it? Sit with it. Don’t push it away.’ There is a big lump of pain in my gut that I didn’t know I’d been carrying. I feel it now. It’s about the size of an oversized banana, and spiky, pointing into me, hurting whenever I turn. I don’t resist it. I try and soften its edges. I breathe into it, and notice how it moves as my ribs move. It really hurts. Tears leak down my face from behind my closed lids. There is pain. So much pain. In me every day and nowhere for it to go, and I’m not sure I’ll ever feel right again. The only way to get through is to pretend it’s not there and hope things get better and hope I don’t make the same mistakes again, but then this pain catches up with me and knocks me down and, no, I don’t think I’ll trust myself ever again, let alone a man and … I begin to weep quietly, feeling ever so desperate, like I always do when …
‘It’s not your fault.’ Gillian’s voice. Calm. Loud. Authoritative. ‘What happened to you. It wasn’t your fault,’ she says.
My stomach twists, resisting the words. No. The pain can’t live under conditions such as this. It starts to argue with her, I start to argue with her. Maybe it was my fault, just a bit. Maybe if I’d fought back. Maybe I’m overreacting …
‘Don’t diminish your pain,’ another voice in the circle says. ‘Your pain is a totally appropriate response to what happened to you.’
‘I’m so sorry this happened to you,’ another voice says.
‘It shouldn’t have happened to you,’ says one more.
I jolt. I clutch my stomach. I can’t figure out whose voice is whose any more. I hear a whimper. Someone else is crying. Maybe it’s me who made the sound. The iron in me hardens, rejects. But it did happen to you, it did. It can’t be undone. You will always be fucked up by this. So fucked up.
‘What happened to you doesn’t define who you are.’ It’s Gillian’s voice again, like she knows. I guess she must know. Because she’s been here too. I gulp, and I gulp again, because if I don’t, I will full-on sob. The tears keep on pouring. I keep my eyes shut, ears open, heart open.
There was a white wall and I looked at it because it was all I could do. I got hurt and I buried the pain of it because, at that moment in time, it was all I could do. I just tried to survive. I’m trying to heal but it’s taking ages and it’s hard and feels impossible but I’m trying, and that’s all I can do.
My mouth cracks open. Words spill out. ‘You will heal,’ my voice is saying. ‘I know it feels like you never will, but you will.’ It’s too much. All the emotion. Too much. I lose track of who is saying what, who is sobbing and who isn’t, what time of day it is.
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘You did the best you could.’
‘It won’t always hurt this much.’
‘You are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for.’
‘It could’ve happened to anyone.’
‘He is the broken one, not you.’
‘You will get through this.’
‘You will get through this.’
‘You will get through this,’ I whisper.
And I know they’re the sort of clichéd sayings you see posted on inspirational backgrounds in swirly font. I know they’re just words, and words can’t take the pain away, can’t undo what was done, can’t make me the woman I was before, can’t make me forget, or forgive, or ever be the same again. But there’s something about these words being chanted by women who get it, who have been there and not deserved it either. Some much further ahead than me on this journey of putting yourself back together again, able to add a layer of authenticity to what they’re saying, because they’re on the same road, but they’re further along, and they can see the sun over the horizon, and they’re calling back to me, promising me that, if I can hold on a little longer, I’ll be able to see the sun rise too.
‘And that’s it,’ Gillian says. ‘Open your eyes when you feel able to.’
It takes me half a minute or so. My chest is sore from releasing grief, not one part of my face is dry. The room full of fans comes into focus. We are all crying, all of us. Some