower than thirty, that I don’t remember exactly] and he’s never worked outside the hours of 5 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday, which is strange in itself. I’m disabling his machine until he returns your phone. Will you please let us know when you have it?”
I agreed, thanked him, and hung up.
By now it had gone midnight, and both me, and T, had to be up for work early, so we decided to go to bed.
Later that morning, as I was about to leave for work, I found my mobile on the hall floor, soaking wet. It was raining heavily, and he had posted it through our letterbox. Luckily, neither the rain, nor it’s fall against our wooden floor, had damaged it.
Phase 3- Week 12
Monday: 2 laps of, 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: 2 laps of, 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: 2 laps of, 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Thursday: Rest day
Friday: Rest day
Saturday: 2 laps of, 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Sunday: Rest day
Total laps = 8
Total miles= 13.324
Total miles run = 9.3072
Total miles walked= 3.98888
70% run
30% walk
Phase 3 – week 12
Day 78: Monday
Due to not being able to sleep at all on Saturday night, I slept from around 4 pm on Sunday, until around 3 am on Monday.
***
When I wake up, I have a terrible migraine, which I think is just a result of sleeping heavily on my antipsychotics. So, even though I am still feeling rough, at 7 am, I decided to get my run over and done with, expecting the exercise to wake me up.
This is obviously a mistake.
I’m very lucky that I did not have a serious accident.
By my second run/walk cycle, I am hallucinating Black Snow, as usual, but I insist on pushing through the blizzard today, which I never do.
At the halfway point of my first lap, which is the part of my route that is wide open, a man who is walking his dog comes out of a side streets a few metres ahead of me. I know he sees me, because he stops on the corner to watch me for a couple of seconds, as he puffs on his cigarette, before continuing on. For this reason, I can only assume, that he purposely obstruct my path.
His dog is idling on the grass verge at the edge of the pavement next to the road. Instead of walking next to the grass, he moves inwards across the wide space so that he is next to the walls of the gardens that line the street, which means the lead is stretched across the entire width of the pavement.
As I approach, I call out, “Excuse me please.”
He acts as though he hasn’t heard me, and isn’t aware I’m there, forcing me to stop running.
“Can I get past, please?” I ask.
Walking so slowly that I can’t move forward at all, he ignores me.
I am done being polite, especially as I’m choking on his cigarette smoke.
“I’m trying to get past,” I shout in the most commanding tone I can conjure, considering it’s 7 am, I have a blinding migraine, and I’m choking on cigarette smoke.
“I’m sorry,” he says, taking his time to shuffle towards the grass. “I didn’t see you there.”
Now, it’s my turn to ignore him. Wheezing, I slip between him and the wall, and resume jogging.
By the end of this run/walk cycle, I feel like I am going to vomit. I am at the 3/4 of a lap mark, so I allow myself 1 1/2 minute break.
After just 2 more cycles, I am back at the 1/2 a lap mark on my second lap, so I allow myself another 1 1/2 minute break.
While on my run, I’m still clock watching.
Also, I decide to building a rest week in, on every 9th week.
I complete 2 laps of, 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 79: Tuesday
On Tuesday, I’m having a very manicish BPD episode, so I don’t go for my run until late.
Probably because of my episode, it is a great run. I don’t stop once, not even for a 1 1/2 minute break.
I complete 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 80: Wednesday
Wednesday should be a rest day, but for some reason, I haven’t made a note of, and don’t remember, I decided to make it an exercise day.
During my run, I am severely hallucinating. Telling myself it’s a mind issue, not a body issue, I push through it successfully.
As you can probably guess, this wasn’t the best idea, and by the time I get home, I feel like I’m going to have a seizure.
Despite this, I insist on writing my exercise notes there and then, so they are indecipherable.
I complete 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minute walking.
Day 81: Thursday
Thursday should be an exercise day, but because I have gone running 3 days in a row, I have no choice but to make it a rest day.
Day 82: Friday
Friday should also be an exercise day, but I have a hairdressers appointment, so I’ve no choice but to make Friday a rest day, as well.
Date 83: Saturday
Saturday should’ve been a rest day, but because I am a day behind and don’t want to have to do to 3 exercise days in a row, on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I make it an exercise day.
My first lap is uneventful.
My second lap is anything but.
As I’m starting it, there is a man lawnmowing the pavement.
At some point, which I don’t recall, my hallucinations become too much, so I decide to walk the rest of the way home. It is this decision that will prevent me from being hit by a car.
At the end of my route there is a road that always has the same cars, vans, and even a ambulance permanently parked along the edge of the pavement, blocking the view of the road. I always pause here, to peer through the vehicles, to check there are no cars approaching. Today is no different in that respect. What is different about today, is that after checking there are no cars approaching, I walk out into the road, rather than run. As I am just about to pass the parked cars, one flies by me, and narrowly misses hitting me. It must have come from around the closest corner, and is definitely going above the speed limit. If I had run out, instead of walking, it would have hit me.
I completed 2 laps of, 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 84: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Part 2.D
Adam
If, while you were reading last week Sunday autobiographical blog post – Conditioned To Except And Accept It, Part2.C, Adams Friend – you guessed that me and Adam fell out because his friend sexually assaulted me, you are half right.
Me and Adam fell out because he assaulted me.
When this assault occurred, I was so conditioned to excuse certain sexually motivated, inappropriate behaviour, that is what I did. Also, I was just about to turn, or had just turned, twenty, and was determined to put the excessive sexual abuse I had already suffered behind me, and start a new life, as a new person, in a new city, which may have caused me to play down the incident in my own mind. Plus, none of the other women that he assaulted accused him of assault. Surely if they hadn’t accused him of it, I shouldn’t. Nobody wants to be the girl who cries wolf, destroying an innocent man’s reputation, life, and future, even if violated, ashamed and afraid is how it made you feel while it was happening and/or after, right? I mean thats what society kept telling me. Regardless of my reasons for not speaking up, or admitting to myself how serious what he had done to us was, I still didn’t view his behaving as harmless. At the time, I classed it as childish, but dangerous behaviour.
As a thirty four year old woman, I am torn on whether I class what he did as harassment or assault. If pushed, I would say it was a harassment, but maybe I would feel differently about it if I was one of the other girls.
Is there such a thing as being sexually terrorised?
That’s how I felt while it’s happening, sexually terrorised.
However if you went as far as calling it assault, I wouldn’t disagree with you, at least not where the other girls were concerned.
Although Adams intentions towards me were the same as they were towards the other women, the outcome was different. He inflicted serious, and what could have easily been fatal, bodily harm on me. That is what I mean when I say he assaulted me.
The group from the second floor we’re going to Alexandra Palace to ice skate, and because Amy was Adam’s girlfriend, she was going to. It was her who invited me. Though I wasn’t sure the group would be happy with me tagging along, I accepted Amy’s invitation, as I had never been iceskating, and I really wanted to go. As a child, my mum would never allow me or my sister to take part in the activity, due to an accident she had as a teenager. She had fallen or, maybe in an even weirder level of foreshadowing of what would happen to me, been pulled over, and while she was down on the ground a passer by had her clipped her face with the blade of their shoe, slashing it open.
We had been there ten minutes maximum, when he started skating up behind women, only, and pulling items of their clothing down. All of them asked him to stop it. Several of them tripped over their own clothing. The first few times he tried to do it to me, I halted, press my back against the wall, and firmly made it known that I didn’t think what he was doing was funny. The other women saw this and began copying me. All of this should have been enough to make him understand that what he was doing wasn’t a harmless prank. Honestly, I think he was probably aware of this before he began doing it, after all, this is the same man who said violently, sexually assaulting blonde women, was just what his friend did. Sadly, but not shockingly, it escalated his behaviour. He wrestled some of the other girls clothes off so aggressively that their underwear came off as well.
Witnessing this was horrifying, particularly for me, as I was wearing a strapless bra, under a strapless dress, so I was afraid he would leave me naked in the middle of the rink, the next time he began chasing me, I decided my best option was to get away from him, so I sped up. That didn’t deter him, and he increased his own speed. Terrified, I screamed at him to leave me alone, gripping the front of my dress. When he caught up to me and grabbed the back of my dress, I tried to spin around to fight him off. As I did, he yanked my dress, which caused us to both slip. we skidded along the ice at such a high speed as we fell. As we both crashed to the floor, I landed, hard, on top of him. The blade of his shoe slashed open the inside of my forearm, from just below my elbow, to the top of my wrist.
There was blood everywhere. All over me, him, and the ice.
Panicking, I stumbled up, dashing off to the toilet to attempt to stop the bleeding. Amy was the only person who followed. She assessed the damage, and helped me slow to bleeding which took awhile.
Eventually, Hannah came to find out what was going on.
Amy told her we need to go home, as I was seriously hurt, which should have been obvious as there was blood all over the sinks and toilet cubicles.
Everybody, including the girls, blamed me, rather than Adam, for ruining the evening.
After that, I only entertained Adam when I had no choice, and I only did it for Amy’s sake.
Phase 3 – Week 11
Monday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: Rest day
Thursday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Friday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
Phase 3 – Week 11
Day 71: Monday
Monday is the start of my final week of 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, and I am still clock watching for my run times. Truthfully, I don’t feel ready to go from a 60% run to a 70% run, again, and I am dreading it, even though I know I can do it.
Day 72: Tuesday
Tuesday is uneventful. The only note I make is that, recently I have noticed a lot more people running on my route.
I complete 2 laps, of 3 minutes running, 2 minute walking.
Day 73: Wednesday
Wednesday, is a rest day.
Day 74: Thursday
On Thursday, I forget to take my medication before I leave the flat to exercise, which includes my asthma inhalers, so I have to go back home to take it at the end of my first lap.
During my second lap, I consider having a rest week next week, but it seems too soon.
I complete, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 75: Friday
Friday is my last day of 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking. It’s completely uneventful. The entire week has been uneventful, I wonder if this is a good sign, meaning that I am ready for a 70% run again.
Day 76: Saturday
Saturday is a rest day.
Day 77: Sunday
Sunday as a rest day.
Part 2.C
Adams Friend
This autobiographical story is not only about the violent sexual assault of me and three other women, by the same man, at the same time, in the same place, it is also about what feels like a universally held opinion that fighting of a sexual predator is socially and criminally worse than the sexual assault, if not entirely unacceptable.
This story happened during my first month at university.
May and Fee we’re going to a “famous” cocktail bar in central London, and everybody in the penthouse crew and the group from the second floor, except me, was enthusiastically begging to go with them. This reaction made me assume that the bar was indeed famous, therefore, it was a sightseeing trip. I was neither interested in sightseeing, nor cocktails, and was certain that I could not afford a night of drinking in any cocktail bar, never mind one in central London. Yet, everybody assumed I was going. When Amy and Charlie realise this wasn’t the case, they nagged me until I agree to join them.
As the date approach, the group from the second floor organised pre-cocktail bar drinks, which I happily prepared for, relieved that I wasn’t the only person who was worried I couldn’t afford it, and pleased that drinking beforehand would give me a excuse not to buy drinks while we were out. Drinking in halls turned out to be the only planning that had gone into the event, which became clear as soon as the door to our halls close behind us. I suppose, we all expected that May and Fee had planned the event, being that it was their idea. It is my opinion that if there had been a plan, what happened, would not of happened, for so many reasons.
“How many taxis do you think we’ll need?” Charlie enquired, taking her mobile phone out of her handbag.
“I’m not wasting my money on a taxi, when we can get the bus,” Fee objected.
“The bus doesn’t run Saturday nights,” Adam informed us.
“The bus doesn’t run at this time any night,” Johnny added
“I’m not wasting my money on a taxi,” Fee insisted.
“How are we getting to the tube station then?” Amy asked.
There was a minute of silence as we considered our options.
The Trent Park campus, was located in Trent Park country park. The most used entrance and exit to the campus, and the only one accessible by vehicle, as far as I know, was Snakes Lane, which was a mile long road separated from the woods and the golf course by flimsy fencing. During the weekdays and evenings, and Saturday days, the university operated a shuttle bus service, which ran between the campus and oakwood tube station.
It was Charlie who snapped us out of our silent contemplation. As she counted us, divided us by how many taxis we would need, and multiply them by the fair, people began agreeing with Fee. Suddenly, the majority of our group was moving towards Snakes Lane, convinced that there were so many of us that we would be safe, and the rest of us had no choice but to follow or become separated from the majority of the group. Their confidence was short lived though, and we all came to an abrupt halt just two minutes later, when we reached the section of road between the campus and snakes Lane that had no street lights. This section of road was darkness like I’ve never experienced before. It was so dark that you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face, and this was the mid “noughties,” so we couldn’t even use our mobile phones as torches.
We all stared into that blackness, until Johnny urged us forward.
Me, Amy, and Charlie, clung together as we move through the void, unsure that we were moving in the right direction.
“What if somebody is out here, waiting for people like us to attack?” Charlie wondered.
“What if a car comes round the corner? It won’t see us in time to stop,” I countered.
Then, Charlies body jolted, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Before me and Amy had a chance to react, we heard Johnny laughing behind us.
“Don’t speak, then he won’t know where we are to mess with us,” Amy advised, angrily, but Charlie disobeyed, swearing and scolding Johnny, understandably furious that he had snuck up behind us and grabbed her.
Things didn’t get much better once we emerged into the dim light of Snakes Lane. It was eerie, and anybody could have been hiding in the trees that lined the road.
Eventually, whoever had our alcohol produced a few bottles from the bag, and we passed them around as we walked.
“If you’re hiding, come out and get us,” Eric shouted into the trees, laughing manically.
“Stop it Eric,” Amy order, but he continued to shout into the woods that surrounded us, provoking anybody who might be hiding in there.
By the time we made it to oakwood tube station, the drinks had gone straight through me and one of our female companions, and to our dismay, the toilets at the station were locked. It was decided by the rest of the group that we should go back across the road into the woods to relieve ourselves, and with no other option and the group growing impatient with us, that’s what we did.
It was the first time either me, or her, had ever had to pee outside.
“I don’t want to go,” I admitted, squatting awkwardly as I pulled my clothes out of the way. “I wish I had stayed home. Let’s go home.”
She wasn’t as naturally skilled as I seemed to be at peeing in the woods, but even after weeing on her own short, she was adamant that she wanted to continue on into central, she even made a joke about weeing on her shorts when we get rejoined the group. Everybody, except Fee and May, were amused by her anecdote. In the few minutes we had been gone, Adam had invited his friends from Croydon, which is where he was from, to meet us at the bar. Fee and May had a problem with this, and had somehow made it our fault because we had needed to pee.
Once we were on the train though, their cold attitudes thawed. The person with our alcohol passed the last of the bottles around, urging us to drink them now, because we couldn’t take them into the bar. The boys, who were all from London, taught us girls, who all weren’t, how to tube surf inside the carriage. They made it sound, and the other girls made it look, difficult. Unchallenged by the game, and beginning to need a wee again, I watched the others play, until the fullness of my bladder grew painful. It became so bad that I ended up crying, not just from the pain, but also from the fear that I might wet myself. Honestly, I don’t know how I made it to the bar, but I did, and as soon as we stepped inside I hurried off in search of the toilet.
On leaving the toilet, no more than three minutes later, I spotted Charlie standing alone in a corner, wearing an expression that suggested she was now the one about to burst into tears, so I went over to find out what was wrong.
She explained that one of Adams friends had already been here when we arrived, and that he had walked straight up to her, stuck his hand up her skirt, and groped her, before any of them even knew who he was.
“What the fuck? What did Adam do?” I asked.
“He just said that his friend has a thing for blonde women, and it’s what he does,” Charlie choked.
“What did the others do?” I believed Charlie completely, but was struggling to cope with the resurfacing memories of what Ash had done to me that night at the Krazy House, which was why I was questioning her. Not only did I want to protect Charlie, I wanted to protect myself, and I was afraid that we might not be able to trust the people we believe were our friends.
Charlie didn’t answer. Instead, she nodded her head in my direction, and in a strained whisper, warned me that he was approaching us.
Turning to see who she was gesturing at, I was immediately grabbed between my legs.
Shocked and reliving my past trauma, I shoved him away from me, as hard as I could. He stumble backwards, caught his balance, then came at me, grabbing my shirt. Again, I shoved him away from me, hard, yelling at him, “[Not to] fucking touch me.”
Several strangers nearby shot me dirty looks.
“Fuck off and leave us alone,” Charlie Pleaded loudly.
The looks she got were sympathetic, still, nobody, not even our friends, came to help us.
Noticing the attention we were drawing, he scurried back to Adam. However, he either couldn’t, or was unwilling to control himself, because within a minute he had groped both May and Fee, who were the only other blonde women in our group, sparking a massive argument between the two of them, him and Adam, and Amy and a few of the others from the second floor. The argument was so heated, that it was impossible to tell who was on which side.
Finally, with more people getting involved, the argument ramped up to the point where it genuinely appeared there was going to be a physical fight, and May and Fee fled to me and Charlie.
May was very shaken up. She was sobbing, saying she wanted to go home, on a loop.
Bizarrely, this enraged Fee, who complained that she wasn’t going to allow Adam to ruin the occasion, and refuse to leave.
“You can stay, but me and May are going home.” I hadn’t wanted to come here at all, so I wasn’t about to say now that I had been assaulted and was at risk of being assaulted again if I stayed.
“I’m coming too,” Charlie told us.
When we started towards the door, Fee changed her mind, calling to the others that we were going home.
“We only just got here,” Hannah protested.
“We’re not asking you to come with us,” Charlie responded, in a tone that commanded them not to try to.
Then we were outside, me and Charlie huddled together, silently making our way towards the tube station, while May and Fee followed behind us, bickering in hushed voices.
What Fee and May failed to inform me and Charlie, was that the majority of the people from the second floor had decided to leave before we had. In fact, the reason that only one of Adams friends had shown up, and and why he hadn’t molested anybody else in between me and Charlie, was because he had come to convince Adam to go to a truly famous, student, nightclub, that was much cheaper, which was where the rest of Adams friends had gone. During this discussion, it came out that the cocktail bar wasn’t famous at all, it was just a places Fee’s older friends, who attended different universities in London, frequency, and the original plan had been for her and May to go with them. Apparently, there wasn’t a single drink on the menu for under twenty pounds. That was the cause of the argument, and the molestation just intensified it.
This meant, that right after we left, they left.
How the argument reignited, I genuinely don’t know. One second, it was just May and Fee bickering, the next, all hell broken loose.
Me and Charlie attempted to distance ourselves from everybody, including Fee and May, by crossing the road, even though the tube station we were heading to was on the side of the road we had just been on and around a corner, but May and Fee followed us, and the others followed them. Proving us right, Adams friends seized the opportunity to sexually assault me and Charlie again. At first, although he alternated between the two of us, his attention was mainly focused on Charlie, who was reluctant to physically fight him off, and batted his hand away almost gently, until it occurred to her to call her boyfriend and pretend he was going to meet us at the end of the long empty road we were on, to give us a lift back to halls. In reality, Charlies boyfriend was too far away, in Basingstoke, to meet us, and that was if he hadn’t been a massive prick who refused to help her. Charlie’s phone call did discourage the sex pest from targeting her though, and he turned his full attention onto me. Unlike Charlie, I wasn’t reluctant to fight him off, and as I did, not only did he become more violent towards me, the others stopped arguing with each other, and began demanding that I stopped shoving Adams friend (away from me), and accusing me of being both out of order and out of control.
It is my belief, that them taking “his side,” escalated his behaviour. He slammed me against the metal shutters of a shop, wrapped his hands around my throat, and tried to get us a hand inside my clothes. Unable to breathe and panicking, I clawed uselessly at the hand around my throat with both mine, as I wheezed muffled cries for help.
Everybody watched.
Except Charlie.
She jumped onto his back, punching him over and over in the back of the head until he had no choice but to release me in order to fight her off. Unable to throw her from his shoulders, he repeatedly slammed her into the shutters, while the others screamed at her to get off him.
Catching my breath, I dragged him away from the shutters, unintentionally shaking Charlie loose. Then he was hitting me in the side of the head, and Charlie was struggling, once again, to pull him off me.
The others screamed at me and her to stop it, but never him .
The rest of the “fight” is a blur. The next thing I clearly recall, is several of the boys wrestling me and Charlie against the shutters and demanding that we calm down, and threatening not to let us go until we did.
Even after the boys had decided it was safe to release me and Charlie, the argument raged on, only now the subject matter had changed to a topic that was so simple the fact that anybody could manage to argue over it was ridiculous – who was going to the nightclub, and who just wanted to go home. The group of us who just wanted to go home had grown, and somehow, this had offended the group that wanted to continue on to the club.
Not surprisingly, once we parted ways with the group who were staying in central London, our night became calm and uneventful. That is with the exception of a “very embarrassing situation,” that I got myself into, not my words or even feelings, but those of the people I was with.
Predictably, it was not calm or uneventful for the group that went to the nightclub.
The next day, Amy who had been part of that group, filled me in on what happened.
Adams friends assaulted “the wrong girl,” and her boyfriend who was close by, so witness the entire assault, decided to “teaching him a lesson.” Like the cowards they were, Adam and his friends fled, forcing the others to also leave the club. For some reason that nobody could remember, the sex pest came back to halls with them, and what unfolded once they arrive, turned everybody against him.
“What a prick,” they would remind each other, for months down the road.
“What a selfish/inconsiderate piece of shit.”
What was worse than him being a violent sexual predator? I hear you ask.
This –
There was a box of kitchenware in the entryway by the security office, which the cleaners had put there. They claimed that any dirty items left in the kitchen overnight were move into the box the next morning, for health and safety reasons. However, I never left any dirty items in the kitchen and I had my kitchenware taken twice. The first time, I had put washed pans on the draining board to dry and forgot about them. The second time, I was making breakfast, a good half an hour before they were scheduled to clean the kitchen, went back into my room to collect a knife, and when I returned my stuff was gone, toast included. On both occasions, I cut my losses, replace the items, and moved on. Never did it cross my mind to retrieve them from that disgusting box, and as you can probably imagine, being that most of the items they put in there were dirty, it was disgusting. Even if I had wanted to retrieve them, they likely would have been gone, because students used this as a way to get free kitchenware.
Apparently, as soon as they entered the building, he announced that he needed to be sick, and vomited into the already disgusting box full of kitchenware.
Phase 3 – Week 10
Monday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: Rest day.
Thursday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Friday: Rest day.
Saturday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Sunday: Rest day
Phase 3- Week 10
Day 63: Monday
Mondays run was abysmal. Not only do I always seem to struggle with the first run of the week, I had been busy running around doing stuff that desperately needed to be done all day and then ate two peanut snack bars, which was a terrible mistake, but I was so hungry I couldn’t face my run without eating, and I did wait an hour after eating to go, which I thought would’ve been long enough.
As soon as I began, I got terrible pains in my legs and cramp in my stomach, felt as though I was going to vomit and couldn’t breathe.
Due to all of the above, I constantly kept stopping and was only 5/8 of a lap in, when a lady offered me water and to walk me home. Not that I would’ve accepted either, I explained that I just needed to catch my breath and was going to start running again once I did.
I made it almost to the same place on my second lap before I admitted defeat and walked the rest of the way home.
Despite all this, my run could have been much worse, as on my first lap, when I reached the first bridge, there were broken eggs on the pavement, so I believe that I just missed kids throwing eggs off the bridge again.
I completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 65: Tuesday
Tuesday wasn’t much better, but this time it was because I didn’t prepare for the heat.
However, although I did stop and walk home at the same point as yesterday, as I was so thirsty, I did not stop once mid run. I did promise myself that I would get into the habit of bringing water with me, then immediately forgot about this promise until now though. What I actually should have done, was gone home for a drink in between laps, after all that is one of the reasons that I do laps rather than a single circuit.
I completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minute walking.
Day 66: Wednesday
Wednesday was a rest day.
Day 67: Thursday
Thursday was the worst exercise day of the week by far, and I sort of knew it would be before I went. As I was getting changed into my running clothes, the heavens opened. I debated staying in and getting some washing and writing done, but I had plans that I couldn’t, wouldn’t and didn’t want to change for Friday, which meant if I didn’t go exercising today, I would’ve had to go exercising 3 to 4 days in a row, which I know I am not capable of doing yet, so I waited for the rain to go off then immediately headed out, hoping I could beat the next down pour.
I didn’t, and I was forced to walk home in the rain, soaked, because the ground was slippery and my eyes were full of water.
I (sort of) completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 68: Friday
Friday was a rest day.
Date 69: Saturday
Saturday’s run was wonderful, I didn’t stop at all and it was completely uneventful and unmemorable.
I completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 70: Sunday
Sunday was a rest day.
Part 2.B
During my first month at university, I became friends with many different friend groups and individuals, who lived in my halls of residence. In order for the next two stories in Conditioned To Expect And Accept It, as well as the rest of the stories in this miniseries, to fully be understandable, I have decided to write this post about how I met these friends.
However, there are five people I don’t remember meeting. Sam, a dance student, Emma, a drama student, GP, a fine art student, and Mikey, I can’t recall what he studied, all of who were already friends. The fifth person, was a girl name Laura- a printed textiles student.
If you have read my blog from the beginning, you will have seen me mention S before, in my posts–
S
• The First Time I Was Hit By A Car
https://pixievannucci.wordpress.com/2020/10/18/the-first-time-i-was-hit-by-a-car/
• The First Viewing
https://pixievannucci.wordpress.com/2021/01/03/the-first-house/
• The Second Viewing
https://pixievannucci.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/the-second-viewing/
• The First Time I Was Sectioned
https://pixievannucci.wordpress.com/2021/01/24/the-first-time-i-was-sectioned/
• (and) The Time Everybody Blamed Me For Being The Victim Of A Robbery
The reason that I am using just his first initial is not because he did anything wrong, I honestly don’t have a bad word to say about S, he’s a great person who I still care about, and I deeply regret the breakdown of our relationship which was entirely my fault. It is because I have not gotten his permission to speak about him, but due to how important he was to me I cannot talk about my life without talking about him, therefore I am trying my best to protect his privacy and anonymity. I know, he knows, I am writing this blog, and I truly hope he understand that I would never want to do anything to upset or hurt him.
Due to S being the very first friend I made in London, we need to go back to the day I arrived, right after I was shown to my room.
As I stood in that tiny, grubby, bare room, with just two pieces of furniture – a desk and a bed, a built in wardrobe and set of shelves – neither of which had any doors, and oddly – a cracked and dirty bathroom style sink, with a mirror above it, listening to Jodie (whose name I didn’t know yet – we met properly in the kitchen a few days later, where we bonded temporarily over the fact that we were both wearing odd earrings) I decided I had made a terrible mistake moving to London – a city I wasn’t familiar with, where I knew nobody.
“You’re there now. Give it at least a month,” my mum advised me, when I phoned her in tears.
Acknowledging that I was stuck there, having spent almost all my money on taxi fair and having not receiving my student loan yet, I began going through tasks I needed to complete, but only got as far as making the bed before I collapsed onto it sobbing.
Which was where I was still laying a couple of hours later, when there was a knock on my door. Trying to pull myself together, aware that it was obvious I had been crying, I opened the door and was greeted by a small group inviting me to come to the student union with them. Honestly, I didn’t want to go, but I agreed to join them as soon as I fix my hair and make up.
It only took me around half an hour to calm down enough to, and, do my make up, but when I got onto the student union the group was huge. By pure chance, everybody in this group was living at Trent Park and studying at Cathill, the arts campus, despite this though, it quickly became apparent that these weren’t my type of people, and I began to wish I hadn’t come. Thinking it would be rude to leave, I took advantage of being one of the people standing, due to the lack of chairs, and went to sit on the window ledge nearby.
There was already a man sitting on the same window ledge and he introduced himself as S, a second-year student, taking a double major in film and journalism.
By this point in the evening I’d already knocked back a couple of drinks on an empty stomach, and I was about to knock back a few more, so I don’t remember the conversation thar followed, but S did.
Later, in the years following our meeting, he would tell people how he thought I was crazy when after two minutes of conversation I leaned in and affectionately declared that I knew we were going to be best friends, then we would all laugh because my prediction had been correct. S quickly became the big brother I had never had.
Amy
The only other memory I have from my first day in London, is collapsing on the bed face down at the end of the night, as the room spun around me. Struggling unsuccessfully to roll over, it occurred to me that because I hadn’t eaten anything, I was much drunker than I usually would have been. The best I could do was turn my head to the side, so it wasn’t buried in the pillow and I could breathe slightly easier. Beginning to pass out, I heard somebody in the toilets, across from my room, vomiting violently. My last thoughts were of how sorry I felt for them.
When I woke up the next morning, feeling physically ill, covered in my own vomit, I realise I had been the person I had heard being sick. Up until this point in my life, I had never been so intoxicated that I had been sick. There had been very rare occasions that I had thrown up the next day, while violently hung over, but never on the night itself. Recalling how I had fallen onto the bed on my stomach and managed to turn my head during my last few seconds of consciousness, rather than lying on my back like I always did, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. I also couldn’t believe that my alarm clock had been enough to wake me up.
To make matters worse, I had to be at an early morning lecture, then from there, go straight to enroll.
Ashamed, I pulled the bedsheets off the bed and wrap them in a pile to put in the washing machine later. Then I hurried off to clean myself. I brushed my teeth for about ten minutes, then got in the shower and scrubbed my hair and skin over and over again, with boiling hot water and almost an entire bottle of both shower gel and shampoo, but the taste and odour lingered.
The odour seems much stronger than my perfume, so I was relieved when I got to the Trent Park shuttle bus stop and I was the only one there. Unfortunately, a couple of minutes later another girl entered the bush shelter. Convinced the reason she was staring at me was because she could smell me, I tried to avoid looking at her, but eventually she approached me.
“Rachel, you don’t remember me do you?” She laughed.
Meeting her gaze, I shook my head, “No sorry.”
“I’m Amy (Amy was a first year textiles student) you came into my room and molested my teddy bear pebbles last night.”
“What do you mean I molested your teddy bear ?” I asked, confused and horrified.
“You came in, saw him, started shouting about how much you loved him, picked him up and hugged and kissed him while you said you wanted to steal him, then you wouldn’t let him go when I told you I wanted him back,” she obviously wasn’t upset about what happened, as she hadn’t stopped laughing.
Even as I apologised to her, she giggled.
If you’re wondering, pebbles was a toy meant for babies, that Amy had owned since she was a baby. He was a pink and green dinosaur or monster, with sad, haunted, washing machine scratched eyes.
Later that evening, when I got home from the freshers fair, Amy introduced me to the other members of what she called The Penthouse Crew- Charlie, Fee and Carol – all drama students, and May – a jewellery student.
After we had all eaten dinner in Amy’s room, she took me downstairs to meet Adam – a graphics student, Hannah – a dance student, Johnny and Eric, and the rest of her friends from the second floor.
We were all in Adams room. He was sat at his desk, on his computer, with his MySpace account open.
“I have my space,” I informed him enthusiastically. “I thought everyone had MySpace, but you’re the only person I’ve met so far that has it.” Of course this wasn’t true, because I had no memory of the previous night, but Adam responded as though that had also been his experience and requested my MySpace details.
“Is this you? He enquired, sounding impressed when he found my profile. “How did you do this your page?”
Though I can’t recall completely what my page was like, I recall that it was heavily customised. It had weird fonts and a wall of tiled Bokeh photography that was my own (which I think wasn’t even a thing back then).
“You know when you write your about me, and there’s that weird script below? You remove parts of that script and replace it with links to fonts and your own photos and instructions from other websites that tell it what to do.”
Me and Adam were never really friends, but he was the only person from this group that seemed to notice I existed.
The Penthouse Crew
If S quickly became my brother, then Amy quickly became my sister, and the penthouse crew immediately accepted me as one of their own. My first impression of the girls was that they were genuinely nice. They tried to recruit all thirty residents thirty residents of the third floor including the three who were men, one of which was Mikey, into the group, making extra effort to include Sam and Emma, who despite politely refusing their friendship would later admit to me that they “Never liked a single one of those girls.” Regardless of what my opinion of this admission was at the time, my opinion of it today is that they were hypocrites. Despite the fact that I fell out with The Penthouse Crew, coming think May and Fee were terrible people, in my book Emma and Sam were just as bad as them, while Amy, Charlie and Carol were much better people than all four of them. After the first couple of weeks, it became clear that The Penthouse Crew was just the six of us, and we all became closer, tighter and impossible to infiltrate. We were sisters, part of an exclusive group even Hannah was never a member of.
Nobody tore us apart. We imploded from the inside.
Of course like any friends groups there were clicks within our click. Fee and May had been best friends from day one, and Carole was their unwelcome third wheel. I tried to convince myself that I was imagining the hostility from the two of them towards Carole, and even tried to match their situation to the situation between me, Amy and Charlie.
Me and Amy were inseparable, and Charlie was our best friend, she was with the two of us most of the time, she was one of us, as much Amy’s friend as she was mine.
They explained to me, on the night Amy introduced me to them, that they had name themselves The Penthouse Crew because we lived on the top floor of our halls.
“Aren’t penthouses expensive houses built on the top of buildings for rich people to live in?” I had asked, examining our grubby little home. At the time I was unaware that Amy, Fee and May were from rich families, and Charlies family weren’t bad off either. I really have no idea what Caroles family’s financial situation was as she never spoke about her family to me, but I knew she had one as she went back up north to visit them regularly.
Phase 3- Week 9
Monday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: Rest day
Thursday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Friday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
Phase 3 – Week 9
Day 57: Monday
Mondays run was both bad and good, which, I suppose, means I actually did great. You see, it was terrible because I had bad period pains, which are worse for me in some ways as I don’t always get bad pains, and so I can’t prepare for them and I’m not used to them. After almost 23 years of having periods (since I was 12 years old – and two days if you want me to be precise) all I have learned about my own, is that like me, they are entirely unpredictable. I was also hallucinating and kept checking my phone for my run time,
The reason it was good, was because I only stopped for my planned one minute break.
I completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 58: Tuesday
On Tuesday, I am exhausted, due to only getting about four hours sleep and my pains are awful, but other than that, my run is uneventful.
I complete, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 59: Wednesday
Wednesday is a rest day.
Day 60: Thursday
On Thursday I woke up super late at 2:30pm, because like most nights my neighbours kept me awake into the late early hours of the morning, so as a result I go for my run later at 5:30pm. I still have pains and was clock watching again. Yet, for some reason I wanted to do a third lap, but stopped myself because I really am sticking to my plan this time.
I complete, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 61: Friday
Friday’s exercise was absolutely awful. However, I can’t fully remember why, because for some reason I didn’t make any notes and only made a vague tweet.
What I don’t know – whether I was breathless, hallucinating, if my knee, shins, or ankles hurt, if I almost fell or had any other accident, if I kept stopping.
What I do know – I still had my pains, I was exhausted from another bad night of sleep, I felt like I had been kicked in both thighs, I walked the last 3/8 of the lap.
I completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 62: Saturday
Saturday was a rest day.
Day 63: Sunday
Sunday was a rest day.
Part 1
I’m going to tell you five short stories about times that I have been sexually harassed, all of which took place in between my break up with Ste S and the assault that my trial was for.
Andrew B
I believe that Andrew B was in his mid twenties when this happened. I was eighteen. He had worked at the DIY store before I did, but had left to go and work somewhere else, before reapplying for and receiving his old job back. During the period he didn’t work there all the staff talked about how much they hated him, and how he had sexually harassed many of the female employees and gotten away with it. When he returned, everybody acted as though they were glad he was back.
On this occasion, I had been sent to help him with a job that should’ve only taken a couple of minutes, I don’t recall what the job was, what I do recall is how obvious it was that he was dragging the job out to interrogate me. I use the word interrogate because that is how it felt. Afterwards, for the rest of my employment there, I felt uneasy and afraid of Andrew.
This is how our conversation went –
Andrew: So what are your hobbies?
Me: Art, photography, fashion design –
Andrew: No, that’s what you study. What do you do in your free time?
Me: I do all of those things in my free time.
Andrew: If that was true, you’d be living a sad life. How don’t you understand that they’re not your hobbies? What else do you do?
Me: I go out with my friends, read, watch films –
Andrew: My God! Are you really stupid or are you messing with me? Everybody does those things. They aren’t hobbies. What do you enjoy doing?
Me: I just told you.
Andrew: So, you’re basically telling me that you sit at home diddling yourself and flicking your bean all day everyday.
This was when I walked away and reported it to the manager on duty, who accused me of being dramatic and to blame for both what Andrew had said to me and how long the job was taking, then sent me back to finish the job.
During my first month at university, I was in central London visiting “famous fashion locations” for a project, when I got a call from an unknown number. Curious, I answered it and was greeted by a string of insults and sexually explicit comments, that the caller clearly thought were cute and banterish, but which were vile and distressing.
“Who is this?” I demanded, through gritted teeth, shaking.
“Andrew B…,” He replied, as though I should have recognised his voice.
I hung up, feeling very mentally and physically unwell, collapsing against the wall of the shop I was outside. He tried calling me back several times. I watched my mobile ring, but didn’t answer.
The DJ
One night at the Krazy House, me and Kate got speaking to the DJ, so I requested a song.
The DJ responded that he would play me the song, if I fucked myself, right there and then in front of him with a glow stick.
When we tried to complain, We were informed that he wasn’t a Krazy House employee, so there was nothing they could do about it.
We’re not here for your entertainment
Another night, when I was at the Krazy House with a group of my college friends and a few of their friends, me and VM, ended up separated from everybody we were with, as we search for her girlfriend, who had gone to the toilet, hadn’t returned and wasn’t answering any calls or texts. There were occasions when the mobile signal was bad at the Krazy House, but as we were able to call and text VMs girlfriend, we were sure this wasn’t the reason she wasn’t responding. I think she had lost or dropped her phone in the toilet, but I don’t fully remember, I just recall that when we found her she no longer had her phone.
We were stood at the bar on the K1, waiting to ask the bar staff if they had seen a woman matching her girlfriends description, when two men, who were much bigger and older than us, began speaking to us.
VM explained that we were searching for her girlfriend, gave them a detailed description and enquired as to whether they had seen her.
The men didn’t answer. As soon as they heard VM had a girlfriend, they began aggressively demanding that me and VM kiss each other for them.
There are so many problems with this behaviour, all of which are very obvious, so I’m not going to bore you by listing a single one of them.
As you can probably imagine, I was furious, but before I could say anything, VM said we would do it if they kissed each other first.
My protests were cut off by their protests, but VM insisted we would kiss, only if and after they kissed, and oddly, eventually they agree, but they wanted a “full minute of me and her kissing,” for “ten seconds of them kissing.”
As soon as they scrunched their eyes closed and touching lips, VM took my hand and led me quickly away.
The taxi driver
Like an idiot, I bought everything that I would urgently need on my arrival at university in London, in Liverpool, as I had only ever been to London once, for my university interview, so didn’t know where anything was in London. This seemed sensible, until I realise there was no way I could transport two suitcases, which were almost as tall as me and each weight at least twice as much as me, halfway across the country alone. To make matters worse, I’d only realised this on the day I had to leave.
Stressed, I figured out that even if I had enough money to make two journeys, I didn’t have enough time.
While I was having a meltdown, my mum called a local taxi company to get a price and time for the journey. She was quoted a couple of hours and £200. (It came to £250)
With that sorted out, I embarked on my long distance taxi ride, never considering how dangerous it would be once I was in between home and university and I was entirely at the mercy of the taxi driver. Honestly, I am grateful things only went as far as they did, as I am aware that it could have ended much worse, but while I was trapped in that taxi, in the middle of nowhere, with a thirty something year old man, making sexually explicit remarks about what he wanted to do to me, I tried to convince myself that my fear of being raped by him was me overreacting to the situation, probably because I couldn’t deal with the reality of how much danger I was in.
I was so relieved when we arrive, that I am sure I was out of that taxi before it even fully stopped. The driver also got out and began demanding that I give him a kiss for, “Everything he had done for me,” or I wouldn’t get my suitcases back. When I refused he grabbed my wrist, and we began struggling. There were groups of people all around us, yet only two middle-aged men, who were both helping the same girl, came dashing towards us to stop him. On seeing the they were coming to help me, he let go of my arm, opened the boot of his taxi and flung my suitcases into the road, before speeding off.
The two me helped me pick up my suitcases, and bring them into the building.
It took a while for a member of staff to come and show me to my room, which turned out to be next door to Jodie’s room (the girl whose family had just helped me). When I heard her through the wall, talking on the phone about what happened, I broke down crying, finally admitting to myself how much danger I had been in.
My mum complained to the taxi company, who told her technically he was self-employed.
The man at the freshers fair
It was my first actual day at university, enrolment day, the day after I arrived, and I had gone to the freshers fair that was being held at the campus I lived on, with Sam, the girl who live next door to me, and Emma the girl who lived next door but one to me on the opposite side to Sam, next door to Jodie.
I can’t remember what this particular man was promoting, but that doesn’t actually matter, what matters is what I do remember. He approached us and began his sales pitch, and as soon as I spoke he stopped it and turned his full attention onto me. “You’re a Scouser! I love the Scouse accent! I make my girlfriend to a Scouse accent in bed!”
Obviously creeped out, I asked the girls could we move along, but they refused, insisting they wanted to hear more about what he was promoting, either not understanding and/or caring that, what he had said to me was inappropriate.
They never signed up for whatever it was he was selling.
Phase 3 – Week 8
Monday: 2 laps of 3 minute running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: 2 laps of 3 minute running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: Rest day.
Thursday: 2 laps of 3 minute running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Friday: 2 laps of 3 minute running, 2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
Phase 3 – Week 8
Day 50: Monday
Although I was still checking my phone for my run time and I did have to stop once, because I was both hallucinating and struggling to breathe, Mondays run was much better than Sundays, and I did not stop once mid run. However, I did decide that during this week and next week, I will give myself a break after I finish my first lap and then the run walk cycle I am currently in as I do.
I completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 51: Tuesday
Tuesday run is uneventful.
I completed, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 52: Wednesday
Wednesday is a rest day.
Day 53: Thursday
Thursday is a terrible exercise day. Not long after I start I get a phone call, and right afterwards start to need a wee. I’m so distracted by my need to wee that I almost roll my ankle and fall over. Then with a 1/4 of my first lap to go, I get so desperate that I have to stop running and walk back home to go to the toilet.
When I get back out, I’m determined to do better, but I get another phone call. Then I’m forced to stop mid run because there are so many cars parked on the pavement that they are difficult to get around and are obscuring my view.
I complete, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 54: Friday
Unlike Thursday, Friday is a great exercise day. It’s so good, that it makes me want to increase my run time and decrease my walk time, but I’m not going to, I’m going to stick to my plan. During the entire run, I only checked my phone for my runtime twice, once on my first cycle, once on my last cycle, and although I had to stop mid run once, it was because I thought I had lost part of my headphones inside my ear and panicked. I hadn’t.
I complete, 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 55: Saturday
Saturday is a rest day.
Day 56: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Hooray! It’s finally over guys! We have made it through the stories from the worst summer of my life, at least for now and with the exception of one short story that wasn’t long or relevant enough to have its own full post, which I will be briefly talking about in my next post. However, because we are building up to the story of my sexual assault trial, and we are almost there, we are moving straight into one of the worst years of my life, my first year at university. It’s another year of being screwed over and abused by people I considered to be my friends, in general, but also and most importantly sexually. Due to how much went on this year, I’m not sure how many stories I am going to have to tell to make our focus stories makes sense, so if you have stuck with me this far, thank you, I hope you stick with me to the end of this series of stories too.
This week, we are following a sort of theme, as we are moving straight from one story about something awful a woman did to me, to another story about something awful another woman did to me. This hasn’t been purposefully done, as a theme, it’s just the chronological order these things happened to me in, again with the exception of some of the short stories I will be telling in my next post.
So, with that said, let’s get to today’s story.
It was my first week of university, so freshers week, at around 9 o’clock at night, and everybody but me, who was busy working on one of the many projects I had already been set, seem to be socialising. I was sat at my desk, with work spread out in front of me, logged in to MSN messenger and MySpace on my laptop, struggling to concentrate because of the competing noises coming from the many parties being held in my halls of residence, as well as from the student union which was right outside my window, when I got a message on MySpace from Adam, who was a man I had met that week, through one of the girls, called Ami, who lived on my floor. I was quickly becoming friends with Ami, who was already in a relationship with Adam. He was inviting me to a party on his floor, which was the floor below mine. Replying, immediately, I declined, explaining that I was working and wasn’t appropriately dressed, as I was dressed for bed, wearing a T-shirt and shorts.
“That’s not a good enough enough excuse. We all have work to do. Get changed. I’m coming to get you,” Adam insisted.
Seeing as I planned on still refusing to go when Adam arrived, I did not get changed.
A couple of minutes later, which would have been the right amount of time for Adam to get to my room, there was a knock on my door. Like an idiot, because I was expecting Adam, I didn’t put the chain on my door or check out the peephole, I just opened the door. To my surprise, and fear, I found not Adam, but a group of at least six men in the hallway, all of who were strangers to me. Instinctively, I knew whatever it was these men wanted wasn’t good, so I tried to shut the door, but number one put his foot in between the door and the frame, preventing me from doing so.
“Wow, ” man number two whistled, looking me over hungrily. “Your friend wasn’t lying. You are hot.”
Suddenly, very aware of how physically exposed I was by my lack of clothing, and how loud the noise around me was, meaning nobody might hear me calling for help if I needed it, my fear grew.
“What do you want?” I asked, impressed with how annoyed rather than afraid I managed to sound.
“To come in,” my number three answered, as though I was going to let them come into my room. As he did, he started to push my door open further.
“Is she a Scouser?” My number four asked, trying to peer over the heads of his friends. “I like a Scouser.” This brought to mind what the man at the freshers fair had said to me that same week, and I began to panic. As soon as number three started to push the door open, I had begun to push back, realising that if all of them pushed the door inwards together they would even easily overpower me. Now though, I knew I had to be more aggressive than them to prevent myself from being assaulted by these men, as I understood that men like these preyed on the reluctance of their victims to physically fight back, because of the worry that they would get into trouble if they hurt their attacker.
Remember at the end of last weeks post, when I told you I regretted my reluctance to hurt my attacker, even as he assaulted me?
Well, at this point, I had learned this lesson and I knew the regret and shame I would feel if I did not fight back against these men as much as I possibly could. So, knowing the only way to protect myself was to shut my door, I slam number ones foot as hard as I could in between the door the frame.
My action had the desired effect, and number one pulled his foot back, cursing and shouting as though I had forgotten his foot was there, saying things like, “My foot was there you stupid bitch.”
Before I could close the door though, number three moved fast, sticking his head in the tiny gap in between the door and the frame.
All I could think about at that moment was what an idiot number three was. As I began pulling the door towards me, widening the gap, he moved his head further into the space between the door and the frame. He must have thought I was opening the door for some reason. I wasn’t. I was building up momentum. Then, I rammed the door as hard and as fast as I could against his head, so hard in fact that while he screamed about me being a bitch he struggled unsuccessfully to free his head.
I pulled the door back again, in order to build up momentum to ram his head a second time, but he took this opportunity to remove his head from in between the door and the frame, giving me the opportunity to finally shut the door and put the chain on.
After I got my door closed, I grabbed my keys off the desk and lock the door, remembering what Fee had told me about the woman who had shown her how to open the doors using a bankcard or drivers license, if they weren’t double locked, before collapsing, trembling onto the bed, wondering where Adam was, as I listened to the group of men banging on the door and shouting obscene threats at me.
It took them far longer than I expected it would to go away, and when they finally did I was sure that I heard them not only leave the corridor but the floor. Not knowing why they had targeted me and seemingly nobody else on my floor, or if they were on their way to target somebody else, leaving altogether, or planning on coming back to get me, I waited until the angry voices disappeared, then peeked out into the hallway to check they were indeed gone, while keeping the chain on, before heading out in search of help, because I didn’t want to be alone if they returned, and I believe that I needed to make the building security guard aware of what had happened, but I didn’t want to go down to his office alone.
I didn’t have to go far. As soon as I stepped out into the corridor, I noticed that the girl who lived in the room next door to me on my left (if you were leaving my room) Sam, had her door open. It was the raised voices of her, GP and Mikey that caught my attention. When she saw me in her doorway and began to speak to me directly, I forgot all about my plans to seek refuge or alert the security guard, as all I could think about was how they all known what was happening to me and none of them had tried to help me, not even the two men, GP and Mikey, who would have come close to the men while they were attempting to get into my room, on their way into Sams room.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I had to do it. They were throwing my stuff around, and I was scared they were going to break something. They said they didn’t want to hurt or rob me, they just wanted sex, but I wasn’t their type and if I told them where the hottest girl I had met so far lived they would leave me alone…so I told them go next door… I told them, the girl next door is hot, blonde and white (Sam had dark hair and olive skin) because… well… you live next door.”
For anyone whose opinion is that Sam just did what she had to do to survive, personally I disagree.
First of all, having your stuff broken isn’t as bad as being raped.
Even if she was scared that they would rape her if she didn’t throw somebody else under the bus, she just needed to pretend to do it, to get them out of the room long enough to shut the door.
She knew where both GP and Mikey lived, and she also had a way to contact them, as she contacted them and asked them to come to her room after the group of men left. Can I just point out, she was so afraid of them, that she didn’t shut her door when they left. What she could have done was send them either to GP or Mikey’s room, being that they were males and in less danger of being raped, seeing as these men stated they wanted a woman, then alerted them both anyway before the group got there and alerted somebody else to go and tell the security guard what was happening.
