Reasons I Fail vs Reasons I Am EPIC

I REGRET NOTHING.

So, I have this thing, where I sometimes feel compelled to list the reasons why I am an epic, epic fail.  The trouble is, all too often, we're more likely to self-deprecate than we are to build ourselves up.  And the fact is, almost nobody is made entirely of flaws.  We're all made up of reasons why we're stupid and reasons why we're actually awesome.  Those reasons fuse together to make a fully rounded person and that's actually pretty cool.  So, you see, I am a total failure as a writer, because I just used "actually" twice in quick succession, but I'm a total epic win as a writer, because I'm attempting to use my blog to make you - yes, YOU - realise that your flaws are just human and that being human and having flaws is OKAY.

With all of that in mind, I've decided to have a look at some of my biggest reasons for failure and contradict them all with some of the reasons I actually think I'm doing okay at being a human.  Although someone needs to take the word "actually" away from me, before I use it again and am forced to add "ACTUALLY ADDICTION" to the list of fails...

FAIL: I am extraordinarily sensitive.

You know how some people are really tough and nothing ever seems to affect them, emotionally?  I am not one of those people.  In fact, I am the polar opposite of those people.  I cry at adverts.  I have been known to lie awake until the early hours of the morning, regretting a casual sentence I may have uttered once ten years ago, because I'm suddenly concerned that someone might have taken it the wrong way and been upset about it and now it's too late to take it back.  I've been known to lie awake at night analysing things other people have said to me, brooding over whether or not I've taken it the wrong way.  Literally everything I do and say is tempered with a desperate need to not upset anyone, combined with a constant fear that I'm not a nice enough person.  Add to that the fact that I have the total opposite to "thick skin" and you have someone who bruises like a peach in the emotional sense, given the slightest metaphorical knock.  It's annoying and I hate it and I want to be all tough and strong and ROAR, FEAR ME, WORLD!  But that's not me and it never will be.

WIN: I am extraordinarily sensitive.  SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!

Sometimes, your flaw doesn't always have to be a flaw.  I am massively sensitive and in a strange way, it's like a bizarre superpower.  I can tell when someone is upset, even when they're doing a highly convincing job of being all "I'm fine."  I know how to talk to someone who needs a bit of emotional support.  I am tactful, because I know what it's like to accidentally take someone's words the wrong way and be awake until 3am internally beating myself up because I can't stop replaying them over and over.  Someone once told me that I'd be one of the first people they'd go to if they were upset about something, because they could guarantee that I would be sensitive enough to handle it in the way they needed.  I'm taking that as quite the compliment, frankly.  Epic fail done good.

FAIL: I have really bizarre fears.

I am scared of having my blood taken.  Like, actually terrified to the point that when someone has to take my blood, I freeze and they often can't get any out.  Weirdly, I don't have a phobia of needles in the slightest (I have tattoos and I get an annual flu jab because of my asthma) and blood in general doesn't freak me out all that much.  But somehow, the idea of having it deliberately taken from me makes me literally shake with fear.

I also suffer with emetophobia - the fear of vomit.  If someone is ill around me, I will obsessively wash my hands until the skin peels, because I am so terrified of catching a bug and being sick.  I can't handle seeing anyone throw up (to the point that when I watched a YouTube video with my best friend recently, she had to pre-warn me that the guy was sick in it, in order to give me adequate time to look away in horror).  When suffering from a stomach bug, I have genuinely been known to pace around my bedroom, repeating: "I will not be sick, I will not be sick, I will not be sick..." like some gruesome mantra, until the very last minute, when I inevitably panic and am forced to quite literally face my phobia head-on (or rather, head down).  I work in childcare and it's an in-joke amongst my colleagues that if a kid is sick, I will rush out of the room on "urgent business."  The "urgent business" generally being "I MUST GET AWAY FROM THIS DESPICABLE HORROR BEFORE I EMPTY THE CONTENTS OF MY STOMACH IN RESPONSE."  It's a genuine problem.  The thought of someone being ill around me prompts a massive fight or flight response, in which my heart goes crazy, I get breathless and I shake.  I'm a terrible, terrible friend to be around if you're unwell and I'm sorry.

