How can it be right?
The last fortnight has been explosive in the press and on social media around two issues in particular: violence against women, and lack of support for mental health. Two issues, two names: Sarah Everard and Megan, Duchess of Sussex. I, along with so many other survivors of trauma, have resonated with both a fear for safety against unprovoked violence, and a lack of support for our mental health.
It’s been incredibly poignant all week to hear and read the outpouring of stories of women who, like me, are afraid to walk home alone in the dark. Since my 2019 rape (read about it here), by a total stranger, after dark, in circumstances not dissimilar (but also very different) to Sarah Everard’s – and where I count myself lucky not to have been killed – my fear of being alone in the dark has multiplied exponentially. After a childhood of trauma and abuse, it was always there, but I suppressed it, feeling – like so many women seem to have done – that I was overreacting, that I was making a mountain out of a molehill, and that it’s just the way it is: we cannot expect to be safe if as women we’re out alone in the dark. We cannot expect to be safe in our own homes. We cannot expect to be safe with strangers, and we cannot even expect to be safe with people we know.
And that’s what the last fortnight’s outrage has centred on: how wrong it is that so many of us should live so fearfully, and how it’s not our fault – we can’t just blame ourselves for being worriers or cowards or overreacting; we can’t always (we shouldn’t have to) adjust our behaviour. I’ve found the media coverage of Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder unsettling, verging on triggering. I live a mere 120m from a corner shop along a well-lit road. But I’m reluctant even to walk there and back once it’s dark. I’ve always thought it was just me, and that I was being pathetic and that I should get over myself. Judging by the outpouring of stories since Sarah’s murder, it’s not just me, and maybe I’m not being pathetic.
And then there’s been the mental health issue raised by the Duchess of Sussex. Feeling suicidal, reaching out for help, and receiving no support. How many of us resonate with that narrative? Like women walking home clutching their keys, this for so many of us (male and female) is the norm. I recently changed GP surgeries and had an appointment with a new doctor. I told him about my recent rape. I told him about my childhood trauma. He didn’t respond. Nothing. Not even a sound. Not an enquiry about how I was either physically or mentally. No suggestion of support. He just changed the subject.
I won’t embroil myself in Team Queen versus Team Sussex, or Team Piers versus Team Alex. All I’m saying is that that cry echoes in so many of our lives – a patent struggle with our mental health, with the will to live, and no-one to hear that cry or offer help with it. (If you want to read more about suicidal ideation, check out my article Suicide: To Be or Not To Be).
How can it be right that so many of us live in daily fear of violence? How can it be right that so many of us receive no support for our mental health?
#rantover.
Be safe! (As much as it’s within your power to do so!)