That is what I would’ve done.
Phase 3 – Week 7
I have –
1. Reassessed what my goals were when I started exercising. It was never about achieving a full run, although I want to. It was about losing weight and keeping it off.
2. Accepted that I am different to other people, and that what other people find easy, I find hard.
3. Accepted that my current circumstances are different to my previous circumstances. I’m never going to enjoy running outside.
4. Finally “thrown away the guidebook;” I am not opening it again, at least until I am fully running.
5. Set myself a new achievable plan.
Weeks 1-4: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Weeks 5–8: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Weeks 9–12: 2 laps of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking.
Weeks 13-16: 4 1/2 minutes running ,1/2 a minute walking.
Weeks 17 to 20: 2 laps of a full run.
Before making this plan, I did a test run, of 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking. The reason I decided on this particular combination was because it was the last time I was not only comfortable but excelling, and it was where I began phase 3, meaning that it was pre-changes.
6. Identified that I am currently struggling to go outside again, so made this one of my goals.
7. Finally settled on a schedule, meaning set days and times. Although I am aware that it won’t always be possible to stick to it, I am going to stick to it as much as I can.
My days are –
Exercise days: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
Rest days: Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday
My times are currently in between 3– 4 o’clock
Phase 3 – Week 7
On the day I rolled my ankle, I realised that I had changed too much about my exercise routine at once, which I now understand completely destroyed; my stamina; the progress I had made; as well as my ability to – progress, and to engage and cope, physically and mentally, with running and my journal. At this point though, all I understood was that I had almost suffered a serious accident due to being unable to engage mentally, therefore, I had no choice but to take a break.
By the end of week 7, I was aware of what contributed to my accident. I want to go through each of the mistakes I made individually, even though it is my belief that none of these things alone would have caused it.
1. Not accepting that my circumstances when I previously ran and enjoy it were different: I was running on a treadmill in the gym.
2. Not accepting my circumstances are different to other peoples: not everybody struggles with –
• Severe asthma
• Stress at the thought of having to go outside
• Stress related hallucinations…
• And seizures
• Mood…
• And “behavioural problems”
• Severe concentration…
• And attention problems
• Easily becoming “afraid”
• Or “paranoid”
3. Messing with my running pace, which led to pain in my knees and lungs, as well as breathing difficulties.
4. Halving my laps, because I believed it would help me achieve a full run faster, but which further broke down my stamina.
5. Switching from manually timing my runs, to using my phone, causing me to become disorientated and distressed by not knowing how long I had left to run.
6. Frequently changing what days I rest and exercise on, therefore leaving me routineless. As we all know without routine I become unstable, hysterical and unable to function.
*On the Monday of week 7, I weighed myself and discovered that I had gained half a stone, so everything I lost, in week 5 and 6.
Phase 3 – week 7
Monday: rest day
Tuesday: rest day
Wednesday: rest day
Thursday: rest day
Friday: rest day
Saturday: rest day
Sunday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking
Phase 3 – Week 7
Sunday
By Thursday, I wanted to start going for a run again, even though I had promised myself two weeks rest for the sake of my mental health and potentially sprint ankle. Mainly this was due to weighing myself and finding that I had regained all the weight I had lost this year. However, I’d already identified most of the mistakes which led to my accent.
At first, I resisted going, because one of my new exercise rules is that I will create and stick to realistic plans, so going for a run before the end of the two weeks felt as though I was breaking this rule before it even came into effect.
This was until Sunday, when I realised that I was once again struggling with just the idea of going outside, which pushed me into going for a test run, to see how my ankle was, and whether my new goals were actually achievable.
My ankle was fine. Although, there was a moment near the beginning of my run, where I stepped off the pavement and landed on it hard, in a funny position, and worried I had injured it.
Though, I found that, I was struggling with the 3 minutes of running, and kept checking my phone, I believe that practice and patience will resolve this.
Taking the week off has fix my paced issues, as I am back to my normal pace.
During my run, I was almost hit by two adult men speeding around the corner on an electric scooter, and narrowly avoided tripping over a partially smashed watermelon, abandoned in the middle of the road.
Ash, was never a person I would have become friends with in the wild, she wasn’t even a person that I would have become friends with in work if it wasn’t for Helen, and I deeply regret that I ever did consider her to be a friend, especially as I could tell that she was false. Ash and Helen were close, they had worked together for a couple of years, as the only female shopfloor staff, by the time I started working there, if you didn’t count Marge who was in her 60s. I quickly came to like Helen, and we had a lot in common, we both had troubled home lives and complicated families, neither of us were into men much, and when I first started working there I was too young, and looked it, to get into pubs and clubs with my friends who looked it, or were, old enough to get in, and Helen despised pubs and clubs. The more I was around Helen, the more I was around Ash, and although I didn’t like ash, and I got the impression that she didn’t like me, I soon put it down to us being sort of polar opposites and found myself making an effort to get along with her.
Although my family thought of me as “girly” in comparison to my “tomboy” sister, nobody else did. Yes, I wore make-up, costume jewellery, heels, skirts, dresses, but I also wore jeans, combat pants, hoodies, vans, and converse. A year earlier, I had cut my hair into a short bob, and got what I planned to be the first part of a tattoo that would either stretch up one side of my back, or down one leg, as well as having three earrings in one ear, four in the other, a nose stud, eyebrow bar, and a belly bar, and I wanted to add snakebites (studs on both sides of my lower lip) to my collection. My hobbies were fashion design, art and photography. I listen to hardcore metal music, mainly Emo music, a bit of indie music, and dance music and electronica. I had grown up watching and reading horror, and still did.
Ash was what my friend Kate would have called a poser, she was a “girly girl” who thought of herself as a “rock chick,” (her words, not mine) and laughably, in my opinion, she once referred to Michael as the “rock poser” in her family. Michael may not have looked like an Emo, but he certainly dress like one, and he knew all the bands and music. Ash never dressed in anything close to rock style clothes of any type, and wore sensible girly glasses and real jewellery. Her only hobby seemed to be men. The only rock band she seemed to know anything about was Nirvana, and what she knew about them wasn’t much. Once in the staff room during our lunch hours, she was boring me so much by talking about Nirvana, but actually saying nothing about them, that I told her I was more of a Foo Fighters girl, so I really had nothing to contribute to the conversation, to which she seriously asked me what the Foo Fighters had to do with Nirvana. When I informed her that Dave Grohl was in both bands she replied that, [“] [I] couldn’t fool her that easily.[“]
“Okay Ash,” I had nodded, going back to reading my magazine.
The next Saturday she had excitedly exclaimed that she had something to tell me, that would blow my mind. It was that Dave Grohl was a member of Nirvana.
I laughed so hard I cried when I realise she didn’t know that he was in Nirvana the week prior. I’d assumed that she didn’t know it was the Foo Fighters that he was in, being that she claimed to be such a huge Nirvana fan.
Personality wise, she was very unpleasant, as she was a spiteful, judgemental, hypocrite, just like a mother. However, I suspect that there was something less surface unpleasant about ash, and instead she had issues that went much deeper, but this impression came after we “fell out,” when one of her family pet dogs had to be put down, and she was laughing about it.
A few months after I began my relationship with what I now consider to be my first real boyfriend, Matt, and the only one of my ex’s that I haven’t got a bad word to say about, (Manager) A made me work on the checkouts for a couple of hours during midday, to cover the lunch breaks, because a member of staff had called in sick that day, which I really wasn’t happy about considering the reasons why I had insisted on being moved to the shopfloor. Plus, they were other till trained staff working on the shopfloor who could’ve done it. About ten minutes after I logged on, she brought a woman who was clearly related to her, to my till to be served, and introduced me as “the cradle snatcher.” Neither me, nor the woman, laughed. The woman looked embarrassed. I was furious. Both (manager) A and Michael, her son, had lied to me about his age. I felt like responding that I should start calling her daughter that, seeing as she was older than me and had tried to kiss me, but I bit my tongue, because I didn’t want to get fired and because I would have also pointed out that her daughter, was a spiteful bitch just like her, if I started down that road. After her initial excitement of getting to break the news to me that Michael was her brother, it became obvious that she didn’t like the fact that I was her brothers girlfriend, but I assume that it was because, like her mother, she didn’t believe I was good enough for him. After she tried to kiss me, it never occurred to me that she might have liked me in the same way that Michael like me, it’s hard for me to even believe that now. Yet, I can’t think of any reason why she would have done what she did to me, other than being jealous and/or hurt, but then if she did have issues, would she have needed a reason.
Although me and ash didn’t go clubbing together regularly, it was enough that when she got her friend a job at the DIY store, her friend acted as though we were friends. I honestly didn’t remember her friends name (and today, although I remember her bright Auburn hair, and her love of forensics science, which was what she was studying at uni, I don’t remember her name). Also, what happened had already happened, so I kept my distance as much as possible, the same way as I did with Ash, as I didn’t know if she was one of the girls involved.
On the day of the first instance, which was a Saturday, I had mentioned to Ash that I was going into town that night with my friend MK and his friends. What I didn’t mention to Ash was that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go or not, as things had been a bit weird between me and MK for a few weeks. During the period that I was going through my ordeal with Ste S, MK had tried to kiss me. We had been out with my friends at the Krazy house, and were both very drunk. One minute we were dancing, and the next his lips were on mine. Much like I would do with Ash at her party, I froze, neither reciprocating nor rejecting him, because I didn’t want to kiss him, but I no longer felt like I was allowed to reject the advances of men. When MK realised that I was just going to stand there, he pulled away, pointing out that if I didn’t want to kiss him, I didn’t have to.
“I don’t want to kiss you,” I confirmed robotically, before walking off.
I valued my friendship with MK, so on one hand I wanted to go, so things could get back to normal as soon as possible, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to go because things between us were still tense. When Ash said that she was also going into town with friends and suggested we all go together, as all her friends were girls, and all MK’s friends were boys, although we had never done this before, I text MK to see if he and his friends were up for it, hoping it would ease the awkwardness. MK and his friends agreed, so after both me and Ash went home to get ready, we met back up with our friends in concert Square.
Ash, proving once again what a poser she was, wanted to go to the walkabout, which is where Ash always wanted to go, even though, or at least every time that I went there, and I only ever went there with ash, it was full of chavs, but because Ash always got what she wanted, so that is where we started our night. Eventually, the boys got bored and headed off to another club, leaving just me and MK with Ash and her friends, and with the girls also getting restless and beginning to talk about going somewhere else, Ash decided that we should have gone to the Krazy house, as though going to the walkabout hadn’t been her idea.
Due to my very recent ordeals with both Michael C and Ste S, the stress of waiting for HIV test results, and an extremely awkward atmosphere between me and MK, I was already hammered by this point, so the few (traumatic) memories I have of the night from when we arrived at the Krazy House are hazy.
What I am sure of, is that we hadn’t even been there long enough to buy a round of drinks when MK tried to kiss me again. Not wanting a repeat what had happened with Ste S, this time, I put my foot down and rejected him. MK then attempted to cause an argument with me, but only succeeded in creating a small scene before storming off. He wasn’t even out of sight before Ash enquired as to what was going on between the two of us, I answered that there was nothing going on between us, thinking that it was obvious that was his problem, but Ash refused to drop the subject.
She was still talking about it over an hour later, while we were standing at the bar, waiting to be served and “Adam” approach us. Due to being deep in conversation, we had been at the bar for longer than we should have. My back was to him, so I didn’t see him approach us, but Ash did, and when he (rudely) interrupted us to introduce himself, Ash immediately and enthusiastically introduce the two of us. Ash’s enthusiasm led me to believe that the cockney accent was coming from the type of man Ash would have found attractive, so when I turned around to face him I was surprised to see a heavy, short man, who even I classed as being on the unattractive side. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t Ash he had come to speak to, it was me.
Now, at the age of 34, having fallen victim to so many bad men, if a man approaches me in public, I have no problem demanding that leave me alone, but being an anxious, timid, 18 year old, who had been raised to be polite to a fault, I didn’t know how to demand he leave me alone, and even worse, I didn’t think I was allowed to, even though his behaviour was extremely odd, and inappropriate from the start.
This is the conversation that we had at the bar –
“Adam”: “Where are you from?”
Me: “Here.”
“Adam”: “No, I mean like what country are you from?”
Me: “Here.”
“Adam”: “No, I mean like what country are your parents from?”
Me: “Here.”
“Adam”: “No, I mean like, what race are you?”
Me: “White.”
“Adam”: “Don’t lie to me. You’re clearly Indian, or Asian.”
Me: “No. I’m not.”
Feeling really creeped out by him, I got the attention of the barman and paid for both mine and Ash’s drinks, believing that it would end the interaction, but Ash invited him to join us.
As we made our way back up the stairs to the floor in between the K2 and K3, which was where Ash’s friends were, “Adam” signalled for a group of men further down the bar to follow us.
Despite it being Ash who invited him to join us, “Adam” would not leave me alone, even when I politely requested that he did, and because we were all standing up and Ash was the only person that I really knew there, I was finding it impossible to shake him off, as every time I managed to break away from him and insert myself back into whatever conversation Ash was having, she would start include him in the conversation too.
Though I don’t recall all of what he was saying to me, I recall him admitting that he had been watching me since my argument with MK (who is Asian) and kept insisting that I go back to his hotel room with him. To which I replied that wasn’t going to happen, as I wasn’t interested in him, or sex, and even if I had been I wasn’t stupid enough, or the type of person to, go back to a strangers hotel room, or have a one night stand. Finally, pretending to be busy texting, I sat down on a small row of seats that ran along a staircase, that had a railing between it and the stairs. Like my rule never to accept a drink from anybody, I also had a rule not to leave my friends, so I was careful to go just far enough that it would be obvious that I wanted privacy. What I failed to understand, even after everything I had already been through that summer, was that bad men don’t care what you want, or don’t want.
Him, Ash and her friends, all chatted for a few minutes while they all stared at me, which was really unsettling because it couldn’t have been more obvious that they were discussing me. Then “Adam” came over, slid into the row of seats next to me and in a distressingly similar way to what to Ste S had done to me at the pub, grabbed me violently and began trying to kiss and grope me, only “Adams” assault was far more intrusive than Ste S’s. At first I tried to fight him off, and a two points I managed to stop him just long enough to shout to Ash and her friends for help, as well as the people coming up the stairs. Unsurprisingly the people coming up the stairs acted like they couldn’t see or hear me. To my horror though, Ash and her friends were all watching and laughing, as though what was happening to me was hilarious.
Remember in my post about my date with Ste S, when I told you how it wouldn’t be the only occasion I gave in and “allowed” somebody to assault me in order to get their assault on the over and done with?
Well this is that other time.
Being trapped between the wall and the railings I just gave in and waited for it to be over. Once it was, and he let me go, I ran to Ash and her friend, still for some reason believing that they would help me, but instead they called me terrible names and laughed at me.
“Adam” wasn’t done with me yet either. He had just needed to go to the toilet, and when he returned he began insisting that I go back to his hotel room with him and offering me money for sex.
After my date with Ste S, I spent weeks blaming myself and analysing what I should have done differently on the date when he began assaulting me. The first was leave. Initially this didn’t seem like a safe safe option in my current situation. Not only did I know that “Adam” would probably follow me. It was Saturday night, and I was in town. The second was too alert a member of staff. At the pub that would have been the barman. Again, initially this didn’t seem like an option in my current situation. It was too busy. Also, what would the bar staff do? Once I told them I would still be in the club, and so would “Adam.” Then, I had a risky idea that maybe if I did both it would work. It would mean intentionally breaking my rule of never separating from my friends though. However, after what she had just done, I already no longer considered Ash a friend, and felt like I might actually be safer on my own. Again, I told “Adam” leave me alone, and Ash I was going home, then I raced thought the club, and down three or four flights of stairs. As I had expected, “Adam” chased after me, but by the time he caught up to me I had already explained to the bouncers what had happened to me, and that I wanted to leave but was afraid he would follow me.
“That’s him,” I shouted, pointing. “That’s the man who assaulted me.”
“No I never,” he protested. “Your friends said that you like to play hard to get. That you like it rough. They said if I gave you money you’d at least give me a blow job.” As soon as he finished speaking and saw the reaction of the bouncers, who looked as though they had never heard something so blatantly stupid in their entire lives, his face dropped, and he turned and dashed up the stairs and into the crowd.
I didn’t wait to see what the bouncer said or did. Seizing the opportunity, I left the Krazy House, glad I only had to make it to the bottom of the road to get a taxi home.
The next time I saw Ash was a week later, when we had to work our Saturday shift together. I hadn’t spoken to her since I left the Krazy House a week prior, and we completely ignored each other for the first few hours.
I was the locker room, texting, about to go back to work after my lunch break, when my friend Marc came in.
“Shit Rach, you’re a dark horse, I never knew you were that type of girl.” He laughed.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, confused, looking up from my phone, I hadn’t seen Marc all day because the store had been super busy.
“Ash was showing me her photos from last weekend and there’s one of you and that boy you pulled with his hand up your dress.”
You know when people say they saw red, well it wasn’t actually red, but the emotion hit me so hard and fast that it appeared visually like the world around me exploded, as my skin began a to prickling and burn.
“Rach what’s wrong?” Marc sounded as though he regretted saying anything to me.
“She took fucking photos of me being assaulted,” I repeated, over and over, but I wasn’t talking to Marc, I was having some sort of meltdown. Throwing my phone into the locker, I slammed the door over and over again until some of the rage subsided. “Where is she?”
“She was in the lighting department when she showed me,” I began to walk away from him while he was midsentence. “Rach,” he called. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Ash was still in the lighting department when I got there. Actually, as luck would have it, she was in the tiny stockroom, that was basically a cupboard with shelves in big enough for a single person, but that didn’t stop me going inside there with her. Not giving her a chance to speak, I put my left hand against the door frame an my right against the shelves so she couldn’t leave.
“Give me the fucking pictures,” I hissed.
She reached up to a shelf above her head and awkwardly took down the packet of photographs, sorting through them, giving me the ones I wanted.
I don’t think I’d ever been so angry, and I definitely had never been so ashamed, in fact to this day I am still ashamed and have never been more ashamed by anything else.
As I sat in a toilet cubicle, crying, tearing up the photographs and wishing I had also gotten the negatives, I berated myself for not fighting harder, for not doing more, for not hurting him. I told him no, to leave me alone, to stop it. I pushed him away, and pulled away. But that was all I had done, because even while he was attacking me, I was afraid that if I hurt him, if I done him any harm, it would be me that got into trouble.
Phase 3 – Week 6
3×1 lap of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking, days unknown.
Phase 3 – Week 6
Day 36: Monday
All I write for Monday’s entry is –
Stop Starty
Been busy
Hurt toe
I will have completed 1 lap of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking.
Date 37: Tuesday
Tuesdays notes simply say –
Stop starty third day in a row.
This isn’t true, it’s the second day. My sanity is clearly, dangerously close to slipping.
Day?: The day of the accident
These notes say they were written on Wednesday but I know this isn’t true. However, I don’t know if they happened on the Thursday or the Friday.
All I wrote underneath the day was –
Stopped cycle one, hallucinating.
Stopped cycle two, phone call.
Third cycle twisted ankle, almost fell. Finish last 47 seconds of running anyway.
Here’s what I remember –
I slept from the afternoon the day before, until around 3 or 4 am this morning, because I hadn’t slept the night before that.
After cleaning the flat, I went for a morning run.
The hallucinations were heavy black snow, I couldn’t see through.
The phone call was from my mum tho I don’t recall what was said.
I believe when I rolled my ankle and almost fell I was checking my phone, to see how many more seconds I had left to run, as I was struggling both physically and mentally
Later, I decide to take two weeks rest, if not for my ankle, for my mental health, but I want to talk about that decision in next weeks post.
Part 4
As you know, I’ve been building up to writing about my sexual assault trial for the last few months. The events in this post not only take place after the sexual assault that trial was for occurred, I’m also unable to write about them in narrative form, so this post is going to be a little bit different from what you are used to from my Sunday autobiographical blog post.
In some ways, this post is one of the most important blog post that I have tackled today, as it briefly touches on some of the warning signs that a man might be a sexual predator, or abuser, that I’ve learnt about through my own life experiences, and which has been confirmed through my consumption of true crime. I will specifically be discussing male on female sexual violence in this post, so I want to make it clear here that I know women can also be sexual predators and abuses, and that men can also be victims of these crimes.
Whether or not these warning signs also apply to women, I don’t know, as I have not done any research for this post, I’m simply speaking about my own personal experiences, and what I myself have watched, listened to and read about on the subject, for non-research Purposes. As well as touching on my minds way of denying the extent to which I might have been in danger to cope, and my natural reaction to automatically and impulsively defend others who might be in danger, particularly people who I love and/or care for.
Let’s look at the warning signs.
1. This is a point that we have touched on previously. Men who cannot take no for an answer when it comes to you going on a date with them. If a man cannot take no for an answer when he asks you to go on a date with him, he won’t take no for an answer in regards to anything else, and that includes sexual contact.
I am unsure as to whether Ste S actually falls into this category or not, as he never actually asked me to go on a date with him personally, he got other people to do it for him.
2. Men who want to have anal sex with women, who don’t want it, or specifically because they do not want it. I do not mean men who asked for it or suggest it, then when you say no accept that you do not want to engage in it and move on. I mean men who continually bring it up and/or trying to force it on you after you have said no.
Ste S does not fall into this category, so I will leave this fetish alone for the remainder of this post, but it is something I will bring back up, as and when it’s relevant.
3. Men who want to take the “virginity” of women, because taking the “virginity” of women is what excited them sexually.
This definitely does apply to Ste S. However, I believe Ste S is actually worse than men who want to only do this with “a consenting woman,” because he wanted to take the “virginity,” of women even if they didn’t want to have sex and/or have sex with him.
We really do have to take “virginity” fetishes more serious as a society, as the people that have this fetish often prey on the vulnerable, or people who cannot legally consent to sexual activity, whether it is their “choice to consent” or not.
Addressing why throughout this post I will be using quotation marks around the word virginity is also important. Virginity isn’t a real thing, it is a concept, and it is a concept that, again, although it is dangerous to both men and women, is particularly dangerous in regards to male on female crime. We need to stop using the word virgin and virginity, as well as pushing the concept of them, or allowing others to push the concept of them, as a factual thing.
With that all said, let’s look at that how I have “coped” with the danger Ste S posed to me. When I first started writing about Ste S, it was my belief that the events I will be discussing in this post took place only a year after the party, which was impossible, because I knew that it took place during the summer holidays in between my first and second year of university. I went back and forth questioning the time that today’s events occurred, thinking maybe I was wrong and they happened during the Christmas holidays, but after debating this with myself for the best part of a month, maybe two, I am confident that they took place during the summer, so not only a year after I had last had to work with Ste S, but two whole years after the party.
I would like you to pause for a moment here, to think about how long two years actually is in general.
Now, take another moment, to think about it in terms of getting over a romantic relationship.
Then add on the fact that “relationship” was actually only a single date, then a few weeks of the party who can’t get over that “relationship” molesting the party who “has moved on.”
It is a ridiculous and terrifying amount of time for somebody to not only still be thinking about you, and talking about you, constantly, but doing it with the same state of mind and the same amount of emotion they had at the time of the “split.”
Here is what happened. My sister, who is three and a half years younger than me, so who would have only been seventeen if my maths is correct, went to a party at her friend Simon’s house.
Simon was either related to Ste S, or was close friends with somebody who was, and as a result he was friends with Ste S, who by pure chance was also at this party.
On discovering that my sister was there, he actively sought her out, then went on an emotional rant about how I broke his heart – not because I broke up with him (and remember I didn’t, Michael had to do it for me) – but because he had wanted my “virginity,” and I had “given it to” Michael B.
I want us to now consider his statement and behaviour.
If he was indeed under the impression that me and Michael B had sex that night (which I don’t believe he actually was) telling my sister about it was not his place.
So, what were his motives for doing so, whether he believed it or not?
He and my sister weren’t friends, they weren’t even acquaintances, they were complete strangers. I’ve thought about what his motives could have been for days now, and all I can come up with, is what I felt like his motives were at the time, which is that he was hoping that he could guilt or groom my seventeen year old sister into having sex with him in my place.
If you put his behaviour into context, can you think of a different reason?
To put his behaviour in context for you, two years after being subjected to several weeks of molestation by this man, because I went on a single date with him, to stop people harassing me over it, he approaches my sister, who is around the same age as I was at the time of the molestation, and who he is a complete stranger to, in a situation where she was potentially under the influence of alcohol, and ranted about how upset he was that I gave somebody else my “virginity” because he wanted to take it.
My sister, recognising that his behaviour wasn’t right, warned me about it the next day. After confronting him about it, which I will tell you about in a minute, I reached out to people who I was still connected with, through social media, et cetera, who I had worked with at the DIY store, which wasn’t many people, and told them about what he had said to my sister, which is how I found out that he had been telling people this since the night of the actual party, and was still talking about it constantly, to that very day.
This is partly why, I don’t believe, that he genuinely thought me and Michael actually had sex that night. What I believe is that he was hoping that I was still a “virgin” and still fantasising about taking my “virginity” to that very day.
The rest of my reason was the hungry, hopeful looking in his eyes, that suggested he was deluded enough to think I was coming to offer him my “virginity” the day I confronted him.
It was the day after Simon’s party, the day my sister told me what he had said to her, that I marched down to the DIY store, filled with anger and fear, to confront him.
Half of me expected that he might not be in work that day, all of me expected that I would need to ask whoever was on the checkouts if he was in, then search for him if he was. As luck would have it, he was at the front of the store, by the same pallet of emulsion that me and Michael B had our paint fight at.
As soon as I saw him, all the repressed feelings of anger, fear and shame, rose to the surface, and I began absolutely screaming.
I remember shouting, “Don’t you come near me, my family, or my friends, ever again. Don’t even talk to us. Stay away from my sister. Don’t ever speak to her, or try to contact her again. Stop lying about me. Stop talking about me.”
Everybody around us was watching, both staff and customers. I turned and ran from the store. The security guard, who had been approaching me, looked relieved as I did.
Was I afraid about getting into trouble?
No.
Because I was willing to stop lying to myself and other people about what he had done to me if it meant protecting my sister from him.
I’ve never admit it to my family what he did to me. I just told them that I had gotten myself into a relationship that I didn’t want to be in.
When I got outside, I burst into tears, so proud of myself for not crying in front of him this time. Then, I had what I now know was a (mild for me) panic attack.
I still remember his mouth dropping open in shock, and flapping around like a fish out of water, when I started screaming at him. There was no fear in my voice that time, just pure rage. Maybe in his mind I was still a teenager ashamed to admit I was a victim of sexual assault, afraid my mum would blame me again. But I’d already crossed that bridge again, this time as adult, and for all the fear and shame I still had then, still actually had until writing this post, my anger was greater.
It still is.
I’m no longer angry at just him, and myself, I’m angry at the world that laughs at a teenage girl who begs them to help her get out of a relationship she never agreed to be in.
And that is why this story is important.
Part 3
Ste S was either, incapable of understanding that I was a human being with thoughts and feelings of my own, or didn’t believe I had a right to exercise free will, because even with a third party informing him that his behaviour was despicable, he was still reluctant to stop abusing me. I was an object to Ste S, an object that in his opinion he had a greater right to own than anybody, including myself. Faced with the reality that he was no longer going to be able to abuse me, he burst into tears and began begging me – not to give him a “second chance”– not to forgive him for abusing me – but to have sex with him right there and then in Michael’s bedroom, like he also owned that, because he wanted to be my first. As he did, he groped hungrily at me.
Recoiling, I sunk into Michael, who wrapped his arms around me protectively and pulled me away.
“You’re pathetic,” Michael observed, clearly as shocked by Ste S’ reaction as I was. “She doesn’t want you. She never wanted you. She went on a pity date with you, because you were going around ordering everybody to hassle her for you, and you’ve been abusing her ever since.”
This was the first time anybody had mentioned, or admitted, to, or in front of me, that Ste S had been requesting that people harass me for him.
As quickly as he started, he stopped crying, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands, and his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. Then without another word, he moved to the window, struggling to drag his fat body and stubby legs through it.
“What are you doing?” Michael demand, releasing me.
“Going outside for a fag. Is that okay with you?” It wasn’t actually question, it was an aggressive statement, but Michael responded to it as though it was.
“No, go downstairs into the garden like everybody else.”
Ste ignored him. Lighting a cigarette he strutted around the roof of the extension, like he owned that as well, shouting down to people in that same stupid and disgusting fake jovial voice.
Now, with the adrenaline wearing off, and a giddy relief sinking in, the massive amount of alcohol I had consumed took affect, causing the room to spin, as my body was already turning to jelly. I went to sit down on the bed, but Michael stopped me. If I wanted to sit down on his clean bed, I had to take my dirty trousers off. This seemed like a reasonable request. Glancing quickly at the Ste, to check he was looking away, I shimmied out of my dusty, grimy trousers and climbed onto the bed, reaching for the blanket. I had no problem with Michael seeing my underwear, but I did not want Ste S seeing it.
“If you’re getting under the covers can you take your dirty T-shirt off too?” He asked, as he stepped out of his jeans and sat on the top of the covers.
I stripped my bag and top off, throwing them onto the floor, then pull the blanket up to my chin.
We began to talk about what had just happened. That is, until I lifted my head and caught Ste S pressed against the glass, watching us with the same violent, bitter expression of hatred that he had worn earlier outside. Laying down, I pulled the duvet completely over my head, complaining about him as I did.
Michael got off the bed and approach the window. Although I couldn’t make out what they were saying, I could hear that they were arguing.
Eventually, there was a lot of grunting and thudding as Ste S lumber back inside the bedroom, then the bedroom door opened and closed.
“He’s gone,” Micheal reassured me, sliding under the covers. “And the doors locked. He cant come back in.”
We lay there whispering to each other for so long I lost track of the time. Naturally, the conversation changed from Ste S, to what had been going on in our lives since we broke up.
Maybe it was because of how Michael had just save me, or because I had never cared for anybody else the way I cared about him, or it could’ve just been the alcohol, but Michael said something, I don’t remember what, that made me think he still cared for me, and I found myself pressing my lips against his. Without hesitation, he reciprocated, wrapping me up in his arm. As soon as we came apart though, he admitted guiltily that there was somebody else, that he had a new girlfriend. That is when my feelings for Michael died. I was furious – not over him having a new girlfriend – but because he had cheated on her with me. If he had kissed another person while we had been a couple, I would have been heartbroken. I was sure it would have ended our relationship.
“How could you do that to her?” I threw off the covers and clambered over him, searching for my clothes and bag in the dark.
“You’re one to talk,” he shot back angrily.
“What’s that…” (meant to mean) I started, but I never finish my sentence. Instead, my own anger took over me, “You know what, it’s fine. Before I had my tongue in your mouth tonight, I had it in your sisters.” It wasn’t technically true, it was the opposite way around, but in the heat of the moment who actually kissed who didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that I wanted to upset Michael as much as he had upset me, because I knew that he was accusing me of cheating on him with Michael C. He was blaming me, for being assaulted.
That was all it took to push Michael over the edge. He jumped off the bed, grabbing me. Then he threw me out into the hallway in my underwear, and locked the door behind me.
“Michael. You have my stuff in there,” I rattled the handle pointlessly, as I banged on the door.
But he ignored me.
“I always knew I’d get to see you in your underwear one day, Rach,” Ste W joked, coming up behind me. He nudged me away from the door and banged on it himself, loud and hard. “Michael you little shit, give Rach her clothes back.”
Again, Michael didn’t reply, but if we put our ears to the door, we were sure we could hear him moving around inside, searching for my stuff.
That’s when I noticed the moans and groans coming from inside the bathroom. They were so loud that they cut through the party noise. “What the fuck is that?”
Ste W hesitated. I imagine he both didn’t want to be the person who broke the “bad news” to me, or the person who “grassed” on his best work friend. “Ste S is having sex with Jenny in there.”
By the time Michael opened the door, shoved my stuff against my chest and slammed the door shut again, locking it behind him, the moans and groans had changed to both Ste S and Jenny screaming at the top of their voices.
It was obvious that everybody in the upstairs hallway felt awkward and embarrassed. Except me.
I got dressed right there, in the hallway, and practically skipped downstairs to call my taxi.
Afterwards, I learned everybody who had witnessed me skipping off, couldn’t understand why I wasn’t upset or angry with both Ste S and Michael. Obviously, I was over the moon that Ste S was having sex with Jenny in the bathroom, because it told everybody that “me and him were over.” As for Michael – I wasn’t embarrassed by what he did to me. I was wearing nice underwear, and I was super hot, but even if I had been embarrassed by what he did to me, I still wouldn’t have been able to hate him, due to what he did for me that night.
Phase 3 – Week 5
Monday: Rest day.
Tuesday: 1 lap of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking.
Wednesday: 1 lap of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking.
Thursday: Rest day.
Friday: 1 lap of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking.
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: 1 lap of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking.
Phase 3 – Week 5
This weeks journal notes show the decline in both my mental and physical ability to continue on with my running and my running journal without a break, as do next weeks, so there really isn’t much to them. However, they do count towards my run in general, running progress (or rather decline in this instance) and are important examples of why –
• You do need to take breaks from your exercise routine occasionally for both your physical and mental well-being
• You should set realistic goals and stick to them
• You shouldn’t try to progress too quickly.
While preparing to write this weeks blog post, I couldn’t find my notes, that is how badly I have been struggling. In the end, it took me the best part of an hour to locate them.
Day 29: Monday
On Monday I have to go into town to sort out that urgent problem that I couldn’t fix last Wednesday, which changes Monday from an exercise day to a rest day.
Date 30: Tuesday
On Tuesday, I complete 1 lap of 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking, even though it’s really difficult.
This takes me 15 minutes, or 3 run/walk cycles.
Day: 31 Wednesday
On Wednesday, I have to stop running twice and am heckled by a group of teenage boys at the 3/4 point. This leaves me feeling like my run wasn’t worth it and terribly upset that I can’t go outside without being approached, bothered, hassled, or harassed
Day 32: Thursday
Thursday as a rest day.
Date 33: Friday
when I return home after my run on Friday, I simply write a list which says –
Hungry
Rainy
Tired
Stopped all three cycles
Date 34: Saturday
Even though it’s raining on Saturday, I’m determined to go for my run, because if I don’t go today, I will have to go tomorrow, meaning I will be doing 2 or 3 exercise days in a row. But, when I reach the front door to the block of flats I realise that the rain is much heavier than I thought it was. when I open the door, the wind immediately sweeps the rain inside. aware that I won’t make it to the gate before having to give up, I resign myself to going tomorrow instead.
Date 35: Sunday
On Sunday, I forget to take my morning medication which includes my inhalers, before leaving my flat to exercise, which means I can’t breathe during my run. Despite this, I battle through not stopping once, but cutting my last run short by 30 seconds.
Part Two
The excitement didn’t last long. Not that it would have anyway, but it was Ash who hurried it to it’s inevitable conclusion, not me, or Ste S. She was eager to reveal her reason for inviting us all, and none of the managers, to the pub. Her parents and youngest brother were away on holiday, again, Michael was out that night with friends, and she was in the mood for a house party.
While she explain this, I was beating myself up for not being strong or brave enough to kiss a total stranger, and resigning myself to putting back on my public everything is fine mask, while privately, desperately begging to be released from a relationship that I never agreed to be part of.
And Ste S continue to pretend that he had orchestrated the entire ear in mouth “joke,” offering me around as though he was my pimp.
Everybody except me, who was suspicious of why Ash was inviting her colleagues instead of her friends and neither wanted to be around Ste S or her youngest brothers pets, where “up for it.” Ash pleaded with me though, promising me both the tanks and her brothers bedroom doors were closed, just like Michael had done months prior. Reluctantly, wishing for another opportunity and a different way to force Ste S to break up with me, I climbed into the first taxi that arrived with Ash, Ste W, two of our other male colleagues, and some of the alcohol we bought at the pub for the party.
Being that it was a Saturday night, taxis were in high demand, so we arrived at Ash’s a good ten minutes before anybody else.
Ash unlock the front door leading us into the hallway, as she rapidly chatted about how we had to see her bedroom. The boys put down the drinks, Ash put down her keys, and we followed her into the bedroom, which was behind the door to our left, expecting something unique, but to our surprise, it was just an ordinary bedroom.
When the boys question this, Ash explained that the room was built specially for her, and that it was one of the two extensions her parents had added onto the ground floor of the property since they bought it. The other extension was to enlarge the kitchen.
After a couple of minutes she started requesting that I put her ear in my mouth again, and the boys immediately egged me on. I don’t remember what she was saying, what I remember it’s her sitting down on her single bed as she tugged me down beside her.
“Ash, I wanted to piss Ste off,” I admitted, blinking back tears. “I never agreed to be in a relationship with him, and he won’t let me break up with him, so I need him to break up with me.
“Out,” she commanded the boys.
“No way,” Ste W protested. “Things are just getting good.
Ash stood up and shoved them into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind them, then returned to the bed.
“You know what would really piss him off, is if you cheated on him,” it felt like ash was reading my mind, and I had assumed that she was kicking the boys out so we could have a private conversation, so it never occurred to me that she was volunteering to be the person I cheated on him with until she leaned in and kissed me.
Shocked, I froze, neither reciprocating nor resisting. It was only when she stopped and stared at me confused that I regained my ability to speak.
“I’m not into this Ash.”
When she didn’t respond, I stood up and left the room, going to join the boys in the kitchen.
Ash remained in her room, opening the door for people as they arrived. To my surprise, people who weren’t even in work that day, or at the pub with us, began arriving with their own friends. It didn’t take long for the house to get so full of people that somebody opened the back door, and I eagerly went into the garden to escape Ste S. Then, to avoid him begun moving from group to group every time he found me and insert himself into the conversation. So, I genuinely didn’t noticed that Ash was still absent.
Luckily, I had not long reentered the kitchen when my worst nightmare began to unfurl itself into reality, meaning I was in the right place at the right time to hear Craig W’s warning.
As I came inside, everybody’s attention was on Jenny, who was attempting to open a beer bottle with her teeth. A man I had never seen before was warning her that she might break a tooth.
“I’ve already broken a tooth opening a bottle,” she bragged, then proceeded to break another. As she opened her mouth to swear, her words disappeared under a bloodcurdling scream, and everybody’s attention snapped to that. The scream turned into incoherent shouting, and a commotion followed the person responsible through the house, as he raced down the stairs and into the kitchen
Red faced and spluttering, all he managed to utter was “Ash” and “snakes,” before Ash herself began descending the stairs calling, “where’s Rachel? I’m looking for Rachel.”
After sharing a horrified glance with Craig W, we both grabbed the door handle and pulled the door between the living room and the kitchen closed, using our body weight, against the people on both sides who were trying to open it, to keep it closed. As ashes silhouette became visible on the other side through the frosted glass, Ste W began to sort of narrate in disbelief what was happening. Apparently, Ash had both snakes draped around her neck and shoulders.
Eventually, after what felt like eternity, somebody in the living room convinced Ash that wearing two snakes, one of which was a Boa, was not the best idea, and after being reassured Ash was upstairs and the snakes were back in their tanks, I dashed through the house and into the small front garden to phone a taxi.
I was waiting on hold when Ste S appeared behind me, and began aggressively demanding I go upstairs with him, so he could speak to me alone about my behaviour. We were alone here, so I knew that speaking to me was not his real intention. However, even if we hadn’t have been alone, I would’ve known what is real intentions were, because he had made them known to me earlier that night, through text messages, when he had told me tonight was the night I was going to stop being a frigid bitch and have sex with him. Also, I wasn’t his girlfriend, and I had purposely been behaving in a manner I hoped would embarrass him.
Refusing, I insisted that I was going home. He snatched my mobile off me, hanging up, and when I tried to get it back, he spun me around and body slammed me into the wall of the house, pinning me there. He moved into “kiss me,” but I turned my head as close to the wall as I could. He began fumbling with the button on my trousers with his empty hand, so I grabbed his fingers and tried to bend them back, but he held onto the button tight
That’s when it hit me. This wasn’t an old man pub, where everybody was a stranger who either didn’t want to get involved, or was enjoying watching me being assaulted, and it wasn’t working, where I could get fired, so I started screaming for him to get off me and fighting him.
But he was too strong.
And nobody came outside from the party to help me.
Despite this, I persisted, shouting as loud as I could, as I shoved and clawed at him, hoping that if nobody from the party was coming to help me, a neighbour would.
Because I was making so much noise, neither of us heard the taxi pull up. The first thing I heard was the cold, calm, voice boom above my own, “Yo, guys, what’s up?”
Both if us stopped fighting, and Ste even stepped away from me. His mouth twitched and twisted, and I realise that he was struggling to form a pathetic excuse for his own behaviour, not to convince me, Michael, or anybody else, just himself, which I now realise is what he had been doing all along.
“Michael, can I talk to you please?” I grabbed my phone from Stes grip and slipped from between him and the wall. “In private?”
“Yeah,” he agree, ushering me inside, not taking his eyes off Ste who was glaring at him with a violent, bitter hatred, that absolutely chilled me. Not only was I worried for myself, I was worried for Michael too. He was taller than Ste S, but he was thin. Ste S weighed a lot more than Michael, plus he was a proper chav. If it came to a physical altercation between the two of them, I didn’t think Michael would stand a chance.
We seem to move through the party unnoticed. He led me upstairs into bedroom that turned out to be his own. Then he went straight to the window, opened it, climbed through onto the roof of the extended kitchen and beckoned for me to do the same.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Convinced my leg was going to go through the ceiling of the kitchen, I stepped over the window frame onto the roof gingerly, sitting down opposite him.
“Yeah, I come out here all the time to smoke,” he explained, lighting a cigarette as he did. He took a drag before he continued.” What was that about?”
Even as I had followed Michael through the house, desperate to confide in somebody new, a person who might actually believe me due to the fact that I had been so completely and madly into them, yet I still never wanted to be physically intimate with them, I wasn’t sure I could do it. After all, me and Michael weren’t managing to get along well post break up. Now though, I found it impossible not to let the entire ordeal with the Ste S pour out of me, at the same time as the tears did . Michael listened emotionlessly and silently until I finished – “I just don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” he said flatly, stubbing his cigarette out against the wall and standing up.
As he did, a cry rose above party noise, “Yo, Mickey B, when did you get here?” It was Craig B, Kelly’s brother, Michael’s closest friend at the DIY store, and the only person at the store who was taller than Michael B.
“Just now,” Michael called down.
“What are you doing up there?” Craig B enquired, curiously.
” ‘Avin’ a cig-e-ret,” Michael pronounced it strangely. I imagine it must have been an in joke between the pair, because Craig B howled like it was hilarious.
I had only just stood up to go back inside, when Ste S’ fucking disgusting bulbous heads appeared beyond the edge of the extension next to Craig B and he asked in a stupid jovial voice, “What are you doing up there babe? I’m coming up.”
Before I could object, his bulbous head disappears again.
Shaking, I turned to Michael and whispered, “See? He’s acting like you didn’t just find me fighting him off. I told you,” With every word my voice grew louder and louder as I became more hysterical, losing volume control. “I told you, this is what he does.”
“Ssh,” Michael nudged me towards the window. “Let me deal with it.”
We had only just climbed back inside, when Ste S burst into the room and in that same stupid jovial growl yelled, “Whats up guys?”
I only had a fleeting moment to wonder whether he was making fun of Michael, before Michael confronted him.
“You know what’s up. You’ve been taking advantage of Rachel,” Michaels tone was so calm, it was also so commanding and confident.
“I haven’t –” Ste spluttered, his expression turning to one of fear, but Michael cut him off.
“I just fucking saw you doing it, and she’s told me everything. She’s not your girlfriend. She never agreed to be your girlfriend, so you’re going to stop telling everyone that she is and… Your… Going…to… Stop… Fucking…touching…her…do you understand?”
Suddenly, I realised Michael wasn’t the timid and shy boy he had always been around me. He was a fearless and reckless man. The same fearless and reckless man who had fought off a group of men armed with knives, and lived to tell the tale.
Ste didn’t even attempt to answer him. Pretending Michael wasn’t even there, he glared at me. “This is your last chance or we’re over Rachel. I’ll be your first, right now, tonight, or you and me are over.”
“We’re over,” I confirmed.
Phase three – Week four
Monday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: Rest day
Wednesday : Rest day
Thursday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Friday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Saturday: 5/8 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking
3/8 full run
= 3.324 miles
Sunday: Rest day
Phase three – Week four
Monday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: Rest day
Wednesday : Rest day
Thursday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Friday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Saturday: 5/8 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking
3/8 full run
= 3.324 miles
Sunday: Rest day
Total miles: 13.296
Phase 3 – Week 4
Day 22: Monday
On Monday, my attempt to match my previous pace causes me to struggle. Due to my current pace being slower than my original, my knees here. Due to my current pace being faster than what I have recently been doing, my lungs are burning and I am unable to catch my breath.
Maybe I’ve come out at a slightly different time, whatever the reason, there are more cars fully parked on the pavement than there normally is, between the halfway and the endpoint of my route. This means there is severely restrict the pavement access.
Before I enter the narrow long stretch of street between several cars and garden walls, I checked both in front of me and behind me. There’s nobody else around. I’ve taken less than ten steps when a cyclist behind me, who was not there literally ten seconds ago, starts furiously ringing his bell at me, demanding that I move out of his way and let him pass me.
What the actual fuck?
Where does he want me to go?
And why isn’t he on the road where he should be?
Eventually, because I don’t move, because I can’t move, he does get onto the road, muttering loudly as he does.
It’s on my second lap, just passed that same place, when I have a similar, but much scarier encounter. Once again I am between the vehicles and the walls when a bike come speeding towards me, and without attempting to stop or slow down, enters the very narrow stretch of pavement in between the cars and the walls too. It’s only thanks to an open garden gate that I’m not mowed down by him.
To add insult to near serious injury, he’s wearing a helmet.
If you are helmet prick, I would really love to know why, as you are riding on the pavement, you wearing a helmet?
Is it in case the pedestrian you mow down causes you to go over your handlebars as you hit them?
I complete 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 23: Tuesday
Tuesday is a rest day.
Day 24: Wednesday
When I wake up on Wednesday my mood is horrendous. I’m still severely – depressed, angry, agitated, hyperactive and restless; but I am also suffering from an emotion I can only describe as unstable hysteria. It’s an emotion that I know well. It’s the emotion that leads me to spend money on weird stuff, scream and cry at work (when I had a job,) and experience – shaky, impulsive suicidal fantasies.
When I am in moods like this one, I am beyond my own control.
As you probably guessed the day doesn’t get any better from here.
There is already a raging storm outside; torrential rain, thunder, lightning, howling wind. There’s no way I can go running in weather like that.
Then, I am faced with two problems, that I feel the desperate urge to solve immediately. Before I have time to consider these problems, I find myself, soaking wet, on the bus, going into town, to solve them.
I only managed to solve one of them.
Day 25: Thursday
On Thursday, my unstable hysteria has faded enough for me to be semi functional.
As I eat breakfast, I debate what set of days I’m best exercising on, I know I’m going backwards and forwards but I can’t help it. I am behind and I feel as though catching up is impossible. I am wishing I had gone running on Tuesday, instead of leaving it until Wednesday. During my run I am heckled (I’m not sure if heckled is the correct word, as what happens to me is silent) by a man who looks as though he is in his late forties or early fifties, and who, I think must be drunk, on drugs, or both. He is strolling along a good bit ahead of me, travelling in the same direction as me. For seemingly no reason, he stops and turns to watch me. His expression is full of furious malice, so I am thankful that I am at the only place on my route that is wide open, which allows me to keep a few metres distance as I’m passing. As I do, he mimes running in a manner that makes me feel violated and afraid. Yet, I can’t explain why.
I completely 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minute walking.
Day 26: Friday
Friday is one of those uneventful days I love.
It is also the first day in a while, that I don’t stop mid run.
I completely 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minute walking.
Day 27: Saturday
Because it’s my third exercised in a row, I’m really struggling. Every time I strike the ground with my left foot, I get an ache in my left shin. It gets so strong that 5/8 of the way around, I decided I need to stop in case I injure myself again.
I walk the last 3/8.
Day 28: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
On the Saturday that I finally broke, It was Ash B that made me cry, but it was Helens fault that I cracked. I am unable to even recall what it was that Ash B said to me that sent me running to the toilets in tears, because as I sat in the cubical bawling, it was Helens advice that repeated in my mind. According to her, if I went on a date with Ste S, then I could use that date as an excuse not to go on another.
What Helen didn’t understand was, that unlike her, this hadn’t seemed like a solution to my problem until now, because I didn’t know that Ste S was driving the harassment. My perception, was that everybody had taken it upon themselves to nag me, so in my mind they would also nag me to go on second, third, fourth date and so on. To this day I still wonder how he convinced them all to harass me, and in such a relentless manner.
Up until this point, the thought of speaking to Ste S about the harassment hadn’t seemed like a possibility, due to how upset I was about it, and how awkward I felt about this person who repulsed me being attracted to me.
What I should have done was marched right up to him and aggressively informed him that nothing was going to happen between us, and if the nagging didn’t stop, whether he was responsible for it or not, I would be speaking to the store manager about it. To me though, none of this seemed like an option, because I genuinely believed that I was somehow responsible for the harassment I was suffering from, therefore, it would be me who would get into trouble for inappropriate workplace conduct.
