TW: Abuse, self-harm
If you're reading this - Happy International Women's Day!
I want to take a moment to talk about what today means to me. It's going to be long and be a bit of a bumpy ride, so buckle up!
Whenever this day comes around, it's inevitable that at least one bloke will "jokingly" ask when International Men's Day is (November 19th FYI), and it's usually followed by a short lecture about how good women have got it these days, and how the problems that we're "complaining about" don't really exist anymore.
Fair enough when you consider the life I'm leading these days - I have a warm and comfortable home, I have a boyfriend and friends who love me, I have a good job, and I never have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. I'm also free to go about my daily life in any way I please. I'm grateful to the women of history who sacrificed what little they already had in order for today's women to lead this kind of existence.
Consider this however - there are still places on this Earth where women still don't have the same basic rights that I have, that you probably have. There are girls who are forced into marriage at the age of 12 to a man three times her age; there are countries where where practises such as female genital mutilation and breast "ironing" are still performed; there are countries where women have no access to education or opportunities simply because they are women. If you believe that International Women's Day doesn't go beyond catcalling and the gender pay gap, you're wrong.
It's a day where we recognise the impact that women have had on the world throughout history, and the impact that individual women have had on our own lives, as well as recognising how amazing we are as individuals. My family is full of strong women who all manage to stay bad ass no matter what life throws at them, and I believe that I'm also bad as fuck despite the shit I've been through.
My mum died when I was 8, and within the next 4 years, my stepdad had become horribly abusive, physically and mentally. He cut me off from my family, telling me that they didn't want me, and sending back their letters, rejecting their calls, all whilst telling me they'd never tried to contact me. He began drinking, and subsequently lost his job, and then later his driving license after being pulled over for drink driving whilst I was in the car.
He would drink all evening and then wake me up at 2am to scream at me for "ruining his life", telling me he wished I'd never been born and how my mum's brain aneurysm was probably caused by me stressing her out. He would then break down about losing her and about how terrible his life was, and I would usually have to talk him out of killing himself and then wait up until he went to sleep before getting ready for school and leaving without breakfast. We had no money because he didn't have a job. We could never afford to have the heating on, and my diet was so poor that I was constantly poorly - dinner most evenings was beans on toast or mince meat with potatoes and I was constantly exhausted due to the lack of nutrients and vitamins, coupled with the lack of sleep and the fact that I had to walk all over town to go to school and to fetch shopping when he was too drunk to go. He would take money out of my savings account and tell anyone who questioned it that it was for food and that he would pay me back, but in reality it went on cigars and booze.
He would drag me all over Stoke so that he could party and sleep with random women (it was after one of these "parties" that he was pulled over for drink driving), and he always had people coming in and out of our house on drugs. One of them once smashed a plate and tried to slash his throat with it and so my stepdad had to take him to hospital but "forgot" to tell me, so I woke up the next morning to an empty house covered in blood. I had to go to school and didn't find out what had happened until I came home.
He was unbelievably controlling, probably because he was afraid that I would tell people about the way I was living. I had to be home at a set time every day, and if the clock ticked over by literally one second, he would scream at me for hours about what a bitch and a whore I was, and he would inflict the most ridiculous punishments on me such as limiting how long I was allowed to shower for, or waiting until I was halfway through straightening my hair before taking the straighteners away and sending me to school in an attempt to embarrass me.
He kept tabs on me and my friends and would tell me that he had "spies" at school who would report back to him about what I said or did outside of the house. He would start arguments over nothing, and tell me that I was worthless, and I started to believe it.
The worst part, and also the hardest part for me to talk about, is that he would constantly try to sexually abuse me. He had child porn on his computer and would try to make me look at it if I was on the computer doing homework or anything (I refused, obviously). He secretly filmed me in the shower and would constantly try to touch me. He would climb into my bed at night and lie there silently before telling me that it was just because he was lonely, then he would either laugh or cry and leave the room again with no explanation. He would also tell me that he could rape me any time he wanted to, and that nobody would believe me. I believe that the only reason he never did was because he was always too drunk to stand up, and I would lock myself in the bathroom and sleep in the bathtub.
I spent my early teens terrified that I was going to be raped or killed, and I self-harmed regularly. I kept trying to run away, but I had been conditioned into staying silent, and because I felt like I couldn't open up about what was happening, school and other adults would write the whole thing off as teenage drama and send me back home. I even asked to be put into care, but they didn't realise what was happening and said that "care isn't the place for a nice girl like you".
I eventually escaped at 16, and went to live with the most amazing woman, my unofficial foster mum, Jane. She took me in straight away, no questions asked, despite only having met me once or twice before. She was like a mum to me, and my best friend. She helped me to turn my failing grades around at school, and she helped me to get back in touch with my family years after my stepdad had cut them out of my life. I made more friends and my confidence grew massively (as did my waistline thanks to the amount of food and snacks she always made sure to get in for us!). She gave me back the childhood I'd been missing, and when she died just 2 years later, it was like it had been snatched away again.
I tell you this because for years, I felt like I couldn't speak about what I'd been through. I always told myself that other people had it much worse, that somewhere in the world there was another woman who wasn't lucky enough to have a bathroom that she could lock herself in at night. That somewhere else, another girl was suffering more than me because she didn't have a Jane of her own that she could run away to. I counted myself lucky that I'd "got off lightly" with the abuse I'd faced, and I didn't really talk about it for fear of making people feel uncomfortable.
But the abuse still happened, and it had a permanent effect on my life. I've only recently been able to start talking about it in detail, and I finally feel like I've come to terms with everything and that I've moved on from being a victim. I also believe that this has something to do with the fact that my stepdad died a few years ago, giving me the closure that a lot of abuse victims never get.
My point is that there will always be women out there who are have had it worse than me, and there will be women out there who never get closure or a happy ending. But that's exactly why International Women's Day is important. We are always being told that our problems "aren't that bad" - the point is that nobody's problems should be "that bad", but that quite often they are. International Women's Day is, for me, a day to think about how much I've had to overcome personally, and to think about the women all over the world who are still fighting for equality and respect.
If your biggest obstacle in your life is "just" catcalling or "just" the gender pay gap, your obstacle is still valid, you are not what people do to you, and I hope that you continue to fight the good fight and continue being a bad ass queen who loves herself and takes no shit!