I am also scared of spiders to the point that I will leave a room if I see one, depending on its size (if it's little, it can stay, as long as I know where it is at all times).  And wasps... Don't get me started on those evil little bastards.  I got stung on my ear once and the whole thing swelled up to twice the size.  They're vile.  I need to be warned of their presence immediately, so that I can exit the situation as quickly as possible.

Thanks, Dan and Phil.  Especially Phil, because reasons. Such strong reasons.

WIN: I am SO much tougher than I ever realised.

I'm a survivor.  Insert Destiny's Child gif here, because I'm still too busy looking at the one above.

I got bullied to the point of feeling genuinely suicidal when I was only twelve years old.  I lived through being told I was ugly and unlovable on a daily basis.  Being spat at, tripped up, reduced to "it" rather than "Emma" or even "her."  But I never stopped believing that one day, life would get better.  And once I was older, I trained in being a "listener" and gave up my lunchtimes at Sixth Form to help run a counselling service for lower school kids who were being bullied and needed someone to open up to.

Then, years later, I fell in love with a man who abused me psychologically, emotionally and sexually.  I became a total and utter shell of who I was before.  I was so manipulated and confused that I believed I deserved everything he said and did.  But, somehow (and believe me when I say it was the hardest thing I ever did), I found the strength to walk away.  I sought help and rebuilt my life.  Then, when I was in a much better place, I used my experiences to become an anti-abuse advocate online and to write my debut adult novel, which aims to raise awareness of psychological abuse and the damage it can cause.

What I'm saying is: I lived through some awful things.  Things that led me to the lowest point in my whole life.  But it got better.  I fought to turn those horrific experiences into something positive, so I could try to help other people.  Turning a negative into a positive isn't easy and I'm proud that I've never stopped trying.  I might be a bit of an oversensitive twerp, but it turns out that you can't keep an oversensitive twerp down.

FAIL: I am SO clumsy.

Oh, this could so easily be me...

Literally in the time it took to upload that gif to my blog, I have attempted to pick up the drink that's on the table beside me, got the coaster stuck to the bottom of the glass, shook said glass and sprayed my face with the contents, whilst sending the coaster flying across the room.  

If someone is going to fall over, it's almost always going to be me.  If someone is going to knock something down, it will definitely be me.  I frequently break things and have no idea how I've done it and today at work, I trod in playdough and trailed it all down the brand new carpet in the corridor, before I even noticed something was amiss.

Somehow - and I really don't know how - I have never broken any bones.  Also, for reasons I will never fully understand, I'm quite good at ice skating (seriously, me on ice with blades attached to my feet should not be a situation that ends well).  But for the most part, my life is one incident of utter clumsiness after the next.  My legs are covered in bruises and I have no idea how I even got most of them.  

Seriously, if you need something broken, dropped or spilt, I am your woman.

WIN: I write books that people seem to like!

I went onto Amazon earlier, to get the link to my novel (pictured above), because I figured it would be handy to put it in this blog, seeing as I was talking about my experience of living through abuse, earlier.  When I searched for it on Amazon, it came up as having four 5* reviews.  Last time I looked, it only had two, so obviously I was very keen to read the new ones!  

Nothing - and I genuinely mean that - makes me feel as proud and thrilled as when someone compliments my writing.  I don't do it because I want to be rich and famous (although I wouldn't turn down a million pound movie deal, if anyone's reading this...).  I do it because I love it.  There is nothing in the world that I want to do more, in terms of career goals.  Writing, be it creating a blog post like this, crafting a fun and entertaining children's story or the process of actually writing a whole novel, is my greatest passion.  To think that anyone reckons I'm any good at it is incredibly humbling and completely exhilarating all at the same time.

If you'd asked me this time five years ago what my biggest dream was, I'd tell you that it was to have a book published.  Now, I've had three traditionally published and two self published and I think that's something to be pretty damn proud of.

FAIL: I am utterly and completely hopeless when it comes to approaching someone I am romantically interested in.

I have actually written about my personal Five Stages of Having a Crush, before.  Suffice to say, if I like someone, I am more likely to stick pins in my own eyes than face having to tell them, such is my massive fear of rejection (issues, so many issues).  