What had changed between me entering the toilets and deciding to talk to Ste S about it, was that Helens advice had morphed into an admittedly terrible plan.
Please if you are ever in a similar situation, don’t do what I did. confide on somebody you can trust, preferably somebody not associated with the group of people involved. You see, I thought I could trust Helen, which is where I went wrong, as she was friends with the people involved and the person driving them all.
Never go on a date with a person who can’t take no for an answer when they ask you to go on that date, because if they wont take no for an answer about the date, they wont take it as an answer about anything else.
The best life advice I can give you is learn to say no, and learn to say it confidently and aggressively. It wont just be great for your physical safety, mental health and life, it is empowering, it will stop awful people using, abusing and taking advantage of you. The more you say no, the easier it will become and the more you will love doing it.
Remember, you owe nobody, nothing.
Writing about this has not only made me realise the dangerous situation I put myself in and the trauma and damage it caused to my mental health, but also the harmful and destructive patterns that it established in my beliefs, behaviour and life. Since these events, I have only ever gone on dates with the impression that by doing so I am both entering into some sort of relationship with that person in which they have all the control, and that I also have no right to complain if they touch me, etc, without my consent, as though consent was established when that relationship between us was. I have gone on dates with anybody who has harassed me relentlessly enough and recruited others to harass me, because I believed it was the only way to stop that harassment, as well as finding it impossible to break up with anybody.
I was twenty nine before I managed to break these destructive and harmful behaviours and beliefs, meaning I wasted the best and most crucial relationship years of my life, and although I have loved some of my romantic partners, I have never been in love.
It took me a while to stop crying, and even longer to gather the courage and convince myself I was calm and strong enough to speak to Ste S. I did my best to hide the fact that I hard been crying, by removing my make up which had run and been smudged across my face with make up removing wipes that I had in my bag, but seeing as I didn’t reapply my make up and my eyes were red, bloodshot and swollen, would have been obvious that I had been crying. Plus, I burst into tears again as soon as I saw Ste S.
“I’m busy,” he complained as I approached him.
“I wanted to talk to you about a date,” I forced out the words feeling as though they were going to choke me.
He stopped what he was doing and turned to face me. As it was obvious that I didn’t want to go in a date with him, I hoped that he would reassure me that I didn’t have to. I mean who wants to go on a date with a person who doesn’t want to go on a date with, or want, them?
But he didn’t.
The conversation was made even more horrible by Ste S not being alone, as he was remerchandising an aisle with Ash B and Ash M. Ash M was pretending that the conversation wasn’t happening, but he looked as awkward as I felt. Ash B had stopped what she was doing to watch.
Before he could speak, I quickly proposed my compromise.
“That’s nothing to do with me, so I can’t promise that,” he puffed out his chest like he was a big man, which struck me as odd. Was he bragging that he was unable to stop his friends from bullying me?
That didn’t seem like something he should be proud about.
“Oh okay,” I mumbled. “I’ll let you get back to work then.”
As I began to walk away, he called after me. “No wait. You’ll stop won’t you Ash?” He didn’t sound happy about the deal, which confirmed what I suspect about being nagged for a second, third, fourth date, et cetera.
I turned in time to see ash nodding.
“Meet me at [insert name of the pub across the car park] at (I think) 2 o’clock tomorrow.”
Ste S was waiting for me outside the pub when I arrived, wearing, I kid you not, a fucking gold chain necklace over a tracksuit.
This was the first time that I had ever been in this pub. Yet, on entering it and discovering it was an old man pub, I didn’t question the location because of my dates with Michael B. Inside there was one barman and four customers total. Two of the customers were sitting at the table in the right corner, and the other two were sat on one of the three sofas in the left corner.
I expected us to go to the bar first, then sit at the table away from the other customers. However, Ste S led me to the sofa opposite the sofa the two old men were sitting on. The two old men whose eyes had been all over me since I walked through the door. At the time it seems strange to me, but with hindsight, I now know that he was planning on sexually assaulting me from the moment we entered the pub, if not all along, which he couldn’t have done if we were sat at a table.
When he asked me what I wanted to drink, I answered that I would get my own drink.
To which he replied with this dramatically executed argument, that one of us had to stay where we were to keep our seats.
“There’s nobody here. There’s loads of seats,” I glanced around baffled.
Despite my insistence that I would get my own drink, he came back with a vodka and lemonade for me.
There was no way before the Michael C incident that I would’ve drunk that drink, even if I was planning on drinking alcohol, which I wasn’t, so I definitely wasn’t after it.
What happened next should have been my first and only cue to leave.
He grabbed my arm, hard, holding me in place. “I bought you a drink, don’t be so rude and ungrateful.”
Trying to drag my arm away, I pointed out that I told him I would get my own drink and made my plans about not drinking alcohol known to him. Still, I had to rip my arm out of his clammy grip to go buy an orange juice, which I didn’t get a chance to take even a sip of during entire date.
To my surprise on returning, his pint glass was already empty and he headed back to the bar and bought the exact same two drinks, before immediately demanding to know, [“] Where [I] saw this relationship going, [“] when he sat down again.
“This isn’t a relationship,” I reminded him shocked. “It’s one date.” We both knew that I had no intention of going on another date with him.
That was the extent of our conversation. He lunged towards me trying to kiss me.
“Don’t Ste,” I pushed him away.
But he refused to listen.
Instead of doing what I should’ve done, which was leave, because I genuinely thought I owed him the date to honour our deal, I spent the next half an hour attempting to fight him off, before giving in and “allowing” him to grope me, because I thought that maybe I had unknowingly consented to this by agreeing to go on a date with him, and that it would be over sooner and then he would let me go home.
After another half an hour passed, I started to complain that I wanted to leave. An hour seem like a long like a long enough time for it to be considered a real date, but he continued to grope me and I began fighting him off again, feeling dirty, violated, and ashamed of myself for allowing it.
Toxic guilt is an emotion that I feel a lot, shame it’s not. Yet, I am still, to this day, ashamed that I “allowed” him to touch me, even though it wouldn’t be the only time I stopped fighting somebody who was sexually assaulted me in order to, ironically, make that assault stop.
Am I ashamed of this?
Of course.
But I am admitting it due to how important I believe admitting it is.
We all make mistakes, owning up to them is important, and as a rule I never lie, even by omission. I can’t lie, I am extremely bad at it, but even if I was good at it, it’s no way to live your life being afraid of the mistakes you have made and the lies you have told resurfacing. Yet, this isn’t why I am admitting it, my reasons are these –
1. I’m not trying to get anybody in trouble and/or ruin their reputation and/or lives by writing this blog, and if I was it would be for the stuff they have actually done.
2. As it is my opinion that you shouldn’t lie and should own up to your mistakes, as well as believing that you should live your life “privately” in the way you would live it “publicly,” if Ste S or anybody else I have or do write about doesn’t like me telling the truth about them, they should never of done what they did. Their shame or upset isn’t my problem. My problem is the trauma and damage they have inflicted on me and my life.
3. I don’t believe that I am the first or last person to “allowed” somebody to get their assault over with, because they are desperate for it to end and resisting feels like they are prolonging the assault. I want that to change. I want people in that situation to fight, especially young vulnerable people, and I want to anybody who can’t fight for any reason not to be blamed for it, and for the blame to be put rightly on the abuser.
4. Finally I want everyone to know, understand and admit that agreeing to go on a date, or be in a relationship with somebody, isn’t consent to being touched, photographed et cetera, etc, etc.
Luckily, I had informed my mum that I wasn’t planning on staying long, so, at around three hour mark, she was beyond worried and called me to check I was “okay.” Though I don’t recall our conversation, I remember telling her I was about to leave, assuming that he would have no choice but to end the date if I said this, as he would know she was expecting me back home.
He on the other hand, somehow got the impression that my mother was ordering me to go home because the house was empty, and she didn’t want it to be. No, I don’t know why he got this impression either.
After offering to walk me home which I refused, he followed me, trying to grope me as he did.
We were less than half a mile down the street when we reached another depressing looking pub and he became distracted. “Do you want to go in for a drink?”
“No. I want to go home. I have wanted to go home for hours. I want to go home,” I whined.
“It’s just one drink,” he said angrily, as though I was going to trust him after the ordeal he had just put me through. Then he said what alerted me to the fact that he thought I was on my way home to an empty house and my blood ran cold. “No one is going to know you’re not home if the house is empty.”
“My house isn’t empty. My mum and sister are home.” What was he planning to do to me in an empty house if he had assaulted me in a pub while two pervy old men watched?
“What?” He slipped up, then managed to prevent himself from saying more that would have betrayed his intentions, but it was too late, I had seen the rage slip into this features for just a second. Pretending to check the time on his ugly, gaudy, oversized, cheap watch that he probably thought was bling, he gave the worst acting performance I have ever witnessed. He fake gasped “Oh! I didn’t know it was that late. I have to go home. My mum is going to be worried sick about me.” Then he leaned in trying to kiss me. When I pulled away he grabbed my hair with one hand and my chest with the other and rammed his tongue down my throat, before walking off the way we came, calling over his shoulder that he would see me in work. It sounded like a threat.
Phase 3 – Phase 3
Disregarding tips –
1. Relax and run tall
2. Find your happy place
Now focusing on –
1. Getting back to my original pace
2. Lengthening my stride.
Monday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Tuesday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Wednesday: Rest Day
Thursday: 3/4 of a lap of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking
1 lap of 7 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
1/4 of a lap of 3 1/2minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
= 3.3 to 4 miles
Friday: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking = 3.324 miles
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
Total miles= 13.296
Total run % = 70
Phase 3-Week 3
Day 15: Monday
On Monday, I throwaway my plan to do another week of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking and progress to 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
As a result of the first lap being easy (it will be the only easy lap of the week) I feel like I have made the right decision, not that I considered it before I did it. Like on so many other occasions, I left the flat with the intention of doing one thing and less than a minute later I was doing another.
The second lap is slightly harder and it is made far waste by the people I encounter, who are –
• 2 individual and separate smokers.
⁃ Every exercise day this week, I have passed at least 1 smoker. I really hope that it is a result of it being summer and/or the covid restrictions being lifted and it dies back down, as it’s not only causing me breathing problems while I’m running, but also during the rest of the time.
• And a man spraying his garden, with some (probably toxic) mystery liquid.
Watching the pavement is crucial, due to all the inconsiderate idiots that drive vehicles along them and I don’t see him spraying his garden until it’s too late, which makes me wonder if when he sprays me, he sprays me on purpose. This man definitely would’ve seen me coming, as the garden walls/fences/bushes are low down all the way along this road and it is 1/4 of a lap, or 1/4 of 1.662 miles, and his house is near the end of the street. As I pass, the spray shoots out so far, that it not only hits me, but also a passing car. Whatever he is spraying isn’t water. I know this because it goes into my left eye, causing it to burn and sting, as well as my mouth and it doesn’t taste like water. This happens near the end of my run, causing me to walk the rest of the way home, because of the pain and irritation in my left eye.
I complete 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 16: Tuesday
This week I’m still working on my pace and stride, as well as 1 new tip from the relax and run tall list, which is the bend your arms at 90° angles tip.
Although I am only two days into this exercise week, by the time I finish today’s run, I decided that all these tips are having a negative impact on my run. Maybe I will revisit them at a later stage and have a different opinion, I doubt both, but for now I am writing all these tips off as terrible advice.
The problems that I am having with each of these pieces of advice are as follows –
1. Take small strides
Do you remember in phase 2, when I said that I wanted to work on taking bigger strides,
Well, I never achieved that.
This makes me wonder what is classed as short strides and what is classed as long strides.
My strides still feel too short – and now I am what? – Trying to keep them this size? – Trying to shorten them? – When I still feel as though I need to be increasing them.
My stride length is far from comfortable, and it is because they are too small.
So, back to trying to increase them I go.
2. Find your happy pace
Running slowly has done the opposite of help me, it is made running much more difficult for me, and as a result my knees hurt so badly that they keep forcing me to stop mid run.
To make matters worse, I can’t get back to my previous pace.
Due to the fact that I am a naturally fast walker, I’m also a naturally fast runner.
I’m furious at the guide.
I’m furious at myself.
My original pace was my happy place and I have allowed the guide to destroy it .
In an attempt to fix this, I will be adding 2 extra weeks of 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking, while working on getting back to my normal pace.
3. Bend your elbows at 90° angles
Listen, I’m sure if I googled “Why should I bend my elbows at 90° angles while running?” The Internet would have a lot to stay in its favour, but I don’t. My natural elbow angle is an acute angle between my upper and lower arm on the inside. While I’m running outside, so having to carry stuff, that’s not going to change. Constantly reminding myself to adjust them is distracting to the point of causing me to stop to correct the angel, and because focusing on this is causing me to lose count how many seconds I’ve been running.
Today, all these problems are beyond irritating to me.
I complete a very stop, starty, 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minute walking.
Day 17: Wednesday
Wednesday is a rest day.
Day 18: Thursday
On Thursday, it feels like I am stopping to walk too frequently, which I know isn’t the case, as I am running for longer, meaning I am stopping less frequently than I was before. However, the feeling is annoying me so much that when I reach the 3/4 point of my first lap, I change my run time to 7 minutes and my walk time to 3 minutes, not changing them back until I’ve done a full lap.
I complete collapse of 70% running, 30% walking.
Day 19: Friday
Going for a run on Friday is a mistake, as I still struggle on every second exercise day I do in a row.
For some reason, I don’t understand, not to do with the exercise itself, but rather with writing about it, I have begun to desperately want to get my exercise days out of the way.
This is having a negative impact on both my ability to run and my progress.
Although I have promised myself, for 5 (?) Weeks, that I will go back to exercising on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, I mean it this time.
I completely left of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 20: Saturday
Saturday is a rest day.
De 21: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Phase 3 – Week 4: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking
Phase 3 – Week 5 : 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking
Phase 3 – Week 6: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking
Phase 3 – Week 7: 2 laps of 4 minutes running, 1 minutes walking
Phase 3 – Week 8: 2 laps of 4 minutes running, 1 minutes walking
Phase 3 – Week 9: 2 laps of 4 1/2 minutes running, 1/2 minute walking
Phase 3 – Week 10: 2 laps of 4 minutes running, 1/2 minute walking
Phase 3- Week 11: Full run
Ironically, the harassment began with Ash B. She was the first person to mention that Ste S “cared deeply for me” and had been “intensely smitten with me,” since my first day. The nagging began immediately. [“] [I] should let him take [me]on a date. He [was] a great guy. He [was] a genuinely nice guy. He [would] looked after [me] unlike [her] brother. [I] was truly lucky to have Ste S interested in [me].[“]
It didn’t take me long to snap at her, only a matter of hours, which speaks for how relentless she was.
Things would get much heavier the longer it went on, and the more people that got involved.
“If you think that I’m so lucky, you go on a date with him.”
“He doesn’t like me. He likes you,” She shrugged, as though she would’ve happily gone on a date with him.
She continued to nag me about it even after I snapped at her.
Helen, my closest friends at the DIY store, despite her being ten years my senior, and us only seeing each other for around half an hour a week, if we were working our normal shifts, was next to get involved. “I know you’re going through a rough time right now Pix, but that’s why you should go on a date with him, you need to have a bit of fun. He genuinely cares about you. He’ll look after you unlike Michael. Plus, if you go on a date with him and you still feel the same afterwards, then you can tell him – I have been on a date with you, so I know that I don’t want to go on another.”
I don’t recall the order in which all the others got involved but I do recall the extend to which I was nagged. Managers were even involved, mainly, manager A and Jo. Nobody seem to speak to me unless it was about work or Ste S, and it went on for weeks.
Maybe most people wouldn’t have broke in this situation, but I did. I have blamed myself for what happened for almost twenty years. It is only through writing this story that I have begun to realise I was bullied into what happened. There were so many factors that contributed to what happened and most of those factors seemed to be adults, some with power, manipulating a vulnerable, inexperienced, barely adult woman, into a position where a grown man in his mid-twenties could abuse her. I was only eighteen. This was my first real job. I had just been dumped by my first ever boyfriend, because he was a liar, and his friend sexually assaulted me. I was waiting for HIV test results – Who was going to want me if I had HIV? I was also so trusting and naive in that I assumed everybody had voluntarily decided to play matchmaker themselves. At this point I had very serious, undiagnosed mental illnesses that would have been affecting, and that would’ve been somewhat obvious to those around me. They probably never realised that I was ill, but they certainly would have have realise that my behaviour and “personality wasn’t “normal,” and that I was vulnerable to their bullying and manipulation.
With tears in my eyes, I begged all of these people to stop pressuring me. I had made it clear that I wasn’t interested in Ste S.
You see, I secretly and actively despised Ste S. However, I didn’t feel like I could admit that I didn’t like him, because everybody else did like him.
Physically he made Michael C look like a model. He repulsed me. He had a giant head, with a bulbous chin, cheeks and forehead. His eyes lips and teeth were far too small of his face. Although his arms and legs didn’t look overweight, his stomach protruded, which I would later learn was a “beer belly.”
If you’re thinking I’m a horrible, vain person, who was only concerned with physical beauty, you are wrong, because his personality was more offputting to me than his physical appearance.
Although he apparently remembered the first time we met, I wouldn’t remember it until after “we broke up.”
If there were too many Michael’s working at the DIY shop, then we were over run with Stes. At least where the Michaels where concerned some of them went by Mike, and to his close friends at the DIY store Michael B was affectionately known as Mickey B, although I never did find out why. In the case of the Ste’s they all went by Ste, we had no Stes, Stevens or Stephens.
Looking back, all the Stes were pricks, every single one of them without exception. Two of them though, Ste S and Ste Woodhall, were pricks for the exact same reason, they both thought that they were better than everybody else. Bizarrely, although they weren’t friends (and in Ste Woodhalls defence, he was never involved in the harassment that I faced at the hands of Ste S) they behaved very similarly at work.
Nobody ever questioned their behaviour, or stood up to them, the reason being that the supervisors and managers enabled their behaviour. Their behaviour was long established by the time I began working there, so I never felt capable of directly challenging them, but I never liked them or their behaviour, and certainly never followed their orders. Neither of the pair were supervisors. Yet, they acted like they were, giving out orders and attempting to punish anybody who didn’t follow them, even if their orders directly contradicted the orders the other members of staff had been given by the supervisors or managers. They believe that they knew everything and everybody else knew nothing, and on the very rare occasion that a colleague dared to stand their ground because they were right and they knew it, they would receive a brutal and public dressing down. While the pair got away with not getting all their stock out, and being rude to customers and colleagues, they would report others for what they perceive to be a rude attitude, not getting all their stock out and writing off damaged stock. They even reported people for things like going a minute over their allocated break time, not going on break at exactly the second they should’ve, even when it was because that person was helping a customer, and going to the toilet, “too much.”
The managers never questioned how the pair knew all of this if they were where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to be doing.
To add insult to injury, Ste S was both the rudest employer and the biggest skiver.
On one occasion, I was walking towards the pet department when he popped out from between the bottom shelf an the shelf above it, which had been cleared of stock for a remerch, scaring the shit out of me. Convinced that was what he had intended to do, I demanded to know why he was lying on the shelf.
“I really needed a break, and I don’t have any more to take,” he said, as though he should be entitled to more breaks than the rest of us. His tone implied he had been working hard, when really he hadn’t.
On an abnormally slow Saturday evening, (due to a football match being played at the Liverpool ground, which was just down the road) while I was still working on the checkouts, I saw him leave the store alone. It had been hours since my lunch break, and I was overdue my last break because nobody had come to relieve me, despite me making several tannoy requests for them to do so. No customers has entered or exited the store in hours, so I certainly hadn’t served anybody with, or released a prepaid kitchen to anybody. Ste S was in a foul mood because he was missing the match (even though we supported Everton) and lots of employees snuck out for cigarette breaks, which was blatantly what he was doing, so I really didn’t pay any attention to him until the commotion started. He had only been out there a couple of seconds when I heard shouting and metal clashing. Startled and wondering if I need to press the panic button, I leaned awkwardly over the counter to see what was happening. Ste S was bright red and screaming at a group of boys, who looked about twelve, and trying to ram them with a trolley. The boys looked scared and a couple of them were shouting back. One of them was trying to use another trolley to protect himself and his friends from the one that Ste S was trying to ram them with.
When he came back in and I asked him what had happened, he told me this blatant lie –
“I was coming back from helping a customer pack a kitchen into their car, when I saw those chav (Ste S was more of a chav than those children) abusing our customers. I caught them earlier in here trying to steal and threw them out, so when I asked them to leave our customers alone, they attacked me.)
Though I can’t prove it, I am sure those boys weren’t in our store earlier that day, as there was nothing of interest in there for them, and they definitely weren’t stealing if they were, because our store had a strict policy on detaining shoplifters and calling the police, without exceptions, even for children.
The final incident took place on a busy Saturday afternoon and actually happen after “we broke up.”
Kelly had called me to the paint mixer, as I was on paint mixing duty that day, so I was the one with the keys to the paint mixer. I was unlocking the doors to it, listening to the customer talk about what paint she wanted, when another customer approached me asking for help.
“I’m really sorry,” I apologised. “I’m just mixing some paint for this lady. If you don’t mind waiting I’ll help you as soon as I’m done, but it’s probably going to be quicker for you to ask the cashier to call somebody else for you.”
“I’d rather wait for you,” seemed agitated. “The cashier called someone to help me, but he refused.”
“That’s awful,” I cringed. I believed her, and I would’ve been furious if I was her.
She nodded and waited patiently, hovering at the side of my vision, which I found really distracting and stressful.
Once I had mixed the paint, I informed her that I would be back in a minute, then I carried the paint to the checkout and left it on the shelf under the counter for Kelly, before heading back.
Even when she produced chain from the bag she was clutching and requested I cut it in half, I did not make the connection.
“I think there’ll be a charge for it, but I might be wrong, because I’m not trained to cut chain. That’s probably why the other person couldn’t help you. Didn’t he offer to call somebody that could cut it for you?”
She shook her head. Then handed me two receipts, one for the chain, the other for the cutting charge, both from that day. “I’ve paid. My husband bought twice as much as we needed. I’m obviously not after a refund for the extra, it’s just too long to use the way it is.”
Before she could say anymore, I told her I was going to get a colleague who could cut the chain, but that I would return to wait with her, rather than just abandoning her. Wrongly, due to it being Saturday, I assumed it would be Lee, one of the supervisors on chain and wire cutting duty, as it always was, but it was Ste S that Kelly called for me when I explained what I needed.
Pissed off that I had to deal with Ste S, I headed back to the cutting machine, and the two of us waited for ages.
As soon as he arrived, his face turned hard and pink. “I’ve already told you I can’t cut it! You should’ve got it cut when you bought it!” He waved his hand at us.
I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the floor (exaggeration of course) as the memory came back to me, and I realise that I had first met Ste S when he refused to cut my wire.
“Okay Ste, thanks. That’s all we needed,” I muttered, thinking fast. I waited until he was gone before I turn to the lady. “I’m going to speak to my supervisor. Please wait here.”
This time, when I got to the till, I put out the tannoy call myself for Lee.
He came right away.
“What’s up, trouble?” He joked.
“I’ve got a lady who wants some chain cutting,” I handed him the receipts. “Can we do it?”
Examining the receipts, he nodded. “I’m not on chain today.”
“I know. I was hoping you would teach me to cut it,” I gave him my biggest, most enthusiastic smile.
“Of course,” he agreed. “Let me find out who has the keys.”
The pair of Stes didn’t stop at trying to control staff members in work. They also tried to get people in trouble for what they did outside of work. It didn’t take much to trigger their malice, staying at your boyfriends or girlfriends house was enough for them to try to say your personal life was effecting your work performance. Their favourite though, was going after people who had been drinking the night, or day, before.
Until I got Facebook, during my first year of university, by which time I had already quit my job at the DIY shop, I knew nothing about Ste Woodhalls life outside of work, other than he was a university student. Although I was never Facebook friends with him, we obviously had mutual friends, which was how I found out that he had been out drinking just like the rest of us had.
Ste S was far worse than Ste Woodhall when it came to being a hypocrite though, particularly were drinking was concerned. I found this out much sooner, in a much harder way. You see, Ste S was an aspiring alcoholic, meaning he didn’t just drink every night after work, and on his days off, he also drank on his lunch breaks, and some time before work. Then he operated heavy machinery, and drove the forklift he didn’t have a license for. When I reported him to the managers, they did nothing.
What I wouldn’t find out until much later was that Ste S had somehow convince everybody to harass me. They’d all been aware of how he felt since my first day, but had said nothing because he told them not to. It was Michael Cs rumours about me that inspired him to take action. In his opinion, [“] If [I] [would have] sex with Michael C, [I ] [would have] sex with anybody, and it should [have been] [him] because [he] saw [me] first. [“]
This is the man my friends thought was a [“]great, genuinely nice, chilled out guy,” who “genuinely cared about [me] and would look after [me].[“]
After I started working at the DIY shop, I did occasionally buy things from there; small things for my bedroom, holidays and college; such as fairy lights, paint and wallpaper.
My mum bought things from there more regularly, as she had a house to maintain and it was the nearest DIY shop to our house.
There was one occasion though, before I started working there, but after I had handed in my sparsely filled CV, that I was technically a customer at the DIY shop.
It was during my first few weeks on my national diploma course, which was in fashion and clothing design. Things were hectic those first few weeks. The teachers set us several small projects, that still required a lot of work, and which all over lapped
The theme of the hardest was, simply umbrellas.
The only rule was that, the garment had to be handmade.
I had designed a very large skirt.
“It’s going to need a structure structure. Some sort of wire, like on an actual umbrella,” one of my design teachers, Emma, advised me. “You’re probably going to need a hoop to go around the waist and the bottom, then panels all the way around.”
After searching all the haberdasheries, craft stores and art stores, I felt like I had bitten off more than I could chew, because I couldn’t find anything that seemed suitable. I had my fabric, but it wasn’t useful, and I couldn’t progress, without the wire for the structure.
Then one day, when I got home from college, there were metres of expensive looking wire waiting for me. My mum had seen it at the DIY shop and bought it for me.
As grateful as I was, and even though she had bought me a pair of wire cutters, I encountered a problem immediately. The wire was one long strand, and too thick for my wirecutters to make a dent in.
My mum had bought me both of these things on impulse. She’d been at the DIY shop looking for something else, when she saw the reels of wire and chain. As the wire had been cut off a reel, it was understandably unreturnable. However, we had the receipt, so my mum suggested that we go back to the DIY shop and pay the charge for them to cut it for us, which she couldn’t have done at the time she purchased it, as she didn’t know the measurements of the lengths I needed. As I was on a deadline and was eager to start constructing the garment, we headed back to the store straightaway.
It was early evening when we arrived, so the store was empty. We explain the situation to the lady on the till, who I know was Cath, and paid the charge. She instructed us to go and wait at the reel and she would call her colleague to help us. We for quite awhile, so long that we started wondering if one of us should go back to the checkout to ask the lady to call her colleague on the tannoy again. It was then that a man, who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties appeared to “help us”.
Politely, I explain what I needed and produce both our receipts and the wire.
“Can’t do it,” he huffed bluntly, in a tone that suggested we were inconveniencing him. “It has to be done when you buy it.”
“We only bought it a couple of hours ago. I’ve paid the cutting charge, and the woman on the till said it could be done.”
“Can’t do it,” he repeated.
“Why? I’ve paid,” I tried to show him my receipts.
He didn’t look at them, didn’t try to take them, just stared blankly at me. “Can’t do it.”
It wasn’t just his refusal after I had paid that caused me to snap, it was his attitude too, as well as the repetition, “Are you serious? Do you know how to say anything else?”
His expression twisted into one that seemed to accuse me of being the rude person in this situation, and he glared angrily at me.
“Come on Rach. He can’t do it. Let’s go and see if we can get a refund,” my mum suggested, calmly.
“We fucking better be able to,” I complained, as I followed her to the end of the aisle. I was upset, because I had seen the price of the wire on the receipt, so I knew my mum had paid a lot of money for the wire and I wasn’t going to be able to use it. As I reach the end of the aisle, I saw him watching us out the corner of my eye, which made me turn to confirm what I was seeing. He was watching me, with an expression of harmed bewilderment, as though I done something awful to him.
Cath gave us our money back, and apologised. My mum had enquired as to whether there was a different member of staff that could help us before requesting the refund, but Cath had insisted that he was the only person with a set of keys, as he was the only person in that night trained to cut the wire and chain, and so he was the only one in that night that knew the policy around using the machine.
Although I left the store that evening furious and defeated, I soon forgot about the bizarre interaction, because my garment construction teacher said she didn’t know how we would fasten the wire together, and even if she did, the skirt would be far too heavy to wear.
My schedule
Monday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 3.324 miles
Tuesday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 3.324 miles
Wednesday: Rest day
Thursday: 1 laps of 6 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 1.662 miles
1 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 1.662 miles
Total miles: 3.324
Friday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 3.324 miles
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
Phase 3- Week 2
Day 8: Monday
The first Monday and Tuesday of every fortnight are always busy for me, because I do things like pay my bills. Today, I also have a blood test to go to. By the time I get around to going for my run, I am hungry, tired and in a terrible mood. Add to this that my legs feel stiff and its raining outside. I don’t want to go for my run. I want to stay home, make dinner and get ready for bed, but I am dedicated to my exercise routine, so I go.
I’ve not been out long when my eyes start burning. Unsure of whether it’s the rain itself causing the burning, or if the rain is mixing with sweat, I try my best not to rub my eyes. This is impossible. Having water in my eyes restricts my poor vision further and feels awful, even without the burning.
At the half way point of my first lap, I pass three teenage boys. I haven’t gotten far when they sprint up to, and run alongside, me, before passing me. As they do, one of them puts his arms out, as though he is crossing the finish line of a race.
I have to stop running, as I am gone laughing.
I complete 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 9: Tuesday
Yesterday night, while I was washing my hair, I discovered a massive lump on the back of my head. When I touch it, it sends ripples of pain, accompanied by popping sounds and sensations, across my head, and I feel as though I am going to be sick.
The lump wasn’t there when I woke up. I don’t feel like I have had a seizure, and I haven’t woken up on the ground or anywhere strange. Also, I don’t seem to have any missing time. From what I remember of the day, I haven’t banged my head.
Finding the lump was distressing enough, but the circumstances around finding it made that distress even worse. I am already emotionally fragile, so one online appointment request, four phone calls to and from my doctors surgery, which includes one telephone appointment, over both today and yesterday, and I am a hysterical mess, that can not stop crying.
I debate going for a run.
Con- If I can’t stop crying, I wont be able to run.
Pro- Going for a run might stop the crying.
Eventually, I decide to go. It does stop the crying, but only while I am running. As soon as I get home, I start crying again.
I complete 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 10: Wednesday
On Tuesday night, I accidentally take my antidepressant instead of my antipsychotic. I realise what I have done about half an hour later, when I begin to feel shaky and wired (?). A quick look at my pillboxes confirms my error.
Due to how exhausted I am, I do try to sleep, but I can’t, so I get back up and tell myself that I am going to use this time to finish my phase 2 guide, which I have been struggling to write for days now.
when I finish, I am disappointed with how little I had to say about phase 2 and am worried its not my best work because of how tired I am.
Regardless, I move straight on to planning phase 2, which looks like this:
Week 1: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking. (Already completed.)
Week 2: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking. (This week.)
Week 3: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Week 4: 2 laps of 3 1/2 minutes running, 1 1/2 minutes walking.
Week 5: 2 laps of 4 minutes running, 1 minutes walking.
Week 6: 2 laps of 4 minutes running, 1 minutes walking.
Week 7: 2 laps. Full run.
Once my plan is down on paper, I feel a bit worried about my final week, as it feels like too much of a huge progress leap.
When I start reading the guides advice for phase 3 that worry grows, as it confirms my suspicions that 7 weeks isn’t long enough to progress from half a run to a full run.
About its own phase 3 schedule the guide says, “If its moving to fast then you may want to spend two weeks or more on each weeks training before you feel ready to move on. You can stretch this plan on as long as you like, although, ideally, you’d complete it in 14 weeks.”
Immediately, I have the urge to change my plan, but fight it and read tip 1.
This is enough to break my plan.
Tip 1
Find your happy pace
This tip advices us to run at a pace where we could hold a conversation, in order to run farer.
No matter how fast I go, I would alway be, as the guide puts it, “huffing and Puffing.” Also, I am a naturally faster walker, so I am naturally a fast runner. Running slowly is difficult for me.
The reason it breaks my plan though is this line-
“If you run faster than you should, it’s going to hurt all the time and you’ll never get to a point where you can do it for 30 minutes.”
I decide to change my plan properly tomorrow, but for now I write a note to remind me that both weeks 2 and 3 will be 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, and that I will be working on both my pace and stride during these two weeks.
Day 11: Thursday
After not sleeping on Tuesday night, I fall asleep at around 2pm on Wednesday afternoon and am woken up by my neighbour upstairs at around 4am on Thursday morning.
As I sit with a cup of coffee I think about tip 1 and start to feel angry.
Is the guide trying to sabotage peoples progress?
Thats how it feels.
While I clean my flat, I seethe over it some more, until it becomes to much.
At around 8am, I drag my exercise clothes on and head out.
For my first lap, I run for 6 minutes and walk for 2 minutes. This is enough to kill myself doubt. For my second lap I run for 3 minutes and walk for 2 minutes.
Although its busy, I wish I was up early enough to run at this time every day.
Day 12: Friday
I was planning in going for a run today, but as soon as I wake up, I begin to question whether it’s a good idea.
The reasons that I was planning to make today an exercise day are:
1. I had a doctors appointment booked for this afternoon to go in and have the lump on the back of my head checked.
2. I really want two rest days in a row.
However, everything seems to be warning me not to go.
Firstly, the lump on my head is almost completely gone, as is the pain and popping, and the nausea is gone, so I cancel my appointment.
Secondly, I have no running leggings to put on under my tracksuit bottoms, which doesn’t prevent me from going, it just means I will be extra distracted and annoyed during my run.
Finally, that extra 3 minutes I did per run cycle has really taken its toll on me. I am absolutely exhausted and my legs, knees and feet are aching.
In the end, I promise myself that I’ll take it easy and work on my stride and pace. Then I pull on my running clothes and head out.
It’s difficult, but I survive it, which seems like an achievement.
I complete 3 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 13: Saturday
Saturday is a rest day.
Day 14: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Part 2.C
The End
It wasn’t until I got to the toilet that I realised just how much of a mess I actually was. My T-shirt and trousers were so soaked through with paint that, my underwear was also covered in it. I threw my T-shirt in the bin and began trying to wash the emulsion off my stomach, arms and face, but because it was matt, the water multiplied it and I ended up smearing it around my body instead. Frustrated, I tried to wipe it off with toilet paper, but the toilet paper was so cheap that it’s stuck to my skin in clumps. After picking as much of it off me as I could, I opened the new T-shirt and pulled it on. It was so big on me that it was probably a safety Hazard. It was definitely going to get in the way of me doing anything I need to, so I attempted to tie it in a knot to one side, but it wouldn’t stay tied.
Feeling agitated, I left the toilet, telling myself that I just had to make it to eight o’clock. This didn’t make me feel any better, as that was the majority of my shift.
Little did I know, the worst was yet to come.
The wallpaper department was three or four aisles wide and half the length of the store, from the back aisle to the centre aisle. Its shelves were smaller in height than those in most of the other departments. Although they were still taller than me, if I stood on my toes and reached up, I could touch the lip of the top shelf. The reason the shelves had lips on was because they slanted down. This allowed the wallpaper to roll to the front, without rolling off. Each shelf was deep enough for one roll of wallpaper, but because of the over stocking issue, they were crammed three rows high. A lot of the time, trying to pull out a roll, resulted in both the plastic wrapper and the paper catching on the sharp jagged metal, which tore them apart. It would then be discarded onto the floor, where it would get dirty, trodden on and torn to shreds.
The borders were kept along the top shelves, and should also have only been stacked one row high. However, due to there being no shelf above them to prevent it, they were stacked seven or eight rows high. This made tidying the wallpaper department like playing the most infuriating game of Jenga, but with a deadline. The slightest bit of pressure, or balancing a border in the wrong place, would bring an avalanche of them down on top of you.
It was more difficult for me, as ladders didn’t fit down those aisle because they were so narrow, and I couldn’t actually reach above the lip of the top shelf.
Dreading what I would find, when I got there, I did a walk around to assess what needed to be done. I was relieved to find that the bulk of the mess was torn wallpaper and plastic. There were no undamaged rolls to cram back in, and only a couple of stray borders.
Finding a rare space on a wallpaper shelf, I carefully placed the borders in there, before I began to gather up the mess. I had only just started, when I heard laughing in the next aisle and a mountain of borders came crashing down, most of them hitting, or bouncing off me, before they landed and rolled off in different directions.
Overwhelm, I wanted to sit down on the floor and cry, but, somehow, I managed to hold myself together.
Honestly, I am not sure I even thought any further than trying to scoop up all the borders, which there were far too many of, for me to hold them all at once. I just acted in the moment, hysterical and on the edge of an emotional explosion.
Michael appeared in the centre aisle, laughing. As he walked towards me, reaching above his head, he knocked down another pile.
“Stop it!” I screamed, dropping some of the borders that I was already holding, as I tried to scoop more up.
Again, laughing, he reached up. That’s when I exploded. Grabbing a border, I threw it at him, screaming at him to leave me alone, as I did.
He jumped back, still howling, and waving his arm above his head.
Still screaming, I threw another. He jumped back, this time into the centre aisle, taunting me as he did.
I have no recollection of what he said, just how I reacted. I hurled another border at him. It’s sailed towards him, high and fast. I was sure it was going to hit him, but at the last minute he slid to his right.
That’s when I saw her. A woman, who must have been in her early thirties, dressed in office clothes, standing in the aisle behind the centre aisle.
Panic gripped me, even though I was sure that she was too far away. After all, I was terrible at throwing. Yet, the border was still sailing through the air towards her. My anger had given me a skill that I didn’t usually possess. I watched in horror as the border hit her, hard, in the shoulder, causing her to drop whatever she was holding.
For a second, all three of us stood there stunned. Then she spun around and roared “Which one of you little shits threw that?”
Rage and fear, that I was about to get fired, flared up inside me. It was so powerful, I felt not only my face but my arms burn red. Starting to cry, I turned and run towards the toilet, shouting that she’d rather deal with my manager than me. It was true.
I sat in the toilets and cried for over half an hour. Then pulling myself together, I decided that I better go and face Jo. I found her at the checkout.
“Jo,” I sniffed.
“I know,” she held up her hand stopping me. “Go face up your usual aisles.”
“Where’s Michael?” I asked, afraid of what he was going to do next.
“Tidying the wallpaper,” she told me.
Part 2.B
Michael B and his workplace privileges
If you had asked me before I knew Michael B’s surname, whether he was a lazy or a poorly performing employee, I would’ve said no. In fact I would’ve said that he was a hard worker, as that is the impression he always gave me. Yet, I heard a lot about Michael B from the other employees; he was lazy; he was an idiot; he was a poor performer; he played a lot of jokes that weren’t funny, and were sometimes dangerous; he got away with it all because his mother was a manager.
When I finally learnt his surname, I couldn’t understand why our colleagues had this awful impression of him.
Then, while we were a couple, the customer complaints began; he was stupid; he ignore them completely when they asked him for help; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yet, I always believed that at worst these incidents were misunderstandings; maybe hadn’t heard them; or, at best, just customers being customers; maybe he gave them accurate information, that they just didn’t like.
It wasn’t until this current story, that we are in the middle of, that I started to believe everything that I had heard about him. As we worked more shifts together, I began to feel as though our colleagues and customers had been overly nice about him and played down his bullshit, even while they complained about him.
On one occasion, he tried to cause another verbal and physical altercation between us, and despite me managing the unbelievably difficult task of ignoring him while he screamed at me and shoved me, we both got punished.
I was sent to clean some shelves, with of all things, WD40. Yes, I know that it’s not meant to be used for general cleaning and posed a serious risk to my health, especially because I am asthmatic, but I am vulnerable to due to my mental illnesses, and to make matters worse, work is a BDP trigger, so I have always allowed myself to be bullied at my places of employment, afraid that if I don’t I will lose my job.
Michael was given a bucked, some tools and a map of where all the mouse traps where, and sent it to collect all of the dead rats.
He enthusiastically hurried off, which should’ve been a warning sign.
About half an hour had passed when I got that uneasy feeling that somebody was behind me, and turned to find Michael attempting to creep up on me, with the bucket in both hands
We where mid argument about why he kept trying to cause fights with me, when a colleague (I don’t remember who) came to warn me that Michael had been bragging that he was going to tip the bucket of rats over my head.
Annoyed, Michael exploded into a massive rant at them, for “taking my side,” and then stormed off, as though pouring dead rats on somebody was harmless fun.
On another occasion, I caught him setting up one of his “pranks.”
It was New Year’s Eve, and the store was extremely quiet. Although we were closing hours earlier than usual, the manager had given us the same amount of work to do, as they would’ve done if we were closing at our normal time.
This meant, I was rushing around, trying to get everything done.
There was only me and Michael working on the shopfloor that day.
Though I was wondering what was keeping Michael away from me, which meant that I was on edge worrying that he was plotting another way to attack me, I was glad of the peace and interruption free shift, up to that point.
As I hurried between the back aisle and the warehouse, I saw him up ahead and was just about to duck down an aisle and go the long way around, when he noticed me.
“Rachel!” He called.
A first, I pretended that I hadn’t heard him, but he continued to call me.
“What?” I said, hoping whatever he wanted from me would be quick.
“Pick that pound up for me,” he replied, pointing to a pound coin on the floor, near where he was standing.
“No,” I shook my head.
“Pick it up,” he demanded.
“Pick up yourself,” I told him.
“I can’t,” he grinned, proudly, “It’s glued to the floor.” Then he turned to the shelf end he was standing next to, picked up an open tube of superglue and resumed spreading it over the shelf, picking up the bottles of PVC glue and then putting them back down on top of the superglue as he did.
“What are you doing?” I enquired, confused.
“Gluing the glue to the shelf,” he informed me, as though both acted itself and his reason should’ve been obvious to me.
“Why?” I bit.
Spinning around, he pointed to the warehouse. “You can see out,” he explained. “Me and [insert colleague name, I don’t remember] glued that pound to the floor and watched customers try to pick it up last week. It was a hilarious. One man tried to pick us up for like ten minutes,” he laughed.
unimpressed, I walked down the aisle he was at the end of, and away from him as fast as I could.
Part 2.A
The overstocking issue
As my last two Sunday blog posts have touched on the overstocking issue at the DIY shop, but not actually explained it, I’ve decided that it’s a good place to start this week set of posts.
In last weeks post, I told you about an event that it contributed to, where the dog food became mouldy and maggot infested. I want to make it clear that I am in no way denying that Helen and Ste W played a part in what happened. Although overstocking contributed to this event, so did staff laziness and/or ignorance, as they should’ve been rotating the pet food, so that the freshest food was on the bottom, or at the back.
In the post before last weeks, I told you about how Jo made me and Michael overstock the pallet of paint. Those tubs of paint were without a doubt, a safety risk, to both staff and customers.
Firstly, They could’ve simply fallen over, but the weight of them could’ve also cracked the wooden pallet and brought all the sacks of paint down. As a teenager those particular risks never occurred to me, but what did occur to me was the possibility that customers who were trying to reach one of the tubs, might drop it, or pull the entire stack down onto themselves. I want to make it known that I expressed these concerns every time I was given the task of overstocking them, as well as the possibility that I might drop it, or they might fall on me. The response was always the same-
“Get on with it.”
Luckily, at leat while I worked there, none of these things happened, but there was some near misses, mainly customers dropping the tubs onto the floor and the tubs bursting open.
It was an unwritten policy at our store, which was part of a nationwide chain, that no stock, except bathrooms, kitchens, furniture and sheds were kept in the warehouse. If you physically could not fit all the stock you were given to put out, onto the shopfloor, because there wasn’t enough room for it, that was a fault with your performance and you would receive an “official warning,” as well as threats that if you didn’t work harder you would be fired. Although I don’t remember anybody ever being fired for this, it’s not to say that nobody ever was.
Due to staff that transferred from other branches of our company, I know that this wasn’t company policy.
The dog food and paint weren’t the only casualties of overstocking. Thousands of pounds worth of stock was damaged every year. As damage stock was monitored and recorded as a financial loss by head office, which could lead to an investigation and eventually disciplinary action being taken against the managers, another unwritten store policy was that the damage stock stayed on sale and was never reduced in price. The excuse that the managers gave was that customers would still buy damaged stock and pay full price for it. This reason never sat well with me, as it wasn’t completely untrue. Desperate and/or likely vulnerable customers did buy damaged stock at full price, although it was rare.
This uneasiness aside, keeping damaged stock out seem crazy to me, not only because old damage stock caused new damage stock, but also because it posed a safety risk to staff and customers.
Due to all these reasons, plus it feeling very fraudulent to me, I never followed this unofficial no writing off or reducing stock policy and always wrote it off, which put me amongst the minority. Even though a few of other members of staff always wrote off damaged stock too, it only ever seem to be me that got into trouble for it. Maybe they thought I went out of my way to write off damaged stock, even though it was just that I had a lower threshold for the amount of bullshit I was capable of handling, before I myself broke, so to speak.
An example of this is the time I was facing up and sorted out all the lightbulbs.
We sold lightbulbs in both single and multi packs, most of which rattled when you move them, as they were full of broken glass.
Earlier, when I refer to vulnerable customers, this is what I meant –
The boxes of lightbulbs weren’t sealed closed. You could open them and see inside, meaning you could not only check if they were broken (that is if the rattling didn’t give it away) you could have also swapped the broken bulbs for unbroken bulbs. Yet, some people would buy multipacks where the majority were broken.
On this particular day, the lightbulb had not only just been “restocked,” a customer had gone through several boxes (I assume looking for a full box of undamaged bulbs) then, it seems just drop them onto the floor and bottom shelf, as there were boxes, bulbs and broken glass everywhere.
Risking my own safety, I cleaned up the glass, then went through every box of bulbs in the store, repacking them until I had full boxes of either broken or unbroken bulbs. The few mixed boxes I had, I took to be written off with the damaged stock. I’d like to point out that I could’ve easily, with less risk to my personal safety, just gathered up all the boxes which included damaged bulbs and had them all written off, but I didn’t. I took the time, care and effort to prevent unnecessary financial loss for the store.
Yet, when I took them all to put to in the box in the office where damage stock went to be written off, the managers were furious with me and threatened to give me an “official warning,” until I asked what would happen if a staff member or customer had to cut themselves.
I left the office with neither an answer, or a warning.
A quick note, or rather an apology, before today’s post.
As you all know, I am very unwell with my mental health and as a result I struggle to concentrate. The last few weeks my mental health has been worse than it usually is. As you might have guessed from last weeks post, I’ve been struggling to complete the second part of this story. To be honest I’ve been struggling to even start it, so I have decided to split it up into three parts, with the hope that having smaller sections to work on will finally help me complete it. However, all three parts will be published on the same day.
My schedule
Monday: 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 3.324miles
Tuesday: 3 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 3.24 miles
Wednesday: Rest day
Thursday: 3 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 3.24 miles
Friday: 3 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking – 3.24 miles
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
Phase 3 – Week 1
Day 1: Monday
Slowly, I have fallen behind on everything and that includes my exercise. As usual, I am forgetting to write down notes about my runs that will then be turned into journal blog posts, I am also behind on writing those posts as well, and now I have both a phase 2 guide and a plan for phase 3 to write. Not to mention that it took me over twice the amount of time as it should have to complete phase 2, and I haven’t read, or researched, any tips in a long time.
Reaching phase 3 is hopefully the fresh start I need to get me back on track, even if it’s just with my exercise progress.
My I don’t have a plan yet plan, was to start phase 3 on 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking, which is what I was doing at the end of phase 2, but to reduce my laps to 2. This is because my focus for phase 3 is getting to a full run, and I feel like the long distance is a hindrance to that, and my distance can be worked on once I am fully running. However, when I get outside, I feel as though I will be going backwards not forwards because of these changes if I don’t increase my run time and decrease my walk time, so I do 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Since I started running again, after recovering from my sprained ankle, I’ve had a really painful cut on my left ankle at the back, and now one is developing on my right ankle in the same place. Plus my legs feel stiff.
Not surprisingly, I am almost hit by a bike.
When get to the end of my second lap, I want to do a third and question my plan to only do 2 laps for the entirety of phase 3. Maybe I should feel proud that I go home and stick to the plan, but I don’t. Instead I feel like a lazy failure.
I completed 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minute walking.
Day 2: Tuesday
Tuesday is meant to be a rest day. However, I have an important appointment tomorrow, so I go today instead. Last night, a twitter friend suggested that the reason my legs might be feeling stiff is that I’m not stretching before my run and not taking any water with me. So, on Tuesday, I do take water with me.
Never again.
The bottle that I take is designed for running, it is shaped like a zero so you can put your hand through it, but with my phone and keys, it’s still too much to carry. Not only is it distracting, I keep almost dropping it, my phone and my keys. I stop to drink from it three times, I don’t like that I have you stop if I want to drink out of it.
Today, I encounter two dangerous idiots riding vehicles on the pavement.
The first is woman riding an electric scooter with a child on it. The child is in her way, causing her difficulties controlling the scooter. This is actually becoming a regular issue.
