I have nothing to say

Content warning: sexual violence, PTSD

I want to write to tell you that you aren’t alone; that the systems are broken and seeking incarceration isn't the answer even if it feels like the only way. I want them all to know that what happened to you, a stranger I have never met, isn't right.   

I want to write to tell the men in my life that the jokes they make and the debates they start at the pub at the end of our road aren’t harmless. Not to me, nor to the others sitting around the sticky table under a heater, passing cigarettes and knowing glances. Their fixating on imagined scenarios or hypothetical causes simply as thought experiments are only tangential conversations because they have no stake in the claim, no vigilance or fear of safety. It isn’t right. 

I want to write to tell the women in my life that I know what it's like. I don’t know how it happened to them and I don't need to tell them what happened to me, but there is an understanding that something has happened to us both; an inevitable fact given the statistics. It isn’t right. 

I want to write so that people on the internet know when I talk about sexual violence in fictional tales, when I comment upon the casual misogyny thrown to female authors, that it is not at attempt at moral wokeness, nor trying to catch someone out: it is a visceral response, a feeling in the pit of my stomach that reacts without my knowing; but what they are saying. It isn’t right. 

I want to write so that the children in my class know that their teacher is hurting, that vulnerability should be lauded and not shamed, that witnessing violence, the shades of black and blue, may not be for innocent eyes but are reality for many sitting next to them on the carpet. It isn’t right. 

I want to write so that the girlfriends I hold dear know why I flinch on nightclub dance floors, why I am the first to offer to cover the cab fare, why I don’t want to talk about it (ever) but I want them to know somehow - through osmosis of thought or from reading this, that what happened to me, and to them too, isn’t right. 

I want to write so that my boyfriend knows why he finds me sobbing between the sheets, why I scream when he walks into a room from behind, why I can’t stand being chased up the stairs. It isn’t his fault, but still, it isn’t right.

I want to write, but I have nothing to say, because what happened to me likely happened to you too. There is nothing unique about tales I can tell, memories from other lives, nothing so bad I can’t sleep at night, safe for now with my rituals and rules. That isn’t right.