I can vividly recall one night in September last year, being out for the evening and being graced with the presence of my then real-life crush.  At one point in the proceedings, his friends all went off to the loo/the bar/to discuss the weird short girl eyeing up their mate and my friend disappeared to get a drink.  He was all by himself.  I was standing mere feet away.  So, I wandered over, uttered an entirely awkward line of conversation, he smiled, I panicked and then I pretty much ran away.  I mean, I made the excuse of going to get a drink, but the fact is, I had a drink in my hand.  I was just terrified.  I'm talking "someone has a syringe in their hand and they're tapping my arm to find a vein" kind of terrified.  What if he knew I liked him?  What if he threw up at the mere thought?!  That would be traumatic on two levels.

The trouble is, I'm not sixteen.  I'm thirty bloody three and entirely capable of holding a conversation with almost anyone.  I'm generally fairly comfortable in myself and I reckon I'm a pretty decent human.  Yet, you put me in front of someone I like in THAT way and I turn into the most epic of epic fails you could possibly wish to meet.  Specialities include:

• Spilling my drink on myself.
• Going all giggly and shy.
• Becoming mute OR talking endless nonsense (there is no middle ground).
• Mumbling, because I'm not confident in the utter rubbish I am spouting.
• Turning a delightful shade of puce.

Bizarrely, if someone I like initiates the conversation, I'm generally fine (albeit hugely nervous), but if I have to initiate it?  Good lord, no.  Nine times out of ten, I will sit and think about initiating it, until the chance has passed.  At which point I will go home and cry over not having taken the opportunity because I am an idiot.

WIN: I am, despite all my flaws, happy in myself.

Awkward pose on the dance floor - wooooo!

One good thing about getting older is that you become more attuned to who you are and who you want to be.  You start to realise that you're actually okay with being you and if there are things you still don't like, you learn to either accept them or change them.

I may be an oversensitive, clumsy loser in love with a particularly weird set of phobias, but I'm me.  I'm the only me in the world and that's pretty cool.  All my strange little ways are just what make me unique and anyway, weirdness is good, right?  

For all my flaws, I know that I've got a kind heart, a sensitive soul and a creative brain.  So, I over-analyse stuff and I dance like my Nan, but who cares?!  I cook a bloody decent risotto, so that more than makes up for it.

It's the same for everyone - for all your flaws, there are positive personality traits.  Everyone has a list of negative qualities - it's impossible not to, because nobody can ever be perfect - but we've all got a list of positive attributes, too.  Our goal in life should just be to ensure that the good outweighs the bad and that we don't let ourselves dwell on the negatives for too long.

So, embrace everything that makes you who you are.  You're a big jumble of things, all mixed together to create a whole.  And that's just the way it should be.

Emotional Abuse & Me

Me, back in early 2010.  That's a hood, it's honestly not my hair...

In March 2012, something life-changing happened to me.  That's not hyperbole.  It genuinely was a moment that changed my life and changed me forever.

I'd been having counselling for three or four months, following the end of a relationship.  A relationship in which I'd convinced myself I was a bad person.  A weak, sad, pathetic, desperate, clingy, needy woman, whom nobody could ever really love.  I'd been with someone who'd given me a sob story about how messed up he was and how he didn't really know how to behave in a relationship.  He'd told me he couldn't help his behaviour; he was scared by how close I'd gotten to him, so he reacted by pushing me away.  And I stuck around, wanting to help him, so surely I was sort of to blame for whatever he did to me after he'd warned me off?  As he himself put it, the last time I ever spoke to him face to face: "You knew what you were getting into.  I'm not to blame for any of this.  You are."

After I finally found the strength to walk away from him - nearly two years after we first met - I was convinced I'd "abandoned" him.  He used the word often enough to describe people no longer in his life, so I suppose it was drummed into my brain.  

I blamed myself.  I hated myself.  I found myself drinking a glass of wine most nights "just to take the edge off" the pain I was feeling.  I'd cry myself to sleep and hope I never woke up.  Every morning, when I did wake up, I'd find myself with a head full of dark questions: "Why am I so useless?"  "Why doesn't everyone just ditch me?  I'm not worth knowing."  "Why wasn't I strong enough to help him?"  "Why am I such a failure?"