The second is a man on a bike, who as I am passing some gates that are opened out onto the pavement, leaving only enough room for me, comes flying around the corner and doesn’t stop or get onto the road. Honestly, I don’t know how he didn’t hit me, but if he had hit me, I feel like he would have killed me.
I completed 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 3: Wednesday
Wednesday is both a busy and bad day. After my appointment, I have the urge to go for a run, but I tell myself going for a run three days in a row never works out well, and shockingly, I listen.
Day 4: Thursday
Thursdays run is by far the worst of the week. 1/4 of the way around my first lap, I am almost hit by another idiot and child riding an electric scooter together, on the pavement.
Just around the corner from that, I passed a woman smoking. For the rest of my run and the night, I struggle to breathe.
Regardless, I complete 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 5: Friday
Fridays notes are short and to the point. It should have been a rest day, but I went for an uneventful run.
I completed 2 laps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking.
Day 6: Saturday
Saturday is a rest day.
Day 7: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
An Interlude
If you think that the incident from last weeks blog post was a one off and that me and Michael only got away with throwing paint around because his mum was a manager, and close friends with Jo, you are wrong, sadly. Looking back, I honestly believe none of the staff that worked at the DIY shop were mentally stable. As a result, altercations, especially those involving stock as weapons, were common there.
Despite what happened next also not being a particularly rare occurrence, I do believe that if Michael wasn’t involved and Jo wasn’t the manager on duty, I would have been fired, that Thursday night.
Unfortunately, though, you’ll have to wait until next week to read about that, as this week, I am going to tell you about the time I was attacked by a colleague, who didn’t even get in trouble for attacking me, never mind fired.
When Jenny, a self proclaimed army brat, started working at the DIY shop, at the beginning of the summer, she quickly made it clear that only three things interested her; drinking, shagging and creating conflict; if she could do all three at once, even better. Jenny regularly threatened physical violence against, and verbally abused, all none supervisory staff (though she did it in front of them) and, truthfully, she didn’t do much else.
Yet, she immediately, took an extra intense disliking to me. Maybe it was as simple as me being the only person who worked there that was smaller in height than her (although, she weighed a good bit more than me too) or that I really did try my hardest to ignore her unprofessional behaviour and remain professional. Although, it is possible that she knew about Ste s’ obsession with me. After all, it later came to light that, I was the only person who didn’t know about it.
She had flirted with Ste S from her very first day (her version of flirting was more like sexual harassment, but Ste S not only encouraged it, he reciprocated it, which made the pair “uncomfortable” to be around. Personally I felt violated just seeing and hearing the way they interacted).
Her assaulting me took place on, an unusually quiet, Saturday evening, which if I had to guess, I would guess was in the September or October, but it was definitely not long after me and Ste S “broke up.”
Straight after the “break up,” meaning the very same night, he had sex with Jenny in the toilet at michael B’s house, during a party.
Jenny was engaged to somebody else.
Despite this, she was desperate for Ste S’ attention; desperate for him to want her (which eventually lead to one of the people who worked at the DIY store telling her fiancé about the one night stand) but at this point, she was throwing herself at him and being rejected, because he was busy whining about how devastated he was that “I broke up with him,” filling his account of what happened between us with lies, to either gain sympathy for himself, or turn people against me, possibly, both. What’s bizarre is that Jenny would have know that these were lies, just like most of the people he was whining to would have know they were lies, but I wonder whether the two of them convinced themselves that what he was saying was true, or whether they were just vindictive, abusive people, made for each other and their behaviour was amplified by them being around each other.
I, like with the knowledge of his obsession, was the last to know about his whining and lies. It was over two years later when it came to my attention, during an entire year of which he hadn’t seen or spoken to me at all, and I only found out because he was still doing it, and he was doing it to people outside of the DIY shop.
Helen, my closest friend at the DIY shop, who was a decade older than me and the supervisor of the pet store department, didn’t work weekends. If I remember correctly, she was also off for a couple of weeks either sick or on holiday at this time. Ste W, who I was also friends with and who was the only other member of staff who worked on the pet store department, had gone home around an hour earlier.
It was manager Leanne who called me, over the tannoy, to the pet department, delighted to assign me such a disgusting task.
She and Jenny were waiting for me when I arrived.
Jenny didn’t look thrilled.
Leanne did.
The smell had hit me when I was about two aisles away, so how the issue had remained a secret, for how ever long it had been an issue, was a mystery to me.
What was more perplexing than that though, was how and why the customer who had “discovered it” hadn’t been aware that there was an issue before she tried to pull one of the bags of dog food from underneath the pile.
You see, this lady had reasonably (if of course the pile hadn’t absolutely reeked and had flys buzzing all over it) assumed that because dog food was a perishable item, it would have been regularly rotated, so that the freshest food was on the bottom.
These were huge bags of dog food, so they were laying on a pallet, but a similar problem was found with the smaller bags that where on the shelves.
What had been happening was that Helen, Ste W, or both of them, were throwing the new stock on top of the old stock, or in the case of the smaller bags, pushing the old stock to the back and putting the new stock in front of it.
Although, I am sure there must have been more ingredients to the revolving recipe that created that nightmare, as the food wasn’t just expired and mouldy; it was infested with maggots and flys.
How did we know this?
Several of the bags where, unexplainably, torn open, so when the customer tugged on the bag (which was already torn open) the entire pile buckled and the contents of the torn bags poured out into the floor.
Leanne had brought a flatbed trolly with her. She instructed us to go through all the pet food checking its expiry dates and remove any that was out of date, while cleaning up the mess. Then she sauntered off, leaving us with a, “Have fun girls.”
“I’ll do it by myself. Fuck off,” Jenny scowled at me, grabbing the burst open bag nearest to her and struggling to pull it onto the flat bed trolley.
It was obvious, she couldn’t do the job alone.
“We’ll get it done faster if we do it together,” I said, grabbing the other end of the bag and hauling it, with Jenny, onto the trolly. Even just half full it weighed a ton.
“I’m not joking,” Jenny growled. “Fuck off,” she moved to one of the other torn open bags.
I moved with her, thinking that she was planning on moving it.
Instead, she crouched down and stuck here hand into the meat.
Watching her do this was enough to make me retch. “What are those white things?” I assumed, correctly, that she must know, if she was happy to touch them.
“Maggots,” She smiled. “Baby flys. Aren’t the cute?”
“No,” I shook my head. I don’t like long insects (with the exception of slugs and snails, because, well slugs and snails are adorable) as they remind me of snakes.
Still holding the writhing meat in her hand, she stood up and approached me. “Here. Have a closer look.”
She tried to smush it in my face, but I moved away quickly and around to the other side of the pallet, carefully avoiding stepping into the liquefying meat as I did.
She laughed as she threw it at me.
Again, I move backwards quickly, but the mush fell apart as soon as it left her hand.
“Stop messing around. Let’s get this done. The smell is making me sick,” I complained. I didn’t really think Jenny was joking and if she was I didn’t find it funny. I wanted to get the mess cleaned up as soon as possible, so that it was out of her reach. “We’re best to start with the bags on top,” that was obvious to me. Without her help I attempted to flip one of the bags over, as I examined it, search for its expiry date.
In response, she began walking away.
“Where are you going?” I asked, as she passed me. I was about to turn to face her when she grabbed me by my hair and t-shirt, trying to drag me over into the meat.
If she had only been dragging my hair, she probably would have succeeded.
Reacting instinctively, I stomped down hard on her foot. Lucky for me, she, like me and all the other women at this time at the DIY shop, didn’t wear steal toe capped boots, like the men did. She was wearing “sensible shoes.” I was wearing converse. She grunted, letting go of my hair, but she still had hold of my t-shirt. As I yanked it away from her, my momentum propelled her forward. She wobbled about for a few seconds, as though she was trying to catch her balance, but she must have leaned too far back and her foot was in the meat liquid, causing her to slip arse first into the mush.
Jenny, who had a naturally pink complexion, flushed bright red. “I’m going to batter you for this,” she howled, as she started to push herself up, but she slipped and fell back down.
“You have to get up first,” I observed. I knew she was serious, but so was I.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” she shrieked, her red complexion growing darker.
Now, I was the person walking away.
When I told Leanne what happened, she replied that she didn’t care and sent me back to finish the job.
However, going to speak to her about it, had given me enough time to assess the situation.
Jenny was standing, covered in meat, when I returned.
“See those cameras?” I gestured to the wall where the nearest where mounted, surveying the aisle we where on. “If you touch me again, I’ll have all the evidence I need to get you arrested.”
I knew the police wouldn’t care, after all, I had recently been attacked in my own home and they didn’t care, but Jenny didn’t seem to know that; she was fuming so much at me saying this too her, that if she was a cartoon character she would have had steam coming off her.
She glared at me for the rest of the shift while I struggled to do all the work, but she stayed away from both me and the mess and didn’t attempt to touch me again.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get much done. The majority of the expired stock and mess had to be dealt with by the Sunday staff.
Phase 1
Miles walked –98.636
Phase 2
Miles walked –98.315
Miles run –53.4178
Total miles- 151.7332
Over all total
Total miles walked –196.9514
Total miles run- 53. 4178
Total distance – 250.3692 miles
Part 1
Tip 1
Know what your personal progress goals are
Like in the phase 1 guide I wrote, this tip might sound so simple you skip it – Don’t!
It’s about knowing what your goals are, so that you don’t allow others to discourage, or distract, you from them.
This is what almost happened to me, while I was trying to follow a guide that wasn’t user friendly.
The guide is meant to help people with no experience of running get started. Yet, it is so over complicated that there is very little running to be found in the schedule for phase 2, and the instructions for what little running there is, are so overly complicated I can’t decipher them.
A lot of the schedule is cross training, by using either a bike or an elliptical trainer.
I can’t ride a bike, so I don’t own one, and although I have used an exercise bike in the past at the gym, I can’t afford a gym membership right now, which obviously means I can’t afford an exercise bike, but if I could afford one, I would be spending that money on a treadmill instead.
As for the elliptical trainer, I have no idea what it is.
Lets all be honest with the problems here.
If you can’t understand how to do something, or afford to do it, then you can’t do it, it’s that simple.
If you’re anything like me, and you find learning how to use new pieces of exercise equipment off putting, you’re not going to want to do it, especially if you can’t see how it’s going to help you achieve your overall goal.
If your goal is to run, my advice is to use your time to run, not messing around with bikes an elliptical trainers.
The same can be said about your money, and how you spend it.
The fact of the matter is, if I hadn’t been a “runner” in the past, it would’ve caused me to give up, because I have been a “runner” in the past, and it almost did,
On the other hand, you might be tempted to mess with an elliptical trainer because you’re dreading actually running – Don’t.
I said this in my phase 1 guide, but I will repeat it here, be purposeful with your exercise. Messing with an elliptical trainer might seem like a great way to avoid running in the short term, but if running is your goal, eventually you are going to have to start running, and the longer you stall, the harder it will be.
Tackle your goals head on, especially if you’re dreading doing so.
Tip 2
Plan your progress before you begin
This is another thing I struggled with because of the guide. However, this one is partly my fault, as I didn’t read ahead to see there was a phase 3 as well. Not only was I completely on my own with deciding how to progress, I was also under the impression that I needed to progress to full run within the 7 weeks, which I quickly learnt wasn’t possible, even if it had have been what the guide said to do.
If you haven’t consulted a doctor about your exercise plans yet, now might be a good time, especially if you have any health issues, as you can discus safe distances, ways to progress, and safe timescales for progressing.
If this is not an option, you could use Google to see if there is any advice on this online, from doctors or professional runners or trainers.
What I did, was use my phase 1 experience, as well as my previous experience as a runner, to progress. Although I did it as I went, without a plan, which I don’t recommend.
Let’s start with distance.
I would suggest a starting target of half your final walking distance in phase 1. If at any point you want to increase it (which I did, and it was a mistake) I would say don’t increase it to more than 3/4 of the same distance.
Although the guide told me to increase the amount of days a week I exercise from 4 to 5, I didn’t. When I started phase 2, not only didn’t I have time to fit in an extra day of exercising, I was confident that I wasn’t physically capable of exercising five days a week, and I was correct. Personally, I would recommend exercising 4 days a week during phase 2.
Next plan your run walk times. I started phase 2 by running 20% of my route and walking the other 80%, and ended it by running 50% and walking 50%.
When I say this, I don’t mean that I ran the first 20% – 50%, then walk the remainder. I did it in a continuous short cycle of run walk, meaning – I ran for 1 minute, walked for 4 minutes, ran for 1 minute, walked for 4 minutes, ran for 1 minute, walked for 4 minutes, and so on, on a loop.
So, that you can see what this looks like, and to help you plan your own progress, I have put together 2 examples schedules.
Schedule 1
Week 1- run for 1 minute, walk for 4 minutes
Week 2 – run for 1 minute, walk for 4 minutes
Week 3 – run for 1 1/2 minutes, walk for 3 1/2 minutes
Week 4 – run for 1 1/2 minutes, walk for 3 1/2 minutes
Week 5 – run for 2 minutes, walk for 3 minutes
Week 6 – run for 2 minutes, walk for 3 minutes
Week 7 – run for 2 1/2 minutes, walk for 2 1/2 minutes
Schedule 2
Week 1 – Full week -4/4 days -run 1 minute, walk 4 minutes
Week 2 – split week – 2/4 days -run 1 minute walk, 4 minutes
2/4 days – run for 1 1/2 minutes, walk for 3 1/2 minutes
Week 3- Full week – 4/4 days 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minutes walking
Week 4 – Split week– 2/4 days – 1 1/2 minutes running, 3 1/2 minutes walking
2/4 days – 2 minutes running 3 minutes walking
Week 5- Full week -4/4 days – 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking.
Week 6 – Split week – 2/4 days – 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking
2/4 days – 2 1/2 minutes running 2/2 minutes walking
Week 7– Full week – 4/4 days – 2 1/2 minute running 2 1/2 minutes
Although I have written a 7 week schedule for both examples, if I were doing it again, I would double it to 14 weeks, because of how hard I found it.
If you choose to double it there are several ways you could do it.
You could pick one of my schedules and just make –
Week 1 – weeks 1 and 2
Week 2 – weeks 3 and 4
Week 3– weeks 5 and 6
Week4 – weeks 7 and 8
Week 5 – weeks 9 and 10
Week 6– weeks 11 and 12
Week 7– weeks 13 and 14
Or you could start with 30 seconds of running and a 4 1/2 minutes walking.
Or you change the increase and decrease time from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
However, the best advice I can give you about planning how you progress is to take your weakness and limitations in consideration, and work with them, rather than against them.
Tip 3
Get to know any hazards on your route
Obviously, there are some hazards that you can’t do much about, such as being hit from behind by a bike or one of those horrible electric scooters.
With most hazards there will be nothing you can do to change them, but by being aware of them you may prevent an accident or injury.
For example.
On my route-
• There are a lot of open manhole covers
• As well as litter
• Which includes broken glass
• And dead animals.
• Most cars don’t indicate
• And many park so that they are blocking the entire pavement
• some even drive along the pavement in order to do this.
• There is a constantly slippy spot, that always feels icy
• And a person who always leaves their driveway gates open outwards onto the pavement so they are completely obstructing it.
I more than anybody understand that paying attention to and/or being aware of your surroundings isn’t always easy, so my advice is to keep a journal of the hazard you encounter. You’ll be surprised how quickly this helps you remember recurring problems to watch out for.
Tip 4
Trust that you know yourself better than anybody else knows you
Hopefully, you have already started to develop helpful habits and rituals to keep you motivated and on track.
If you haven’t now is the time to start.
The problem is that, there is so much advice out there that it’s not only hard to know what advice works, but will work for you in particular, because what works for somebody else might not work for you.
This entire guide has been very much focused on knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, and this tip is no exception.
Trust that you know yourself better than the advice givers, because the wrong advice can as easily break you, as it can make you.
Take the guides advice of rewarding yourself after every run, so that your brain associated the exercise you do with that reward.
My brain is incapable of doing this, as the part that controls impulse control doesn’t work. I will very quickly become addicted to the reward, and I will indulge in that reward whether I have been for a run or not.
For me the run has to be challenging and feel like work. My high goals and blog are what keep me motivated.
What keeps me on track is myself made calendar, it helps me to stay organised. I know what day of the phase I am on, and it helps me to swap exercise days and rest days without getting confused.
Find what works for you and stick to it.
Tip 5
Rest and recover if your body needs it
If you injure yourself, take time off to recover, its’s that simple.
However, you might be able to stop an injury from happening if you pay attention to your bodies warning signs. soreness, aches and persistent pains are all warning signs that you are at risk of injury. Take a break to rest, or slow down and adjust your schedule, in order to avoid an injury and the lengthy recovery time. After all, your goal is to build up your body, not break it down.
Tip 6
Log your miles
Log your miles. It’s both motivating, and helps you keep track of your progress, in the most accurate way.
Part 1
I was really worried about working with Michael B after he broke up with me, but not for the reasons that I should’ve been. My concerns were about how upsetting it would be to see him. When I became interested in him romantically, but not sexually, it never occurred to me that the pull I felt towards him was entirely emotional, therefore our separation would be extremely difficult for me to deal with, and that is of course not taking into account why he broke up with me, meaning his lies and my sexual assault.
As soon as we broke up, Michael B completely disappeared off the Thursday evening shift. At the time, I never realised that it was because he was also dreading working with me. After all, I didn’t have the same “my mother is a manager privileges” as he did, so it never crossed my mind that he had had the luxury of requesting not to work the same shift as me and having that request granted. I’m sure, that his mother would have happily done everything in her power to separate the two of us.
However, Michaels reasons for not wanting us to be around each other were not the same as mine. In time, I would learn that Micheal was actively holding a grudge against me. That grudge is what I should have been worried about, but who suspects that their ex, who they did nothing to harm either physically or emotionally and who broke up with them, despises them so much that they can’t be in the same building as them without verbally or physically attacking them.
We didn’t see each other at all during the months between us breaking up and him getting stabbed. It was as though he had never existed. At first, I think I took his absence from my life worse than I would have taken his presence in it. He was all I thought about. He was all I talked about.
You might imagine that after being sexually assaulted, I never wanted to drink again, but the opposite was true. I drunk myself into oblivion every opportunity that I got, in a desperate attempt to deal with the emotional trauma that I felt over it, but my attempts were never successful. In fact, alcohol made both the pain of the assault and the breakup much worse. On top of all this, I had questions for Michael that not only remained unanswered, but which for the most part remained unasked, because he had ignored me for three days, then broke up with me by text message. During these booze fuelled attempts to wash away my suffering, I was out of my own control. I had an itch (to speak to Michael about it all) and having a mobile phone gave me the tools to scratch that itch. Yet, every time I began to text him, my friend Kate somehow knew what I was doing, and stopped me by taking my mobile phone off me. Of course, I would fight her. It wasn’t real fighting though, it was more like a tug of war over the phone.
My memories of most of these altercations are lost to and alcohol and time, but I do have one memory that shows how heated they got.
We were at the Krazy House, on the floor in between the K2 and K3, by the toilet, arguing as she tried to pry my tiny glowing pink Nokia out of my vice like grip, when a girl approached us.
“Excuse me, are you two okay?” She intervened.
“Yes,” Kate replied, politely. “I’m just trying to get her phone off her.”
There was a pause, where now I understand that the girl was probably regretting getting involved, but Kate understood it straightaway.
“Oh no. I’m not robbing her. She’s my friend, and she’s trying to drunk text her ex.” Kate corrected herself.
The girls expression softened. She looked relieved. “Give your friend your phone,” She advised me empathetically. “You’ll only regret texting him in the morning.”
Eventually, though, his absence did help me to heal. I had just “gotten over him,” when he was stabbed, and then, once again, he was all I could think about.
For months he was unable to move his hand or fingers, which meant that he was unable to work, and because the verdict was still out on whether he would ever be able to move it again, it was also still out on whether he would ever return to work at the DIY shop.
When he eventually returned to work, having seemingly lost his “my mother is a manager privileges,” on a Thursday without any prior notice to any of us lowly non-managers (probably excluding ash, for obvious reasons) which included his name not been put back on the shift schedule, I was relieved he had recovered.
My relief was short lived.
Jo was the manager on duty that night, and she decided that it would be a good idea to pairs us up to unpack a paint delivery, which was a crate of huge, cheap tubs of white emulsion. Her pairing us up was weird, especially as it was a one man job, and the two of us were the only members of staff on the shopfloor that night. Looking back, I wonder whether she doubted that Michael was physically capable of handling the task alone considering what he been through and how long you been off, but pairing us up was a massive mistake on her part. That’s not to say that I think she should have, or could have, anticipated what happened.
The task was a simple one, cut off the shrink wrap and stack the containers on the pallets at the front of the store. Michael was in a foul mood, and began trying to start an argument with me before we even removed the shrink wrap. I was refusing to engage in the one sided argument, which only seemed to irritate him further. To make matters worse, halfway through unpacking the crate it became obvious that one of the tubs was leaking. There was white paint all over the plastic containers, and was still wet.
“Be careful one of them is leaking,” I informed him, wiping my hands on the bottom of my T-shirt.
He even tried to make my friendly warning into an argument.
“What’s wrong Michael?” I enquired, surprised by how I managed to keep the annoyance out of my voice, and by how compassionate I sounded. I truly did care. I just wasn’t aware that I was what was wrong.
When he used this to verbally attack me, I decided to ignore him completely and to not interact with him in anyway, not even a polite and friendly way. Again, this only seemed to irritate him further.
Unfortunately for me, it was Michael who found the cracked container.
The tubs of emulsion felt as though they weighed more than me and the stack was almost as tall as me, so lifting them was challenging for me. This meant that me ignoring Michael, could realistically just have been me focusing on what I was doing.
I was halfway through lifting one of the tubs on to the top of the stack, when he began trying to get my attention.
“Rachel. Rachel. Rachel…”, He repeated, insistently.
I had no choice but to finish what I was doing before I turned around, but I didn’t plan on responding to him when I did.
Maybe it took me so long to turn around, that his excitement got the better of him and he just couldn’t wait, or maybe he misjudged the speed I was moving at, because I’m sure when he swung the container with the hole in it at me, covering me an emulsion, he meant to hit me front on, not side on, which was what happened.
As the thick, sticky, liquid hit my hair and skin, I gasped. For a second, I stood there in shock trying to catch my breath, and figure out what had just happened. Then my brain caught up, and after working so hard not to, I finally lost my temper with him.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shrieked. “That could’ve gone in my eyes.”
I don’t recall his response, but whatever he said angered me so much that I smeared the emulsion from my skin and hair onto his.
He bent down, scooping up a handful of paint from the puddle at the bottom of the crate, and threw it at me.
The next thing I remember is the two of us, who were now covered in paint, scooping up handfuls of it, and flinging it at each other, as Jo dashed from the offices, shouting at us to stop it.
How she became aware that we were throwing paint around, I don’t know. The only other member of staff working that night, was whoever was on the checkouts, and that person couldn’t leave the checkouts unless either me or Michael took over. Also, they did not put out a tannoy call for Jo. My best guesses are, that she was either in the room with CCTV monitors, or she just by chance came out onto the shopfloor as it was happening.
I stopped immediately, but Michael carried on, seemingly unable to control his rage.
“He started it” I complained.
“An I’m finishing it,” Jo shot back. To her credit she was extremely calm. “Look at the state of you two,” it was the most emotion she showed during the entire exchange. “Go ad get a mop, bucket an cloth an clean this mess up, while I see if we have any clean shirts for you two,” She instructed Michael.
While they were both gone, I finished unpacking the crate, disposed of the shrink wrap and broken tub, and made a wet paint sign
Michael still hadn’t returned by the time Jo did, carrying two new shirts. The sizes printed on the packages said large and medium.
“You’ll just have to do with medium for tonight, an I’ll try to order you a couple of small. How many do you have at home?”.
“Two, I had one for each shift I worked every week.
“Go an get changed. Then you can go an tidy the wallpaper.”
I accepted my punishment of tidying the wallpaper without complaining.
Monday: 3 Laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking -4.986 miles
Tuesday: 3 Laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking -4.986 miles
Wednesday: Rest day
Thursday: Rest day
Friday: 3 Laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking -4.986 miles
Saturday: 3 Laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking -4.986 miles
Sunday: Is a rest day
Total miles: 19.944
Run percentage: 50%
Phase 2 – Week 7
Day 34: Monday
To say that I am excited by the potential that Mondays run holds is an understatement. There are several reasons why I feel like this is a landmark day, and none of them have anything to do with what I have planned for the run itself.
Firstly, I have made it to the final week of phase 2, which is a massive achievement in itself, but what makes it an even bigger achievement, is that I was beginning to believe I would never get here. Due to my concussion, surgery and sprained ankle, this phase has dragged on. In fact, it has taken me more than double the amount of time to complete phase 2 than it should have (and that is if nothing happens this week to set me back further).
Yes, this is disappointing in some ways. By now, I should be fully running, but it has also taught me that setbacks can and will happen, they are in evitable, and the longer you persevere the more setbacks you will encounter. What matters is that you don’t allow them to defeat you, and I certainly haven’t. I’m proud of myself for this. It’s a valuable lesson, and I am glad I learnt it early on, as I think it would have been much harder to overcome if I faced this challenge later.
It also feels serendipitous that phase 2 both began, and ended, with, events that forced me to take time off exercising to recover.
Secondly, today is both a Monday and the first day of the running week, which makes me at least feel as though things will be easier to remember, organise, do and deal with.
Thirdly, (and I might be wrong about this one) but is this my first real running week that I haven’t had an English Language lesson, test or work? Either way, it feels like there is more space in my week to focus on both running, and writing about running.
Due to all the above, I decide to tackle the last two phase 2 guidebook tips.
These tips are:
1. Practice patience
This is more advice on not doing too much too soon. It specifically focuses on not allowing yourself to be fooled into thinking you are more physically capable than you are, by any weight loss you achieve, no matter how large and achievement that weight loss is. It asks us to remember that we are building up the strength and/or density of our muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones, which takes time.
My verdict on this one, is that you should do as it advises.
Personally, I am probably going to continue to set high goals for my progress, even though I’ve already experienced exercise related injuries, because of how important challenging myself is to my motivation, which I have mentioned before.
2. Relax and run tall
This advises us to:
A. Take short strides.
B. Keep our elbows flexed at 90° angles.
C. Keep our hands relaxed –
“As if you are holding a piece of paper between your thumb and index finger.”
D. Picture ourselves walking tall…
E. And looking straight ahead…
F And avoid looking down at our feet.
I’ll be honest. I forgot this tip intermediately after reading it, which I suspect there are two reasons for.
1. It’s impossible, while I am running outdoors, not to look down while I am running. If I don’t I could step into, or trip over, an open manhole cover, as well as step on dead birds, rats and dogs shit, or run through nettles.
2. There is too much in this tip for me to remember at once.
So, I’m going to cut it up and spread it across Phase 3 starting from week 2.
There’s actually not much to say about Mondays itself.
My knees hurt.
As usual I almost get hit by a bike on the narrow pavement, because the person riding it expects me to go into the road. I’m seriously considering starting a petition to get bikes and electrics scooters off the UK pavements.
Let me know if you’d be interested in this.
I complete 2 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 44: Tuesday
Tuesday’s run is grim.
It looks cold out, and it’s cold inside my flat, so I wrap up warm, by putting a pair of running leggings under my tracksuit bottoms and two tops under my hoody, but when I get outside it’s actually boiling hot.
I’m not even out of the dog park, when two things that will cause me to have a bad first lap happen.
The first is that I start to feel like I need a wee, as I went before I left the flat, I tell myself I am imagining it. I am not.
The second is that as I stepped off the pavement, I stumble, hurting my right ankle. Convinced that I have now wrecked this ankle just after the left one has recovered, I forced myself forward knowing that if I have it’s going to end me as a runner, because I’ve already taken so much time off lately.
Luckily for me, both things are resolved by going back into my flat in between my first and second lap. I get to use the toilet, and take the pressure off my ankle for about 30 seconds, which appears to be all that was needed. This seems strange, but I don’t question it.
Today, I have to deal with a workman’s van, that said workmen has decided must be parked across the entire width of the pavement, and I’m just thinking how nice it is that I haven’t encountered an electric scooter in awhile, when one whizzes past me from behind, getting far too close to me.
During my last half a lap, I am forced, by how awful I feel physically, to stop mid run twice. I find myself thinking it’s because Tuesday is the Thursday, meaning I am on my second day of exercising in as many days.
It’s not until I get home that, I realised to change the start of my week from Wednesday to Monday I didn’t have to change the days I go running. I make the decision to swap them back next week.
I complete 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 45: Wednesday
Wednesday is a rest day.
Day 46: Thursday
Thursday should be an exercise day, but after how badly I struggled on Tuesday, I don’t feel ready to face it again.
Day 47: Friday
Fridays run is just how I like it – uneventful.
To my surprise, at the end of my third lap I find myself wanting to do another. For once though, I do the sensible thing. I tell myself that because I am going for a run tomorrow, I can’t overdo it today, and go home.
I complete 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking.
Day48: Saturday
On Saturday, I’m really glad that I went home and didn’t do that extra lap yesterday, as I am really struggling again. Near the end of my run, I have to stop mid run a couple of times as I feel awful.
Nothing worth noting happens on todays run, unless you count an old man who is out in his garden with his dog cheering me on.
I complete 3 laps of 2 1/2 running, 2 1/2 minutes walking.
Day 49: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
This story must have taken place between May and September, when I was 18, which would have been during the college summer holidays. The reasons for me believing this are:
1. It hadn’t been long since me and Michael B had broken up.
2. Michael C had already been fired.
3. The incident with manager Leanne trying to frame me for fraud had recently taken place, and as a result I was now refusing to work on the checkouts and was working on the shopfloor instead.
4. Nobody was harassing me over Ste S yet.
The emotional impact of this incident was so severe I don’t recall what I was doing at the time, or who it was that I had this conversation with, although I think it might have been Ste W. What I do know is that it was a man, and that it was definitely somebody who didn’t like Michael B.
They came up behind me while I was busy working and asked, “How made up are you (slang for how happy are you) that Michael B got stabbed?” They were laughing as they said it.
Maybe it was because they were laughing that I assume they were joking. I stopped what I was doing, turned around and told them that I didn’t get a joke. I was thinking that even if I had gotten it, I knew that I wouldn’t find it funny.
“Who’s joking?” They replied, still laughing. When I didn’t say anything they added. “Shit, you really haven’t heard?Nobody’s told you that Michael B got stabbed last night?”
As I realised that they ween’t joking, I instantly felt sick. I felt like somebody had punched in the stomach, knocking all the air out of my lungs. My brain Fumbled around for the words I needed, but when I found them my mouth didn’t feel capable of delivering them. Blinking back to tears, in a stilted, shaky whisper, I breathed a question I was afraid to have answered. “Is he dead?”
“Unfortunately not, but he is in hospital,” they grinned.
“Why do you think this is funny?” I demanded, but my voice crackled and cracked so much that the sentence had no power behind it.
“Oh come on Rach, the little prick got what he deserved,” he sounded slightly defensive, but mostly still amused.
What had Michael be done to him, or anybody, to deserve being stabbed?
Nothing. He wasn’t a bad person. Yes, he could be dishonest and a nob at times, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be stabbed.
Composing myself as best I could, I asked another question that I really didn’t want to know the answer to, but which I need to know. “Do you know what happened?”
“Apparently, he was walking through town alone, after going out drinking with some mates, when I couple of guys tried to rob him. He refused to give them his money or phone, so one of them tried to stab him in the face. He put his hand up to block the knife and it went all the way through his hand and came out on the other side.”
I cringed at the thought of it.
Why was he walking around town in the middle of the night?
Why was he alone?
Where were his friends
“Apparently it cut all the muscles, or tendons, or ligaments, or whatever it is that makes your hands work, because they don’t know whether he’ll be able to use it ever again.”
I stood there, silently, feeling somehow both emotionally numb and emotionally overwhelmed at the same time, with nothing to say in response.
I honestly can’t recall how our conversation ended, although I do know it was abruptly. What I do remember is that they were suddenly gone, and I was in such an extreme state of shock, that even then I couldn’t have told you with any certainty who it was that had broken the news to me. Afterwards, I immediately just got back to what I had been doing, before I was interrupted.
Wednesday – 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking = 4.986miles
Thursday – 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking = 4.986 miles
Friday – rest day
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Phase 2 – week G 1/2
Wednesday
On Wednesday my ankle no longer feels uncomfortable, but my knee is still bothering me.
It’s a hot day. Yet, the ground feels icy and slippery, which is really weird and causes me to consider stopping several times in case I fall, but I don’t stop or fall, not even when it starts raining.
Other than that, my run is uneventful, which is the way I like it, but that means that I don’t have much to write about.
Today has been my easiest run since I started again.
I complete 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking.
Thursday
Thursday is also uneventful.
I complete 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes of walking.
During my run I think about why I’m finding it so hard to progress to a full run, I’m finding it far more difficult than the last time I did it. I come to the conclusion that it’s the difference in mileage. Back then I was running for 2 miles, now I’m running for almost 5 miles.
Friday
“Last night,” I didn’t manage to get to sleep until 8 am because of my neighbours, which means that I didn’t wake up until after 3 pm and didn’t take my morning medication until almost 6 pm. Due to taking my morning medication so late, I’m afraid that it is not safe to take my medication, so as I know I won’t sleep anyway tonight, because I woke up so late, I make the decision to not take my night medication and stay awake until tomorrow afternoon. This will mean missing my morning medication, and taking my night medication early. It also means missing a run, because it’s too late to go when I wake up on Friday, and going Sunday will mean I have to go three days in a row, which right now I accept I can’t do.
Regardless of all the cons, I don’t actually have a choice, so that is what I do.
It was a Thursday afternoon, a couple of weeks after Michael C assaulted me, and I was at home, alone, getting ready for my shift at the DIY store.
My mum had only just left to go to the supermarket, so when I heard her return a few minutes later, my first assumption was that she had forgotten something. It wasn’t until the front door slammed hard, and she began shouting that she had been attacked and to call the police, that I realised something was wrong.
As I had been about to get in the shower, I was half dressed as I dashed from the bathroom into the living room, picked up the phone and dialled 999, frantically asking her questions about what had happened. She was in the hallway, still, so I couldn’t see if she was hurt, and her answers weren’t making any sense. The only part I understood, was who had been involved. It was the 16 or 17 year old sister, of a girl that I had been friends with in infants school, who lived around the corner from us.
I was telling the 999 operator what little information I had, when somebody started banging on our front door, screaming for my mum to get outside. If I had known she was going to be stupid enough to open it, I would’ve stopped talking to the operator to tell her not to open it, but I didn’t, so I didn’t. What possessed her to open it, I still don’t know, as I’ve never asked her.
As soon as the door opened there was a thud, and several other people, including my mum, began shouting.
“They’re in the house,” I informed the operator, as I dropped the phone onto the coffee table and ran out into the hall. I could hear her advising me to stay on the phone with her and that the police were on their way, but I wasn’t going to let what sounded like a mob of people attack my mum.
It was hard for me to even get into the hallway, because of what was happening. My mum was down on the floor, on her back, against the stairs, with the mother of the girl, and a huge man I didn’t recognise, on top of her. There was also a crowd of people gathered around our front door watching, and a dog belonging to the woman who was attacking my mother at the top of the stairs.
Instinct took over. I grabbed the man, because he was nearest to me and began dragging him off my mum. To my astonishment, he went down easily and quickly. Maybe I was lucky and caught him off guard, or balance, or both. As I was dragging him towards the front door, a shrieking woman, who it turned out was his girlfriend, jumped up onto my back and began trying to fight me. She sunk her nails into the bare flesh of my bare arm and started, what felt like, punching me on the side of my head, shoulder and neck. I swung my body wildly, throwing her off me and into the crowd, at the same time I swung the man around, and outside after her.
The crowd were so busy trying to help his girlfriend up, that they didn’t see him coming to mwards them, as a result he took half of them down with him, like a bowling ball crashing into the pins at the end of the lane.
My mum had managed to get up, and hold of the girls mother, and as I stepped away from the front door, she pushed her outside.
“The police are on their way,” I warned them, as I managed to slam the door shut before they could stop me and get back inside.
Not thinking about the fact that I that to open the door again to get it outside, I ran upstairs to find the dog. To my dismay the dirty, flea riddled creature was in my bedroom, because my door, and only my door, had been open. I chased it downstairs and outside. It seemed like my warning had been enough to scare everybody involved, as well as the spectators, away.
I was still half dressed, and on the phone to the DIY shop, explaining vaguely that I had an emergency to deal with, when the police turned up. Barry, the store manager was threatening me with a warning, and accusing me of being both hung over and wanting to go out drinking at the same time, when one of the two male police officers asked me to put some clothes on and come to join them in the living room.
“Barry, I’ve got to go, the police need to speak to me,” I told him, then hung up.
As I was pulling a t-shirt on, I noticed I was covered in blood.
It was only when I joined everybody in the living room, that I found out what had actually happened. My mum hadn’t even made it out of the street, when the girl approached her demanding money, which we discovered later on was for drugs, which is why the two drug addicts (the man and woman who I had thrown outside), who my mum recognised, got involved. Obviously she refused to give her the money, so the girl grabbed my mum’s bag and tried to steal it. My mum successfully fought her off, accidentally knocking her to the ground as she did . As the girl landed she banged her head on the tarmac, at which point she started to scream for both her mother and the drug addicts. In shock, my mum hurried back home, not knowing what else to do.
The police were absolutely rubbish. They told us there was nothing they could do because we weren’t injured, and that if the girl, her mother, or either of the drug addicts were injured, they could press charges against us.
“Are you joking?” My mum asked. “My daughters covered in blood, she’s obviously injured.”
“Oh right, is that your daughters blood is it?” The police officer said, as though he didn’t believe it was, before ordering me to go wash off the blood and check myself for injuries. My arm was torn to pieces, and I had what looked like bite marks on my neck. I look like I had been in a fight with a vampire.
When I showed my injuries to the officer, he called them small scratches, and told me that my mum had accused the woman who attacked me of being a drug addict, and as we couldn’t be sure whose blood I was covered in, he recommended that I go get myself checked at the Royal Liverpool hospital for the hepatitis and HIV.
As you can probably guess, in that moment, I felt my world get turned upside down.
I went to the hospital first thing in the morning, and after I explained what had happened the day before, broke down and told them how I had also been sexually assaulted a few weeks prior, but didn’t remember exactly what has happened to me on that night.
They tested me for everything that they could that day, and gave me what I think was a hepatitis vaccine. Those results were clear. However there were some results, which included the HIV results, that I had to wait 6-9 months to be able to get.
They too were clear thankfully. It was the longest few months though, waiting for those results, and by the time I got them, the possibility of having HIV had cause damage to both me and my life, but also might have saved it.
My Schedule
Wednesday-Rest day
Thursday-Rest day
Friday-Rest day
Saturday-3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking -4.986 miles
Sunday-3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking -4.986 miles
Monday-Rest day
Tuesday-Rest day
phase 2 – week G
Saturday
As my ankle has been feeling normal for the last couple of days, Saturday is meant to be a test day in order for me to decide if I can start exercising again. However, when I wake up, there is no question as to whether or not I am going to start exercising again, because I have no choice but to, even if my ankle is still injured. The reason for this, is that I am dreading my run to the point that I don’t want to go, and I am aware that the longer I take off the more this dread will grow, until it is so bad that I can’t go. You might think that I am being dramatic, but I can assure you I am not. Look at how quickly walking and running became an activity I wasn’t able to miss. The same is happening because I haven’t been for a run for so long. The only explanation that I have for this, is that I am borderline, so things quickly become who I am.
This isn’t me saying that I don’t care about my ankle, and the long term effects that running on it, if it is still injured will have on it, I am, but if it’s still injured I am going to need to see a doctor about it, and getting doctor’s appointment will take me awhile. While I am trying to get a doctor’s appointment, I will need to keep running, so that I don’t put the weight I have lost back on. After all, if I become overweight, that’s going to affect my physical health more than an ankle injury.
Every day I don’t go for a run at the moment, could be the day that breaks me as a runner.
When I begin, my ankle feels a bit uncomfortable, and I quickly noticed that I am leading with my left foot. what I mean by this is that every time I start running or change from walking to running, I am pushing off with my right foot and landing on my left, which means that my left foot is constantly taking that initial impact, which seems harder than it is during walking and running. I wonder if my broken shoe or injury has caused this, and make a conscious effort to try to use both feet equally.
Although I know it’s going to be difficult, I start from the progress point I was at before I had my surgery, this is 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking. I do this because I have worked too hard to get to the progress point I am currently at, and I am determined not a fallback progress wise. From the beginning, I struggle and feel as though I need to stop, but I tell myself that; I have done it before, so I can do it again; that other people have done it, and if they can, I can; if it was easy it wouldn’t be worth doing; I need the challenge to keep me interested and engaged.
I somehow complete 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking.
Sunday
Sunday should’ve been a rest day, but as I got up late and I’ve done hardly any writing this week, I want to fully dedicate tomorrow to writing, and in order to do that I have to go for tomorrow’s run today.
After not exercising for so long, going for a run two days in a row is a massive mistake. I’m exhausted as soon as I start running, and my right knee is aching. It also looks as though it’s going to rain heavily. Luckily, it doesn’t.
At the beginning of my second lap, there is a huge group of large black birds circling two semi detached houses, as they scream. It’s so bizarre that without realising it I stop to try to get a better look at what they might be doing. This is impossible as I’m not wearing my glasses. As I watch the birds, a teenage boy on a bike stops, takes out his phone and starts recording them. I think about doing the same. It’s only then that I remember I am on a run, and leave the teenager and birds to it.
By the time I reach the two houses on my third lap, both the birds and boy are gone.
Near the end of my second lap, I’m almost hit by a bike, from behind, which is becoming too much of a regular occurrence.
At the end of my second lap, I debated whether or not I need to call it a day and go home. The answer is a solid yes. Yet, I don’t.
This is another mistake.
At the beginning of my third lap, I accidentally run through a patch of nettles, which have grown out of a garden fence and quite far onto the pavement. They cause my skin to become itchy and sting, but it doesn’t blister.
By the halfway mark, I’m so tired that I keep needing to pause, and by the 3/4 mark I have no choice but to walk the rest of the way home.
I completed 3 laps.
Monday
Monday is a rest day.
Because I am still terrible at writing my journal notes, I don’t write this weeks until Monday. I need to get into the habit of writing my notes immediately.
Since phase 1- week 1, I have wanted to change my run schedule so that Monday is the first day of my running week, but it has never felt like the right time.
The benefits of changing would hopefully be, that it would be much easier on my memory, and would help me plan my weeks, phases and progress better, and maybe farer in advance. My hope is that as a result I become more organised.
Due to all the time I’ve had off over the last few weeks, as well as how badly I am struggling, now seems like the perfect time to make the change.
This is because it will provide me with 3 extra running days during phase 2, if I make Wednesday to Sunday a half week, rather than causing me to lose days.
I make up my mind, this Wednesday to Sunday will be half a week.
“Oh dear, I thought you knew,” (manager) A lied, as I stood there in shock. She was struggling to hold back a smirk to the point where she had to cover her mouth, trying to make it appear as though it was because she too was shocked. She was a terrible actor, or maybe she wasn’t trying, maybe she was just saying the words she knew she needed to say to make it seem as though she wasn’t purposely attempting to sabotage mine and Michaels relationship, but she really didn’t care enough whether I believe her or not to put the effort in.
It was then that it actually dawned on me that I was the only person who didn’t know that Michael was 17, and also the only person who didn’t know that he was lying to me about his age, because none of his friends, or our work colleagues, had mentioned the age difference to me, not even Ash.
In the moment, I was angry at everybody at work, who I consider to be my friend.
Later, I would contemplate all those nights we spent at his friends houses, and pubs full of middle aged people.
Were they really playing up being 40, or had they discovered tricks to avoid being ID’d?
Was it that they knew that the pubs and clubs where young people went were more likely to ID them?
The next time I had to cash up, alone, with (manager) A, she was so eager to gloat about her success in splitting us up, that she admitted she was a liar.
“I knew you didn’t know that he only 17, and I just couldn’t allow him to lie to you.”
You could’ve told me a soon as we started seeing each other, or before. But no she couldn’t tell me before, because she, and everybody else, also knew he was purposely keeping the fact that she was his mother a secret from me too. How about telling your son to tell the truth when you catch him, or discover that he’s been, lying, or teach him not to lie in the first place? That’s what a decent mother, a decent person, would do. – I thought, but I said nothing to her. I was too busy stewing in the irony that (manager) A looked down on other people (mainly me) when she couldn’t be a decent human being herself.
I had never cared that she hated me, not even when I was going out with her son. It did concern me though, because she was my manager, which meant that she held certain power over me at work. I’m confident it was her idea to have me questioned over the missing money, that didn’t even go missing on my shift, as when we found out where it was and who was responsible, the girl responsible worked completely different days to me. Due to my concern, I had wondered what her reason for looking down on me was, but after this conversation, I never wondered again. The truth was that now I didn’t just even not care that she despised me, I was glad. I must’ve been living my life in an honest and caring way if this nasty dishonest woman hated me.
Yet, on that Saturday, when she revealed Michaels secret to me, she held more power over my personal life than she had ever held over my professional life.
She did not only destroyed my relationship, she had destroyed the illusion of the person who had taught me that I was capable of wanting a romantic relationship. That is what hurt me, not the loss of Michael himself, the loss of the illusion of who I believed he was.
It wasn’t like the signs hadn’t been there, they had, but I had chosen to ignore them, chosen to live in the illusion and now it was gone.
As soon as I got out of work that Saturday, I texted him to ask him if it was true.
When he didn’t reply, I text him, insisting that we needed to talk about what his mother had said to me.
“I can’t, my Nan is here,” he replied.
For the next three days, I tried to text him and phone him constantly, but he didn’t respond or answer his phone. By the Wednesday I had given up. I knew we were over.
How can you continue a relationship that is built on lies?
How could you ever trust the person who told you those lies, again?
During those three days, I kept thinking about a conversation I had with him after I found out I Ash was his sister, Ash who was almost a year older than me (if I remember correctly).
How are you and ash the same age?” I enquired.
“Where Irish twins,” he told me, calmly and confidently.
“What are Irish twins?”
“It’s when you’re born in the same year, so we’re not twins, but for a couple of months during every year we are the same age,” he explained.
When I worked out the age difference between him and Ash, it matched what he said.
It wasn’t until the Thursday, that he actually broke up with me.
I had just gotten home from work when he text me. I was still feeling really rough and ill from whatever I had drank the night before, so I broke down crying hysterically. Not because he had broken up with me, but because I knew the real reason he had broken up with me was because Michael C was bragging about what he had done to me the night before.
It was bad enough that my boyfriend who had been lying to me, had broken up with me because his friend had sexually assaulted me. What was worse was that they remain friends after. They were still friends after Michael C got fired, and even on the day I left my job at the DIY store, because I was moving to London.
Part fourteen- To The Merseyside Police
can i ask why seeing as i have them on video telling me that they have their body cams on
Wednesday – rest day
Thursday – rest day
Friday – one lap =1.662 miles
Saturday – rest day
Sunday – rest day
Monday – rest day
Tuesday – rest day
Phase 2 – week F
Wednesday
Rest day
Thursday
Rest day
Friday
On Friday my ankle feels completely better. As I am desperate to get back to exercising, I decided a weeks rest is enough.
I start at the progress point I was at before I had my coronectomied wisdom tooth roots removed. When I begin my ankle feels fine, but by 1/4 of my first lap its no quite feeling right and by the half way point it feels really uncomfortable. Because I don’t want to make it any worse, I reluctantly accept that it hasn’t fully healed and hobble home, by the time I get there, it’s low level throbbing and burning.
Saturday
Rest day
Sunday
Rest day
Monday
Rest day
Tuesday
Rest day
It’s only as I write this, that I wonder whether (manager) A really was running late for work on that Thursday that I found out Michael B was her son. I can imagine her and Ash, two petty vindictive bitches, sitting in their car outside the DIY store that afternoon debating who would get to be the person who broke the news to me, both with their own individual and very different motivations for wanting to do so, but which both required the same result – me breaking up with Michael.
That was the extent of A’s goal, to break us up. It was a goal that she would achieve.
Why she hated me so much, I don’t know, but she made it very clear that she did, and went out of her way to do so.
However, I’m still not fully sure what Ash’s motives were, even with the knowledge of how things ended between the two of us.
This wouldn’t be the only secret of Michael’s that Ash would revealed to me. She made it her business to tell me all of her brothers embarrassing secrets, both from his childhood –
Such as – how, as a very young child he had insisted on walking sideways “the way crabs do,” for “about a year,” which drove A mad.
As well as things that happened while we were a couple –
Such as – how, he ate dog chocolate he found on the kitchen counter, because he assumed it was regular chocolate.
“It was disgusting,” Michael pulled a face dramatically as if to prove just how disgusting it had been, when I mentioned it to him.
His version of the story made me laugh more than Ash’s. It always did.
“I talk about him all the time,” Ash had said, as though I was lying about not knowing Michael was her brother, when I finally got the chance to discuss it with her. This wasn’t true. She had mentioned him very briefly in passing twice, and never included any identifying detail about him.
More importantly though, he had never mentioned her, or A, to me, ever.
Also, he look nothing like either ash or A. He shared no physical resemblance to his mother at all, and the only physical features him in Ash shared was that they were tall, and had huge dimples when they smiled.
