You don't own me

I thought this would be the easiest blog post to write...

That it would be full of optimism and hopefulness.
To be honest, after the week I've had, I'm just grateful to be still standing, let alone typing!

SO my friends, the big bad wolf from 2006 will no longer linger in my mind, he is now confined to the darkness he deserves.

I have spent the past ten years in hiding, in worry, in destruction, in hate, in a cocaine fuelled haze (not lately!)

When I was 19, I felt I had my whole life ahead of me, I was at University, I was making friends, I was away from family and learning to be myself, liberated in my sense of self and in my own sexuality.

And then it all came crashing down. One night that ruined me. That destroyed my little bubble of hopefulness and determination and dreams.
And I remember every second of it in vivid detail.
It has haunted me for such a long time.

I lost myself. In lies and promiscuous-ness, selfishness, and nothingness.

I am the girl who was destined for great things, a great big shiny career, the house, the life, the shallow existence!
.............And I ended up a hooker in deepest darkest London, in a warehouse full of Eastern European girls, a horrible pimp and enough mice to scare off Dick Whittington.

I feel lighter.
I feel free.
I feel.... me again?

Is it possible that after 10 years I am liberated? That I truly the person I once was, but with the added bonus of being good, and honest, and grown?

That man took my heart. My body. My soul.
But piece by piece, I've taken it right back.
More than that, I took his.
This week he got to look into my eyes, on my terms, and I'm the one that was in control, I was the one with the power, the truth, and just like that, gone.... gone from my life, from my mind, my heart.

I'm free. I am born.

Now it feels like another chapter of the sad story of my life, that I occasionally pick up and read and wonder how I got here.

I was once a 19 year old girl, who was raped by a monster of a man, who didn't have the decency to not prevent a pregnancy, or an STD, who left me battered, bruised and bleeding in a heap, with clothes torn off my body, carpet burns etched in my skin, a bust lip and bloody on my face.

I was once a fucked up 20 something who was more interested in snorting hundreds of pounds worth of cocaine to forget that I was in fact once a 19 year old girl who was raped by a monster of man.....

I am now a 28 year old woman.
And bad things happen. Bad things hurt. But as the old saying goes,, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

I've been in A and E departments throughout the last ten years, with slit wrists, with drug overdoses, with angry attempts at ending it all and for what?
One night? One man? One selfish ignorant act?

I have to admit, it wasn't exactly Christmas to find out after a heavy night of drinking to forget that the doctors in the hospital told me I was pregnant.
And it certainly wasn't fun to lie to my parents that I was some sort of whore who had fucked a random man at University and gotten my self so silly so silly Fran, pregnant.

As for my mum hating me for having an abortion and not knowing why I had to, it broke my heart.
I would have given anything to have told her the truth - but when I had this conversation with Sarah recently, what would Mrs Barker have said to her dykey daughter who had been raped by a big black man and was now pregnant with the added bonus of chlamydia?
If she had thrown her arms around me and held me, told me it would be OK, taken me to my abortion appointment and demanded justice - I would have told her, in a heartbeat.
But more likely would have been disgust and disdain, that the dykey daughter had gotten herself into such a dangerous situation in the first place, that that "canal street" only brought about bad bad news.

Oh well.
The whore daughter seemed the easier option!

And now I'm older, I wish it could have been different. I wish still, so much, I could hold her hand and feel reassured that its over, that I'm free.

Some things are not so easy to put back together.

Alas, I have my beautiful Sarah, the ever faithful total idiot of a girl who loves me unconditionally with more baggage than Heathrow airport, she stands tall and proud, mine, always.
She's bonkers.
But I am blessed.
I love her with all my heart and she has held my hand through it all.
Dope.

So here I stand, a few days and the weight of what happened this week sinks in.
I type this as I sit in my little shop.
I type this writing up an article.
Writing up the rota
The payroll.
The plan for the coming weeks.

My life is great. My love is unstoppable.
And this week is just another page in the book.

Speak up, shout out and never give up.

- I chose this song to be played on the National Prison Radio this week, because it is exactly how I feel right now in this moment.
I want to throw on a white fur coat and march down a New York street arm in arm with Goldie Hawn and Bette Middler singing my tits off!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_oFL_b719g