When it all got too much, I eventually sought counselling.  I spent my sessions putting myself down, acting as prosecution, judge and jury at my own trial.  I found myself guilty.  My counsellor sat, listened, asked questions and made notes.  Then, in my penultimate session, my counsellor leaned forwards, with a pamphlet in her hands.  She spoke in a very soft, calm voice.  She said simply: "What you've been describing is abuse.  I think you need to call this number and speak to someone about what happened to you."

It was like a bucket of cold water to the face.  I sat and shivered in my seat.  I said just five words:

"But he never hit me."

So many of us, when we hear the word "abuse," think of two things: Physical violence and rape.  I'm quite ashamed to say that even as a childcare practitioner of 14 years' experience, trained in abuse and how to spot it, I didn't really realise that emotional abuse was something that happened between two adults.  

I went home with the abuse pamphlet in my trembling hands.  My counsellor had to be wrong.  I wasn't abused!  I was to blame; I had brought this all on myself.  Still, I knew my last counselling session would take place a fortnight later and I'd be expected to have rung the abuse charity whose pamphlet I'd been given.  My stomach churned at the thought.  How could I phone a helpline used by women who'd been beaten and raped?!  I checked the times of operation and decided to ring after the helpline was closed.  That way, I could tell my counsellor I'd tried to get in touch with the charity, without actually having to do it.  If they had an answerphone service, I'd leave a message and they'd probably listen to it, scoff at my time-wasting and never call me back.  Either way, I had a convenient excuse for not having to actually speak to someone who'd call me out on my stupidity.  I left a message that began with the words "I'm sorry, I'm wasting your time..."

A day or two later, the phone rang.  A very nice, very kind lady with a soft voice explained that she was calling from the abuse charity - did I have time to talk?  I thought I was going to be sick.  They were surely about to tell me off for attempting to waste their valuable services!  I don't think my voice has ever trembled so much in all my life.

And yet shockingly - to me, at least - the lady on the end of the phone didn't tell me off.  She never said I was wasting her time.  Instead, she explained what emotional and psychological abuse was and how difficult it is to spot when you're in it.  She told me - more than once in that first phone call - that it wasn't my fault and that it was okay to let go of the blame I'd been holding on to.  The blame that had been poisoning every aspect of my life.  I'd found myself guilty.  She said I was innocent.

Three months (and several phone calls) later, I began weekly sessions with a support worker.  Ten months after that, I was a completely changed person.

I was going through the night, dead to the world, without crying myself to sleep first.

I had no need whatsoever to "take the edge off" the pain.  The pain was gone.

I didn't hate myself.  I didn't blame myself.  I saw myself having a bright, positive future.  I saw myself as having survived.

Most importantly of all, I was able to use the word "abuse."  I finally realised that my counsellor had been right, on that Earth-shattering day.  The use of my ex's tragic past to explain his behaviour had been manipulation.  The suggestion that if I left, I'd be abandoning him, was coercion to make me stay.  The insistence that the relationship had to be on his terms, labelled as he saw fit, was control.  The digs about my weight... The comments about me being "desperate and clingy" when all I wanted was to be shown some affection...  The demands for sex as soon as I'd arrived to see him, yet the accusation of me being a "pathetic slut" if I tried to initiate it on my terms...  The times he'd throw something across the room and say I made him "violent..."  The time he forced me into the shower, blocking the bathroom door, making me scrub my feet so I was less "fucking disgusting..."  The time he told me that if I was pregnant, he'd give me "the coat-hanger treatment..."  The times he compared me unfavourably to other women - ones he'd been with before me and ones he slept with whilst we were together... The times he'd get what he wanted sexually, then roll over and warn me in no uncertain terms not to touch him, leaving me feeling alone and confused... The times he'd deliberately wind me up and then leave me sexually frustrated... The times he'd deliberately make me angry or upset, so he could criticise my reaction and use it as justification for refusing to commit to a relationship with me...The insistence that none of it was his fault; the world was cruel and out to get him and he was just trying to deal with his issues the only way he knew how...  It was abuse.  All of it.

And once I saw that, I was angry.  Not just with him, but with myself.  How had I not seen it?!  Why did I put up with it all?!