It wasn’t just me who noticed how physically different he looked to them. Michael C brought it up once.
It was the only shift the three of us (me, Michael B and Michael C) worked together, and it was dead. Michael C was skiving at the checkouts, talking at me about something I had no interest in, when Michael B and one of the other managers S.L. came out of the offices and headed off towards the garden centre.
“Have you noticed how much Mickey B looks like S.L.?” He changed the subject suddenly.
This caught my attention. “What do you mean?”
“You know A and S.L have been friends since uni? One of them even got the other their job here.”
“So?” I didn’t know any of this, I wasn’t even sure if it was true.
“Mickey B, looks nothing like the rest of the B’s. They’re all pale skinned, blond haired and blue eyed. Mickey B is so dark.”
“Michael has blue eyes,” I pointed out.
“You’ve met his dad and brother. He looks nothing like them. They’re pale and blond as well.”
“I’ve never met his dad or brother –” I started.
Michael C cut me off shocked, “You haven’t met his dad or brother yet?”
“We’ve only been seeing each other a couple of weeks,”, I snapped, sounding more defensive than I meant to. I actually had no desire to meet the rest of his family. His mother would make it so awkward and hostile an environment that even the idea of it was extremely unappealing to me. Plus there were things in their house I didn’t want to be around.
Also, by this point, I was already beginning to feel disillusioned with both Michael B and our relationship.
When we became a couple, I honestly had no expectations of what he would be like as a boyfriend, or what our relationship would be like.
Yet, the reality of both, were far less than I could have ever imagined.
At first though, I tried to convince myself that the problem was that I had expected too much, and that paired with the disappointment of missing our first planned ‘date,’ had led to my unwarranted disillusionment
The truth was that, I hadn’t even really been looking forward to that ‘date,’ as it didn’t sound much like a date. He basically told me we were going out with his friends, who were also in couples, and that was that, there was no negotiation. It was on a Thursday and they were meeting at 6pm. I had requested that we do it another night, because I was working till 8pm, but wouldn’t actually get out of work until about 8:30pm, giving me less than three hours with them. This meant that I wouldn’t have time to go home and get a shower beforehand (which I would really want and need) and would have to get changed and do my make up in the toilet at work, and that would only be possible if the manager on duty allowed it.
I had never been to the pub they were going to, so again, I had no prior expectations.
However, less than an hour into my shift, I began to feel; both hot and cold together; tired and lightheaded. Then I started shaking and sweating.
By the halfway mark, I was sent home, which never happened. Nobody was ever sent home.
“You can’t die here, we’ll be held responsible,” Jo joked, as she ordered me off the tills.
I felt so much like I actually was dying, that I didn’t have the energy to laugh.
When I got home, I cried.
Michael didn’t seem bothered that I couldn’t go, or that I was vilely ill. His response had been that they would be going the following week.
The next Thursday, we both got ready in the work toilets, and got a taxi to the pub.
Not all of his friends were in couples, as he had let me to believe, so this was in no way the double, triple, et cetera, date he had implied it would be.
More importantly, the pub, which was literally in the middle of nowhere, was full of middle-aged couples and friend groups, which meant it was boring to 18 year old me. (As an almost middle-aged woman now, I still wouldn’t go there.)
The place suited his friends though. They were completely uninteresting people (with nothing interesting to say) and so was Michael whenever he was around them.
All our ‘dates’ were like this. Although, the rest of them were at his friends houses, when their parents had gone out for the night. They would sit on their parents overly expensive patio furniture and quietly drink. I felt like they were playing at being 40.
I wanted adventure.
I wanted to dance until 6 am.
I wanted to be 18.
After the pub closed, Michael walked me to my bus stop and waited with me until my bus came. His behaviour should have been a massive red flag that he wasn’t fully who I thought he was. He pushed me against the bus shelter, and tried to get his hands up my dress.
“I’m not into this,” I told him timidly, pushing him off me.
Looking back, the irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. The son of a woman who had nothing but disrespectful glares for me, trying to grope me in a bus stop.
Maybe his mother had filled his head with lies that she could somehow tell I was ‘easy.’
To his credit, he stopped when I got upset. (And, listen, I know how sad it is that I have lived a life where I can genuinely give a guy ‘good guy credit’ for listening to me when I said no, but I’m sure that this isn’t just my reality, I’m sure that this is a lot of peoples reality.)
This wasn’t the only incident like this. A similar thing happened the only other time we were ever alone together.
His family had gone away to the Lake District, and he invited me over to his house to watch a film after I finish work.
I said no.
I can’t believe I’m admitting this publicly. There are very few things I am genuinely afraid of, but my big one, the one that scares me so much that I tell absolutely nobody anymore in case they use it against me, is snakes. I can’t even look at or be around, toy or cartoon snakes. I once had a meltdown in the street because I saw a toy snake in the gutter. Yes, I knew it was a toy. No, I couldn’t control myself.
Michael B’s little brother had two pet snakes, one of them was a Boa, and he was not a responsible pet owner. The snakes regularly got out of their tanks and were discovered inside the toilet before anybody was even aware they had escaped.
Michael reassured me that he had checked the snakes where still in their tanks, then locked his brothers bedroom door.
My answer was still no.
Yet, by the end of my shift he had worn me down, and I found myself at his house.
When I arrived, he made no pretence about putting a film on. As soon as I sat down, he was all over me me. I’m not going to lie and say understood his behaviour; I didn’t. He was beautiful, but I had no sexual interest in him, and even if I had, I would not of been having sex with him or anything close to it just a few weeks into our relationship. However, I was aware that physical intimacy was a normal part of romantic relationships, so I made an effort to reciprocate to what I felt was an appropriate level and kissed him back.
At some point he pushed me into the corner of the sofa and got on top of me, which I wasn’t comfortable with, but I didn’t begin to resist until he started trying to get his hand inside my T-shirt. At first I just kept moving it away, but in the end I had to tell him to stop it, because he was ignoring my ‘hints.’ This time he only sort of listened to me. He stopped for a few minutes, before trying again, but now he was also grinding against my legs like dogs try to.
It was then that I lost my fucking mind laughing. I could feel that he was enjoying it, which suddenly made the entire situation hilarious to me.
“Why are you laughing?” He had sulked, as I firmly insisted that was enough, pushed him off me, and sat back up.
“How do you find this exciting?”I genuinely wanted to know.
“Lets just watch TV,” he grumbled, avoiding my question.
“I need the toilet,” I told him.
He gave me directions to the bathroom, which was up the stairs to the left.
His brothers bedroom was up stairs to the right.
As I reached the top of the stairs, I saw them in their tanks by the open bedroom door, and lost it again, this time crying and hyperventilating. I tried to call for Michael. I tried to go back downstairs. My voice came out an incoherent squeak. My legs felt like jelly. Trembling, I collapsed onto the top few steps. Unamused and unconcerned, Michael came up the stairs and shut his brothers bedroom door, which I don’t think even had a lock on it, and unenthusiastically attempted to calm me down. As soon as I could trust my legs to support me again, I got the fuck out of that house.
The last time me and Michael were ever together as a couple, was the only time we ever had any type of truly emotionally passionate exchange.
We had gone out into town with his friends.
You’re probably thinking this is finally the occasion where 18 year olds were acting like 18 year olds, and that it was our childish, drunken behaviour, which led us to our break up.
Well if you are, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.
It was a Friday night, and we were at a pub in Matthew Street, which was full of people aged 40 and over (and yes, this was our intended destination).
Theres only one other thing that I remember about that night, and that is that we had a screaming argument. I don’t even recall what the argument was about, or what we were saying. It was just the two of us (from the group we were with) outside the pub, arguing in the torrential rain. He was leaning over me, and we were both shouting at each other. Despite the rain, the street was crowded, yet nobody seem to notice us except for a bouncer outside a club opposite the pub we were at.
I didn’t see him approach us. I heard him before I saw him. “Are you alright mate? Do you need any help?”
We both stopped shouting and turned to face him. It was Michael he was talking to.
“Are you joking?” I said. I couldn’t believe he was asking the six foot one man, who was leaning over a five foot one woman, whether he was okay.
“I’m fine,” Michael replied.
“Are you sure?” The bouncer was moving in a sort of squirming eager way, as he glared down at me, that made me feel unsafe.
“He’s fine,” I responded. “And he’s going to stay fine because I’m going home.” Without another word to Michael, I turned and dashed off into the rain, as he called after me to come back.
The next day, through text messages, we both agreed that the argument was stupid and insignificant.
He was at home, hung over. I was at work completely clear headed, as I had hardly drunk any alcohol and had gotten a pretty early night for me, the night before.
(Manager) A, was the manager on closing duty that day, so it was just me and her in the cash office, cashing up, that evening, which was awkward enough, but she decided to make it worse by bringing up mine and Michaels argument from the night before.
It pissed me off that he had told her about it, just as much as it pissed me off that she was bringing it up, because it was none of her business and it was obvious that she would and was using it as ammunition to try to break us up. Yet, I managed to remain calm and polite.
When she realised her plan wasn’t working, she abruptly changed the subject. “Isn’t it lucky that Michael looks so much older than he is?” She smirked.
I knew she was baiting me, but I had no choice but to bite. “Why?”
“Well if he looked his age, he wouldn’t be able to go out drinking with you would he?”
“What do you mean?” I was so stuck on the way she has said you, like I was the reason he was out drinking, that I completely missed her implication.
“You know,” she said, as though I did, even though she knew I didn’t and that I was so naive I had completely missed her point, so she was going to have to spell it out to me, “Because he’s only 17.”
Part twenty- To The Merseyside Police
So will you be sending me a new subject access form out then too?Please provide an address i can send a complaints letter to via post as i will now be employing a solicitor in this matter
Thank you
(Should have been Phase 3- Week 1)
My Schedule
Wednesday: 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running and 2 1/2 minutes walking – 4.986 miles
Thursday: Rest day
Friday: 3 laps of 2 1/2 minutes running and 2 1/2 minutes walking – 4.986 miles
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Rest day
Monday: Rest day
Tuesday: Rest day
Total run percentage: 50%
Total miles: 9.972 miles
Phase 2- Week E
(Should have been Phase 3-Week 1)
Wednesday
On Wednesday, although my face still really hurts from my surgery, it’s much better. The pain is no longer at a level where it is going to be aggravated by, or stop me from, exercising.
Also, my ankle feels completely normal, so I believe that the weeks rest has been long enough for it to recover from whatever was wrong with it.
I leave my flat intending to do 3 laps – the first half of each being 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking – the second half of each being 2 1/2 minutes running, 2 1/2 minutes walking. My plan changes as soon as I start running. I decide to do 2 1/2 minutes of running, 2 1/2 minutes walking, for the entire 3 laps.
At some point, I begin to feel like my left ankle is taking the impact of my foot hitting the pavement, much harder than my right ankle is. Not long after this, I realise that there is a sort of popping sensation in the soul of my shoe. The more I concentrate on it, the more I’m convinced I have felt this popping on and off briefly over the last few weeks, and that the sole of my shoe is cracked.
As I continue on, my ankle starts to hurt again. I am sure that my cracked shoe is the cause of this pain. At first I think that finishing my run won’t do it any serious harm, and that I will just buy new shoes before I go running again, but the pain quickly increases. As it does, I consider changing my run walk times, or even stopping altogether, but I don’t.
This is a terrible mistake.
By the end of my third lap, my ankle is throbbing, and I am unable to put any weight on it.
When I get home, I immediately inspect the souls of my shoes, inside and out. I don’t see or feel any cracks, either on the inside or outside, but the soles are very worn down on the outside, so not only am I probably right about the crack, I am worried that they might not be safe to run in anymore.
Thursday
When I wake up, my ankle feels fine. However, my mind is already made up, I need a new pair of running shoes.
If I go for my new shoes today, then I can go for today’s run tomorrow, meaning that I am not missing any exercise days this week.
Yet, I am not even halfway to the bus stop, when I discover my ankle is wrecked. Every time I try to put my weight down on it, it throbs and burns. I promised myself another rest week.
Although I am not sure it’s a good idea, I decide to continue on into town, because I’m already on my way now, and I know that if I go home I likely won’t make it this far again any time soon.
My promise to myself doesn’t last long. After a few hours of very stressful shopping, I am fooled into thinking that my pain is gone, to the point where if it wasn’t too late and I wasn’t so hungry by the time I got home, I would’ve gone for a run.
Friday
My shopping trip must’ve had such a bad impact on my already poor mental health, that I either went into a state of physical numbness (which is something I have experienced episodes of my entire life) or it was simply so bad that it masked the pain, because when I wake up on Friday, my ankle is sore.
It’s not bad enough that I don’t think I can’t go to my run, after all, I have new shoes and an ankle support.
This support is not only awfully uncomfortable (it’s digging into the bottom of my foot, and just wearing one – I couldn’t get two- is not only hugely distracting, it’s agitating as well) but it also feels as though it’s making the pain in my ankle worse. I stop to adjust it several times, at one point I even sit down on a bus stop bench so that I can take my shoe off to adjust it, but this doesn’t help.
As I reach my flat at the end of my first lap, I go inside to take it off.
During my second lap, my ankle feels much better than it did with the support on it, but halfway around lap 3 the pain is the worst it has been since it began a few weeks ago.
I promised myself 2 weeks of resting it, and hobble home.
Saturday
rest day
Sunday
Rest day
Monday
Rest day
Tuesday
Rest day
Although I don’t recall when or how, me and Michael B first started speaking to each other, or I realised that I had become romantically interested in him, I do recall that it was early enough into my employment at the DIY store that I hadn’t memorise all of the surnames, of all of the Michaels who worked there, and hadn’t yet worked shifts with or even met all of them. There were so many Michaels employed at the DIY store, that his name being Michael wasn’t significant enough to raise any questions or red flags.
Due to our interactions at work being so brief and playful, I didn’t get the chance to learn a lot about his life, before we were a couple.
My use of the word playful to describe our interactions isn’t entirely accurate, but I can’t think of a better word to describe them. It certainly wasn’t flirting (the closest we ever came to flirting, was when I confessed how I felt about him) our interactions were far more innocent than flirting.
Despite not having the correct language to describe our interactions, I can provide an example of them. It is the only example of them that has managed to survive the decade and a half that has passed, and remains almost untouched by the passage of that time in my mind.
It had been a particularly bad shift for me, especially being that it was a Thursday, though I have no recollection of why it had been so bad. I was desperately hoping that I wouldn’t have to serve another customer because of how badly I was struggling to make it 8 pm, which was when the store closed, and was deep into one of those episodes where your mind travels to some mysterious place, leaving you staring blankly into space, so I didn’t realise that he was standing in the cubicle behind me until he snap me out of it.
“Rachel,” he said, in that way he always did when he was demanding my attention.
When I turned to face him, he was staring up at the ceiling, twisting his upperbody and waving his arms in the air. For a good few seconds, I watched him silently, trying to figure out what he was doing before I gave up and asked him.
“I’m dancing,” he answered, confidently, yet awkwardly, as though it should have been obvious.
“Your dancing?” I clarified. I wanted to laugh but I didn’t want to offend him.
“Yes,” he smiled proudly, causing me to crack, and without meaning to I burst out laughing.
After I managed to compose myself enough to ask him why he was dancing, my cheeks ached.
“I’m dancing for you,” he explained, as he continue to ‘dance’.
“You know, I didn’t ask for this, don’t you?” I gestured in his direction, as I cracked up again.
“I know,” he finally stopped writhing.” But you looked so sad, and you don’t look sad anymore.” Then, he disappear back onto the shopfloor.
Even at the point that we became a couple, I still hadn’t met everybody who worked at the DIY store, as I only worked sixteen hours a week on set days and times, and this included some of the Michaels.
Please also bear in mind that, when I went out with him and Michael C on that Sunday afternoon, I had no intention of bringing up how I felt about him. As far as I was concerned, that ship and sailed. In my ‘version of reality,’ I had made my feelings about him known, and he had politely rejected me by not acknowledging them. Which, honestly, I was fine with. I was just glad that he hadn’t made a big deal out of it, and made things at work awkward or uncomfortable. If I was wrong about his rejection, well, then he would have to clarify that. Looking back at the situation, I suppose he had wanted what I had wanted, which was to take things slow and get to know each other before we got ourselves into something serious. I take full responsibility for that not being how things played out. After all, it was my impulsive, stupid, kiss that threw us straight in at the deep end.
However, it wasn’t as though I knew nothing about him, I did know a little bit.
We listen to the same type of music, and one of his hobbies was playing bass (?) Guitar.
He was the physical embodiment of the phrase, tall, dark, and handsome. In fact, I think there was only one person who worked at the store who was taller than him, and that man was a legitimate giant. Maybe his height was one of the reasons he looked older than he was.
I found out how tall he was not long after I started to notice him during my Thursday shifts, and it was of course during one of those Thursday shifts.
Me and Joe (one of the only managers who I actually liked and who I think also actually liked me) were at the checkouts talking about work stuff. She had come to swap the security box that we dumped the ‘paper’ money into, in case we got robbed, so that she could start cashing up early. By pure chance, Michael who had been doing some visual merchandising that involved moving shelves around, came to the checkouts to put the tools back in their box below the counter.
“What were you doing with that tape measure before Michael?” Joe enquired, in a teasing tone.
Both me and Michael turned to look at each other. He seemed slightly embarrassed, and hesitated as though considering how to answer the question without making himself appear stupid.
“He was standing over there before,” Jo pointed. “With the tape measure under his foot, pulling it above his head.”
As though he was more embarrassed by his actions than the reason behind them, he replied that he had been measuring himself.
“Oh yeah?” Jo did not sound convinced. “How did that go?”
“I’m six, one,” he announced, as he hurried off, forgetting that there were still tools all over the counter.
It was also during one of these shifts that, I found out he was younger than me.
When he had mentioned that he was at college taking his A-levels (?), I’d been surprised, because it meant that (unless he hadn’t gone straight from school to college, which didn’t seem to be the case) he was around the same age as me, even though he looked about nineteen or Twenty. I was seventeen.
Then, in the October, on one particularly dark, cold and drizzly Thursday evening, he was telling me what he was doing for Halloween (which was having a booze fuelled party with his friends) when he cut himself off to ask whether I had any Halloween plans. Feeling like a child, because I was just days to young to be celebrating Halloween with my booze fuelled friends who were 18+, I explained that I didn’t, but that I did have plans for my birthday.
“How old are you going to be?” He had his back to me, and his attention was still on whatever he was trying to fix.
“Eighteen,” I admitted.
“You’re older than me,” he said sounding as shocked by this as I was. “I’m not eighteen until may.”
It was that may that, I decided to confess how I felt about him. It had seemed so much easier to write it in a birthday card (also, work did not seem like an appropriate place to tell him that I thought he was beautiful – in both appearance – and what?– mind, heart, soul) until I actually tried to do it. In the end, unable to find the right words, and feeling just as exposed writing it as I thought I would saying it out loud, I taught myself how to write “I think you are beautiful” in French, and wrote that instead. My thinking was that it would be obvious that it was a declaration of- not love – affection (?) – if he felt the same about me, he would translate it – if he didn’t, surely he wouldn’t put in the effort.
“It’s only a card, but please don’t open it at work,” I had insisted, when I handed him the envelope, in the locker room.
“I wont,” he promised.
When he saw me the next week, he thanked me for the card, I told him he was welcome, and that had been that.
However, the shock that I felt when he told me he younger than me, was nothing compared to how I felt when I found out what his surname was.
Although there had been no actual confirmation, either verbal or ‘written’ from either me or him, it was clear by that Thursday, four days after we had gone to watch his friends band play, that we were a couple.
We spent the rest of that Sunday (which was the majority of it) wrapped in an almost private bubble of his making, even after the band and the rest of his friends had joined us. The girls were trying to fire questions at me – this girl they had heard all about, who had managed to snatch up their friend, who it became obvious by the end of our relationship, they all wanted for themselves – yet somehow he continually brought the conversation with me back to just me and him. He showered me with affection, which I did my very best to navigate, awkwardly, not only because of how romantically inexperienced I was, but because I genuinely didn’t understand physical affection.
Michael C sat on the edge of the group, forgotten in the excitement, watching the two of us bitterly. Nobody seem to notice him but me. The way he watched us made me feel uneasy.
We sent text messages backwards and forwards over the next three days, not a lot, but enough to make it obvious if it wasn’t already that we were together. In those text, he casually mentioned that he wouldn’t be in work that Thursday, and that he had swapped shifts with Ash.
Ash was slightly late that day, because her mum, who had given her a lift into work, had been running late. A, her mum, who was a manager, had passed me on her way to the offices, without a word. I had spotted her out the corner of my eye as she passed, all blonde hair and Ivory skin, wearing too much jewellery and that disapproving glare she always gave me.
Ash came skipping towards the checkouts a few minutes later. I saw hair blonde hair and Ivory skin before I saw that expression on her face that said she had gossip to tell me. I had just finished serving a customer when she reached the checkouts. Without stopping, she pointed at me, dramatically waving her hand in a circle, announcing, “You! You and my brother! You and my brother! I know all about you and my brother!” Then she disappeared into the offices, leaving me confused and horrified by the news that my new boyfriend, was my manager’s son.
Part Ninteen- From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people.
In your initial request to us, you asked for copies of ‘telephone calls from August 2020 from me and my phone number, to include July if possible’. These as well as the audio versions of these calls are what have been provided.
The call logs are the transcripts of the phone calls you have made.
The redaction removes third party and police technical data, it is not your personal information.
I can confirm that your Subject Access Request form exists (see attached as 1. Data Request), and as confirmed above, using the references you kindly provided I managed to locate the footage. It has since been posted out to you and should be with you either tomorrow or Monday. The delay in it being provided was due to me not being able to locate it.
We have used Egress for several years as it is a secure method of sending large quantities of information via the internet, it allows us to by-pass the need for physical documents which, if sent via post, could end up being lost.
It is not assumed that the requestor knows Egress exists, and we are more than happy to confirm the veracity of the programme itself and the security it offers it’s end users.
I have attached a copy of our Subject Access Request form should you wish to make a new request.
For complaints, you can either contact our Professional Standards Department via the online form:
· https://www.merseyside.police.uk/fo/feedback/tc/thanks-and-complaints/
Alternatively you can contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) via their own website:
· https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/complaints-and-compliments-about-us/
I understand you are reluctant to speak with anybody on the phone, but should you change your mind I am more than happy to speak with you regarding your Subject Access Request.
Kind Regards,
My Schedule
Wednesday – Tuesday
Full week of rest
Phase 2 – week D (should have been phase 2– week 7)
Wednesday – Tuesday
Forced recovery time, due to my coronectomied wisdom tooth roots being extracted. Initially, my concern was that I might dislodge the blood clot that forms in the hole/s and/or split my stitches, as I saw information that suggested intense exercise could do both these things. However, it quickly becomes clear to me that, the pain is too bad to do even light physical exercise.
Although I am not happy about having to rest, my left ankle is really hurting, so I accept rest is desperately needed.
This story takes place during the time that I was engaged (which I believe) would put it somewhere in 2010 or 2011, meaning it had been around four or five years since I had last spoken to Michael C.
This meeting was completed by chance, although I am sure our paths were bound to cross again at some point, being that we both lived in the same part of a not so massive city.
Alex (my fiance) had come to visit me from London. When he came to visit me, he always stayed in a hotel in the city centre. On this occasion, I hadn’t been planning on staying with him in the hotel, but our plans had changed after he had checked in. We had gotten the bus to my mums house, where I was living at the time, so I could pack (a very small) suitcase (which had wheels on it) and then we had gotten on the bus to go back into the city centre.
It’s on this bus journey, that mine and Michael C’s paths crossed again.
The single decker bus was completely empty when we got on it, and as I had my suitcase we decided to sit near the front of the bus. I was next to the window. Alex was next to the aisle.
To my absolute horror, when the bus pulled up at that same stop I had gotten of at all those years earlier, on the night I had gone to confront Michael C (unsuccessfully) he got on the bus. I recognised him immediately. He looked exactly the same. He had the same neglected hair (and when he recognised me, and and that same predatory grin, that had haunted my memories since the night he assaulted me, crept across his face) he had the same and uncared for teeth. He was even wearing the same type of clothes, jeans, trainers and a polo shirt, which all looked unwashed.
He recognised me a soon as he saw me. He sat a couple of rows behind us on the other side of the aisle, watching me. Not only could I feel his eyes on me, if I used the window next to me as a mirror, I could also see him watching me.
Not wanting to alert him to the fact that I was who he thought I was, and that I recognise and remembered him (I mean, how could I forget him after what he did to me?) I text Alex to let him know who had just gotten on the bus, and how sick I was feeling because of it.
Beyond checking his phone, I’m not sure what I expected Alex to do, considering how he had behaved in the past. I suppose what I wanted, was for him to grow some balls and stand up for both him and me, if Michael C approached us. (I mean, at this point in our relationship I had already lost count of the amount of times I had defended him, while he brainlessly smiled at the person/people insulting, harassing or assaulting him.) However, when his phone dinged with the text notification, he uncharacteristically did not check his phone.
“Check that message,” I told him, trying my best to keep my tone calm, as I nudged his foot gently with my own, in a way that was obviously a private signal to him.
“No, it wont be important,” he replied, before continuing to talk about whatever stupid thing was more important than my blatant distress.
Somewhere between distressed by Michael C’s presence, and furious at Alex’s ignorance (which I now know with hindsight, was due to the fact that Alex didn’t actually care for or about me) I began to tremble, as I typed out a second text message to him. My brain was already so fogged over by emotion that, I don’t remember what I wrote in that second message, but I do know that it didn’t actually matter, because my intention in sending it was purely to draw Alex’s attention to the first message I just sent him. When his phone dinged again, I half demanded, half begged him, to check his messages in a far more urgent tone, that was beginning to lose control of, while I tapped my right leg against his left leg.
When he still refused to check his messages, I gave up on subtly trying to communicate with him, as I now felt as though there was more of a chance that Michael C would understand my desperate signals than Alex would.
Feeling like a trapped animal, and with my distress, anger and nausea growing, Alex’s words faded into the background. Trembling, I turned to face the front of the bus, and stared blankly at the window, hoping that the bus would hurry up and reach our destination, or at the very least some other passengers would get on.
Alex didn’t seem to notice that I was no longer looking at him, or able to listen to what he was saying, and continued chatting away, which only agitated me further.
As the bus reached the end of the strand of shops, Michael C got up and moved to the seats directly to the side of us, and began trying to speak to me.
Even though it was obvious that Michael C was trying to talk to me, Alex began not only answering him, but also trying to include him in “our” “ongoing” “conversation.”
“Why are you ignoring me?” Michael C kept asking me.
When he finally realised that I was not going to answer him, he put his question to Alex. “Why is she ignoring me?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said, as though it was a great question, then he turned to me and told me to stop being rude.
“Why don’t you stop being inconsiderate?” I snapped.
“If you don’t want to speak to him you should tell him that yourself,” Alex bristled.
At that, I turned and confronted Michael C “Go away. I don’t want to talk to you. Leave me and my boyfriend alone.” Then I turned my back to them both, and stared out of the window next to me.
Michael C just chuckled and carried on trying to speak to me, and Alex continue both answering him (and what felt to me like pathetically) and desperately trying to involve him in the previous subject matter.
At this point Michael C lost his temper and aggressively made it clear to Alex that he wasn’t talking to him, he was talking to me, and that Alex should mind his own business.
Alex tapped me on the shoulder. “He wants to speak to you. Are you going to stop being rude and speak to him?”
I turned to face Michael C. “I’ve already told you to fuck off! Fuck off!” I turned my back on them again.
In response, Michael C gave another laugh, and continue trying to get my attention, while Alex now sat there in silence.
As the bus neared our stop, I stood up, grabbing my case. “Come on,” I insisted, to Alex, as I passed him and moved to the very front of the bus.
Alex dawdled, acting as though he was confused by what I was doing. He paused long enough to allow Michael C to stand up before he did, get in between us, and follow me to the front of the bus.
“There’s live music tonight at the [insert pub or club name I don’t remember]. I’m going. Do you want to come with me?”
To my surprise, Alex declined, telling him we had plans.
“I wasn’t inviting you. I was inviting her,” Michael C clarified bluntly.
Why I suddenly tried to reason with Michael C, I don’t know, but I did. It was a massive mistake, because it seemed to encourage him. “That’s my boyfriend. We are engaged,” I held my hand up, showing him my engagement ring.
“Your boyfriend doesn’t mind me talking to you. He has even told you to stop being rude to me,” Michael C smiled that disgusting lopsided grin of his.
“I mind! I mind! And when it’s me you’re harassing that’s all that matters! It’s you who’s being rude! Now fuck off and leave us both alone!” I choked back tears.
To my horror, the bus didn’t go towards our stop, it was diverted, which added an extra couple of minutes on to our journey. In the moment, I believed this was prolonging my ordeal, as I never expected it to continue once we got off the bus.
I wanted to cry.
I wanted to scream.
When the bus finally stopped, it was at the small set of bus stops outside St John’s shopping centre, near the huge set of stairs down into the main shopping area. It wasn’t our usual bus stop, Queen Square was.
I hurried off the bus. Michael C dashed after me. Alex dawdled behind, as though he could sense there was going to be trouble, and didn’t want to have to intervene.
As I stepped onto the pavement, I set down my suitcase, which I had been carrying, and pulled out it’s a long handle so I could pull it behind me on its wheels.
“Let me carry that. A lady shouldn’t carry her own bags.” This wasn’t a “polite” “chivalrous” offer, it was an aggressive demand. Violently he snatched the small handle at the top of the suitcase, that you used to pick it up and carry it, and started trying to drag it off me.
Terrified that the handle I was holding (the flimsy handle you use to pull the case behind you on its wheels) was going to snap off, but determined not to let him have my possessions, I held on, pulling back. We were so close to each other, and the suitcase was at such an awkward angle for both of us, that neither of us seem to be able to get a tight enough grip to drag it off the other.
At first, I shouted at him to “Stop it!” -And to “Let go!” Then, and I don’t know why, maybe my fear, anxiety and panic, ramped up, I began to scream for help and that I was been robbed, which, technically, I was.
Yet, this didn’t scare Michael C off. It didn’t even cause him to let go.
The bus stops around us were practically empty, and people were walking by watching, but refusing to intervene.
Then from behind me I heard a booming, authoritative, male voice, demand “Let go and leave her alone.”
Completely unfazed, Michael C stopped pulling, but kept hold of my suitcase. “I’m just offering to carry the lady’s suitcase for her.”
“The lady has asked you to leave her alone. Respect her wishes and fuck off.”
As Michael C’s face dropped and he let go of my case, a small wave of relief washed over me, and a tiny hint of a victorious smile turned up the corners of my lips.
Visibly seething, Michael C took a couple of steps back, staring at my rescuer, before turning and walking away, glaring over his shoulder as he did, until he disappeared into the crowds of people further up the street, at the bus stop out side the second storey of the Boots.
It was only then that I felt safe to face my rescuer, and thank him. He was an older stocky man, maybe in his early 50s, with glasses and a goatee.
As a thanked him. And thanked him. And thanked him. I swallowed and blinked away tears.
“Don’t worry about it,” he reassured me. “I was just doing what any decent bloke would do.” With that, he shot Alex a look that conveyed, disgust, disappointment and pity, in it.
“Do you want me to carry your case?” Alex asked. He had never offered to carry anything for me before. In fact, I often found myself carrying his stuff.
“No,” I said though gritted teeth, somehow managing to hold back the suggestion that he grew some balls, and tell him that’s what I’d prefer.
That was the last time I ever saw Michael C, at least as far as I know, and I hope that it’s the last time I ever do.
Part eighteen- To The Merseyside Police
Hi, further to my now dozens of emails to you am writing with and official request
-for recordings of all calls that i made to you and form my mobile number this is in excess of ten and yet i have only received two or three please provide all the recordings
-i now want paper transcripts of all these call too
-i have been told the paper transcripts that i have received are suspiciously, heavily and wrongly redacted because i am entitled to know what was being said about me by third parties during the call as these comments not only could be libellous or discriminatory but could have lead further to any confusion or unfair or criminal actions by the police
-this also goes for any systems that you use and i have been told that you would have no need to hide or redact information about this and how and where information was logged communicated sent etc
-i requested body cam footage i still have not gotten and have been told both it does and doesnt exist
– i have asked several times DO YOU have my subject access request form there and got no response please answer this question
-please explain why nobody emailed me to tell me about egress or that you used it and why it was just assumed i know it exists and how to use it and if this is your process for all requests
-please provide me with your process
-please acknowledge that this email will be dealt with how it will be dealt with and when i can expect this information as its been over a month already since i put this request through
-if you are not going to address any of these issues please send me reasons as to why along with a new subject access request form which i can take to a solicitor etc to deal with as well as a paper complaints form or an address to write to
My Schedule
Day 36: Rest day
Day 37: 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking – 4.986 miles
Day 38: 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking – 4.986 miles
Day 39: Rest day
Day 40: 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 41: Rest day
Day 42: Rest day
Total Miles: 13.296 miles
Phase 2
Week 6
Day 36: Wednesday
Wednesday should have been an exercise day. However, due to the fact that I need to attend college to take my English Language exam, I broke possibly my only unwritten exercise rule, and went for a run yesterday instead, which was in a different exercise week.
I am still struggling from the severe paranoia that was caused by the ordeal involving the young boys throwing eggs at me from the top of the bridge, so what happens next leaves me extremely shaken and afraid for my safety, especially with it happening so close to the rumours that I have a rape fetish being put online, which I want to make very clear I do not.
I have just left Clayton Square shopping centre, which I walked through to get to the Starbucks near central station (which is where I took the photograph of the anti-Tory, anti-Boris graffiti on the phone box, two weeks prior) on my way to college, when I hear somebody shouting, “Pix!, – Over and over again. Because pixie, shortened a lot of the time by the people who call me it to Pix, it is my middle name and I actually do you go by it, I instantly react to it by stopping and looking around. It sounds as though the calls are coming from either the left or behind me, but as I turn around to survey both the street and shopping centre, I see nobody that looks as though they are trying to get my attention and definitely nobody that I recognise – from now or my past – or from “real life” or online. I decide that I imagined it, and start walking towards the Starbucks again. I’ve only taken maybe two steps when the shouting begins again, but this time they are shouting “pixie!”– In full.
Due to my level of panic, I’m hit with several waves of thoughts in less than a second, but I only remember part of two of these, as it is these two parts combined that cause me to react in the way that I do.
The first goes something like this:
Why didn’t they say anything…
…Or wave when I turned around?
Maybe I didn’t see them…
… Maybe they were behind a stall in the shopping centre…
… Maybe they hid from me on purpose.
Why would they call me and hide from me?
Maybe to check if it is actually me…
…Maybe they are planning on secretly follow me to where ever I am going…
… Maybe they want to hurt me.
The second goes something like this:
It can’t be somebody who knows me well, because if I didn’t respond to Pix, surely they wouldn’t keep shouting the same thing and would try Rach, or Vanucc, depending on who it was…
…but I very obviously did respond to Pix.
The situation really doesn’t feel right, or safe to me.
Without looking around again, I dash inside the Starbucks, half expecting the person to follow me inside, and half worrying they are waiting outside for me to leave, so that they can follow me or ambush me.
While wait for my coffee, I watch the street outside. People passed by normally. Nobody appears to be hanging around. However, I am aware that doesn’t mean that they aren’t. I am aware, that they could be waiting out of sight. Yet, I can’t stay in here all evening. I need to be at college soon, and the shop will eventually close.
I try to tell myself that it was just a chance encounter with a person that I don’t interact with very often online, or who doesn’t use their own photograph, or real information. Then, I cautiously leave the shop and hurry to college.
It is not until later that night, while I’m lying awake in “bed” unable to sleep, that I remember posting that stupid graffiti tweet, and begin to worry that somebody was waiting for me, hoping I would return on the same day and time at some point.
Day 37: Thursday
On Thursday, it’s raining heavily. I love the rain, but usually not when I need to go out in it. Today though, I do need to go out in it, and I’m glad it’s raining. My paranoia is so severe because of the bad week I have had, that if it wasn’t raining, I’m not sure that I would be able to go for my run at all. Nobody, no matter how desperate they are to “get me,” is going out in that rain.
The pain in my left ankle, is much worse.
I complete 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking.
Day 38: Friday
Friday should’ve been a rest day, but I decide that I want two rest days together, which means going for my run today, instead of tomorrow.
Progress in my run/walk times is overdue, so I attempt 150 seconds (or 2 1/2 minutes) of running as soon as I start, which doesn’t go well. When I reach the end of the 2 1/2 minutes, my feet, legs and knees are aching, my lungs are burning and I can taste blood.
Defeated I complete 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking. This is much harder than it usually is, because the effects of that 150 seconds sticks with me for the entire run.
When I get home, I wonder how I am going to progress, but I don’t come up with any ideas.
Day 39: Saturday
Saturday should’ve been an exercise day, but I went yesterday, so it’s a rest day.
The 40: Sunday
Sunday should have been a rest day, but for a reason I don’t recall, I decide to go today instead of tomorrow.
This is a massive mistake.
I start with 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking, but when I get halfway around lap 1, I wonder if I can change my times to 2 1/2 minutes running and 2 1/2 minutes walking. I complete the remained of my lap this way.
That is how I find my new way to progress.
I plan to do the same for the next two laps, but things don’t go to plan.
I am halfway around my second lap when the heavens opened. At first, I try to continue running, but it’s impossible, as the rain is so heavy I am unable to see through it. I can’t remember experiencing anything like this before, ever. Within a few seconds I’m drenched, and by the time it stops, I am so soaked that I imagine this is how it feels to get out of a swimming pool after being pushed in fully clothed. I have no choice but to cut my run short, and walk home.
On today’s walk, I also came very close to being hit by two bikes, and one of the men riding one of them shouted abuse at me, like it was me, the pedestrian, that shouldn’t have been on the pavement.
Day 40: Monday
Monday is a rest day.
Day 41: Tuesday
Tuesday is a rest day.
Today, I have my coronectomied wisdom tooth roots extracted, which means that I need to take a weeks break from running.
Although I am not happy about this, I know that it is not only best for my face, but also my ankle, which I suspect is now really messed up.
I don’t recall the dates that me and Alex became a couple, got engaged, or broke up. What I do recall is that the only thing I enjoyed about being engaged was the ring, but probably not for the reasons you expect. The reason that I loved that ring, wasn’t because; of how expensive, or beautiful it was; or that it made me feel loved, or special; or even that it showed the world that I was head over heels in love, and had found my soulmate and he was wonderful, and that he felt the same about me, so much so that we were going to get married and live happily ever after. Honestly, I think by the end of our relationship, I was more in love with that ring, than I had ever been with Alex. What I loved about that ring, was it superpowers. whenever I was being bothered by a stranger in public, I would flash that ring, and my harasser would disappear.
I am sure you assume, that being in the presence of the man that I put that ring on my finger, increased its superpowers. Tragically, it did not. In fact it had the opposite effect. Even before we were engaged, a problem had come to my attention. It was a problem which I genuinely, but stupidly, expected to resolve itself. whenever a stranger harassed me when I was with Alex, his presence exacerbated the situation. If I was alone while being harassed, nine times out of ten, the man harassing me would go away before he took things too far. However, if I was with Alex, nine times out of ten the person harassing me would take things too far, and the other 10% of the time it would escalate to the point where either me or Alex was physically assaulted by the person. It was as though his presence enraged the men who were harassing me.
With the majority of these men, it would be a repeat of the same situation. I could be at the point of almost tears and/or telling them angrily to fuck off, and they would respond with something along the lines of:
“Calm down love, your boyfriend doesn’t mind me talking to you. Why do you?”–
Or:
“Your boyfriend doesn’t seem bothered that I’m asking you out, he mustn’t care about you. You should be with me, not him.
During these incidents, Alex would politely engage them in conversation, while he smiled at them, brainlessly and balllessly. On rare occasions the men involved would act like he wasn’t even there, never mind speaking to them, but for the most part they would tell him to fuck off and mind his own business. He always complied.
In this blog post, I’m going to give you two very brief examples of occasions when Alex was assaulted, both of which took place in the pilgrim pub, in Liverpool’s city centre, on different nights.
Then, in my next blog post, I will tell you about the time that I was (sort of) attacked by Michael C, while Alex watched.
Example one is very short, as the incident was so routine up until the end, that I don’t remember what the man pestering me was saying to me. Whatever it was, it resulted in me angrily demanding that he leave the two of us alone. When a few of the other people who were in the pilgrim that night turned to look at us, because I was raising my voice, he nodded calmly and agreed, “Ok, I’ll leave you alone.” (Me and Alex were sitting next to each other – I was on his left – and this man was had sat down on the other side of Alex – on Alex’s right – when he came over to speak to us.) Then he picked up Alex’s pint, which was almost full and poured it over his head, before standing up and walking just as calmly out of the pub.
Example two happened on a slightly busier night, but the pilgrim was by no means even close to full. We were sat opposite each other, next to the wall, at a small table, when two men approached us and sat down at the table, one next to each of us, blocking us both in.
“You don’t mind us sitting here do you?” The one next to me asked. He was uncomfortably close to me.
I looked around the pub and saw that there were plenty of empty tables they could be sitting at, then I replied that yes we did mind, we were on a date, and they should leave us alone and go to sit somewhere else.
The one next to Alex laughed at this as though he didn’t believe me, “You two are on a date?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’m out with my boyfriend. That’s called a date.”
He laughed again. “What’s a gorgeous girl like you, doing with Mr potato head here?”
(Even though Alex did have a giant potato head – and listen I’m not trying to shame him here – and if you’re reading this you very likely know me, and to know that I very rarely make remarks about people being unattractive or ugly – I truly believe most people are beautiful, but it is just a fact that some people are not, and I’m not going to lie about them being beautiful if they are not – the truth is that Alex wasn’t attractive, and he was ugly, and this man wasn’t the first person to say something like this to me about Alex – )I was furious.
“Leave us alone,” I demanded.
The one next to me, made a comment that they were only joking, and I shouldn’t be such a miserable bitch. Then he nodded his head towards Alex who was smiling brainlessly and said, “See? Mr potato head got the joke.”
After this they both started asking me personal questions, starting with things like my name and age and getting more inappropriate and intrusive. Annoyingly and unsettlingly, Alex was answering them, telling them all my personal information. As this went on, four more men who seemed to be with them approached the table and pulled up chairs, discovering in the process that there was only room for three chairs at the side of the table.
At this point I was already upset, angry and arguing with Alex, telling him to stop answering the strangers questions about me, and asking him what was wrong with him, but now I began to feel afraid.
“Come on Alex, let’s go and sit somewhere else,” I insisted, standing up, but when I told the man next to me to move so I could get out, he ignored me, acting as though he hadn’t heard me. It didn’t help that Alex was still sat there making no attempt to stand up, smiling brainlessly and trying to make conversation with the strangers who were intimidating me and seemed predatory.
“You don’t have to go anywhere love, it’s Mr potato head that’s in the way.” With that, the man next Alex stood up, grabbed Alex by the shirt and dragged him from behind the table. Alex continued to smile a up at him brainlessly.
In shock and disbelief over what was happening, I began shouting at the man, but I have no idea what I was shouting. As he swung Alex around, I became a hysterical, and I think every person in the pub including the staff were now staring at us.
At this point, it was as though the man assaulting Alex came back to himself, and he let go of him.
The men blocking me in finally got up and let me stagger out from behind the table on shaky legs.
As soon as I was free, I insisted we leave, which resulted in another argument between me and Alex, because he wanted to stay.
Part Twenty One- From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people.
A new Subject Access Form was attached in the previous email, but I will print out a physical copy and send it out to you as well.
You can send your complaint to:
Professional Standards Department
Merseyside Police Headquarters
Canning Place
Liverpool
L1 8JX
Kind Regards,
Phase 2
Week 5
Day 29: Wednesday
On Wednesday it rains heavily all day, meaning not only do I have no choice but to go out running in it, a quarter of my route is badly flooded. To make things worse, both my ankle and knees hurt, and I am severely tired and depressed.
I complete 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking.
Day 30: Thursday
Thursday is almost an exact repeat of Wednesday. The rain is so bad, and I am so tired and depressed, that I contemplate not going running today and making up for it tomorrow, but after admitting that it will likely rain again tomorrow, and my medication increase is responsible for how tired and depressed I am, which means I will feel this way for awhile, if not forever, I change my mind as I really want to get it over and done with.
While I am out, I think about the guides advice about rewards, although I have no idea why this comes to mind. I come to the conclusion that rewarding myself would do me more harm than good, as I’m not sure that my brain is capable of associating the reward with the exercise. By rewarding myself I would risk becoming addicted to the reward without doing the work. It seems to me that I need to be both afraid of something bad happening, and have a goal to aim for, to motivate me. For example, being afraid of becoming unhealthily overweight (which I currently am not, I am not even over weight, I am only in stone, I am just not comfortable in my new body and my clothes no longer fit me) and wanting to get back to my normal weight of 7 1/2 stone. I also make the realisation that being motivated is not the same as being engaged or interested in what I am doing. For me to remain engaged and interested in the task, it has to both feel like work and a challenge to me. My blog makes it feel like work, because if I want to keep blogging about running, I have to actually go running. My high progress targets keep me challenged.
I complete 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking.
Date 31: Friday
For the last few months, I have been suffering with breathlessness, coughing and wheezing on an off. I’m proud that I didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that it’s Covid, even though it’s obviously my asthma. Due to the fact that it isn’t going away though, last night I attempted to put a request in to see my doctor in the afternoon using their awful online system. The first few attempts send me to 111, so in the end I just leave a note of all my symptoms on the first page and explain I’m going to have to click no on all the questions asking about the symptoms, in order to try to get an appointment. This works, an my request goes through.
When I wake up in the late morning, I phone my GP surgery to ask if I was successful in booking an afternoon appointment, and to my surprise I find out that I was.
The fact that I am so behind on writing my running journal blog posts (I am in week 5 of phase 2, but I have only written up to week 2 of phase 2, because of how busy I currently am with college work, revision and exams) it’s not only stressing me out, but when I get around to writing the blog posts, my own notes make a no sense to me, as I can’t remember the actual days themselves. I decide that while I wait for the nurse to call me back, as there is no set appointment time, I will try to decipher some of my notes and catch up on my rough drafts.
When the nurse finally calls me back, I haven’t done much, and she tells me I need to go in to see her so that she can listen to my breathing. This results in me finding out of the mould in my flat is now causing me asthma related health problems.
Because I have done hardly any writing, I decide to dedicate tomorrow to writing, which means going for my run today instead of tomorrow. I realise this is a terrible idea straight away. The combination of my twisted ankle, exhaustion and depression, my asthma problems and it being my third exercise day in a row, it’s too much. I tell myself that, I can cut my exercise short, and just do 2 laps. However, I quickly change my mind. If I had gone tomorrow I would not allow myself to cut it short, so I can’t allow myself to cut it short today. I battled through.
I completely 3 laps of minutes running and 3 minutes walking.
Day: 32 Saturday
Saturday should be an exercise day, but as I went yesterday instead, it is a rest day.
Day 33: Sunday
Today, I realise that at some point, I made a new calendar for phase 2. Though I don’t remember when I did this, I decide that when doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am unable to keep track of what day number I am on, and whether it is a rest day or exercise day without it.
Date 34: Monday
Monday is an absolutely awful day for me.
I am exiting the dog park on my first lap, when a group of teenage boys outside the corner shop begin to heckle me. They are shouting “encouragement”and shockingly sexually explicit comments for what appear to be boys around the age of 14. I obviously ignore them, but I can’t ignore what happens next.
As I am approaching one of the two bridges I have to go under every lap, something hits the ground directly in front of me and explodes. I am of course shocked by this but snap out of that shock quickly when three or four more of what I believe to be rocks immediately follow, before the young boys throwing them begin to jeer me. I’m still moving, and by some miracle I manage to dodge the all items that are raining down around me. The boys don’t miss a second. Their attack is relentless. It’s only when one of these items explodes releasing an absolutely sickening smell, that I realise they aren’t stones, they are eggs, and rotten eggs by the smell of them. I have dodged them all up until the point I go under the bridge, and by the time I emerge on the other side it becomes clear that they have thrown all eggs they had, as they are just jeering now. I have survived the onslaught untouched, but the two separate events are enough to convince my paranoid mind that I might have been purposefully targeted.
As I passed the corner shop on my second lap, I want to turn into the dog park and go home, but as the teenage boys are gone I force myself forward. Less than halfway down the same street though, I begin to panic when a man who smells of pungent sweat and alcohol tries to talk to me as I’m running towards him. Again, I consider turning back and going home, but I fight the urge and push forward.
My mental state isn’t holding up well though, and as I approached the bridge during three minutes of walking, I use my phone camera to zoom in on the bridge. It appears that the boys are gone, but I’m not convinced that they aren’t hiding, so the closer I get, the sicker I feel. Nothing happens as I passed under the bridge. Yet, I am still unable to shake my paranoia, and although I managed to do a third lap, I behave exactly the same as I approach and pass under the bridge again.
Date 35: Tuesday
Tuesday should be a rest day. However, today I break an unwritten rule of mine and go for a run today instead of tomorrow, because tomorrow I have to go into college to sit another English Language exam. I have this rule because Tuesday and Wednesday are in separate running weeks, and I have considered doing this before. The reason I let myself break rule today, is because it will legitimately be a one off, as it’s my final exam, meaning college is over after tomorrow, and I have a lot of writing to catch up on.
