Tomorrow will mark 11 years... what feels like a lifetime, but somehow, feels like yesterday.
More poignant than any other year that has passed by, as tomorrow is the first exact Friday 13th October since that night in 2006.
What is Friday 13th to you? Superstition? Legend? This month is it a fun run up to Halloween? Spooky and all!
I'm not good with any Friday 13th, its a date burnt into my mind and my memory, so whether its a sunny day in May or a cold October, it makes no difference to me.
Or so I thought.
I have watched my calendar counting down, knowing this day was coming. It's a strange feeling of foreboding, I should feel grateful to put another year between me and it, another year means progress, I survived, better than that, I thrived.
Today the news is saturated with Hollywoods latest sleaze ball grabbing tits and arses left right and centre, and its disgusting. Its so synonymous of the sad world we let grow, where men can do as they please with little consequence, even more so those in a position of power, wealth and influence. Living in Rochdale, the local news is all about Cyril Smith, the disgraced Liberal Democrat MP who haunted homes of poorly and vulnerable children, masquerading as a man of kindness and care, all the while abusing his position, a harsh similarity to that of Jimmy Saville - also benefiting from his "man of the people" persona.
What is this society?
A place where monsters no longer lurk, but prowl, openly, in plain sight, shrouded in the arrogance of knowing fear will prevail and no-one will speak out.
Well DAM GOOD ON YOU LADIES.
Find your voices and your courage and scream it from the roof tops, no-one deserves to feel that way.
I spent nearly a decade thinking what happened to me was my fault, that day, that night, my choices, lead me there. Or, my sins caused a karmic storm which was sent to test me and I failed.
Consumed with guilt. Self-loathing. Self-doubt. The constant state of dirtyness, like I couldn't clean my soul from the inside out.
Power, the power people yield over us and control us, for seconds, for lifetimes, with words and actions, we become theirs and we loose our voices.
Don't.
I read a beautiful piece of writing by a girl a few months ago, incredible actually, so raw, I found such affinity with it, I had to get in touch with the person who wrote it, and not surprising, she is a woman of strength and beauty and pride. With words of conviction and honour, she spoke out, shouted out, and built something brilliant upon the back of a horrible horrible thing. This is what we must do, as women, as victims, speak out, share, care, support, love, rebuild, fight, campaign, prosecute prosecute prosecute, change change change.
It can't go on.
Where cat-calls and up-skirt shots are banter for the boys, and tit pics of ex girlfriends seep across the internet for all to see, where relationships are "fuck me, or else," and we are left with no choices, as objects, as things, as desires with no feelings, emotions, wills and purpose.
No.
Tomorrow is Friday 13th October and I have made my choice, it's long enough. It's time enough. No more.
He lives in the past now. I screamed out, I shouted out, for the world to hear me. And they did. So now instead of me standing on my soap box crying about a night of hell and a decade of pain, I won't talk, I will listen.
That's what I'm here for, that is why I write, you need a voice, you need an ear.
You shout, I'll listen.