But of course, I was being manipulated.  I fell for his tragic sob story.  The whole "I was abused as a child; I only push you away because I'm scared... I don't know any other way to behave" shebang.  And I wanted to fix him.  I - as crazy as it might sound, given the above list of atrocious things he said and did - loved him.  And when he told me he loved me too, I believed him.  I was going to see it through, however hard it was.  I was going to help him let go of his awful past and move forwards into a happy, loving future.  

Eventually, my amazing support worker helped me to let go of the anger I felt at my own perceived weakness and made me realise that I wasn't weak at all.  I was so, so strong.  I had put him first, even when it hurt me to do so, because I loved him and believed I was helping him.  And maybe, if he had wanted to grow and change as a person, I would have been.  But he didn't want that.  He wanted to use me.  He wanted an excuse to treat me - and others - however he saw fit.  He chose to abuse. 

Abuse is always, always a choice.  Abusers don't go around controlling, manipulating or otherwise abusing people every minute of every day.  They often have jobs, hobbies and social circles, in which they behave as anyone else would.  They can be charming and even affectionate (otherwise, you'd spot the abuse more easily and leave far sooner).  In the moments when a person chooses to abuse, whatever form that abuse takes, they do it through choice.  Not because they had a terrible past and don't know any better.  Not because you've done something to cause them to have no choice but to abuse you.

Once I stepped out from the shadow of my experience, I was able to see it clearly for what it was.  And now, three and a half years after leaving, I can understand why I didn't recognise it at the time.  I heard his "explanations" and I accepted them.  I thought I could help him.  I focused on the times we sat up all night, snuggled together, pouring our hearts out to one another.  I held on to the times he'd make me laugh, or hold me when I cried.  I saw the relationship I wanted us to have, whilst he manipulated me into being blind to what we really had.  Which, of course, was nothing.

I want to go back in time and tell this girl "I know you like him, but just RUN."

Now, more than five years after I first met my ex, I co-run a campaign called Fifty Shades Is Domestic Abuse.  Not because I'm a prude, who hates the thought of BDSM.  Not because I want to censor anyone's reading or viewing habits.  But because when I read the trilogy, I was stunned to realise I was reading something that may as well have been about my ex, give or take a few billion in the bank and a pair of handcuffs.  The manipulation, the coercion, the control...  It was all there.

Fans of the book often tell me there's no abuse in Fifty Shades.  The author tells survivors the same on a pretty much daily basis, often in a hugely offensive, borderline abusive manner (she even sent a rape survivor triggered by her books a gif of a woman throwing a book at someone's head, with the hashtag "#ignorant").  But just as I didn't recognise my own abuse at the time, it doesn't mean it wasn't there.  The abuse in Fifty Shades is very much there.  But when you point it out, the two myths I clung onto get trotted out by fans:  "But he doesn't know any better; he's messed up!"  And: "She sticks around and she cures him with her love."

I know it's a fantasy and the whole point of fantasy is that it doesn't have to have its roots in reality.  But considering emotional/psychological abuse is so insidious that it often goes unrecognised even by the people living with it, I don't think we need fantasy that romanticises it and perpetuates the idea that sticking with an abusive person will cause them to change in the end so that you live happily ever after.

All of which brings me to what caused me to write this piece in the first place.  In the past 48 hours, three separate Fifty Shades fans have contacted me to tell me that emotional abuse "doesn't exist."  One, a survivor of physical violence, even made the shocking decision to send me a photo of herself covered in bruises, with the tag: "THIS IS ABUSE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.  THERE IS NO OTHER FORM!"

Except there is.  Of course there is.  Emotional & psychological abuse are recognised by all major abuse charities and by the government of this country.  It may not cause bruises, but it causes scars that run deep, even if they cannot be seen by the naked eye.  The fact that there are people out there - and I believe there are far more than just three - who refuse to believe that such a thing exists proves that we need far greater awareness of what constitutes abuse and where to get help.

Five years after I met my ex, I spend some of my time writing on abuse and campaigning against it.  I'm not "weak" or "pathetic," like he said I was.  I've grown and become stronger than I ever thought I could be.  I have a voice and I'm proud to make it heard.

So when you next hear someone say they've experienced emotional abuse, don't tell them that such a thing doesn't exist.  Don't ignore them or dismiss them.  Listen.

WRSAC North Cornwall (to whom I dedicate this post)

Rape Crisis

Women's Aid