Today the pain in my ankle is terrible.
I completely 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking.
Day 29: 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking = 4.986 miles
Day 30: 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking = 4.986 miles
Day 31: 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking = 4.986 miles
Day 32: Rest day
Day 33: Rest day
Day 34: 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking = 4.986 miles
Day 35: 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking = 4.986 miles
You know when you wake up with an extreme alcohol hangover?
Well, waking up with an extremely sedative hangover can be far worse.
Although it is something that I am used to as a thirty four year old woman who needs to take antipsychotic medication (even though it never gets easier to deal with) at eighteen years old, it was like no hangover I had ever experienced. This in itself should’ve been enough to alert me to the fact that I hadn’t simply been drunk the night before. (Looking back, it actually was, but I chose to deny it.) At eighteen, I had never experienced any type of bad hangover before. Like most people in their late teens and early twenties, I was able to stay out drinking until 6 am, get about three hours sleep, then go into work (at 11 am the same day) at the most feeling a little tired and dehydrated. On this morning though, I felt wretched. Not only was I exhausted and nauseous, with a terrible headache, I was also dealing with the emotional trauma that comes with being the victim of a sexual assault. Whether it was the physical or emotional suffering that was the reason I couldn’t drag myself out of bed that day, until I was going to risk being late for work, I can’t say for sure, although I assume it was both. Either way, due to this, I didn’t really start thinking about what had happened to me the night before until I was at work.
I know now that I should have called in sick, but at the time I blamed myself for what had happened, and was still on the fence about whether or not it was best to report what has happened to me, or keep my mouth shut. Honestly, I was also afraid that I would get into trouble if I called in sick.
Both my physical and emotional state made it impossible for me to function, never mind to my job that day. During my shift (and in the weeks that followed) I unwillingly replayed what few memories I had of that Wednesday night (in particular, and most distressing, the image of Michael C smirking as he realised I was loosing control of my body) as well as the memory of his expression that Sunday at the cavern club, over in my mind. After I had kissed Michael B, I turned around for some reason and saw Michael C watching us, his features twisted in shock, anger, and an emotion I didn’t recognise, which gave me the creeps. These memories exacerbated how physically unwell I felt. I began to get hot and sweaty. At one point, while I was in the middle of serving a customer, I had to literally drop everything and dash to the toilets to vomit. I didn’t even have time to log out of the till.
It was ash that triggered this response. She was walking from the direction of the staff room towards the checkouts. She had swapped shifts with Michael B, and I knew it was because he was avoiding me.
When I returned from the toilets, Ash was on my till, still in the process of serving the customer I has abandoned. I waited for her to finish, then thanked her for taking over, and apologised for running off.
She glared at me, with that same judgemental glare that I would catch her mother (who was the female manager called A, from my story about being questioned by the police, when I was accused of stealing) giving me, for no reason. Then, she made a nasty remark about me having too much fun the night before, which caused me to break down into tears and tell her how I had been sexually assaulted by Michael C. Although I hadn’t intended to confide in ash, I think part of me hoped that she would encourage me to report it to the police, even though I was aware that this would cause me problems are home and work,, and that is stupidly what I expected her to do, after all, we were friends (or at least I thought we were). Instead, to my horror, she leaned in so close that I could feel her breath on my cheek, jabbed her finger at my nose and spat, “Don’t be one of those girls who cries rape because you did something you regret while you were drunk.”
At first I was horrified and confused. For one thing, I hadn’t accused him of raping me, I had told her how he had sexually assaulted me, which seemed massively different to me at that point. Also, Ash knew me. Everybody at the DIY shop knew me, and they knew that I wasn’t a liar, or “the type of girl to be promiscuous.” With hindsight, I believe I understand Ashes reaction fully now, and that it is complicated and layered. However, at the time, her reaction convinced me that would also be the reaction of anybody else I confided in, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Michael C did phone in sick for the next couple of weeks, giving the excuse that he had been beaten up during a mugging on that Wednesday night, which eventually reached me through the gossip factory that is present in every workplace. Horrifyingly, so did the rumours that we had sex in the alleyway that Wednesday night. This wasn’t just upsetting because everybody was talking about me and one of the worst things that had happen to me, it was upsetting because it made me wonder whether I had also been raped that night. Whenever somebody asked me if the rumours were true, I would look them dead in the eyes and ask them, “Do you honestly believe that I would allowed Michael C to touch me?” It was the only way that I knew how to answer truthfully without revealing that I had been assaulted.
When I learned that he was due to return to work, I felt sick all over again. Not only had I just managed to kill the rumours, I had also convince myself that he wouldn’t be coming back to work. I decided, there and then, that I was going to confront him about what I knew he had done to me, as well as to try to find out if he had raped me.
Weirdly, as soon as I promised myself I would confront him, a bizarre chain of events began to unfold, like the universe had heard me and was moving to assist me.
On the Monday or Tuesday following my discovery that he was returning, I received a text message from him. He was babysitting his little brother at his dad’s girlfriends house, and wanted me to come to keep him company. I stared at that text message in disbelief for at least half an hour. Not only couldn’t I believe that he had the nerve to text me like nothing had happened, or that he was requesting that I willingly put myself in a situation where I was alone with him after what he had done to me, I couldn’t believe that I had actually been presented with an opportunity to confront him (I mean I couldn’t confronting him while we were at work). On the other hand, I was aware of the danger I would be putting myself in by going there.
Now, over a decade later, I believe that he sent me this message in order to see how I responded, to see what I remembered of the Wednesday night, but at the time this never crossed my mind, I simply took the text message at face value.
After debating what to do for around half an hour, while I literally watched the seconds and my opportunity tick away, I grabbed my coat and bag, and told my mum exactly where I was going and hurried to the bus stop. At that time of night (which was about 9 pm) there was almost no traffic on the road, so it only took me about twenty minutes, once I was on the bus, to get there. The house was easy to find once I got off the bus, as the street she lived on was a tiny one off a busy shopping strand, and he had given me the house number, the street name of the shops at the end of the road.
When I arrived, his little brother, who was only three or four, was already in bed asleep, and Michael was watching one of the music channels on TV (which in those days, actually played music).
I sat dow as far away from him as I could. As soon as I did, he made a few comments about that Wednesday night, that in the moment felt like he was twisting the knife, but which I now think, was him attempting, once again, to see what I remembered. I don’t recall our conversation word for word, but it went something like this –
Him: We were both really drunk on Wednesday, weren’t we?
Me: Were we?
Him: I know I was, and you were in a worse state than me. We had to carry you out of the club, because you couldn’t even stand up.
Me: Oh right. If I couldn’t stand up, how did I get home?
Him: Didn’t I put you in a taxi?
We stared at each other in tense awkward silence, as I tried to build up the courage to do what I had gone there to do, but before I could he broke the silence.
“I heard you and Mickey B broke up.”
“Yep,” I nodded.
“That’s good,” he smiled disgusting smile. It turned my stomach.
“Why is that good?” I asked flatly, somehow managing not to show the emotions that were raging inside me.
“Well, it is for me. You know, I was about to kiss you that day at the Cavern Club, before you kissed Mickey B?” That fucking vile smile didn’t falter as he continued.
“I know,” I replied, through gritted teeth. “I’m glad you didn’t. You repulse me.”
There were a few more seconds of silence were we stared each other, during which I don’t think any of us could believe what I had just said. During this, I flipped between wanting to cry hysterically and laugh hysterically, which prevented me from reacting at all.
Then, whatever song had been playing in the background ended, and Britney Spears came on, at which point Michael C burst into hysterical laughter. Immediately after composing himself, he made an inappropriate comment about me and Britney Spears, which was obviously meant to shock or upset me.
Somehow, still managing to keep my tone flat, I told him, “I’m more of a Christina Aguilera girl.” Then, I stood up, and showed myself out.
When I reached the end of the street, I collapsed against the wall of a shop, shaking and hyperventilating, having what I now know was a panic attack. It was then that I realised whether he had raped or not made no difference to the effect the assault had on my mental and emotional well being. I was already severely damaged by it, to the extent that I didn’t see how it could be worse. All that mattered now was my physical well being.
Since the assault, I had already gotten my period, so I knew I wasn’t pregnant. Although I knew that I needed to get tested for STIs and STDs, I had no idea where to go for this. Again, the weird chain of events intervened, as a few days later I was assaulted by a drug addict in my own home, and as a result I was advised to get tested for Hepatitis and HIV, and given details of where to go.
When I was seen at the hospital, I asked them to test me for absolutely everything.
I still had to work with Michael C though, right?
Only for a bit.
A couple of months after he assaulted me, we were both working an unusually dead Saturday shift. I was alone on the checkouts when he approached me and offered me a bar of chocolate, which I obviously declined. This was strange as we didn’t speak anymore. (As a result of us not speaking, everybody at the DIY store was convince that he was a liar already, as they assumed that the reason we weren’t speaking was because I was angry at him for spreading lies about me.) He persisted in trying to get me to take the chocolate, to the point that he admitted he had stolen it, adding that he stole it from the stand in front of the till, and that he stole from that stand when I was on the checkout all the time, because I never noticed what was going on around me. Although I understood that this was both a dig at me, and him bragging about himself, I didn’t (and still don’t) understand why or how it was a dig and a brag . All I know is that he had, unintentionally, provided me with very valuable information.
That evening, when I was cashing up the tills, alone with whatever manager had been on duty that day, I explained to them what he had said to me. Less than a month later, he was fired for stealing more than chocolate. Yet, he was never interviewed by the police. Regardless, I had achieved what I had hoped to achieve by telling the manager what he had said to me; me and Michael C no longer worked together, which meant that I never had to see him again, or at least that’s what I thought.
Part Seventeen- From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people.
Ok great, I will have a look for it now.
My schedule
Day 22: Rest day
Day 23: 2 minutes running 3 minutes walking for 2 laps (3.324miles)
Day 24: Walk 2 laps (3.324 miles)
Day 25: 2 minutes running 3 minutes walking for 2 laps (3.324miles)
Day 26: Rest day
Day 27: 2 minutes running 3 minutes walking for 3 laps (4.986miles)
Total miles 40% run 60% walk: 12.634 miles
Total miles 100% walked: 3.324 miles
Total mile: 15.958 miles
Phase 2
Week 4
Day 22: Wednesday
Wednesday should have been an exercise day, but because I have an English Language exam at the college, I have no choice but to change it to a rest day.
While I am getting dressed, I weigh myself. I’m still eight stone. Obviously, I’m glad that I haven’t gained any weight, but the fact that I haven’t lost any more, when I’ve been working so hard, is frustrating.
Day 23: Thursday
I wake up on Thursday to the sounds of torrential rain, so I really don’t want to go outside. Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice, as I’m already a day behind, and realistically it could rain all week.
After waiting for the rain to lighten a bit, I hurry out for my run. My intention was to continue with 90 seconds of running and 3 1/2 minutes of walking, but I’m so desperate to get back home before the rain gets heavy again, that I do 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking. The walking part is easy to keep track of, because, as it is the longest part of my exercise routine, at the moment, I use my phone to time it. Up until now, keeping track of the running part hasn’t been too difficult, even though I have been timing it myself, by counting out the seconds. Today, though I encounter a problem. I am unable to count beyond 90, without getting distracted or drifting off into thought. I think that I can resolve this easily by counting to 60 twice (which is what I’m still doing at the moment, and I’m currently in week six) but this present me with a similar problem; sometimes, I can’t remember if I have counted to 60 once or twice.
I’m also presented with a problem that I didn’t encounter on even a single occasion when I was fully walking my route. I can’t remember if during phase 2’s journal I have mentioned this yet, but the road by the roundabout (meaning the part of the street where the cars drive, floods during heavy rain fall. Today, I discover that so does the pavement in between the roundabout and the white van, which makes up a quarter of my route.
Despite these problems, and the fact that I am running into 25 mph winds (I checked the windspeed by googling it when I got home) which makes it both harder to run and breathe, I completed 2 laps.
Day 24: Friday
On Friday, I have an eye hospital appointment, at Saint Pauls. Due to the hospital making such a big deal about giving me an afternoon appointment, I can not get to sleep on Thursday night. The stress of knowing that if I can’t sleep, I can’t go, as it will be too dangerous for me (as I could fall, pass out, or have an accident such as being hit by a car, because my already poor attention will be much worse) keeps me awake. At 5 am, I admit defeat and get up and make myself breakfast, with intention of cancelling my appointment at 9 am when Saint Pauls opens. However, as soon as I admit defeat and accept that I have no choice but to cancel my appointment, I start struggling to stay awake.
I set my alarm for lunchtime, with the intention of waking up with enough time to phone Saint Pauls to cancel my appointment. Then I fall asleep.
Instead of waking up at 12 and cancelling my appointment as planned, I sleep through my alarm and don’t wake up until 1:15 pm. Knowing that I probably have a better chance of making it to my appointment if I skip breakfast and half arse getting ready, than I now do of phoning and getting through to someone to cancel the appointment before it comes and goes, I make the reckless decision (because I am meds hung over, both physically and mentally) to try to make it to the hospital on time.
By the time I get out of the hospital, I’ve been in there so long I’m starving. There is no way I can go for a run as hungry as I am, so I plan on eating a light dinner and then waiting for two hours before I go out to exercise. However, due to how stressed out I am, I actually end up bingeing, as soon as I get home. Still, I waited two hours and go, which I quickly learn was a massive mistake.
Every time I try to run, I get a terrible stitch in my side, and feel so ill I am forced to stop to (dry) retch. Disappointed in myself, I walk 2 laps of my route.
Day 25: Saturday
On Saturday, I complete another 2 laps of 2 minutes running and three minutes walking. Although, I wanted to do 3 laps in order to make up a little for the exercise I missed yesterday, my right knee is really hurting. As I don’t want to risk an injury, I go home.
Day 26: Sunday
Despite the busy week I’ve had, which left me with very little space to write, surprisingly, on Sunday, I finish my blog post a few hours early. Hoping to make up for Fridays failure, I think I can go for a run, but when I go to change, I find that I don’t have any sports bras dry. I am fuming at myself for being so disorganised.
Day 27: Monday
On Monday, I actually do managed to do an extra lap, meaning I do 3 laps of 2 minutes running and 3 minutes walking, yet it still doesn’t feel like I have made up for Fridays failure.
Day 28: Tuesday
Tuesday is similar to Sunday in the sense that I want to go for a run but I don’t have any dry sports bras.
I need to be more organised, or find some money to buy more exercise clothes.
“He’s definitely finished with me, and he’s just scared to tell me. I can’t believe that it’s him who’s finished with me, when it was him who was lying to me,” I typed on my tiny, pink Nokia, with the bright pink, jelly case.
“He hasn’t finished with you. If he had, he wouldn’t be scared to tell you, because he’s finished with girls before. Come out with the two of us tonight, then he’ll have to talk to you about it,” Michael C’s text came through almost immediately.
According to Michael C, him and Michael be saw each other outside of work a lot, and went into town every Wednesday night. Why they choose that night in particular is a mystery to me, as they were dead by Liverpool standards. I had never gone out with them on a Wednesday, prior to this. The only time I had ever seen Michael C outside of work, was on the day that me, him and Michael B went to the cavern club.
There were occasions when I went into town on Wednesday nights, but on this particular Wednesday I had no plans.
It was the college summer holidays, in between my first and last year of my national diploma. I’m sure of this for several reasons:
1. Michael B’s birthday is in May, and we didn’t become a couple until after his birthday.
2. By the November that same year, I was in a relationship with a man in Matthew.
3. Although I had coursework to complete on the day we had gone to the Cavern Club, it hadn’t been so urgent I couldn’t go.
4. I was at home while me and Michael C were texting this afternoon.
As I was desperate to speak to Michael B about what I had found out, and he was now ignoring my text messages and phone calls, I foolishly agreed to go.
I had been wearing a red dress that day, as it was warm, and because it seemed fine for a casual evening of socialising, I never changed before I left.
When I arrived, Michael C informed me that Michael B was running late, and suggested that we go inside the pub we had arranged to meet outside of, which was around the corner from Queen Square, as that’s where we all got off the bus. However, it was packed inside, which meant we couldn’t get a table. As it was filled with “scals,” when Michael C, frustrated by there being no free tables, propose we go onto the club we were planning to go to (I don’t recall the name, as I had never been there before, and have never been there since) again I foolishly agreed.
The club was completely empty when we got there. Yet, Michael C aggressively insistent that I go grab us a table, so that we have somewhere to sit, and he would buy us drinks. This was odd, but I was a naive teenager, so it didn’t raise any red flags.
I simply pointed out that we were the only people in the club, then ordered and paid for my own drink, which I think was a vodka and orange juice. The only person I had ever let pay for my drinks was Michael B, and I paid for his drinks as well. Also, I was a club kid, so I had a well established habit never leaving my drinks unattended.
The club was laid out so that there was a large dancefloor directly in front of the bar, then behind and to the side of the dance floor where private booths.
At first, I didn’t touch my drink, as I wasn’t planning on drinking anything until Michael B arrived. This was because the only reason I had come out was to speak to him, and I wanted to be sober for that conversation. This annoyed Michael C, who kept asking why I wasn’t drinking it. Every time he asked, I explained that I was waiting for Michael B to arrive. In the end, he made this really dramatic show of checking his phone and announcing that Michael B had decided not to come, due to me being there.
Livid, I demanded to know why he had told Michael B I was coming. It seemed obvious to me that Michael be wouldn’t come if he knew I was, because he was blatantly avoiding me.
Defensively, Michael C shot back that of course he had told my Michael B that I was coming, as he wasn’t going to allow me to ambush his friend.
I don’t know if I was more confused by Michael C’s explanation (after all it had been his idea that i come, it wasn’t like I had invited myself with the intention of ambushing my boyfriend), or furious that he had betrayed me.
I’m going home,” I said, through gritted teeth.
“Don’t be stupid, you’re here now, and you haven’t touched your drink. Don’t waste it, just stay to finish it. We can think of a way to get Michael to talk to you about this.”
With hindsight, he sounded desperate for me to stay, but in the moment as a woman who is not capable of reading people properly, he sounded to me like he was trying to make things right with me.
“It’s obviously over,” I choked back tears. “He hasn’t spoken to me now for three days.”
“Why don’t you tell him that’s how you feel? You’re being unfair to him by accusing him of breaking up with you and not telling you.”
This took me aback a little, as I actually felt like I was being accused of doing something terrible. Was I wrong for worrying that my boyfriend had broken up with me because he was avoiding me?
Without thinking about it, I picked up my phone and typed out a text to Michael B explaining how I felt, and hit send. I instantly regretted it. In a state of emotional meltdown, I literally sat, staring at my phone, hoping for a response, ignoring Michael C for over half an hour. As the minutes ticked by, my anxiety and upset grew, until I felt physically sick and could no longer keep it inside of me.
I burst into tears, dropping my head into my arms on the table top, and bawled until I no longer had the energy to continue my tantrum. At which point, I wiped the tears and snot off my face, sat up, and without thinking because I was in such painful emotional distress, I downed the drink that had been out of my sight for at least fifteen minutes while I cried. Then I leaned back in my seat, and began sending my Michael B panicked and pleading messages.
This is where the night starts to become hazy, flashes of memories, although not straight away.
The last solid memories that I have, are of me and Michael C having a very heated argument. He was, as was normal for him, aggressively trying to get my full attention, only this time to the extent that he became physically violent with me, grabbing my wrists and even trying to bend my fingers backwards, as he tried to pull my phone out of my hands. This infuriated me, not only due to the physical violence, but because it wasn’t him I had gone there to see, and he knew that. I had gone there to try to resolve the fact that my boyfriend was avoiding me, and discuss what had led to that situation, and because I had gone there and listen to Michael C accusations about me that I was the one in the wrong, that situation now seemed unresolvable.
“This is all your fault,” I kept saying to him, over and over again. “He thinks I’ve broken up with him now, because of what you made me say to him.”
I don’t recall his responses. I probably didn’t even hear his responses, as we were both low volume shouting at each other.
During our argument, a couple of small groups of other people entered the club, disappearing into other booths.
We were still arguing when I started to feel a strange sensation (and even more unwell) that as an eighteen year old girl who had never taken any drugs, sedatives, or antipsychotic, I wasn’t familiar with, but as a thirty four year old woman, who has been on high doses of Zopiclone and immediate release antipsychotics, I am now very familiar with. My body began to feel heavy and numb, and so did my lips. When I attempted to speak, both my lips and tongue felt fat, rubbery, and in my way. I am convinced that if I didn’t have (undiagnosed, at the time) complex mental illnesses, that are resistant to sleep aids and require antipsychotic medication, I would not have any recollection of the events to beyond this point, and would like to have been completely unconscious.
The memory that both haunts and distress me the most to this day, is the image of his face as he realised I was beginning to lose control of my body. It is an image of his grotesque, smug, satisfied smile, showing his crooked, discoloured teeth. I had just dropped my phone, which I had been fumbling with, bewildered, I glanced up and saw that expression on his disgusting face. Realising something was terribly wrong, I tried to stand up, but when I did the room spun and my legs felt like jelly.
The next memory that I have, is of being slumped on the table, my face wet with tears, unable to move and trying to call for help but only managing to make slurred grunts. His body was close to mind and his had was in my underpants.
When the noises I was making finally attracted the attention of the barman, relief washed over me, as I believed he had come to help me. Instead, he told us to take our inappropriate behaviour somewhere more appropriate.
Luckily, I couldn’t move, right?
Wrong!
When the barman discovered I was semiconscious and unable to move, he helped Michael C pick me up and carry me out of the club.
After this, there is another chunk of time missing, where I assume he realised moving a limp, semiconscious body was not as easy as he thought it would be, as he had moved me into the alleyway at the side of the club, but not far enough in that I couldn’t see the people passing by, and they couldn’t see us.
I recall being pinned awkwardly between his body and the wall, and him struggling to pull down my underpants, as I made crackly attempts to call for help, and weak attempts to push him off me.
Although my attempts to push him off me were unsuccessful, my attempts to call for help must have eventually been successful, because the next thing I remember is being supported by a man, while another man was psychically fighting with Michael C, and winning. At the time these men seemed much older than us, and although I recall very little of their appearances, I do recall that they must have only been in their twenties.
At one point during the altercation, Michael C was down on the ground, which is how he finally got away. He scuttled backwards, before standing back up and fleeing into the alleyway.
The two men helped me into the street, and we sat down on the pavement. It had been light when we had gone inside the club, and now it was dark. I couldn’t even attempt to guess how long I sat there with those two men, as it has gone midnight when I arrived back home, which told me I was missing several hours. I was with them long enough for one of them to buy me both a bottle of Lucozade and a bottle of water in an attempt to, “Help sober me up.” Once they were satisfied that I could get myself home, and that there was somebody at home to, “Look after me,” they put me in a taxi which I think they paid for.
How I got myself out of the taxi and inside my house, is a mystery to me. As soon as I got inside I collapsed onto the kitchen floor, laughing uncontrollably, not because I found any of what had just happened to me funny, rather from the shock, while my mum commented in a tone that was somehow both amused and disgusted that I was drunk.
Did I tell my mum what had happened to me that night?
No. No I didn’t. I never forgot what she had said to me that day I was assaulted at school.
Although part of me didn’t want people to know what had happened to me, there was a part of me that did, because I did not ever want to have to see him again, which wouldn’t be possible while we were both working at the DIY shop.
For over ten years, I was in denial about the fact that I was obviously drugged, and did my best to convince myself that I must have been drunk of that single drink. I couldn’t accept that I was stupid enough to drink a drink I hadn’t been watching. I couldn’t accept that I didn’t see his games or the red flags. However, when I first started taking antipsychotic medication I was prescribed immediate release, and immediately recognise the effects that this medication had on my body were similar to the affects that drink had on it. I could no longer live in denial. I had to accept that I was obviously drugged with some sort of sedative. I have thought about the events of that night a lot over the years, especially after I accepted what really happened to me, but I haven’t spoken about it for sixteen years, until now.
The only thing that I remember about my first shift at the DIY shop, is being introduced to both Michael B and Michael C. This is because the two of them were together at the time, and the person who introduced me to them, did so by telling me, “These are two of the [insert number]of Michael that work here.”
I was being shown around the store by one of the managers, but I don’t recall which manager.
“Hi,” they greeted me, in unison, like a carefully rehearsed double act.
“Hi’ ya,” I laughed, as I was led away. “I’m Rachel.”
Was it love at first sight, when I saw Michael B?
Hard no.
In fact, I’m pretty sure, that I forgot all about Michael B after that, for the first couple of weeks, as I don’t think I saw him for awhile after that.
Did I forget about Michael C?
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to. Even though the only shift we worked together was the hectic Saturday shift, meaning I should have hardly seen him, he always seemed to end up at my till with the customers he was helping, or on the same breaks as me. On the very rare Thursday or Friday shifts that we work together, he always seemed to be at the tills whenever I was alone.
Even with his attempts to aggressively insert himself into my work days, at the beginning he would have been complete unmemorable, if he wasn’t memorable for all the wrong reasons. He didn’t have the best hygiene; he fancied himself an indie kid, but in reality he was simply just a “scal,” who was less of a “scal” than his friends and family; and when he first started talking to me, he gave me the creeps. Yet, I couldn’t put my finger on why. As a naive teenage girl, I wasn’t aware that he was, aggressively, trying to insert him self into my work days. I simply thought that he was just bored and/or skiving.
I wish I had listened to and trusted my intuition more, but even if I had it probably wouldn’t of prevented him from him forcing his company on me, as I had been raised to be polite to a fault. Even when I was busy and he was preventing me from doing my job, I didn’t know how to tell him to leave me alone.
With hindsight, I am convinced that telling him to leave me alone wouldn’t have stopped him, as it would have been obvious to him that not only was I busy, I also wasn’t interested in him, or his life. It wouldn’t have stopped him from bothering me, because he didn’t care about me as a person, I was an object to him, a thing that he wanted to play with.
When he spoke to me, he never asked about me about me or my life, he chatted on and on about himself and his life. Mainly he chatted about the music he listen to and the pubs and clubs he went to, none of which I listen to or went to, but he also talked about his life, and his family and friends.
That was how I learned that he had a very rough childhood, and how I began to sympathise with him and see him as a work friend. After all, I had a rough childhood too.
This is all to say, that I considered him a work friend only, so had no intentions of socialising with him outside of work.
Part sixteen- To The Merseyside Police
it was the eighth of august i have attached both my videos where they tell me they are also recording me and an email from yourselves confirming that there is in fact body cam footage
https://youtu.be/M_D0QPm0dC4https://youtu.be/NSf3XuY24UQ
Day 15: 90 seconds running 3 1/2 minutes walking for 2 laps -3.324 miles
Day 16: 1 minute running 4 minutes walking for 2 laps- 3.324 miles
Day 17: Rest day
Day 18: 90 seconds running 3 1/2 minutes walking for 2 laps -3.324 miles
Day 19: Rest day
Day 20: 90 seconds running 3 1/2 minutes walking for 2 laps -3.324 miles
Day 21: Rest day
Phase 2
Week 3
Day 15: Wednesday
On Wednesday, my knees are stiff, to the point that I am walking like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz when he needs oiling. Yet, I battle through, completing 2 laps of 90 seconds running and 3 1/2 minutes walking. During my exercise, I wonder whether I need to speak to a doctor again about my knees and joints, but I’m put off by the fact that they have told me that my left knee (which is still troubling me after I injured it over a year ago) is fine, and they just stared blankly at me when I ask if the aching in my other joints could be arthritis.
Day 16: Thursday
When I wake up on Thursday, I am exhausted and don’t feel well, due to me either having, or almost having, a seizure last night. Also, I’m worried that I might have another seizure today while I’m out exercising, as they “come in clusters.”
The last couple of weeks have been extra stressful, and the noise from next door was so bad last night that it pushed me over the edge.
Regardless, I go out to exercise. As somewhat of a probably useless precaution, I adjust my run time back to 1 minute and my walk time back to 4 minutes. I complete 2 laps.
Day 17: Friday
Friday is a rest day.
Day 18: Saturday
Even though I managed to complete 2 laps of 90 seconds running and 3 1/2 minutes walking, today I am convinced that there is something seriously wrong with my left knee, because of how much it is hurting.
After I am finished exercising, I go to the supermarket. While I am there, I remember to buy a notebook. This notebook is specifically for writing my exercise journal notes in, so that they don’t get mixed up or go missing anymore.
Day 19: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Day 20: Monday
Before I go for my exercise on Monday, I try to organise my journal notes. While I am doing this, I see that phase 3 of the guide is still building up to a full run, and is completely made up of run walk notes that I cant decipher. Honestly, it makes me feel like the entire guide is a scam, purposely made up of overly complicated gibberish that nobody can understand or follow. Why it would be this way, or what the magazine that published this guide wanted or is achieving by publishing it, I have no clue. For this reason, I am officially abandoning any attempt to follow the guides schedule at all now. I don’t feel like this decision is going to hinder my progress, as I haven’t been able to follow the guide for the last few weeks anyway. Also, I will no longer be including that schedule in my own schedule blog post.
In a way though, this does make me feel more positive about how slowly I have been progressing, as I’ve just doubled the amount of time that I have to build up to a full run.
Today it is raining heavily. Despite this I go for my run and complete 2 laps of 90 seconds running and 3 1/2 minutes walking.
During my run, I spot another open manhole cover, and decide that I need to stop counting them, before I realise that I’ve actually already lost count of how many I have spotted.
Date 21: Tuesday
Tuesday is a rest day.
Today, I’m going to tell you about my first kiss.
“But Pix,” I hear you say, in a baffled tone. “You don’t write love stories.”
You are correct, this isn’t a love story, it’s a horror story, at least it is by the end. However, that end isn’t part of today’s post, you’ll have to wait until next week for that, I’m afraid.
In the future, I will write about my experiences of growing up A-sexual, but now isn’t the time or place. All you need to to know to understand today’s story, is that I was much older than most girls are when I finally found a person who interest me romantically (I believe I was 17 and the year was 2004, which would make me 18 and the year 2005, when these events took place) and even then my interest in him wasn’t sexual. To this day, I’m still not sure what it was about Michael B that interested me.
He was beautiful, but so are lots of people. He was tall, with black hair, olive skin and bright blue eyes. I wasn’t the only person who thought he was beautiful, all his female friends teased him about looking like Brad Pitt. I didn’t see the resemblance, personally. Although, he didn’t look like an Emo, he was just as big an Emo as I was.
He also made me laugh.
Right now, I won’t go into any more detail about mine and my Michael Bs relationship, before, during, or after we were a couple, as they are many other stories, that I will tell on other days.
With that said, let’s get to todays story.
It was a slow Thursday evening at the DIY shop, so I was the only member of staff on the checkouts. As closing time approach, Michael B slipped into the cubicle and stood behind me, quietly. This was odd, as Michael B was usually very loud, and demanded constant attention. After a good five minutes of silence, he finally spoke.
“What are you doing this weekend?” It was a question he had asked me many times, but never with such a serious tone.
My answer, was probably, going into town (meaning, going clubbing) that night, as well as Friday and Saturday night.
“What about Sunday Afternoon?”He murmured.
Intrigued by the specific-ness of his question, I told him that I would be doing coursework, while feeling depressed.
“Does that mean you’re busy?” He sounded disappointed.
“No,” I laughed.
“My friends bands playing at the Cavern Club, me and Michael C are going, do you want to come with us?” He was behaving far more awkward than normal, which is an achievement worth noting, as he was exceptionally awkward all the time.
Honestly, I didn’t want to go. At this point in my life, I was heavily into music, but I’ve never been interested in any type of live music event. Maybe it’s because of my short attention span, and having nothing else to occupy me there, but live music events have always felt like torture to me. However, before I realised what I was doing, I had agreed to go.
Excitedly, he gave me the details of where and when to meet, then raced off to the offices, beside the checkouts.
Some quick notes:
1. Michael C was a man who worked with us, who was also the same age as us.
2. Both me, and Michael B, considered Michael C to be a friend.
3. Up until this point, I wasn’t aware that Michael B and Michael C were friends.
4. I did not know Michael B last name, at this point.
5. There, were about, six Michaels who worked at the DIY shop.
Me and Michael C always worked the busy and chaotic Saturday shift, and this particular Saturday was no exception. Near the end of our shift, Michael C brought a customer to my till, to process a large delivery order. As he given me a piece of paper with all the information I required on it, he didn’t need to stay with me or the customer while I process the order. Yet, he did, chatting away as I struggled to concentrate, which was really agitating me. When he finally, stopped beating around the bush and brought up the event at the Cavern Club, I was pleased at being presented with the opportunity to get rid of him. I responded that the other Michael had already invited me, and I was going. I found it strange that Michael C had brought it up, as he never enquired about my life outside of work.
“That’s weird,” he commented, echoing my own feelings about our current interaction. “It was meant to be just me and him going.”
“If it was meant to be just you and him going, why are you inviting me?” I pointed out.
“Are you and him friends?” He sounded as though he didn’t actually want to know the answer.
“Why?” I was beyond agitated, now.
“He’s just never mentioned you to me,” he seemed taken a back by my frustrated bluntness.
“Do you mention to him that me and you are friends?” I huffed.
“No,” he mumbled, twisting his face into an expression I couldn’t read, before he slunk away, like a wounded animal.
On the Sunday, I met the two Michaels (at 2 pm, I think) at the shops behind Queens Square. They were already together, and making their way towards me, as I passed the stairs to St John’s market.
“You look…” Michael C spluttered.
“I look what?” I pressed. I was wearing a denim skirt, under a long T-shirt, I look like I always did. (Also, I can’t read people well, remember?)
“I’ve just never seen you in anything other than your work uniform,” he replied.
To say, I was confused by his statement, would not be the correct word, but is the closest word that I have to describe how I felt. I made a comment to Michael B, about what Michael C you just said (but I don’t recall what it was).
In response, he made a joke about it (which I also can’t recall).
We both laughed.
Michael C didn’t. He didn’t look happy.
Misreading him, I thought that maybe he didn’t understand that we were joking and thought we were making fun of him, so I explained that wasn’t the case, but his expression didn’t change. With hindsight, I believe that he wasn’t happy that me and Michael B had a relationship were we bantered together, and me and him didn’t. I suppose, being the nasty, jealous person that he was, it stung more than it should have that he was the subject of our banter, after all we were all friends, and friends banter both with and about each other.
The walk to the Cavern was awkward. But once we got a table downstairs and Michael B (who had offered to buy us a round, even though it was the only round me and him were planning on having) went to the bar, the tension between us thawed a little bit. I say a little bit because, as me and Michael B were trying to hold a conversation (in which we were both attempting to include Michael C) Michael C kept challenging Michael B to a race to see who put down their pint faster. When Michael B reluctantly complied, in order to shut him up, it didn’t end well for either of them. Yet, Michael C kept insisting on a second round.
Eventually, my irritation with him became so overwhelming that I snapped at him, telling him that neither me nor Michael B wanted to get drunk, and that if he did that was fine but to leave us out of it.
When Michael Bs friends band came on stage to play, I think both me and him were relieved. He suggested that the two of us should go and sit on the step, to get closer to the stage where we could hear better.
I agreed.
Michael C followed us. He waited for us to sit down, before sitting to my left, so that I was in the middle of them.
As I tried to listen to the band (who we couldn’t see because of the crowds of people standing between us on the stage) Michael C kept poking me in my ribs, and trying to talk to me. His behaviour was really pissing me off, as not only was he hurting me, he hadn’t wanted to talk when we were talking, but now when I was trying to listen to the music he did. Even after I told him he was hurting me and asked him to stop it, he kept doing it. It was only when he started to lean in far too close to me, causing me to feel uncomfortable, that I began to suspect his real intentions. Despite my inexperience with romantic relationships and situations, alarm bells started going off in my head. “He’s going to try to kiss you!” They screamed.
“What’s worse, having Michael C try to kiss you, or having Michael B reject you?” I asked myself.
Appearing completely calm on the outside, but actually being in an absolute anxious meltdown on the inside, I tapped Michael B on the shoulder. When he turned to face me , I leaned in pressing my lips against his.
I fully expected him to push me off him, and demand to know what I was playing at. Instead, he leaned in, kissing me back.
As easy as that, our romantic relationship began, setting into motion a chain of events that would lead to one of the worst nights of my life.
Part Fifteen- From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people.
If you can provide me with the dates then I can do another search, but based on the dates of the logs and the numbers of the officers I cannot find any.
The guides schedule
Day 8: walk 30 minutes
Day 9: 30 minute cross training
Day 10: rest day
Day 11: walk 30 minutes
Day 12: 20 minutes cross training
Day 13: walk 50 minutes
Day 14: rest day
Total exercise time = 2 hours and 20 minutes
My schedule
Day 8: Rest day
Day 9: 1 1/2 minutes running 3 1/2 minutes walking 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 10: 1 1/2 minutes running 3 1/2 minutes walking 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 11: 1 1/2 minutes running 3 1/2 minutes walking 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 12: Rest day
Day 13: 1 1/2 minutes running 3 1/2 minutes walking 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 14: Rest day
Phase 2
Week two
Wednesday
Wednesday should be an exercise day, but as I have to go into college to do an English exam, I make it a rest day.
Thursday
I have a dental hospital appointment on Thursday, after which I go straight out for my run. I do 2 laps of 90 seconds running and 3 1/2 minutes walking. This is 30% running and 70% walking.
Friday
Friday would have been a rest day, if it wasn’t for my exam on Wednesday. Again, I do two laps of 90 seconds running 3 1/2 minutes walking.
Saturday
After my hairdressers appointment, I go for my run. I do 30 % running, 70% walking. It’s been A really busy week for me. My lungs and knees hurt.
Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Monday
Today, my legs are so stiff and sore, I feel as though I am walking like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz.
Despite being worried about injuring myself, I go for my run as planned.
While I am running, I wonder if it’s my gate that is causing my knee pain. When I walk, I take lots of small, fast steps, and I seem to be doing the same when I’m running. At first I blame the fact that I am doing run walk, but I did the same when I started running on the treadmill, and I never did it then. My concern is that by taking small steps, I’m taking more of them than I should be, therefore I am landing more often than I should be, which as a result might be causing damage to my knees.
Tuesday
Because of my aching knees, I am very grateful Tuesday is a rest day.
This story is a continuation of last weeks Sunday blog post, so if you have skipped that one due to the fact that it was about a sexual assault, you might want to skip this weeks as well.
If you want to read this story, but you missed last weeks for any other reason, I would recommend reading last weeks Sunday blog post first.
The next day, I arrived at school and headed to the place where my “friends,” always gathered in the mornings, which was in the main corridor outside the giant music room. Usually most of them arrived before me, but by pure chance, only three of them were there that morning when I arrived; Jade, Duffy, and somebody else (I think it was Bunton, or Gibbo, but I don’t remember which, as this person didn’t say anything during our short interaction).
As soon as Jade, who hated me, and who I hated, saw me, she began making very upsetting remarks, very loudly.
“Here’s the slag now.”
“Hello slag.”
That kind of thing.
I don’t recall my reaction to this, but my reaction lead to Duffy informing me that Laura had told them all, all about, how I had allowed two boys to “feel meet up.”
I tried to explain what had actually happened, but again, probably due to how distressing the situation actually was, I have no recollection of what I said, or what Duffy’s response was, I just remember the events this started into motion.
Horrified by the fact that I didn’t know who Laura had gossip about me too, and feeling emotionally and mentally unable to face those people, or confront Laura, I hurried off to hide in a toilet cubicle.
When the bell rang, signalling the start of the school day, and that it was time to go to (what I think we called) our form class (which was a class that we went to at the beginning and end of the school day, for about fifteen minutes, to take part in administration tasks such as registration) I didn’t go. The reason I didn’t go was that I had recently been moved, by request, to Laura’s form class. I didn’t go to any lessons that I had with Laura either. At lunch and breaks, I inserted myself into my best friend, butch’s, friend group, which wasn’t the same as mine.
I did the same the next day, and the day after that, until the initial day of avoidance had become over a week of avoidance.
I want to pause here, to add two notes.
Firstly, avoiding the problem/s was not helping my mental well being. As the days added up, my paranoia increased.
Were people staring at me?
Did they know?
Were those girls whispering and/or laughing, whispering and/or laughing at me?
Secondly, “sagging” (which is what we called skipping school and/or individual lessons) was a massive problem at Archbishop Beck, so until it became so bad that they had to report it to the higher ups, they never bothered informing parents. However, because I had been recently moved to my new form class, by request, my form teacher had noticed, and was monitoring my lack of attendance more thoroughly than he usually would have. For some reason, he had taken personal issue with my absence, and had decided he was going to get me expelled. Obviously, I was unaware of his intentions at this point.
That brings us to the event in question.
Inevitably, like any other problem/s, I couldn’t avoid this one forever.
As had now become my normal routine, I waited for a few minutes after the bell rang to signal the end of form, to give everybody else time to get from there form class to their first lesson, before heading off to my own first lesson, which on this day was English. My English class was above my form class. Because I was late, I took the quickest route, which meant I had to pass my form class. As I turned the corner onto the corridor that my form class was on, I felt sick. Registration had run late for my form class, and all the pupils were only just leaving the room.
Almost immediately, I saw Laura step out into the corridor. She was talking to a girl, whose name I didn’t know. This made me hope she wouldn’t notice me, or say anything to me if she did. My heart was thumping so loud (and fast) that it was all I could hear. Fixing my eyes on the door, to the stairs, which I was heading towards, I sped up.
As we came close together, and were about to pass each other, Laura slammed into me hard with her shoulder.
Then, at the top of her voice, she yelled, “Watch where you’re going slag!”
Everybody in the corridor turned to look at us.
High off adrenaline, I spun around and yelled back at her, but I don’t remember what.
Whatever I said struck a nerve. Her face turned red, and her expression change from smug glee to raging fury. She flew at me, swinging her fist at my head as she did. I stepped back, causing her to miss me. She changed her attack just as quickly as I had dodged her, grabbing me with her other hand.
You know that thing that happens when you have a fight, were you seem to lose your awareness of what is happening?
That doesn’t always happen to me, and when it doesn’t happen, it allows you to stay, sort of, “calm” and in control of the situation. This was one of those times.
I didn’t want to fight her. I never wanted to fight anybody, yet people always seem to want to fight me. However, I especially didn’t want to fight Laura, because I knew everybody would want to know why we were fighting, and I didn’t want anybody to know what had happened to me. Somehow, I managed to push her against the wall and hold her there, to limit how much she could assault me. She tried to kick me and knee me, but I had pressed my body up against hers in a way that meant she was unable to move her legs. One of her arms was trapped as well; with her other hand, she punched me over and over again, in the side of my head.
What was he really weird, was that all the people that were watching were silent. There were no enthusiastically declared announcements that fight was in progress, and there was nobody cheering either of us on.
The only person making any sound was Laura. She was screaming incoherent words, as she hit me over and over again, but I refuse to let go of her. We stay like that for what felt like hours, but was likely only a couple of minutes at the most.
Then I was grabbed from behind. This wasn’t any old grab either. The person wrapped their arm around my body, and gripped tightly onto my left breast.
That’s when I lost it. Instinctively, I let go of Laura with only my right hand, swinging it back and into the person groping me, in an unsuccessful attempt to get them off me.
They wrapped the other arm around my waist, and began dragging me backwards, away from Laura. Now I was the girl screaming incoherently, as I flailed about, trying to break free. As I did, a sea of confused faces watch silently.
It was only when I was dragged into the classroom, that I realised the person dragging me was my form teacher.
Compare to me this man was a giant. I don’t recall how tall he was, but he was big in build. Whether it was fat or muscle I don’t recall, but I assume it was muscle as was he was a PE teacher. Holding me, and dragging me, was nothing to him.” He closed the door behind us, before dragging me across the room to his desk and letting me go.
What happen next, is an adrenaline fuelled Blur.
He told me, in great detail, how he had been keeping an eye on what classes I had been missing and why (which was apparently to get me expelled. This seems very extreme to me, even as an adult.) He was ecstatic that I had “punched” him, when he grabbed me. I was in a lot of trouble, he warned me, excitedly.
This is the point when I broke down sobbing hysterically, and rambling about why it would be me getting into trouble, when it was him who groped me.
Then as borderlines tend to do, my emotions switched, and I began babbling about how he would get away with it, after all those two boys who assaulted me in front of Laura and the receptionists had gotten away with it.
When I finished, I sort of, “dramatically” drop down onto one of the tables and began bawling.
He watched me, quietly, waiting for me to exhaust myself. Once I stop, he crouch down in front of me and apologise profusely for “touching me.”
(Although I know groping me probably was an accident, I don’t think him grabbing my breast was a mistake, I believe he did it to get a good grip on my body, not realising the gravity of what he was doing.)
He was just trying to get me off Laura.
(No he wasn’t. I was the one being attacked. He never attempted to stop her from punching me in the head. He was, to some extent, enjoying himself, because he could tell I was distressed, and he physically drag me through the corridor.)
Afterwards, he asked me to explain what had happened with the boys.
I did, as I snuffled and whimpered; I no longer had the energy to bawl, as I had just been doing.
Telling me to stay where I was, he left me alone.
When he returned, it was with my head of year.
“Who knows?” She enquired, her voice was filled with concern.
“I don’t know,” I spluttered. “Ask Laura, she’s the one telling everybody.”
She nodded, thoughtfully.
(As an adult, I now know that her concern was not for me, and know that when she asked me who knew, what she really meant was did my parents know.)
They then left the room together, again telling me to wait where I was. They were gone a very long time.
To my surprise when they came back, my head of year told me to go to class, adding, “Wash that muck off your face face. You shouldn’t be wearing it anyway.”
She was referring into my make up, which I only wore in small amounts (but sometimes it was too bright for school) which was smeared across my face.
“I’m not getting expelled?” I sniffed.
“No.”
“Not even suspended?”
“No.”
As I got up to leave, she stopped me. “Don’t talk about what happened, and Laura won’t talk about it either.”
I nodded.
Laura never got to suspended either. It baffled me at the time, but as an adult I realise they couldn’t punished either me or Laura, because doing so would potentially expose that a pupil was sexually assaulted, while staff members watched.
Part Thirteen- From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people.
I have double checked for body worn camera footage and I can confirm that there is none held.
Kind Regards,
The guides week one schedule plan
Day 1: Walk for 30 minutes
Day 2: 30 minute crosstraining
Day 3: Rest
Day 4:Walk for 30 minutes
Day 5: 20 minute crosstraining
Day 6: 40 minute walk
Day 7: Rest
My week 1 schedule
Day 1: 1 minute running 4 minutes walking for 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 2: 1 minute running 4 minutes walking for 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 3: 1 minute running 4 minute walking 3 laps – 4.986 miles
Day 4: rest day
Day 5: rest day
Day 6: 90 seconds of running 30 minutes and 30 seconds of walking for 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 7: rest day
Total miles =14.948 miles
Percentage run = roughly 20%
Phase 1
Week 2
Day 1: Wednesday
Although I meant to weigh myself as soon as I woke up on Wednesday, I don’t actually remember to do it until I am getting dressed to go for my run. I know from my days of having an “anorexic BMI” (body mass index) (Even though I wasn’t anorexic) that when you weigh yourself really does make a difference to the result. As I have already eaten and drunk this morning, I try to mentally prepare myself for a heavier result than the last time I weighed myself, but that’s not really what happens, well not by much. Stepping on and off the scales, several times, I come to the same weight give or take a couple of pounds, each time, which is 8 1/2 stone. Rather than be upset that I haven’t lost any weight, I am happy that I haven’t gained any.
My run today is the same as the last few exercise days. At the beginning my knees and lungs are screaming, by the end of my second lap it’s just my knees bothering me and I want to do another lap, but I make myself go home.
Day 2: Thursday
At the end of my first lap on Thursday, I stop and bend down to tie my laces. How often do your laces come undone Pix, I hear you ask. The answer is a lot. My parents never taught me how to tie my laces, because my mum can’t tie laces and my dad didn’t care, so I simply knot them, make two loop and knot the loops, and pretend I can tie my laces. Over the years several friends and boyfriends have tried to teach me, sometimes I even think I’ve learnt, then one day I’ll go to tie them and realise I don’t remember how. As I bend down, I see an identical manhole cover to the one I noticed last week, which was open. This manhole cover is also open. This worries me, as due to my shortsightedness and keratoconus, I can’t see them when I’m standing up. I’m concerned by how many of the absolutely dozens of them along my route might be open like these two, because if I step on one, or catch my foot on the open cover, I will fall.
I wish I owned a treadmill.
Day 3: Friday
Friday should’ve been a rest day, but as I woke up late again (yes again, I’m on antipsychotic medication and my noisy neighbours keep me awake at night) I decide to go for my run today, instead of tomorrow, so that I can dedicate tomorrow to writing.
As I am still unsure of what changes I want to make to next weeks routine, I decided to use the last two days of week one as testers for two different ideas.
Today I keep my run walk times the same, but complete three laps. I find it fairly easy.
While I am exercising, I find myself feeling really down about the fact that I am not improving, and I dwell on those feelings to the point that when I get back home they have almost become a depressive episode.
Later in the night, I realise I have fallen into an emotional trap, that I warned others not to fall into.
What was it that I said?
Don’t expect to make a progress in the first few weeks, but aim to?
I don’t quite remember, but surprisingly I do feel better after recalling this.
Day 4: Saturday
Saturday should’ve been an exercise day, but as I went yesterday, I make it a rest day.
