Essays from The Shadows
Volume Two
Not any more. We are more than that. We do not inhabit a beige world; we are purple and orange.
I don’t even remember who taught me that line. ‘We are not what they did to us in the dark.’ It wraps around me. Makes me stand taller. Gives me a sense of myself. It has healing built in.
They are words that comfort me in the stillness of the night when I wake from a bad dream. A bad dream that my conscious mind doesn’t allow me to remember the details of, but which leaves behind the smell and traces of fear and harm.
A sense of something that unsettles and stops me slipping back into sleep. When things feel just enough not alright that it is safer to stay awake. Then I mutter them to myself. We are not. I, we, are more than that.
I am deserving of protection, of comfort, love and nurture. Me, or the frightened young boy inside of me who feels these things, I, we, they are not just what they did to us in the dark.
A friend and I recently both started to learn this in a new and amazing way. Both very different people, but both stepping forward in a new way with a sliver of hope and a smear of courage.
He was offered a chance to volunteer to do a job that he would love. I was taken along to an online group meeting of male survivors. We will come back to that.
He mentioned that he was looking to volunteer for something, make use of his time; illness means he can’t work, but there must be something he could do, contribute, help with. Out of nowhere, the person he mentioned it to just offered the perfect opportunity. It could not have been better if we had listed the criteria and asked for them to be matched exactly.
The where, the what, the type of work, the fit with my friend, it was specific and perfect. So naturally, he spent the week agonising, deciding he would do it, deciding he wouldn’t. Coming up with an endless list of reasons why it would never work.
Why would anyone want him? It can’t be real. They don’t know what I am like. What if I mess it up? This can’t be right.
We discussed, we reasoned, we applied logic and common sense, we squabbled and debated and went back and forth and back again.
Come the day he was supposed to start, I joined him on WhatsApp. The last hour before he had to leave to go to work.
Exciting. Just going to try it. See what it is like. Give it a go. No big deal. A small thing. See how it goes.
He walked there. We play the same music in our ears. No big deal. Small thing. See how it feels. I leave him at the entrance. Have fun.
Afterwards, I virtually and digitally meet him at that same entrance. He is happy. Glad he did it. Best thing he ever did.
A couple of weeks ago, a different friend asked me to go with him to an online group. Male survivors. Nobody we know. He has no idea what they do or what it is like. Just come along. I want there to be someone I know there.
OK. OK. Sure. Not saying anything. I am just there to support you. Name, Rank, Serial Number. Nothing else.
We went. I sat there. I said very little. I watched. And I listened. I heard acceptance and understanding. I saw care and nurture. I felt confused.
I wanted to leave. It felt safer to go, not stay. Nothing made any sense. I felt safer than I had ever felt in a group of men, anywhere in my entire life. Nobody had spoken to me particularly. I had hardly uttered whole sentences.
I must be missing something. This must be a trick. Why did he bring me here? What is going on?
Nothing. Nothing and everything.
At one point, the person leading asked me if I would say something about my abuse, share something. In a nanosecond, a rush of thoughts and feelings filled me, and I thought I was going to just panic.
Then I just spoke. I spoke because there was no reason not to. I was safe. I would be understood. They spoke my language. I would be protected and cared for. So I said things. Not much. But enough. I even said a very difficult thing for the first time in front of other people.
In the silence that followed, it felt as if I was being held and heard.
We stayed there for hours, relaxed. Listening to each other. I never wanted it to end. Just being there with them was like balm to my hurt.
A small bonus was that discovering that some of the people were from the site I am a member of, and that I had spent months laughing and talking with them.
In the days that followed, I wanted them to meet every week, not once a month. I wanted more. I told myself they would never let me belong to something so amazing.
A couple of them were talking to me the other day, and I found the courage to tell them that in the days following that meeting, I avoided them because I didn’t trust my feelings, convinced I would cry if I spoke to them.
I admitted that I felt very emotionally attached to them, and it had made me feel so heard and seen. They both agreed and understood what I was talking about. It was good it had been said. We acknowledged that our relationship had gone up a level just from having met. Something shifted.
It has opened up the possibility that we are capable of creating relationships that are not based on fear or sex or any of the things that we are used to navigating. We have potential. We have each other, and we are not what they did to us in the dark.