Day 5: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Day 6: Monday
Monday is my second day of experimenting with how to change my routine. Today I completed just the two laps again, but change my runtime to 90 seconds of running or 1 minute and 30 seconds and my walk time to 3 minutes and 30 seconds. This means I am running 30% of the route and walking 70% of the route.
This is much harder than doing 1 minute of running and 4 minutes of walking, when doing both doing 2 or 3 laps.
For this reason I choose this change for my week two routine.
Day 7: Tuesday
Tuesday is a rest day.
The events of today’s blog post took place during my first couple of months of year ten, at which time I was enrolled at Archbishop Beck catholic high school, which by my current calculations would mean I was only 14 years old and the year was 2001. In 2001, Archbishop Beck was at the end of Cedar Road off Walton Vale next to the field, though it has since moved, it is on this field during a freezing cold overcast day, that the story begins.
On this day, my PE class and another PE class had been split into boys and girls, the boys had been taken to the on site swimming pool, while the girls had been taken to the field.
Although there was only one teacher with us during this PE lesson, we had been split into three groups, running, weight throwing, and high jump, all of which require solid dry ground.
Whether or not it is the same twenty years later, I don’t know, but back then, school girls PE uniforms in England where are paedophiles wet dream. They consisted of, a polo shirt (Ours was blue, and the only practical and appropriate part of the kit, however certainly not comfortable and slightly restrictive as they were tightly fitted), a pair of shorts which were like a regular pair of women’s underwear, and a very short and insecure skirt (ours was maroon. These were those skirts that are flat at the front and pleated at the back, and ours only had a very flimsy clip on the side to keep it both closed and on. This clip was constantly popping open whenever you moved).
Why we weren’t allowed to wear appropriate or comfortable sports clothes, such as a loose T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, I don’t know. We weren’t even allowed to wear a sports bra, we had to do sports in our regular bras, and could not wear leg ware, meaning bare legs were required.
PE lessons were always double periods, and about a quarter of the way through it began to rain. Despite this, we were forced to carry on, slipping and sliding on the wet ground until somebody got injured with one of the weights. As I was in the running group at this point, which was the only activity I had done this far into the lesson, I didn’t witness what happened. All I know is that somebody slipped while throwing a weight, and as a result it hit them or somebody else. I don’t know how serious the person/people involved injuries were, but they certainly weren’t given any medical attention or even concern, at least while I was on the field. The teacher simply just saw the accident as an indicator that it was time to take us inside, and told us to gather whatever equipment we had been responsible for bringing out onto the field, then lineup.
Me and my friend Laura had ended up in the middle of the line, which wasn’t actually a line, rather several groups of girls who were standing close together in a row. Laura wasn’t carrying anything, as not everybody was. Regardless of the fact that I had two asthma inhalers to carry, the teacher had also given me a weight to carry. Even as a 34 year old woman, I am small and feeble, as a 14 year old I was (although probably the same height as I am now) such a skinny little thing that the weight was physically too heavy for me. Because I was struggling to keep hold of everything and juggling it, rather unsuccessfully I might add, my attention was fully on these items, so although I couldn’t hear the group of girls in front of us, who were all carrying parts of the disassembled high jump, laughing and joking, I didn’t pay them any attention. I had one inhaler in my left hand and the other which had slipped out of the same hand pinned to my leg. The weight was slipping out of my right hand, which had been cradling it to my body, as it slid down my body towards my legs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Laura jump to her left, then the high jump pole hit me hard and fast right in the middle of my chest.
The bar not only knocked the air out of my lungs, it knocked me off my feet, and I dropped everything I was juggling as I crumpled to the ground. The world was still and silent and completely void of air, so I have no idea what happened in those seconds to minutes, but as my awareness of what was going on around me began to return, my breath did not. Instead, my chest began to feel tight, and as I gasped for what little air I could suck into my lungs, I began to wheeze. I could hear Laura and our teacher both impatiently demanding I get up, but ignored them and continue trying to breathe.
“I don’t think she’s joking. She looks a bit blue,” a girl from the other class said.
“Don’t be stupid people cant turn blue,” the teacher snapped.
The same girl dropped down to my level, and handed me my inhalers. “Take your breathing medicine,” she coaxed.
I tried to, but I felt like I couldn’t breathe it in, and it tasted like it was stuck to my tongue and throat.
The teacher (who, if you haven’t already guessed, did not like me) bent down picking me fully off the ground, and stood a very dizzy me onto my very trembling jelly legs. “Take her to the reception. She’s having an asthma attack,” she told Laura.
Reluctantly, although I don’t know why, because she hated PE as much as me, Laura walked with me to the reception, clearly annoyed by how long it was taking me.
When we got to the reception, none of the receptionist knew what to do, and were not understanding of the fact that we had been sent to them for help in what could’ve been a fatal medical emergency, because and I quote, “They weren’t doctors,” which I assume means there wasn’t a single first aider among them. In the end they decided that the best course of action was to call my mum, who lived roughly an hour away by bus, and who chose to get the bus rather than a taxi, to come and pick me up. Then they pointed us to the chairs in the waiting area, and told us to sit down.
I have no idea why (and after the events of this day realised that Laura had been off with me for awhile), but she was being a proper cow to me.
“Go back to class,” I said to her, I genuinely wanted her to, because I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t need her attitude while I was struggling to breathe, but she just stopped talking and continue to sit there next to me, sulking.
After about five minutes, two boys came in to speak to the receptionist. When they were finished though they didn’t leave, they came over to us.
“What’s wrong with you?” The first boy asked me.
I ignored him.
“What’s wrong with her?” The same boy asked Laura.
“She is being a drama queen. She loves the attention,” Laura answered.
“I’ll give you some attention,” he laughed.
“Leave me alone,” I wheezed.
He turned to his friends and whispered something. They both laughed. Then he moved in front of my chair, blocking me in, and grabbed my breast.
Shocked and distressed, I shot up out of my chair, which he didn’t seem to expect (I certainly didn’t), so managed to get past him.
His surprise was fleeting though. He pushed me into the corner, in between the wall and the window. By the time I managed to find my balance and turn around, they were both blocking me in. I tried to squeeze in between them, but they both began shoving me into the wall. Then the second boy put his hand up my skirt and grabbed me between my legs, while the first boy was trying to get his hand inside my top.
I gave my best attempt at fighting them off, but they were bigger and stronger and together had more hands than me. Crying and shouting as loud as I could, considering I was struggling to breathe, I begged them to stop, and pleaded for Laura and the receptionist to help me, but nobody help me and the boys refused to stop. Whether it came off in the struggle, or one of them managed to pull it off, my skirt dropped to the ground. That was all the encouragement I needed. I knew exactly what to do to try to stop them.
Following my skirt, I slid down the wall to the ground. They didn’t just allow me to do this of course. One of them grabbed my shirt, and the other my hair, but gravity was on my side. Once on the floor, I pulled my knees into my chest, tucked my head into them, and curled myself into a ball.
One of the boys gave me a couple of kicks, but I didn’t budge.
“Bye slag,” one of them shouted as they walked away. Both of them were laughing.
When I looked up, Laura and two of the receptionists, where watching me. I sat there for awhile crying, before I finally managed to get up. When I did, I didn’t return to my seat. I stood where I was and stared out of the window, waiting for my mum to arrive.
As soon as me and my mum got outside, I told her what had happened. I’m not sure what I expected her to do, but it certainly wasn’t what she actually did.
“Why did you let them do that to you?” She accused.
“I didn’t let them,” I spluttered.
She cut me off, “Come on now Rachel, behave. They couldn’t of done it if you didn’t let them.”
That was the only time, I ever spoke about it with my mum.
Part twelve-From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people.
The files have been put in the post, and I have requested they be sent by either recorded or special delivery. With regards to the Bodyworn footage, I will double check for it now.
phase 1: walking
Week one
The guide schedule
Anybody who wants to follow the guide schedule this is it
Day one -walk for 15 minutes
Day two -walk for 25 minutes
Date three -either walk 15 minutes or have a rest day
Day four -walk for 25 minutes
Day five- have a rest day
Day six -walk 35 minutes
Day seven -have a rest day
Total walking time- 2 hours 15 minutes
My Progress
Day 1: rest day
Day 2: rest day
Day 3: run 1 minute walk 4 minutes 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 4: rest day
Day 5: run 1 minute walk 4 minutes 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 6: run 1 minute walk 4 minutes 2 laps – 3.324 miles
Day 7: Rest day
Week C (was meant to be week 3 of phase 2)
Day1 -Day2: Wednesday -Thursday
Wednesday and Thursday, should both have been exercise days. Due to my concussion, they, instead, are rest days.
Day 3: Friday
Friday should’ve been a rest day. My concussion and nerve trauma are still bad, plus yesterday I started to get nosebleeds. However, I am eager to get back to running, and I don’t know how long it is going to be until my concussion is gone (the doctor at the hospital said it could last for up to 2 weeks, and today is day 14 or 15, depending on whether or not you count the day I banged my head) and I am beginning to believe that my nerve trauma might be permanent, so I decided to go for a run today.
On my first lap, my knees and lungs are burning.
On my second lap, it’s just my knees.
During my second lap, between the site of the car crash and the white van (this is the van that I passed with all its doors open and nobody around), which now lives on the pavement blocking pedestrian access, my shoelace comes open. It’s only when I stop and crouch down to tie it, that I see I came close to stepping into an open manhole. Although it’s only small and round, it’s almost as big as my foot, and I can’t see it when I am standing up straight. If I had stepped on it, I most certainly would have fallen. I try to make a mental note that it exists, but I’m afraid it won’t stick.
When I get to the end of my second lap, I want to go around again, but I stop myself as I don’t want to overdo it. Also I have waves of pain rippling from the left side of my head to the right.
Day 4: Saturday
Saturday is supposed to be an exercise day, but as I went for a run yesterday, I make it a rest day.
Day 5: Sunday
Sunday is meant to be a rest day. However, my neighbours kept me awake last night, and as a result I woke up late. Knowing that I am not going to have a productive day, were writing is concerned, I decide to go for a run today, so that that I can dedicate tomorrow to writing.
Todays run is much harder. Both my lungs and my knees are screaming. I persevere through the first lap, telling myself that the second that will be easier, but it isn’t. Despite this when I reach the end of my second lap, I want to do another.
Again, I make myself go home.
Day 6: Monday
Even though I don’t have to, because I went yesterday, today I go for a run again.
During it, I think about how I’m going to change my routine for week 2 of phase 2. Due to next week only being week 1 of phase 1 (officially), I don’t worry about it too much, it’s just that I know that week one will fly by, and so I need to start coming up with a rough idea. I decided to choose from one of two options. The first being increasing my run time to 90 seconds and decreasing my walk time 3 minutes and 30 seconds. The second being to simply add another lap, so that I am doing three laps of my current run walk ratio instead of two.
Afterwards the rippling pain in my head is terrible.
Day 7: Tuesday
Tuesday is a rest day.
Dental update
Tuesday, the 6th of April 2021
On Wednesday, the 31st of March 2021, in the late afternoon, I noticed I had a missed call with an attached voicemail. I don’t feel well enough right now to answer my phone if it’s not family or friends, but even if I did and I had recognised this number, I wouldn’t have been able to because it was the dentist, who currently even just the thought of having to deal with makes me feel immediately and extremely unwell.
After listening to the voicemail, which was a vague message from one of the receptionist telling me that I needed to book an appointment, I felt even worse, but recognised that calling them back that day wasn’t an option due to this.
The next day I felt no better.
As the Friday and Monday were Easter bank holidays, I hoped I would feel up to dealing with it on the Tuesday.
I didn’t. Knowing I was never going to, I forced myself to phone them.
I explained that I had a voicemail off them informing me that I needed to book an appointment and wanted to know why, then gave the receptionist my details.
“It’s for a 20 minute assessment,” she told me, as though that answered my question.
“Okay, but what is the reason for the assessment?” I asked.
“Whatever it is you have requested an assessment for,” she answered me, as though I was being awkward.
“I haven’t asked you for an appointment for anything. I’m not even sure if I’m going to come back to your practice,” I advised her.
“You haven’t phoned us to request an appointment for anything at all?” She replied, as though she didn’t believe me.
“No, I haven’t, that’s why I need to know what it’s for,” I said trying to keep calm.
“Well, when you come in for the assessment, the dentist will tell you what it’s for then,” she started clacking away at her keyboard.
“Listen,Please,” I begged her, knowing she had already started looking for a free appointment to book me in, without me even agreeing to be seen. “I’m already not happy with your practice, with that in mind can you appreciate why I want to know what I am coming in for, before I come in for it?”
“You can just forget about it if you’d rather do that,” she snapped impatiently.
“I’d rather be given the information I need to make an informed decision,” I shot back.
“You’ve had a letter back from the dental hospital,” she huffed. “Could it be to do with that?”
I felt my blood turn to ice in my veins.
Had I been discharged from the dental hospital?
“Not as far as I am aware. As far as I am aware I am meant to be going back to the dental hospital.”
It was true, I was supposed to be going back to the dental hospital, but I didn’t trust the dentist I had been seen by.
“Well, we’ve been sent a letter telling us you need to be assessed for –” she cut herself off. She had literally just been about to give me the information I had phoned for, and she had purposefully stopped herself. “Do you want the appointment or not” she finished forcefully.
“I’d rather speak to the dental hospital first,” I decided.
“Suit yourself,” She sounded like she was smirking.
“Okay. Thank you,” I said politely, amazed at how calm I had managed to stay.
Then I hung up, and googled the phone number for the dental hospital.
The only number on the Internet for the dental hospital, takes you through to the Royal Liverpool hospitals main switchboard, not the dental hospital itself, which I already knew. However, I was cut off by dead ended automated system options several times, after the switchboard operators connected me, which I didn’t expect and which I imagine was due to covid, as this has never happened to me in the past, before I finally managed to get through to a person. I was so happy to finally be speaking to somebody, and so glad that she was actually willing to help me, that even the times she was a little bit blunt with me weren’t enough to break my already frayed patients.
I explained I was worried that I might have been discharged from the dental hospital, and that I had no other way to find out if that was the case, as the receptionist at my dental practice wouldn’t tell me why I need to see them or what the letter said, unless I went in to see them, which I wasn’t happy to do and why.
She advised me that the letter was just to inform my dentist that I had been referred to a jaw specialist, and that I shouldn’t need to go in and see a dentist because of that. Then she told me I hadn’t been discharged, and they were going to extract the tooth, so she didn’t “understand what my problem” was.
I answered her by repeating my concerns that I might have been discharged, and then, shockingly even to me, I began to cry as I told her what happened at my consultation to cause me to become worried about this.
Appalled, she reassured me that she would pass on what had happened at my appointment to a manager. I advised her that I already had an email address to complain to, but appreciated her help, then I thanked her and let her go.
When I got off the phone, I sobbed for a little bit, unable to calm myself down.
Part Eleven- To The Merseyside Police
when and how can i expect it and also can i also get a reason why it wasnt provided or some proof that it wasnt request because this is looking more and more like you have tried to not provide me with the requested material i remember ticking body cam footage its one of the only things i remember about filling out that form but i do remember it clearly
Phase 2: Run-Walk
Week B:(Should’ve been week 2)
Due to the fact that this weeks running journal is for the full week that I couldn’t run because of my concussion, I was going to also post next weeks journal entry with it. However, I decided against it, the reason being that injury related rest is just as important as any other type of running progress, such as Increased:
• Intensity
• Time
• Distance.
Therefore, I want to encourage rest, when recovery is needed. I feel the best way to do this, is by giving it just as much space and attention.
Day one – day seven: Wednesday – Tuesday
Rest due to my concussion, for the full seven days.
For awhile, I’ve debated whether or not I should write about these events, for two reasons.
Firstly, this is an extremely short story. However, I have many stories that are probably just a short, and in every case the length does not diminish the huge impact they have had on me and my life.
Secondly, my memories of these events are sparse, patchy and hazy.
My belief is that today’s main story took place during my second year of university, as my memories of the events being hazy suggests I was taking high amounts of Lorazepam at this time.
Before I tell you today’s main story though, I want to tell you an even shorter story, that took place during my first year at university.
This will explain the staff culture and entitle behaviour of the staff members, at the halls of residence where I lived during my first two years at university, especially when it came to what the cleaners were allowed to do, so why a cleaner might have believed that they could get away with stealing from the students who lived there.
Regardless of whether or not you cleaned your own room, and wanted the cleaners to come into your room, they would clean every students room in the building once a week.
There was a rule, although I couldn’t tell you whether that rule was official or unofficial, that if you put a note on your room door asking them to skip a single week, they might indeed skip that week. The cleaners were obviously aware that I cleaned my room myself, therefore I don’t see why it should have been an issue to skip a week on the occasions I left a note requesting this, yet more times than not, they ignored the request.
According to several of the cleaners and students, you were not supposed to be in the room when the cleaners were in there. How true this was I don’t know, as I had lectures on Friday mornings, which was when the cleaners cleaned the student rooms in my part of the building, so even if I was allowed to be in the room when they were there, I couldn’t have been even if I wanted to be.
During a particular week in my first year, I was suffering from what I now know was some sort of mental illness related manic style episode, where I worked constantly while at uni and at home. As a result, I was working on several different pieces at once, in my room alone. On my desk were, notebooks, written work and plans; while tacked up on the walls, and laid out on the floor, were several large sketches. Among this work were reference materials I was using, which included, books, albums and album covers, et cetera. The cleaner had cleaned my room the previous week, so that Friday, I left a note on the door asking them to skip that week.
When I came home, everything, meaning the work and my personal items, that had been on both the desk on the floor, were gone.
The following Monday, I complained to the building manager about it.
His response was, that the cleaners had a duty to clean the room, and were allowed to dispose of anything that obstructed those duties.
Now onto today’s actual story.
I don’t recall what day it was, what I had been doing earlier that day, or what I was planning to do that evening, but for some reason, I went to put some of my jewellery on. At the time, I wore a lot of both real jewellery and costume jewellery, and had certain items of real jewellery that I wore almost all of the time, so me going to my jewellery box to put on jewellery wasn’t unusual. What was unusual, was that I hadn’t worn any jewellery for about three or four weeks. I assume that this was because I was working on pieces that might have been particularly messy, or the
tools that had been using could have had the potential to damage my jewellery, and/or I was going on nights out a lot and didn’t want to risk losing the jewellery.
As I didn’t have a lot of real jewellery, my jewellery box was very small. Although I never kept my jewellery anywhere else, when I opened the box and it wasn’t there, I didn’t immediately panic.
Instead, confused and wondering if I could somehow have put everything in another place temporarily for some reason and forgotten to move it back, I began searching in other boxes and bags, where I kept things like costume jewellery, hair accessories and make up. As the places I was searching began getting weirder and less likely a place I would’ve put it, my panic grew until I was a complete mess and knew that my jewellery was gone.
In the grip of an emotional meltdown, I rushed to S’s room.
After managing to calm me slightly, he asked me where I had looked, and who I had let in my room since I last saw my jewellery.
My answers were, everywhere and nobody.
“It could’ve been the cleaner,” he suggested, before taking control of the situation and, telling me we needed to report it to the office.
That’s what we did, on the next working day, which could’ve been the very next day, or up to 3 days later.
Again, it was the building manager I spoke to.
Again, he was not helpful.
He told me that it was my own fault, because this wasn’t my home, which meant that I shouldn’t be keeping valuable items in my room.
His response shocked me for several reasons.
Firstly there were valuable items I had no choice but to keep in my room, my laptop my manual SLR camera, my TV, my mini fridge, my MP3 player, my phone, et cetera.
Secondly, I paid rent, which meant that as long as I locked my door, my property should be safe in my room.
Thirdly, it wasn’t like I was reporting that a fucking Faberge egg had been stolen. It was jewellery, stuff that I wore every day, which had massive sentimental value to me, and which was especially precious to me because I was over 200 miles away from my family.
Understandably, I was very distressed.
S wasn’t though. S was pissed off, and the most intelligent person I’ve ever known, still to this day.
When the manager advised us that there wasn’t anything he could do, even if he wanted to, because the new cleaner had only been there two weeks, and the old cleaner had gone the week prior to her starting, meaning he couldn’t question her over it, S knew it was no coincidence that the old cleaner had fucked off around the same time as my jewellery, and took me to the police station to report it as an actual theft.
The police took my report, but bluntly told me that I would probably never see my jewellery again.
The worst part of the entire experience, was telling the people who had bought me the jewellery that it had been stolen.
The most surprising part of this entire story came weeks later, when I had long since resigned myself to the reality that my jewellery was gone forever. While at uni one afternoon, I got a voicemail asking me to go into the police station. Worried I was in trouble for something, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, or that something terrible had happened to someone I loved, I immediately left uni and hurried straight to the police station.
When I arrived and gave my details, the police officer produced an envelope, which he emptied onto the counter. It was my fucking jewellery, and it was all my fucking jewellery, every last piece, not even a charm was missing from my charm bracelet.
The person who handed it in wasn’t the cleaner and claimed they had found it, apparently.
I didn’t believe them.
It meant nothing was going to happen in terms of punishment for the person who took it, which just seemed too convenient.
At the time I was so overwhelmed by relief, and so shocked I had my jewellery back, that I didn’t push it, or even think into why I got it back until months later.
What do I think happened in regards to why, and how, I got it back?
The jewellery wasn’t expensive, and it was very me, so I think that the person who stole it, took it because they wanted it themselves.
However, if that wasn’t the case, and they actually took it to try to sell it, who was going to buy very me second hand jewellery, when they could probably buy very them first hand jewellery for the same price?
Also, if they did take it to sell, I probably wasn’t the only person they robbed, so maybe they just hadn’t got around to trying to sell it yet, because they had more expensive or boring jewellery to sell.
I think the police probably actually did in this case do their job, and contacted the university for the details of all the staff who would had access to my room, within the last month or so, and then somehow convince the thief to admit they took it and give it back.
Honestly, when I made the report, I didn’t believe that I would get it back. However, that was all I wanted, so it could’ve been a happy ending, if the story ended here, but the story doesn’t end here.
Before I left the station, the police told me off, like I was an idiot and the person who had done wrong.
“Next time, don’t let strangers in your room when you’re not there,” he warned me.
This is the type of situation that causes a person with BPD (which at the time was undiagnosed) to feel mentally unwell and helplessly vulnerable.
Don’t allowed unsupervised strangers into your room, the police said, while university rules said that I had to.
Part Ten- From The Merseyside Police.
These emails are sent by several different people
We can accept the below email as your new request, as the previous request was within the last six months we do not need any ID.
Kind Regards,
After reading the guides phase two plan, in my opinion it is far too complicated and unnecessary, and those are the bits that I can understand. It includes walking, run-walks, cross training on a bike or elliptical trainer, and the time guides make no sense to me. For these reason and for personal reasons I wont be following the guide, or posting its day plan. However, I might still try to use it to make my own plan, and have already used it to make my week one plan. I will put up the exercise days/ rest days and total day times, from it too.
My personal reason are as follows:
• I don’t own a bike, and even if I did, I forgot how to ride one in between learning and getting an adults bike, of some sort as a teenager. Don’t judge me I have terrible mental Illnesses and it has been suggested, by some of the members I trained with at the MMA Gym, that I might be dyspraxic. My mother dealt with my potential dyspraxia the same way as she dealt with my mental health issues, which was by getting frustrated with me and telling me to behave like a normal person.
• I cant afford a gym membership, and even if I could, covid.
• I have no idea what an elliptical trainer is, and seeing as I just want to run, I don’t care.
• I don’t understand the instructions. They seem really unnecessarily easy and complicated at the same time, like they’re trying to drag it out. I want a simple plan that gets me to running as fast as possible.
• I won’t be doing any more just walking. I hate it. I’ve done enough, I will be concentrating on run-walking only, from this point forward.
• I’m not doing five days, because if I say I am, I will be setting myself up to fail, as I just cant fit five days of exercise into my life right now, because of my upset lifestyle. I refuse to set myself up to fail. I’m doing too well to sabotage myself.
• I will no longer be counting how long exercise takes me, even roughly. I’m not interested in time, it means nothing. Distance covered is what counts for me.
• I will no longer be using a calendar to keep track of my schedule, I will be changing to a list.
Phase 2: Run-walk
Week A (Should have been week 1)
Day one: Wednesday
Today is my first run walk of the year, but not ever. When I started running 2017, I began by doing running for one minute, then walking for one minute, on the treadmill. This is what I tried to do in November and December of 2020, last year, without success. During week one, I will be doing run for one minute, walk for four minutes, which is 20% run, 80% walk. It feel like it will be almost too easy.
It is not.
Firstly, I am unable to wear my glasses when I run, and I can’t can’t begin to deal with wearing contact lenses, so due to a combination of shortsightedness and keratoconus, my sight is limited to a couple of inches in front of my face, and even that is blurry. Obviously, I can’t see the ground because of this, which makes running a problem in itself. However, it is made worse by the fact that people are walking in groups, in a way that takes up the entire width of the pavement and they refuse to move over, even when they can see me.
Secondly, not only does the middle toe on my left foot still not feel right, my ankle and knee still hurts, and my legs ache from the speed.
Thirdly, I can’t breathe and my lungs are burning.
Then, there are the visual hallucinations. At the moment though they are only mild. I’m, just, seeing black snow, again.
By the end of my first lap, I’m exhausted, but from force myself around the second time.
Halfway around, just, my left boob begins to hurt.
Also, did I mention, that it took me ten minutes to get into my sports bra, because it had an additional hole to the armholes and head hole?
Despite how hard today’s run was, it was much easier than walking stress wise, so I’m not dreading tomorrows run as much as I was todays.
Day two: Thursday
Today, I have all the same problems as yesterday; minus, the 10 minutes spent getting into my sports bra, as this sports bra only has the necessary amount of holes; plus, today’s sports bra being too tight, which results in it cutting into the skin under my left arm.
I find running a bit easier, today. Yesterday, I estimated that running 20% of the route cut about five minutes off my lap time. Today, it seems like I’ve cut off even more time than that.
Day three: Friday
Friday is supposed to be a rest day, but I end up in A&E with a concussion and nerve trauma in my head.
Day four – Day seven: Saturday – Tuesday
Forced rest days, due to my head injuries.
My recent visit to the dental hospital
Tuesday the 9th of March 2021
On Tuesday the 9th of March 2021, I had a consultation appointment at the dental hospital to discuss having my coronectomied wisdom tooth roots removed, which had not only caused me a great deal of pain already, as well as an infection, but will likely cause me future pain an infections if they are not removed.
If you haven’t read my previous five Sunday blog posts, three of which are autobiographical stories and two of which are journal entries, I would recommend that you read those before you read this one, so that you understand what it is I am yammering on about.
If you have already read those posts, you will know that I have been having issues with my wisdom teeth, for over two decades. Why I expected that this appointment would be the beginning of the end of these issues, I don’t know, I admit, I should have known better.
Before I get into what happened at the appointment though, I want to address some concerns I have about how the hospital are dealing with trying to prevent the spread of covid, as it seemed as though they were actively trying to spread it rather than prevent it.
I am no covid expert, obviously, but it seemed clear to me that a better solution would have been to make one set of stairs for going up, and the other for going down.
2. As I entered the building I was stopped about two feet from the door by an employee, who told me, that even though I knew where I was going I wasn’t allowed to enter the building until I had spoken to the staff on Reception 1. Reception 1 is to the right of the entrance, and there is not many feet between the door and the desk, even though the foyer is huge. There were several people already in the queue (which was actually just a disorganised crowd of people, who had all been forced into a very small space together, trying to remember who was in front of them) and more people were already being directed to join the queue almost as soon as I had. When I arrived there was a group of at least six people (I know this because I counted six adults by sight, but they had too many children who were running around to count, without actively making an effort to try to count them) who were all together, none of who spoke enough english alone to conduct a one on one conversation with the (sole) receptionist. This in itself was enough to mean it took the receptions a ridiculously long amount of time to speak to them, but what drug it out even longer was that it eventually transpired that at least one of the group had recently had covid. The receptionist didn’t seem to be able to come to a decision as to whether or not they were allowed to enter the building, as a result they were asked to move into the foyer (where the rest of us had been told we couldn’t go in case we had covid) while they waited for another member of staff to come and assess them. When I finally made it to the front of the queue, I discovered the reason we were all being held there was so that the receptionist could ask us about six covid related questions, which took no more than 30 seconds to answer.
Off the top of my head, there were several solutions which were better than this one, that I could think of:
3. Nobody took my temperature.
(Is that still a thing?
If not it should be.)
4. While I was at the hospital, I had two separate consultations and one set of X-rays. After each of these, I was ordered to put the same mask back on, “For my own safety.” Even though we know this is unsafe practice for the wearer. At no point was I offered a new mask.
I feel like I can hear you all asking me the same question I have been asking myself about the masks since it happened, even though I know the answer to the question, “Why didn’t I just ask for a clean mask/s?”
As stupid as this might sound to a none borderline person, I was afraid.
If you go back and read my tweets from this day (well the tweets that survived it) you will see that as the day progresses I get more and more emotional and erratic, as I cycle through the fear, the guilt and shame about how I allowed myself to be treated the way I was treated, and the anger at myself, again for allowing it to happen, as well as towards the person who treated me that way for treating me that way.
There were reasons why I felt and was behaving this way, but I don’t know how to say what those reasons were because the best word I can find to do so is victimised, but victimised seems like too heavy a word in the context of what happened, yet victimised is not only how I felt as it was happening to me but also how I still feel about it now.
Every time I start to write about what happened, I start to cry. The fear, anger, guilt and shame begin to swell up inside me again. I start to slip in and out of past and present tense, as though I am reliving the events.
My actions while I was at the dental hospital reflect that I was feeling victimised because I am mentally ill. When I am feeling this way I actively seek out organisations, companies and people who have victimised me because I am mentally ill in the past, on social media and the internet, in order to read about them or see what they are saying or doing. While I was waiting for my X-rays and second consultation, this is what I was doing. I don’t know why I do this when I feel this way. It’s not something I am in control of.
This is what happened, I am sorry if I can’t keep my tenses straight, I am really struggling.
A dental nurse showed me into the examination room, but didn’t stay, which I didn’t even notice at first. This was because, the dentist asked me to take a seat and tell her what was wrong, so my full attention was on her.
Starting at the beginning, I explained how after my coronectomy, I was in pain until the December, which then flared back up in Mid 2020, before explaining about my recent infection, and how the dentist took x-rays that showed that the tooth had been moving.
To which her response was, and I quote, “Oh, I’ve heard all about you,” in a tone that suggested she had heard awful things about me, or had been warned about me.
What do you say to that?
What have you heard about me?
That I’m putting in a complaint?
I mean, hasn’t me putting in a complaint been a long time coming?
I think I have been overly patient.
Or maybe you have heard that I am; dramatic, hysterical, abusive, or that I overreact, or that I manipulated my way into getting this appointment?
Because I was in control of myself at this point, and therefore capable of choosing how I reacted to this, I was forced into saying Nothing.
Maybe you don’t Understand how I was forced into freely deciding to say nothing. It’s because I understood the awful thing she had just done to me. She had used my vulnerability to manipulate me. She had made me incapable of defending myself against her, if I needed to. She had done this unprofessional and inappropriate thing to me, and she’d made it obvious to me that was what she was doing, by doing this to me using an inappropriate and unprofessional comment, in a confident way, as if to declare, “It’s my word against yours, and with your reputation, who is going to believe you over me.”
How do I know for certain that this was her intention?
Because as I was explaining my problem to her, she was reading the form they had just given me to fill in about my physical and mental health, and when she got to the point on the form where I had abbreviated borderline personality disorder to BPD, to fit it into the box, she asked me, “by BPD do you mean you have borderline personality disorder?”
Meaning, she is familiar with BPD, and if she is familiar with BPD, it is safe to assume she knows it by its current name, which is EUPD or emotionally unstable personality disorder, meaning she is aware that I am “emotionally on stable.”
If you don’t understand how I have just been manipulated, don’t worry, I’m about to tell you.
There is nothing anybody can say to, “Oh, I have heard all about you,” especially in the tone she said it in, that the person who said it can’t then twist to make you seem as though you; overreacted, reacted dramatically or hysterically or were hostile, abusive or confrontational.
Even just calmly asking, “What is it you have heard about me?” – Could be used as proof that you were overreacting (that you took what was said the wrong way) or became hostile and/or confrontational.
However, as this was said the way it was said, and it had made me feel the way it had made me feel, combined with having BPD, there was no way if I responded to her statement, I was going to be able to respond “calmly.” Also, if she was to answer this question, based on her tone, the answer would not have been positive. Therefore, my reaction to that, would also not be positive.
As a result I was left wondering what had been said about me, which meant that whatever went on during this appointment, I couldn’t disagree with her opinion and/or behaviour in any way.
It also made me feel as though any complaints I made about her, would not be taken seriously.
At this point, I was hyper aware of the fact that we were alone, meaning there were no witnesses.
This made me feel unsafe.
If you’re still unconvinced that she had purposely used my vulnerability to manipulate me, and believe I was being paranoid, not only let me remind you that BPD “paranoia” is triggered by a solid factual event. However I feel what happened from this point on is proof enough.
She, then, “examined me.”
During this examination, it became obvious to me that she wanted certain answers to her questions. What she did, did not feel like an investigation into my problem, if felt like a medical interrogation.
Even though I told her it was obviously where the pain was coming from, she began tapping on other teeth. This seemed normal to me at first, after all the dentists had done the same thing. When she started tapping on my top wisdom tooth, that’s when I began to feel high level afraid. She was asking the same question she’d been asking as she tapped the other teeth, which was, “Does this hurt?”
Only every time I said no, she became more aggressive, increasing how hard she was “tapping” until it did hurt, but not because there was an underlying medical issue causing the pain, rather due to the seemingly excessive force she was using.
She repeated this while squeezing my jaw, and making me open and close my mouth. This went on until I close my mouth and felt painful pop and told her what I felt.
She responded, “No, that’s not right. It would hurt when you open your mouth. Does it hurt when you open your mouth?” “No,” I insisted
“It should,” She repeated
“Well it doesn’t” I insisted.
By now, I had gone into doing this weird thing I do, when I feel like I’m trapped in a dangerous situation and just need to get out of it. I would like to clarify that danger to my BPD does not always mean immediate physical threat, it can mean getting a warning at work, getting fired, et cetera. This weird thing I do, is to try to calmly discuss my position, but eventually end up just agreeing to anything that will get me out of this situation, when I begin to become emotional. So, when she was hurting me, I told her that, “It hurt,” when it genuinely did hurt, but I didn’t feel as though I could safely say to her “I feel like you are using excessive force on me.”
Then she sat back down, and began telling me that my problem was my jaw, not the tooth. She backed this up, by taking things I had said to her previously and twisting them.
Example
Her, “The pain is worse in the mornings.”
Me, “No, it’s not.”
Her, “You said you wake up in pain.”
Me, “No, I said I woke up on the morning I first had the symptoms of an infection, with tooth pain and a headache, and the next day I woke up with a sore throat and earache.”
Her, ” See, you’re telling me the pain is worse in the mornings.”
Me, “No, I’m not. The pain comes and goes, and it can be just as bad in the afternoon or the night as it is in the mornings.”
Her, “See, the pain is mainly worse in the mornings.”
me, “No, it’s not.”
Her, “From what you’ve just told me it is.”
Me, doesn’t respond because I am about to start crying and loose my voice related volume control.
Eventually, I remind her that there is evidence that what I am telling her I am experiencing is real, because there are x-rays showing the tooth has moved. So she sends me for another x-ray.
This is the point, when I start using the internet and social media to torment myself.
When I am finally called in to get my x-ray done, it’s obvious the technician is new, as he doesn’t seem to even know where to begin. Eventually, he has to call somebody else to help him. I don’t blame or judge him for this, I even feel a little bit sorry for him, after all most people have to start from the beginning when undertaking any new challenge.
How has he made it this far into the day without any help, I wonder, and why isn’t there a more knowledgeable staff member with him at all times?
This makes my uneasiness increase.
At my second consultation, the dentist reluctantly admits that the tooth has moved, which apparently means that she has to repeat her enthusiastically examination. After finishing this examination, she tells me, “You are a strange one.”
I want to tell her that I am not a strange one, at all, I just refuse to be bullied into giving her the answers that she wants from me, if they aren’t true, this paired with her enthusiastic examination, has given her strange results.
Regardless, she is still adamant that this is a problem with my jaw, because I am a tooth grinder, who refuses to wear a teeth guard.
I find myself trying to explain that I am not refusing to wear it, I can’t deal with it, because of my mental health issues (which weren’t even diagnosed at the time I was struggling to wear it) but I decide if I’m going to die on any dental health related hill, this is not the dental health hill I want to die on today.
At one point, I remember desperately pleading with her to believe that I wasn’t making up that I was suffering with wisdom tooth related issues.
To which she responded, that she didn’t think I was making it up, she just believed it was a jaw issue.
I tried to reason with her, that the x-rays were evidence that the tooth was causing me these problems.
She remained unconvinced and asked me if she could refer me to a jaw specialist at the hospital, although it didn’t sound as though it was a question or that I had a choice.
At this point, I was at the peak of my do whatever I need to do or say whatever I need to say to survive this experience episode, so when she told me it didn’t mean that they definitely weren’t going to remove the truth, I agreed.
Part Nine- To The Merseyside Police.
None of this email is missing at this point I am frustrated with being messed around by the police.
and will i be getting a new subject access request form in the post be because i remember body cam footage being a tick box on the form and i ticked it so its information i know im entitled to but for some reason you havent provided it
Part Fifteen- From the Merseyside police
As per my update on the 7th of October 2020, I have submitted my findings and I am awaiting a response. Due to a high volume of work the Sergeants are taking longer to review work.
Regards
Phase one: Walking
Tip 1
Seek medical advice
It is important that you are aware of your own limitations and risks, not only for phase 1, but for your goals overall. Speak to your GP before you begin any exercise routine or sport, even one that may seem low risk.
Tip 2
Know what your own goals are
This tip might sound obvious, and as a consequence of believing that, you might skip over it. Don’t! If you skip over it, you risk getting several weeks in only to realise that you aren’t making any progress, because you are aimless.
Do –
Ask yourself what your reasons are For embarking on a seven week walking schedule.
Don’t –
Ask yourself what your reasons are for wanting to exercise overall at this stage.
Think of phase 1 as a separate entity to your overall plan, be it to lose weight, run a marathon, et cetera.
Example
My goals for embarking on the seven week walking schedule were:
• To build up stamina for starting phase 2.
• To force myself to actually leave my house when required to exercise.
Tip 3
Plan a safe route
I would recommend, that you do this before you start the seven week schedule, if that is an option. If you’re familiar with the area where you are going to be exercising, this will be much easier.
A factor that everybody should consider when planning their route, is whether your route crosses any busy roads, as this is a huge safety issue. Beyond that however, everybody’s personal needs will vary.
Spend some time thinking about what your personal routine and safety needs are, before you start planning your route.
If you are unable to plan your route in advance, don’t worry, make finding a safe and suitable route one of your phase 1 goals.
Once you have a rough idea of the route you are going to take, walk it, to see how safe and suitable it is. Do this at the time of day you plan to exercise, so you know what the environmental conditions will be like at this time of day.
For example:
• Is there adequate light?
• Are you going to encounter a situation that will negatively impact your exercise, such as getting caught up in crowds of people doing the school run?
As you walk, time yourself, so that you know how long it will take you to complete your route.
After you finish walking the route, you will have a much better idea of whether it is safe and suitable, or whether you need to make amendments to it, and what those amendments will be, or if you need to entirely disregard that route and start planning a new one.
Personally, I find completing several laps of a small route, rather than one lap of a larger route, better. By small route I mean a route of around a mile and a half, or which takes you 20 to 30 minutes to complete.
The benefits of this are:
• That it gives me the opportunity to pee every 20 to 30 minutes, if I need to, as I can go inside my own flat at this point. This is particularly useful if like me you need to pee often and there are no toilets along your route.
• It allows me to take short breaks for other things, such as water and medication, as I am severely asthmatic, so regular inhaler use during exercise is required. Carrying my keys, phone, medication, water et cetera is something I not only find distracting, it is something I find impossible to do, at all.
• If I overestimated how much exercise I am capable of doing, on any day, it allows me to cut my exercise short, potentially preventing injury.
• Alternatively, if you find yourself wanting to do a little bit more, you can do this in a way that again means you’re less likely to overdo it.
• For those who need to use the seven weeks to plan a safe and suitable route, this is a good way to do that, while also gradually increasing the amount of exercise that you do. After all, it is impossible to plan a 60 minute route this way, when you’re only walking for 20 minutes a day.
As soon as you have decided that you have found the best route for you, work out the distance of your route.
I did this using Google Maps, and it was fairly easy.
This how I did it:
• I went to the App Store, download Google Maps, and opened it.
• In the search bar, I typed the postcode of the street I start my walk on (you can also type in the street name et cetera). Then I dropped a pin at the point that I start.
• The address appeared at the bottom of the screen, which I clicked on. It then brought up a list of options, and I choose the measure distance option.
• This allowed me to add a series of markers along my route. As I did this, it measured the distance, which is displayed in the bottom left-hand corner.
If you decide doing several laps of a shorter route is better for you, you can still use this method to work out the distance you will have walked by simply multiplying (meaning times or x) the distance of your route, by the number of times you completed it.
Tip 4
Use the seven weeks to build an exercise routine.
1. Consultant a professional guide, with the aim of tailoring it into a schedule that suits you.
At this stage you should have:
• Consulted a GP, so you know what your own limitations and risks are.
• Decided your phase 1 goals.
• A rough idea of what your own physical capabilities are.
• Hopefully, loosely planned your route.
Keeping in mind all of the above it is time to start planning an exercise schedule that is specific to you.
Regardless of your current physical capabilities, using a beginners guide will be a massive help to you, when doing this.
2. Unless your physical capabilities and/or risks don’t allow it, I would recommend, that you start by walking for at least half an hour and every exercise day.
There are several reasons for this:
• Firstly, you are likely already encountering situations in your life, or could encounter situations in your life, that require you to walk this far.
• Secondly, you’re not going to want to bother getting ready to do an activity, if getting ready to do it takes longer than doing the activity itself.
• Doing any activity for an amount of time that is so small it makes doing that activity seem insignificant, is going to make you feel like that activity is not worth doing.
Setting yourself up to meet too high of a goal is self sabotage, but so is setting yourself up with too low a goal.
3. Exercise for 4/7 days a week.
Establish a healthy balance of exercise from day one.
You don’t want to:
• Injure yourself.
• Exhaust yourself.
• Have other areas of your life started suffering because you no longer have the time or energy for them.
However, you want to make sure that you are:
• Dedicating enough time to exercise.
• Making it a priority.
Trust me when I say, that exercising four times a week, at least at this point, is the perfect amount.
4. Think of a way, to safely and realistically build up the amount of exercise you are doing, that works for you.
Example 1
If you’re using laps:
Week 1 – 1 lap x 4 days
Week 2 – 1 lap x 2 days + 2 laps x 2 days
Week 3– 2 laps x 4 days
Week 4– 2 laps x 2 days +3 laps x 2 days
Week 5– 3 laps x 4 days
Week 6– 3 laps x 2 days +4 x 2 days
Week 7– 4 laps x 4 days
Example 2
If you’re using time:
Week 1– 30 minutes x 4 days
Week 2– 30 minutes x 2 days +40 minutes x 2 days
Week 3 –40 minutes x 4 days
Week 4 –40 minutes 2 x days +50 minutes x 2 days
Week 5– 50 minutes x 4 days
Week 6– 50 minutes x 2 days +60 minutes x 2 days
Week 7– 60 minutes x 4 days
There is a professionally recommended technique, that suggest that you increase the distance you walk/run et cetera, by 10% every week. This means dividing the amount of time or distance you have walked/run et cetera at the end of your current week by 100, and multiplying (X) it by 110, to get the amount of time or distance you should run walk/run et cetera next week. Apparently this is a safe way to increase the exercise that you do. (Please note that my previous two examples are not using this technique.)
You want to build up your progress in a way that doesn’t risk your safety, but also continues to challenge you.
5. Set a time for exercise that suits you.
All the exercise advice that I have found over the years, has been adamant that first thing in the morning is when you should exercise.
The reasons that these guides always give include that exercising in the morning:
• Helps you lose weight by burning stored fat, rather than energy from the food you have eaten throughout the day.
• Is best because you get exercising over and done with.
• Won’t jam up your day.
If exercising first thing in the morning suits you, then great, do it. However, it doesn’t suit me, and I would feel confident betting that it doesn’t suit most people.
The reasons that exercising in the morning doesn’t suit me are:
• I am on heavy mental health medication (antipsychotics) and don’t sleep well. This means I need at least an hour in the morning to wake up properly. During this time period, I can’t trust my body or mind to function correctly or safely.
• I need breakfast and a cup of coffee, as soon as I wake up.
I did try to go first thing in the morning during my first week, and the thought of having to go for a walk as soon as I got up, made it impossible for me to get out of bed.
If exercising first thing in the morning isn’t best for you, don’t try to force yourself. Best case scenario is that you will give up going. Worse case scenario is that you will go and have a serious accident.
Yet, I do need to address the don’t jam up your day point, as it’s a real problem and one that after seven weeks I myself am still struggling with.
Try to use a time of the day that isn’t already used for something else. You don’t want your exercise to negatively impact other important areas of your life, such as work, housework or family time.
If you have time in your day that is reserved as you time (which trust me, I know that most people don’t) this would be the best time to slot it in.
Accept, because exercise is an important part of life, it is going to take up time from your life.
Again, it’s about both balance and being realistic.
6. Be purposeful with your exercise.
Create space in your dedicated exercise days for walking, and for walking only. After all you would need to do this if you were going running, swimming, or to the gym or a yoga class et cetera. Then only count what you do during this space as exercise, meaning don’t for example count steps you took going to the supermarket or work towards your goal and/or progress.
7. Finally, be as rigid as possible as you possibly can, on sticking to the schedule you have made.
If you know you are going to need to swap your days and times from week to week, plan that as far in advance as you can. if something pops up out of the blue and you have to change your time of day or day on that same day, that’s fair enough.
What I am saying is don’t just decide you can’t be bothered, or you’re not in the mood, so you’re going another day.
If I don’t go today, on my planned day, it is likely that I wont go tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, and very quickly I will have gone from going religiously to not going at all. I would bet that most people are the same.
Tip 5
Invest in sensible walking clothes
Specifically, invest in a pair of proper walking shoes. You might think any old shoes will do for walking. They won’t. I had at least one injury due to unsuitable walking shoes, during the seven weeks.
Also invest in good socks to wear with those shoes. You’re going to be spending a lot of time wearing them, protect your feet.
If it’s winter, invest in some warm clothes, especially warm legwear. Throwing on a jumper, a heavy coat, hat, scarf, your gloves, wont keep your legs warm. Most normal leg wear, such as jeans, aren’t going to do that either. The good thing about walking is that you don’t have to wear light running clothes, take advantage of this when you need to.
Tip 6
Keep organised record of your exercise, progress, events that happened during that impact your exercise, and your thoughts feelings and moods that impact your exercise.
Start by buying a normal calendar, exclusively for using to keep track of your exercise schedule, and marking the day numbers and whether it is a rest or exercise day on it. You don’t have to go into any more detail than that, in fact it’s best that you don’t. Cross off each day, at the end of each day.
The reasons for doing this are:
• So that you know you’re never going to forget what exercise day you’re on, and whether it’s a rest or exercise day. This might sound pointless, but trust me, it’s easy to lose track and it happens much soon and faster than you would imagine.
• So if you do need to change your rest and exercise days around, it makes that easier not only to do, but also to keep track of.
Keep a set of journals.
• In the first journal, set out all your goals and plans, et cetera.
• In the second, log your progress. Whether thats in laps, miles or minutes. Do this as soon as you return from your walk, run, et cetera. Add up your weekly progress at the end of every week.
• In the third, you should log what happens on your walks, your mood, thoughts and feelings around and during your walks. Any injuries, and pains. Any impact it’s having other areas of your life, be it positive or negative. Read this at the end of every week, you will learn a lot from it.
Keep all your journals and calendar together in a folder, wallet, draw, et cetera.
Tip 7
Celebrate Failure
Hope that during your seven weeks, you encounter a day where due to circumstances beyond your control, you fail to meet your daily or weekly goal, and hope that it happens near the beginning.
Regardless of when failure inevitably happens, let it teach you a valuable lesson. Progress isn’t an unbroken chain of exercise days, or consistently being better today than you were yesterday. Progress includes how you deal with both setbacks and out right failure. Do you let it defeat you, or do you carry on?
Carry on!
Interruptions, setbacks and failures, can take many forms. Maybe you just got up late. Maybe your body is telling you to slow down. Listen to it. If you’re too sore, too tired, et cetera, don’t overdo it. Maybe the weather conditions are unsafe, such as if it’s icy outside.
Accept that things outside of your control happen, and that you are not to blame for them. Instead celebrate the fact, that it happened and, you overcame it.
A note I would like to add here is this:
Accept that you probably won’t make the progress you want to in the first couple of weeks, but don’t let that stop you from aiming for your goals.
Tip 8
Build your own support system.
Connecting with other walkers, runners, et cetera, whether it be “in real life” or online, will help you stick to your routine and keep you motivated.
Personally, I have “failed” on this tip so far, so I know that it’s not always an option. If it’s not, find something else that encourages you to stick to your routine, and stay motivated. For me it has been blogging about it.
Tuesday, the 23rd of February 2021
During the weekend preceding the 23rd of February 2021, I realise that I was really mixed up with all my medical appointments because I had so much going on, so I sat down to try to get myself organised a bit. One of the things that I did to get organised, was write a list of all the appointments that I needed to chase up.
On Monday, I was busy with things that needed to be done that day, so I didn’t get around to tackling my list until Tuesday.
On Tuesday the first thing I did was call the dentist, as I still hadn’t received a letter from the dental hospital acknowledging my referral.
The receptionist informed me that, the dental hospital had rejected the referral request, but that the reason for rejecting it was nothing to do with Covid, rather it was because they didn’t deal with coronectomy related issues, due to this I had been referred to a local practice who would deal with them. when she gave me the name of the dental practice, I was sure that it was the one who had refused to remove the wisdom tooth, then lied about it.
At this point, I began feel severely unwell, mentally and emotionally. Trying my hardest not to get upset, I tried to confirm with her whether or not this was the same practice, and explain what had happened the previous time I went there. If I had been given the chance, I would have also told I her the dental hospital had advised me to get referred back to them if I had further pain in my coronectomied wisdom tooth. However, she refused to confirm if it was the same practice, and kept interrupting me and talking over me.
I’ve made my dental practice aware of my diagnosis. The staff are supposed to be trained medical professionals. Though I don’t expect them to be fully aware of how my illness affects me (which as I write this, I feel like they should, after all they know how bipolar disorder or schizophrenia effects sufferers) I do expect them to be aware that I suffer with serious mental illnesses, and as a result to be vigilant of my mood and behaviour when they are dealing with me, in order to identify that I might be feeling unwell and that their behaviour might be exacerbating that, and to adjust their behaviour accordingly. It was obvious to me that she had noticed my state of mind was deteriorating every time she cut me off, as each time she was becoming more combative and hostile towards me, escalating her own behaviour to out do mine, which all things considered really wasn’t bad. Becoming aggressive with a person on the edge of, or in the grip of, a mental illness related, emotionally unstable episode, is not going to calm them down, it’s going to ramp up what they are already struggling with. Due to her escalation of my symptoms, my memory of this conversation is a patchy mixed up blur.
I can give you an example of how she was acting though.
During the conversation, she interrupted me to tell me that I had been referred to that particular practice because it was the closest practice to where I live. The practice I had the issues with is now down the road from where I live. I began to reply, “Then it will be the dental practice that I had the issues with.”
She cut me off at the word practice and said “Yes, it definitely will be that dental practice that you need to go to.”
At this point, I would say that it was a fairly mild episode, and I was managing for the most part to control my reactions. What reactions were out of my control, were not explosive or extreme or even out of order. In the end she got fed up with cutting me off, and in a manner that suggested I was the person being rude and out of order, gave me my patient number and the telephone number to the team who deal with booking appointments, then hung up on me.
Immediately, I phoned the booking team to try to rectify my problem. The woman who answered the phone, did actually listen to what was wrong, but as soon as I finished her attitude towards me changed and she became blunt and disinterested. She informed me that, neither she nor anybody else would be changing my referral to the dental hospital, and that if I wanted to go to a different dental practice it would be one on the Wirral. I can’t drive. I don’t have a drivers license or a car, and I don’t know anybody who does drive, and I told her this. Her response was, that in that case I had no choice but to go back to the dental practice who had refuse to treat me in the past, and if I wasn’t happy with that I would have to write a letter of complaint to my own dental practice.
By now, I was balls deep in my episode.
When I called my dentist back to find out who I addressed my written complaint to, I was holding onto my self control by a fraying thread.
The receptionist refused to give me the information that I needed, because and I quote, “It’s not our fault you have been referred to this particular dental practice, it’s the dental hospital and the booking team is fault.”
Every time I explained that it was the booking teams instructions to do this, she repeated herself.
This is where I lost control, and my complete memory of what happened next. Whatever it was that happened, by the end of it I had the name of the person I needed, and the receptionists bad attitude had changed to one that sounded as though she was worried I was also going to complain about her, which suggests to me that she is aware that her attitude and behaviour towards patients is inappropriate and unprofessional.
During the second conversation I must have been crying, because as soon as I got off the phone to her, I called my mum to tell her what had happened, while sobbing hysterically. I continue to sob hysterically afterwards, but I don’t know how long for, because I was still in that state when my mobile began to ring.
Recognising the number on the screen as my dental practices number, I answered it purely because I expected to be informed that they were striking me off as a patient, due to how upset I had been the last time I spoke to them. Honestly, I would have taken that news better than the actual reason they had phoned me.
It was the dentist who had seen me at my last two appointments, which I was not expecting. She didn’t even verify who she was speaking to, she just launched into what she had to say to me, which was that they would change my referral if I wanted, but it would be changed to a dental practice on the Wirral, not the dental hospital or another dental practice in Liverpool.
To say I was both confused and furious, on top of all my other emotions, as a result of this would be a massive understatement.
“Why have you phoned me to tell me what I already know?” I sobbed breathlessly. It was a genuine question.
Instead of answering she asked “What do you mean?”
(I knew she knew exactly what I meant, because it was the reason I wanted to complain, therefore the reason she was calling me, which was to try to prevent me from making this complaint. Also she later admitted she had known exactly what I meant, and that it was the reason she called me, to my mother.)
That was it. That was the bullshit that broke me. I began shouting about what had gone on early that day. She tried to make the excuse that it wasn’t the practices fault. That set me off ranting about the unprofessional rude receptionists, and the incompetent an uncompassionate dentists who had allowed me to suffer with tooth pain for almost two decades.
If it genuinely had not been obvious on my earlier call that I was unwell, it definitely was on this one. Yet, the dentist handled it no better than the receptionist.
“You can’t blame me for that, I wasn’t working here then, that’s not my fault” snapped at me. Even though I am clearly still suffering with the tooth pain I’m talking about, and its her dealing with it now.
“You work there now, and you’re to blame for this now,” I shot back.
“I’m trying to help you,” her tone of voice did not reflect that she was trying to help me, if that really was the case, which it obviously was not.
“Does it sound like you’re helping me?” I asked.
“There is no point in me talking to you if you’re going to be that way,” she accused. Then she hung up on me.
I collapsed onto the floor in a shaking heap, weeping so uncontrollably that I couldn’t breathe.
After I managed to catch my breath, I dragged myself into the bedroom and crawled into the mattress. Then I lay down, called my mum and I recounted what had just happened.
After I hung up, my mum phoned the dentist herself. She questioned them to as to why they had behaved so unprofessionally when it was clear that it was causing me distress. She reminded them that I am unwell, and was showing obvious signs of a person having an episode, and now because their unprofessional response to that I was severely unwell.
Oddly enough, whoever my mother spoke to was not rude, combative, hostile, or aggressive to her, which suggests that they only found it appropriate to behave that way to a vulnerable adult, who they likely thought would not be able to defend them self, or even be believed if they told anyone.
They admitted that they had phoned me back to doublecheck that what I said about not having a car or a drivers license was true, because you know I’m either stupid or a liar, I’m not a mentally ill person with a genuine problem I needed help with.
They told her that I shouldn’t worry about it, because they had just referred me back to the dental hospital, due to the fact that I was still a patient under their care where my coronectomied wisdom tooth was concerned, and so they were more than happy to see me again.
I just can’t even explain all the issues with this last statement, because I am triggered just writing this, but if you have read the rest of this post, at least half of them are obvious if not all of them.
Part Eight- From The Merseyside Police.
These emails are sent by several different people
The logs have been redacted to take out third party details and police technical information. The two other files are audio files, they will work any media playing software.
I will how ever put the disclosure in the post today and have it sent out via special delivery.
Should you still wish to complain about your response, this can be done in two ways:
Via the Merseyside website: https://www.merseyside.police.uk/fo/feedback/tc/thanks-and-complaints/
Via the ICO website: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/your-personal-information-concerns/
Kind Regards,
Part Fourteen- To The Merseyside Police
Hi I have still heard nothing from you about my complaint can I please get an up date?
ongoing Coronectomy issues
Part one: The infection
Mid 2020
Sometime in mid 2020, I woke up one morning with a familiar pain in my left lower back gum, which felt like the pain I had been experiencing up until December of 2019, only slightly worse.
Concerned, I phoned the dental hospital. The woman who I spoke to advised me that I would need to speak to my dentist about it, because the dental hospital were only treating patients infected with Covid.
I knew my dentist wouldn’t help me, but I did as I had been advised and phone them. The receptionist asked me to describe the pain, and commented that it sounded like the wisdom tooth was moving around inside the gum. However, she admitted she had no idea what a coronectomy was, and informed me that they didn’t deal with wisdom teeth anyway, so I would have to wait for the pandemic to end.
The pain lasted a few distressing weeks, then one morning I woke up and it had simply vanished.
Late 2020
In late 2020, I started to experience an uncomfortable and sore sensation in my left eye, which would come and go. Every time it returned it was worse and lasted longer.
Mid January 2021
My eye problems returned. This time though, the pain was the worst it had ever been, and it didn’t go away. Also I started to see bright flashes of colour above the eye.
Saturday, the 23rd of January 2021
On the 23rd of January this year, I woke up with severe and synchronised, somehow both blunt and sharp, throbbing agony in my left lower back gum, and the back left side of my head. The left eye was also much sorer than it had ever been, and occasionally the pain in it seemed to be synchronised with my tooth and headache.
Sunday, the 24th of January 2021
The next day I woke up with a severe ear ache in my left ear, and a sore throat, but only on the left side of my throat. The combined issues were so bad, not only could I not eat or drink, I couldn’t swallow. Although I don’t like taking painkillers, so I rarely take them, I began taking two every time I could, but they made no difference.
Monday, the 25th of January 2021
At seven o’clock the next morning I was still awake due to the pain, so I got up, googled what time my dentist opened, and waited anxiously to call them.
I honestly didn’t expect them to allow me to make an appointment, and they certainly tried their best not to make me one. I described how I was suffering from a sharp, blunt, throbbing agony in my coronectomied wisdom tooth, head, ear, throat and eye, and that I believed I had an infection in my tooth.
Just as I finishing saying this, the line went dead. The mobile signal at the block of flats where I live is so dreadful, I assumed that the reason the line had gone dead was because my signal had dropped.
Annoyed by my living situation, I called them back and got through to a different receptionist. Starting over, I began to describe my problem again. She stopped me to explain that she’d overheard my previous call, and that her colleague had accidentally cut me off while trying to put me on hold. All of which seemed irrelevant. Then instead of allowing me to personally explain my problem to her, she started asking the other receptionist what I had said to her on my previous call. The other receptionist told her I had been complaining that my face was extremely swollen, which was my only symptom, and for that reason I had jumped to the conclusion that I had a tooth infection. It took about three minutes for me to get the receptionist that I was currently speaking to, to accept that my face wasn’t swollen and that I hadn’t claimed it was. When I finally managed to convince her to listen to me and let me tell her what was wrong with me, she responded- “It doesn’t sound like you have an infection. That doesn’t even sound like a dental problem. It sounds like you should have called your GP about this. I can’t book you in without checking with the dentist that she will agree to see you with this.”
Then she hung up on me.
The conversation had been so stressful, that when she called me back to tell me that the dentist had agreed to see me, I felt too unwell to answer the call. However, I had no choice because I desperately need an appointment.
In a sulky tone, she informed me that the dentist had agreed to see me, and before she would, I would have to fill out an online form. She became argumentative when I explained to her that I only had a mobile phone with very poor signal, and that these factors combined with my mental illness, would make it an impossible task for me to complete. Eventually, she reluctantly went through the form with me on the phone. Her manner, which was really rushed and combative, meant that was an almost impossible task for me to complete too, and I almost broke down in tears once I got off the phone.
After a long examination, during which the dentist “tapped” on several teeth (both top and bottom, even though I had been clear that it was obvious where the toothache was located) and pressed on and squeeze my face, jaw and neck, she decided that still wasn’t enough to diagnose what was wrong with me, and that an x-ray was required. It was an in chair x-ray. If you have ever had one of these, you will already be aware of how unpleasant they are. For those of you who haven’t; they jam this flat, rectangle plastic thing into your mouth, it is huge and sharp, then they make you close your teeth together, even though thats in the way. It feels like it’s cutting into your gums. It probably is. I was already in agony, so this was so overwhelmingly awful, that I felt as though I was going to pass out from the pain. Instead, I cried the entire time she was taking the x-ray.
Afterwards, she tutted as she inspected the x-ray, before pointing out I hadn’t kept my teeth still enough.
Finally, she concluded, as though I hadn’t known all along what was wrong with me, that I had an infection in my coronectomied wisdom tooth; but that my eye was a separate issue I should see my GP over, even though I had already told her I had an appointment for a phone consultation about it, in case they phoned me while I was there.
She prescribed me five days worth of antibiotics.
I thanked her and left.
Friday, the 29th of February 2021
On the Friday morning, which was my last day on antibiotics, I felt no better. As far as I am aware, if you stop taking, or run out of antibiotics, before they take away your infection, you have to start the course all over again. As the next day was a Saturday, meaning the dentist would be closed, this worried me. It seemed to me that the infection wasn’t going to be gone by tomorrow, so I had no choice but to call them.
I explained my concerns to the receptionist, and asked for two more days of antibiotics, just in case. I told her if I woke up the next day and it felt better, I wouldn’t use them.
Her response was that she didn’t think that the dentist would prescribe me more antibiotics until I finish the course I was on at the minute, and that I would probably need to come back in on Monday to see her if I still felt the same then. Again, she said she needed to confirm this with the dentist.
She called me back about ten minutes later, to tell me that I could come back in and pick up another prescription (like I had asked for more than that amount), “because a course of antibiotics should be seven days anyway.”
She said this last bit in a tone that suggested I had incorrectly prescribe myself the wrong amount of antibiotics. I didn’t ask ask her why I had only been prescribed five days if it should’ve been seven. I didn’t want an argument. I needed help. She continue, that if I was still “saying” I was in pain on Monday, then dentist wouldn’t be prescribing me any more antibiotics without seeing me.
Monday, the 1st of February 2021
By Monday, I no longer had a sore throat, or earache. However, although the pain in my gum, head and eye had greatly reduced, it was still bad.
When I phoned the dentist (which was much later than I meant to, because of my ongoing issues with my neighbours) I kept it brief. I told them that I had been in last Monday, and the dentist had put me on antibiotics, but I still felt awful.
I left her plenty of space to just helpfully tell me what I needed to do. Instead, the receptionist chose to rant on at me for a good few minutes, about how I had been told I wasn’t getting any more medication without seeing the dentist, before booking me in.
As soon as I arrived, the dentist lead me to the back room to get an x-ray on the machine that spins around your head. This x-ray was still awful, because it’s still not a pleasant machine, and I was still in pain, but it’s not as unpleasant as the sharp plastic rectangle, and the pain wasn’t as bad as it had been the week prior.
In her opinion the infection had cleared up. The problem now was that the remainder of the wisdom tooth had been, and still was, moving. She showed me the x-ray. The remainder of the tooth, which had been deep within the gum after the coronectomy, was now just below the surface of my gum. It needed extracting. It was no longer a full tooth with smooth edges, it was literally a jagged stump. This meant that I was going to remain in terrible pain, as well as be at risk of future infections, if it continued to move, she warned me.
She referred me back to the dental hospital, and advised me that the dental hospital were randomly rejecting referrals because of Covid, so to phone them back in a couple of weeks if I hadn’t received a referral acknowledgement letter from the dental hospital.
Part Seven- To The Merseyside Police
Hi, I dont want to speak to anybody from the police over the telephone as previously stated. I have just logged back in and half the files dont open the other are all written transcripts heavily redacted. I am heavily medicated at the moment and so I might be wrong on what I asked for but this doesnt seem to be what I wanted do you still have my subject access request form there. I wanted audio of the calls I made all the calls from my mobile number and all the calls if possible that I am the subject of and the body cam footage from that night. Can I get this by post. As stated in the transcripts I have been seeking legal advice on this matter and will be taking it as far as I can through the iopc the legal system and even through parliament if I have to which is why I want audio and video and I need it on a permanent medium. I have video of that night which actually shows that some of what is reported about me in the underacted parts is a lie such as I slammed the door in the polices face. They were done they were leaving they could no longer even be bothered to discuss the situation with me and were telling me to deal with it in the morning so I shut the door. My concerns are very valid and evident and honestly I think what needs to be done is that police need to no longer be allowed to deal with well fare checks. I think the police know that my concerns are valid too and thats why I am not getting what I asked for so if its not going to be provided id like a new subject access request form sending out as well as an official complaints form.
Part Thirteen- To The Merseyside Police
(I have redacted information both at the beginning and end of this email which includes the personal details and contact details of the emails sender)
The sender of this email is the same person as the sender of the emails in part one, part three, part four part six, part nine and part eleven.
Since we last spoke I have conducted a number of enquiries and received responses from officers involved. I have drafted my findings which will be reviewed by my supervisor. You will receive my findings in writing in due course.
The guide schedule
Day 36 = 20 minutes
Day 37 = 40 minutes
Day 38 = 20 minutes or rest
Day 39 = 40 minutes
Day 40= rest
Day 41= 55 minutes
Day 42 = rest
Total time = 2 hours 55 minutes
My schedule
Day 36 = 4 laps = 1 hour 40 minutes = 6.68 miles
Day 37 = 4 laps = 1 hour 40 minutes = 6.68 miles
Day 38 = rest
Day 39 = 4 laps = 1 hour 40 minutes = 6.68 miles
Day 40 = rest
Day 41 = 4 laps = 1 hour 40 minutes = 6.68 miles
Day 42 = rest
total laps = 16
total time = 9 hours 20 minutes
total miles = 26.72
Phase 1: Walking
Week six
Day 36: Wednesday
Today my depression is extremely bad, and I can’t stop crying. My anti depressants usually stop me from crying even when I feel like I want to, so just the fact that I am crying shows how awfully unwell I am. This means that I can’t wear my mask when I go for my walk, as it will be wet and snotty almost as soon as I put it on. Though I cry the entire four laps, my walk is much easier because I am not wearing a mask. I am severely asthmatic, so the mask restricts my already laboured breathing, but it also holds the smell of cigarette smoke if I pass somebody who is smoking, which causes my shortness of breath to get worse, not only for the duration of the walk, but also for the rest of the day, and sometimes for several following days.
Day 37: Thursday
When I wake up on Thursday, I am blissfully unaware, that an unknown event today will cause me to be in quite bad pain for the for seeable future.
Whether it is; kicking the ladder that now lives in my hallway; tripping over a brick in the street, as I try to Dodge two adults who are joy riding electric scooters erratically, as they come speeding around a corner that I am about to go around; or an unknown event, that I don’t even notice as it happens; by the time I get home from my walk, the middle toe on my left foot will hurt. Eventually the pain will spread to the toe to its left, and finally to the little toe.
I completed four laps.
Day 38: Friday
Friday is a rest day.
Day 39: Saturday
My walk today aggravates both my injured toe, and knee, which begins popping painfully again.
I complete four laps.
Day 40: Sunday
Sunday is a rest day.
Day 41: Monday
When I wake up, I am somehow, already balls deep in a weird episode. During the night my brain has convinced itself that I am obese.
I berate myself, for not weighing myself, at the beginning of the seven weeks, as though it was a purposeful decision, and not the result of the majority of my possessions being sealed in two to three dozen cardboard moving boxes.
It’s been a couple of years since I last weighed myself, when I was almost ten stone, which was the heaviest I have ever been. I am much fatter now, so I guess I must weigh about twelve to fourteen stone.
Erratically, I grab a pair of paper scissors and begin hacking into the nearest box. I am prepared to open and unpack every box in my flat to find those scales.
Luckily, they are not only in the first box, they are on top of everything else inside it. Turning my scissors to the bubble wrap that protects them, I hack that open and scoop them out frantically. Setting them down, I adjust the dial and climb on eagerly, watching as the dial swings to around the eight an a half stone mark.
It stops there, which is impossible.
I get off, check the floor is level and solid, readjust the dial, and step back on, repeating this process over and over, only to get the same result.
Reluctantly, I accept that the scales are correct.
A terrifying few minutes follow, where I wonder whether I have body image problems, before I remembered that none of my close fit me anymore, meaning I can’t have body image problems.
Relieved, I decide that I need to investigate.
Grabbing my phone, I search the Internet for a BMI calculator, unable to find the ones that I have used in the past, I am forced to use a new one that I don’t fully trust. It tells me I have a healthy BMI, so I consult another and another, but they all confirm the first result.
This is insane.
How am I fatter but lighter?
Desperate, I ask Google, “How have I lost weight when I am clearly fatter?”
Google suggest I have lost water weight, and muscle mass, and gained fat. That answer makes sense, but it is terribly distressing. Determined to lose fat and gain muscle, I hurry to the shower to get ready for my walk.
During the third lap of my walk, I trip over the same brick as I did earlier in the week. I’m about to turn the corner, when I woman and girl come speeding around it on bikes, looking behind them as they do. As I jump out of their way, my foot catches the brick and I begin to fall face first towards the pavement. Instead I am close enough to the wall that I hit that. I am extremely shocked, upset, and full of adrenaline, and I was still in the group of the same episode before this happened.
Although I don’t realise it at the time, reality has become slightly warped. Everything is moving in slow motion, and the world is completely silent.
As I come around the corner, I’m just in time to witness two large cars collided head on. As the front of the cars meet, they appear to crumple like paper. I don’t react emotionally to what I am witnessing. Rather, I wonder how the drivers didn’t realise that they were about to collide. The largest vehicle, which a man gets out of, was turning in the wrong direction, while in the wrong lane, into oncoming traffic on a busy dual carriageway. The other car, which a woman gets out of, was turning into the residential road he was exiting. As I passed the cars, I see nobody else was in them. The pair are both inspecting the damage.
It is a good five minutes before the world around me feels like it has returned to normal, and I start to notice that everything has been silent and slow. It’s only then that my brain whispers, “That was bizarre and awful. Somebody could’ve been killed,”
“Shit that was terrible,” I agree.
Then I do what I always do to try to make sense of the world, I tweet about it.
I am still not thinking straight, as I don’t call it a day and go home to calm down, I start my final lap.
This is a massive mistake, because shit is about to go from terrible to traumatic.
There is this teenage couple, that I always encounter on my walks, that really piss me off. They are usually with other teenage boys, all of them on bikes, however today they are alone. He is always on the seat of the bike pedalling, and she’s always sat awkwardly on his handlebars. Every time I encounter them, I think about how they are an accident waiting to happen. Today is almost that day.
Ahead, an older man, whose car is parked half on the pavement and half on the road, is doing something at the open boot of his car. A younger man, who is obviously with him, is standing just inside an open garden gate. As the bike goes to pass the open gate, a female toddler runs out of the garden directly in front of the bike, in a blur of blonde hair and pink clothes. I have no idea how the bike doesn’t hit her, but thankfully it doesn’t.
I feel very physically, mentally and emotionally unwell afterwards, but the teenagers just carry on like nothing has happened.
When I reach the scene of the car crash again, things get even worse. There are two police cars and four police officers at the scene now, and their presence stresses me out so badly my body begins to experience seizure symptoms.
I want to hurry passed, but it is impossible for two reasons.
The first, is that the cars have been moved apart, and are now not only blocking the entire width of the road ahead, but there are also part of the cars all over the road. Second, there is an idiot in a car determined to still make it onto the main road this way. I walk halfway up the residential road and cross. As I look back, a police man is directing said idiot to turn back around and drive in the opposite direction. However, this is now impossible, as two more drivers have decided to try to get around him, causing a jam I am not sure any of them can now get out of safely.
In an exam
Remember that letters are diverse and can be written in a variety of styles.
When given a letter to read always think about its
• purpose
• and audience.
⁃ Is it trying to persuade, argue or describe?
⁃ Is it written is it written to a friend or formal?
Pay attention to the techniques used to fulfil the letters purpose and use them to justify your points.
It was just months after my right lower back molar had been rebuilt, when I started to experience a similar pain in my left lower back molar. A visit to my dentist confirmed, that the enamel on the molar was damaged. Again, the dentist blamed me for the problem, accusing me of not keeping, just that tooth, cleaning enough, and even brought up the previously damaged molar as proof of neglect; despite the fact, that the dental hospital had said they were sure, that the wisdom tooth had punctured that molar; while they continued to accuse me of being an over cleaner at my checkups. Again, this contradiction did not help my mental health. Worse however, on top of this, I was now diagnosed as suffering with comorbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Adjustment Disorder, and had notified them of this, so they would have been aware that any contradicting information, especially instructions and/or blameful contradictions, would have caused me to struggle mentally. The dentist suggested that the wisdom tooth might, possibly, need to be removed, at some point. It was already damaging the tooth next to it. It needed removing now, I insisted. This time, I refused to back down.
She was very reluctant to refer me. This reluctance was proven, when I received a letter giving me a time and date for the surgery, which was from a local dental practice, not the dental hospital. I should’ve known that there was something off about this appointment, due to it being for the surgery itself and not for a pre surgery consultation, which is what normally happens.
The date of the surgery came. When I was called in, it was by a dental nurse who led me to the room, but didn’t come inside with me. That was odd sign number two.
Odd sign number three immediately followed. The room was huge and the patient chair was to the left of the door, while the desk was on the opposite side of the door to the right. The dentist who had his back to the patient chair, facing his computer, told me to take a seat, but didn’t turn to face me. He sat facing his computer, the entire time. He didn’t turn to look at me at all. The entire time, was a couple of minutes tops. As soon as I sat down, he informed me that he wouldn’t be removing the wisdom tooth. His reason was, that the nerve was too close to the roots.
I began to explain that didn’t bother me, it had been the same for the right one after all, but he cut me off.
Firmly, he stated that it was his decision as the dental surgeon, as to whether he extracted it or not, not mine as the patient. Then, he immediately ordered me to leave, as he had other patients to see.
This meant that I couldn’t ask him what happened next.
Did he refer me to somebody else?
Or did my dentist?
The tooth still needs removing, regardless of whether he wanted to be the one to remove it, or not.
Not sure what to do now, I waited.
I waited until my next checkup came around. As I still hadn’t heard anything about it, I brought it up then.
The dental nurse who was standing at the computer, responded by whispering to the dentist, “You should look at this,” as though I wasn’t also right next to them both and able to hear.
She did. Then she answered me. “Nothing is going to happen now. We referred you to have it out, and you refuse to let the dental surgeon operate, because you were afraid he might damage the nerve.”
Stunned, I began babbling about how it was him who had refused to remove it because of the nerve.
She interrupted me, by starting to read the letter he had sent them. As I was in a daze, I don’t recall what exactly his letter said. However, I remember stopping her when she got to the bit where he claimed, I had refused to let him operate, and had requested that he discharge me, but she wouldn’t listen.
“He said,” she raised her voice, sharply and authoritatively over mine.
Not feeling mentally well due to what was happening, I snapped. “I know what he said! He’s a liar!”
The dentist and dental nurse exchanged a look that as a sufferer of Borderline Personality Disorder I am sadly very familiar with, an accusatorial, “crazy, rude, bitch” look. It is a problematic look, when the people exchanging it know that you are mentally unwell. I was clearly on the verge of tears, I felt so mistreated by both of them, and the dental surgeon.
“I’ll refer you to the dental hospital, but it is the last referral I am doing for you. If you refuse to have it done again, that’s the end of it,” she warned me, in a tone that suggested I was not only liar, but that my lies had harmed her in some way.
I can’t remember each individual dental hospital appointment this time, as there were far too many.
I think for the right wisdom tooth, I had four appointments total. A consultation, x-rays, a second consultation, then the surgery.
This time I had several consultations, before they gave me more x-rays, and then several more consultations afterwards.
One of these consultations, was with a newly graduated dental surgeon, who just wanted to talk about; how he was originally from London, what he thought about Liverpool, how hard it was to get into dental school, and what documentaries, about the NHS, he was currently watching on television.
The senior surgeons (plural), went on and on for appointment after appointment, about how the root of this wisdom tooth was curly.
They started by, trying to coax me into having the coronectomy.
“Yes, the wisdom tooth was a danger to the back molar, but it was also a danger to the nerve if it moved.”
The impression that I got from this, was that a coronectomy posed just as much danger to the nerve, as an extraction did. They had told me several times, that one of the known risk of having a coronectomy, was that afterwards the root might start moving towards the surface again.
Then they changed to “warnings,” which felt more like they were trying to scare me.
I cut those short. After all, the risks were the same as when I had the other tooth removed, if it didn’t scare me then, it wasn’t going to scare me now.
Eventually, they outright threatened me. It was a coronectomy, or nothing.
As I said previously, at this point I had already been diagnosed with comorbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Adjustment Disorder, and had made them aware of this diagnosis. Yet, any pleas I made to them that having a coronectomy, rather than an extraction would have long term negative impacts on my mental health were met with claims that I was overreacting. (A discriminatory slur about your serious and massively stigmatised mental illness anybody?)
To this day, I still have no relief from the worries that having this procedure has given me. My concerns were never not valid. The surgeon had informed me that persistent pain and infections are real risks after having a coronectomy. However, having since suffered from both pain and infection in the tooth and surrounding gum, my worries have been validated, causing them to make me very ill at times because of my mental illness.
A coronectomy is literally where they saw off the top of your tooth, then crack as much of what remains of the body of the tooth and pull it out, intentionally leaving you with root attached to a jagged stump.
Having a coronectomy is much more traumatic than having an extraction, and afterwards, because the broken tooth is still in your mouth, you experience beyond excuse excruciate pain for weeks. It is the worst physical pain that I have ever gone through, and I have broken bones and been hit my cars, et cetera et cetera et cetera.
After this initial pain died down, and long after the time period I had been given as a guide for surgery related pain to vanish, I was still in far worse pain than I had been in before the surgery.
The dental hospital “monitored it,” which meant bringing me back every three months, to insist that it was just a coincidence, and to try to convince me that what I was actually experiencing was unrelated jaw pain; even though I have never had any problems with my jaw, or jaw pain in the past, and this pain had only begun after the surgery.
By December 2019 the pain had vanished. With great relief, I phoned the dental hospital and told them. They reassured me that they would not discharge me yet, in case the pain returned, and that if it did return, I was to call them, or my dentist, immediately and they would start “monitoring it” again.
If you haven’t read my last two autobiographical Sunday blog posts, I would recommend that you read those before you read this one. They are all separate stories, but they are all connected and posted in chronological order. This is the last of the three stories.
These three stories will be followed by three journal entries about my problems dealing with the NHS, as an NHS dental patient. The first of which will be posted next week.
Part Six- From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people
To access your information, please click on the link below: …
Part Twelve- To The Merseyside Police
Hi, I am looking for an update on what is going on with my complaint as the last time I heard from you was two weeks ago and you said you had contacted the officers involved and were waiting for a response.Can i also ask how much body cam footage you have as what I have been sent is less than the amount of time I was told by the officer I was being filmed and I am wondering why this is?Also what I have as short as it is shows an inappropriate sarcastic attitude from the officer filming me who was the one who can be heard enjoying himself and taunting me in the video is sarcasm professional behaviour during a welfare check? Because to me it shows that he was not behaving with compassion or my safety in mind.
Not long after I registered at the dental practice my mum was a patient at, I began experiencing wisdom tooth pain. What didn’t seem right about this pain, even at the beginning and to my fifteenish year old self, was that it was much worse in my lower jaw. As the upper teeth really didn’t bother me much, I started to worry that I might have a serious problem with my lower two wisdom teeth. My mum, who had all her wisdom teeth removed at the same time, believed the dentist would refer me to have them removed if I just asked. So, after explaining how severe the pain was, that is what I did.
According to the dentist, pain no matter how bad, wasn’t a valid reason to have wisdom teeth removed. He made me feel like his opinion was that I was either being a baby, or exaggerating, if not entirely fabricating the pain in order to have the teeth extracted. This seemed very odd to me. The only dental work I’d ever undergone, or even requested before this, was a brace which I sorely needed. I had booked an emergency appointment a few weeks earlier because of the pain. It was at this appointment that the same dentist had informed me that I was getting my wisdom teeth through, which was the cause of the pain. Though the traumatic incident of having four teeth removed without anaesthetic hadn’t left me afraid to go for checkups, it had left me anxious of tooth extractions, so I wouldn’t have been requesting one if i didn’t believe I needed it. Now my teeth were straight, I wanted to keep all my own teeth forever, and actually cared for them too much. I desperately wanted to prevent future extractions or fillings. This should’ve been obvious, as I was only asking for the lower wisdom teeth to be removed, not all four of them.
My complaints continued as the pain in my lower jaw increased, and the pain in my upper jaw decreased. Whether it was at my checkups, or one of the many appointments that I booked to try to get help with the now intense pain, pressure and strange discomfort I can’t describe, I begged constantly for them to be removed. Eventually, he reluctantly agreed, in a way that suggested it was at best a massive inconvenience for him, and at worst was potentially going to get him into real trouble. He referred me to the dental hospital, who after a long wait time, treated me like I was a nuisance who had wasted their valuable time. They advise me that the pain, pressure and discomfort would go away once the teeth were fully through.
I would like to make a very clear note here, that both my dental practice and the dental hospital, had taken x-rays at this point. Also all of the wisdom teeth had already rupture the gums, and were visible if you looked inside my mouth. Yet I was reassured by everybody who examined them that there was nothing wrong, and that time would resolve my issues.
As difficult as it was to bare, I stopped complaining, and waited. Time only made my suffering worse. Unable to cope with it, I began raising it at my checkups again, but was afraid I would get into serious trouble if I kept making appointments for the sole purpose of discussing my wisdom teeth, so I didn’t. At all of these check ups, it was repeated to me that I had seen a dental surgeon, who had made it very clear to me that the teeth were staying and nothing was going to change that. This was until, obviously frustrated by my persistence, one dentist lost his temper with me. Chiding me, as though I was stupid and should’ve known all along, despite all their aggressive reassurance that my suffering was temporary, he informed me that it was actually going to permanent. My lower wisdom teeth were growing in sideways, which was abnormal. Potentially, this could cause me consistent and severe pain, for as long as those teeth remained in my mouth. Finally, I thought, that they were going to take me seriously and refer back to the dental hospital, but again my request to have them removed was denied.
This discovery coincided with my relocation to London, to attend university. Although I sometimes went to see a private dentist in London for emergency treatment, I remained a patient at my dental practice in Liverpool for regular checkups. Due to the fact that I had consulted several dentists at my Liverpool practice, as well as a dental surgeon at the dental hospital, it never occurred to me to consult my dental practice in London about it, as I had no reason to believe that they would treat me any differently. I had resigned myself to a life of dental pain, which is a really miserable prospect for anybody to face, but especially a teenager.
The dentist who chided me, did only that. He never explained to me what he meant by growing in sideways. By the time I finished my degree and had returned to Liverpool, I had learned what growing in sideways which meant the hard way. Picture a normal set of lower teeth. Now imagine two molars, one at either end of the row, at a ninety degree angle to those teeth, so that their crowns (or the top of the teeth) faces the sides of the other teeth. Finally bury the molars at a ninety degree angle halfway down into the lower gum, so that they are not only growing towards the all the teeth, but through your lower gum.
Despite there not being enough room for them to come through, my wisdom teeth pushed their way out, causing my bottom teeth to move and become overcrowded again.
With hindsight, I know that the wisdom teeth should have been extracted at this point for two very good reasons:
1. Teeth so close together, at odd angles, or overlapping can be impossible to clean, no matter how hard you try.
2. Wisdom teeth growing in at a ninety degree angle, particularly those growing below the gum, are a serious risk to the teeth next to them as they can grow into the roots or sides of those or the teeth.
However, at this point in time, none of this was explained to me, and the dentists who should’ve been aware of the risks of permanent damage this issue posed to my other teeth, showed no concern.
At this point I had been living with extreme tooth pain for roughly a decade, so I don’t know when the dull, throbbing ache began, or when the hot, sharp, electrical jolts started to accompany it. What I do remember, is mentioning the dull throbbing at my checkups, and being met with silence. This made me feel as though I had been labelled a drama queen, that I had cried wolf too many times, and as a result any concerns I raised weren’t to be entertained.
It was the unbearable electrical jolts which led me to fearful make the emergency appointment, at which I insisted something was seriously wrong and needed immediate attention. The response that I got was that they had been aware of a hole in the molar for awhile, and that was what was causing the new intense pain. Then I was accused of not keeping, just that tooth, clean enough.
This caused me a lot of distress and self conflict. For years they had known there was an increasing hole in that molar, and had said nothing about it, while they chastised me for being an over cleaner, and brushing away the enamel where the tooth meets the gum. Maybe this wouldn’t have been confusing and distressing to a non-vulnerable adult, but I am mentally and emotionally vulnerable, so it plagued me. It made me feel I couldn’t do anything right when it came to my dental hygiene, and that I was incapable of looking after myself.
If you’re thinking this is when the dentist referred me back to the dental hospital, you’re wrong. After a good telling off, I was sent away to continue suffering with now agonising physical pain, as well as with the mental anguish this visit to the dentist had caused me.
I would like to make a note here that during this entire decade, and the decade that followed it (which brings us all the way up to this day) I’ve been subjected to several head x-rays every year, because of my wisdom teeth problems. I am plagued by the constant worry of the long term impacts that this could have on my health. I’m afraid, this could cause me potentially fatal illnesses in the future, such as cancer.
I feel, that the NHS has not only subjected me to two decades of unnecessary physical pain, and physical damage (which I am about to discuss) but could also already have put into motion series of events that will lead to my death.
The next set of events took place in between 2016 and 2018, but I’m afraid I can’t be more specific, because I was already very ill with my mental health, and due to being missed diagnosed with major depressive disorder, I was on the highest doses of up to two sets of antidepressants, which exacerbated my actual mental illnesses.
Finally, at a checkup following yet another series of x-rays, the dentist admitted that he was unsure whether the hole had been caused by my wisdom tooth puncturing the molar (rather than me not keeping it clean enough). What he was sure of, was that the tooth with the hole in it was dying.
I was referred back to the dental hospital, whose opinion was that the molar had been punctured by the wisdom tooth.
Understandably, I was both devastated and angry. However, the agony I was in, and the wrongly held belief that my years of suffering with this problem would soon be over, outweighed the devastation and anger.
If like I did at this point, you think that the argument between me and the NHS about whether my wisdom teeth needed to be extracted was over, I couldn’t fault you, but again you would be wrong. They refused to remove the left one, which was less developed, than the right one, as a preventative measure.
They also presented me with the dilemma of deciding whether to have the wisdom tooth or the molar removed. If I chose to have the wisdom tooth removed, I would also need to have half of the molar removed, have a root canal performed, then have the molar rebuilt using a combination of a filling and a crown. even after all of this, the molar I might still die.
If I chose to have the molar removed, the best case scenario was the that the wisdom tooth might move over to fill the gap a bit. To me, this seemed like delusional thinking. Apparently the wisdom tooth was almost fully grown, and it was laying completely flat, half buried in the gum. I doubted it would magically stand up by itself. Also, according to the dental surgeon, wisdom teeth have a very short lifespan, so this wouldn’t be a permanent fix as a new back tooth. What seemed more likely to happen was the worst case scenario, that without the molar to support it, the wisdom tooth would become unstable, potentially causing gum problems, and leading to eventually requiring extraction.
I stuck to the opinion I had held for a decade and a half (at this point), it needed to be taken out.
Still, after all this the surgeon did not want to extract the tooth. He wanted to do a coronectomy which is where they just remove the crown of the tooth (the top of the tooth). The reason for this was that it seemed as though a nerve in my jaw might possibly be located between the roots of my wisdom tooth. He tried to scare me with warnings that I could lose the feeling in one side of my lip, jaw, face and throat. He kept saying he just had to make me aware of the risks, but his reputation seemed excessive. Yet, when pressed on just how likely to happen this was, he had to reluctantly admit the risk was very low.
I held my ground. I had already suffered too much to be pressured into having a surgery they admitted they didn’t know the long term risks of, as it was a fairly new procedure. I was not prepared to replace a known issue with potentially many mystery issues. I knew thinking about what could be would cause me unnecessary stress. I would rather spend half an hour uncertain of my future, than the rest of my life. If the worst happened and the nerve was damaged I was prepared to live with it affects. It was very much a case of, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
At the time of my surgery I was still employed. Due to the ongoing problems I was having because of my mental illnesses, misdiagnosis, incorrect medication, and my works refusal to give me a reasonable adjustments, I had already taken a lot of time off work, and a massive loss in wages. As you can probably imagine, I wasn’t thrilled that I would need to take more time off work. Also, because of my mental illness, misdiagnosis and incorrect medication, I shook violently and constantly, as well as constantly feeling; wired, agitated, angry, restless, paranoid, and on the verge of having a panic attack that never came.
I cried throughout the entire surgery, and my shaking became much worse. The surgeon had to saw and cracked the tooth into pieces to get it out. A dental nurse held my hand, and tried to calm me down and comfort me, all the way through the procedure. I will be eternally grateful for her kindness and compassion.
I was warned that I would be in pain after the surgery, but the only pain I felt was from the exposed hole in my molar. There was an incredible feeling of relief where the wisdom tooth used to be. The pain, pressure and discomfort that I had lived with for half my life, had gone on the right side of my jaw.
It turns out that less of the molar was damaged than they had thought, so I didn’t need the root canal. I did need about a quarter of the molar removing and rebuilding, but it was all through filling.
It was the first filling that I had ever had done, and my only one to date.
I hate it. I hate how it looks and feels, and even tastes. I hate how the metal it is made from might be toxic. I hate the occasional pain I still experience in the tooth, and the fear that one day I might require a root canal or extraction of the damaged molar.
All this could’ve been avoided if they had removed the wisdom tooth fifteen years earlier, when it began causing me pain.
Part Five- From The Merseyside Police
These emails are sent by several different people
I have tried to contact you on the mobile number provided but there was no answer.
Before we try any other options, I will resend your response via egress, once you receive my email please contact me on (I have redacted the telephone number provided.) and we can walk through the process together.
When I was a really young child, not much older than a toddler, me and my mum were both patients at a dental practice which was owned and run by what I believe was the only dentist who worked at the practice. The only members of staff that I ever recall working there were him and the receptionist. He also owns another practice, which I have never seen open. It was a very strange set up to say the least, and I would not have registered myself, never mind my young child as a patient there
For some reason that was never explained to me, being that I was far too young to make or even understands such decisions, my mum changed the dental practice that we went to.
Let me say here that my mum is not the best judge of character; she is also not assertive or confrontational when it comes to dealing with other adults, particularly adults that she perceives as having power or intelligence. Maybe this is a result of my nan’s parenting.
When my mum was only a teenager, my nan allowed a different dentist to fill every tooth in my mums head, despite the fact that my mum was not experiencing any pain or discomfort. The dentist, who was obviously abusing my mum for profit, said it needed doing, so my nan said, go on then. Let’s be clear here. My mum is still in her fifties, meaning this must’ve taken place in the late 70s, not in the 1800s when they would pull every tooth out of your head as soon as you’ve got them so they didn’t have the chance to rot.
It wasn’t even the only occasion my mum was taken advantage of by a dentist. She once had two teeth removed, because she was suffering with ulcers, and the dentist said these two teeth were the cause. Not surprisingly this did not solve her ulcer related issues, and she still suffers with ulcers to this day.
This is all to say whatever lead to my mum’s decision is to leave this practice must have been serious, and yet the fact that she registered me as a patient there again, a few years later, is the reason I am telling you this story today.
I don’t know for sure the reason why she registered me, but if I had to guess I would say it was because he was an orthodontist, and a not in demand orthodontist; meaning that his waiting time for braces was probably non-existent. You see, when my adult teeth grew in, they were huge. This caused my teeth to grow in wonky and overlapping, as there wasn’t enough room in my mouth for them all. Today, I love my giant teeth, but back then I didn’t. They were ugly, and a dental care nightmare. I wanted a brace. The dentist referred me to an orthodontist in the city centre, but informed my mum not to expect an appointment for a few years. Braces are not classed as essential treatment, and are in high demand.
Later, I had a consultation with our old dentist. Before I could have my braces fitted, I needed four teeth removing in order to make space in my mouth, for the rest of them to straighten out; two from the top, two from the bottom, two from the left, two from the right.
For context I was about eleven.
I don’t remember much about the day I had them removed. What I do remember, is that I was given a couple of injections, that I was told were local anaesthetic, and sent out into the waiting room for half an hour. When he called me back in there was no difference, my gums, tongue, lips, and face, all felt normal. I made him aware of this, but he ignored me.
This is where my memories of the day end. Maybe the event was so traumatising I’ve blocked it out.
What happened next, I know from hearing my mum telling other people, as though she was the victim of the trauma.
I want to point out that I was a child, and she was my guardian, the adult in charge of my safety and well-being. Therefore, I do not recognise any trauma she claims to have suffered as a result of this event as valid.
The dentist, who as far as I’m concerned, should no longer be able to practice due to this event alone; as he is a dangerous, irresponsible, and uncaring man; dragged all four teeth out of my head. He did this, while I screamed bloody murder, and tried to fight him off. At one point during the struggle I almost broke free, so he actually put one knee onto my chest, and put all his weight down onto it, in order to hold me down.
The physical damage he could have inflicted on me is probably worse than I am capable of imagining. What I imagine though, is that he could have damaged other teeth and/or my face and/or neck with his tools; and with his knee he probably could have broken bones and/or ruptured an organ.
Luckily for me, I suffered no physical injury, other than having the four teeth ripped from my head without working anaesthetic.
However, as a person diagnosed with a long term trauma caused mental illness, I will never know if, or to what extent, this incident contributed to my mental illness.
My mum should’ve stopped him. She should’ve reported him. She should never have taken me back there.
She did not stop him. She did not Report him. She continued to take me back there.
When I was a teenager, I had a massive argument with him. After my brace was removed, he kept the back part of it on my lower teeth, claiming that it would work as a retainer. The wire kept breaking. When I would try to get emergency appointment because of it, he would leave me unable to book an appointment to have a fix for weeks. My gums, lips and tongue would be torn pieces by that point. I never wanted it fixing. What I wanted was it removing. He kept refusing. Eventually I demanded that he remove it, or I would find another dentist.
He removed it.
As soon as he did I found another dentist.
As you know; I am currently going through a period of reflection, after what I believe was some type of manic episode; as well as simultaneously trying to sort through the chaos I created during this episode; while completing the dozens of blog posts I started to write, before moving onto the bigger writing projects that I began to plan.
It has taken me over a week to complete the first task that I chose to concentrate on, which was starting an online running journal.
While I was completing this task, I had a lot of time to consider what I was going to tackle next. I’ve chosen to reflect on my ongoing health issues.
There are so many reasons for this, which I will discuss as, and when I encounter them.
I don’t know why I chose to begin with my dental problems, but it seems like fate that I did, because this week has been dominated by these problems
My plan initially was to write three very short autobiographical stories and two journal entries, then release them all together.
However, I have encountered several issues with this:
1. The events of Tuesday have taken a much bigger toll on my already fragile mental health than I first realised they had.
2. My current low mood means that I am struggling to motivate myself to start writing, and when I do manage to pick up my pen what I want to say and why I want to say it isn’t coming easily for me. Then I am having a hard time concentrating on, and persevering with, writing.
3. Although each of the three stories aren’t as long as my usual blog posts, they are actually full stories, and together will be much longer than what I usually post. Trying to write them all together it is likely going to result in me running out of time, therefore causing strange breaks in the stories, and will definitely lead to the already low quality of my writing being compromised further.
4. I’ve really struggled with reliving the events of the first story which I didn’t expect as it happened over twenty years ago, and what I personally remember is very little. I admit that I do not understand how other people experience emotions, or why, so I don’t know whether it’s going to be a difficult read for other people. Though I doubt that it will, I have decided not to pile heavy stories on top of each other. Hopefully this will give us all some time to recover in between each story.
My new plan is to release each short autobiographical story over the next three weeks, one story at a time. Beyond deciding that this series of posts will be published in chronological order, meaning the journal entries will be released last, I haven’t decided exactly when, or how, the journal entries will be released. I will update you as soon as I know.
Part Ten- To The Merseyside Police
None of this email is missing I had just reached the point where I was fed up of messaging about it.
and when they respond that they were doing it for my own good again and that i have no legal rights do i have a way to progress this further with the ipoc or any other police bodies or is that when i start legal proceedings for discrimination because i have the polices attitude in my heavily redacted documents which is that you as an agency dont see how its a complaint which sounds more to me like you as an agency dont actually care and that was during a call where i expressed my concerns that putting a saw through the door of a woman you apparently genuinely think is suicidal is a stupid and in appropriate thing to do he told me that doors solid im not im made of meat if that saw came through the door and i was on the other side of it do you think my mother would have thanked you for how you conducted the well fare check she called in they ask me in the video whod be liable if i hung myself whose going to be liable when they put that saw through someones door and saw them in half?
Part Four- To The Merseyside Police
Merseyside police responded to my previous email by sending another link.
Hi, all I have received is a covering letter and nothing that I asked for, can it please just be sent out by post, that wasn’t an option on the form, only coming into a police station which I cant do and email which obviously seems to be incorrectly described on the form as, I expected it would just be sent by normal email. I am not well and this is very stressful. I have a legal entitlement to this information and I feel like you are trying to get out of providing it to me for some reason,.
The psychotic girls guide to surviving the human apocalypse 