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Authors: Stella Noir, Aria Frost
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people, I can’t help but get a real sense of my own solitude, as though I couldn’t see it before without something to put it into context. I haven’t had someone to connect to intimately for a couple of years, and now, because of what has happened to me, I can’t help but think it might not happen at all.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about this so much. I guess it’s because things are moving on so quickly around me and I’m struggling to keep up. I don’t want to get left behind, the broken doll left on the shelf because she doesn’t work properly. I don’t want to be in this situation forever, on my own forever.
Yeah I’m here at work, and there are people around me, and I have friends and family, which is more than can be said for a lot of people, and I have the group therapy sessions in which I can connect at some level with people who can empathize because they’ve experienced the same thing, but even with all that said, it’s not the same thing. The problem is letting someone else get close to me, in order to be able to give me exactly what I need to stop me feeling that way. And that takes courage and trust, neither of which I feel like I truly have.
Chapter Nineteen
Jo
2 4 November 2015. Fifty eight days after.
Ethan is not at the session today. There is an empty chair where he usually sits, and a hole in the group more noticeable than a hole in the roof would be with rain coming through it. We wait for ten minutes to begin the class, all a little unsure if we should proceed at all. Katy calls his mobile, but he doesn’t respond.
“Maybe he’s gone on holiday”, Patricia says, “Didn’t he mention something about family back west?”
“He could be doing something for his birthday, you know as a kind of belated birthday present”, Paul adds.
We spend the first half an hour discussing his possible whereabouts, before moving on from that and beginning the session. It never really gets going. It seems like Ethan is the glue that gels everyone else together. Without him, they all seem a bit lost, Katy included.
I tell them about the court date, because it’s bugging me, and I want to know whether anyone else has already gone through what I’m going to have to do in the new year. Patricia is the only girl who took her attacker to court and spoke up in her defense against him.
“Seeing him there was the hardest thing”, she says. “The lawyers try and trip you up, you know, mess around with what you’re saying about where you were and shit like that, how much you’d been drinking and what went on before consent wise, but that was a piece of cake compared to being stood there in the same room, his eyes on you like they must have been when he was doing it. My trial went on for three weeks because he was a sick sonofabtich and there was a lot of stuff he was accused of doing. It got easier every day, but it still wasn’t no walk in the park, that’s for sure.”
Patricia was raped on her way back from a night out like me. Dragged into the bushes at the edge of the park and forced into the ground with a knife across her throat. She still has the scar. The guy that was responsible? Someone who had tried it on with her at the club she’d spent the evening at, and she’d turned down. It was as simple as that. If she wasn’t going to agree to giving it to him, he was going to take it himself.
“I didn’t want to, but I had to go. They sent him down for what we said about him. Plenty of the other girls didn’t take to the stand, but there wasn’t any DNA evidence on me, so I had to talk and tell my side of the story. I was glad I did too. That was the first time apart from to my sister and Mom. I came here after that case went to trial. He denied it of course, until he was red in the face. Said I’d agreed to it, that we left the club together, that it was my idea we fucked in the park-.” She excuses herself for swearing and it makes the group smile. “-They’ll say anything
I don’t know why I’m thinking about this so much. I guess it’s because things are moving on so quickly around me and I’m struggling to keep up. I don’t want to get left behind, the broken doll left on the shelf because she doesn’t work properly. I don’t want to be in this situation forever, on my own forever.
Yeah I’m here at work, and there are people around me, and I have friends and family, which is more than can be said for a lot of people, and I have the group therapy sessions in which I can connect at some level with people who can empathize because they’ve experienced the same thing, but even with all that said, it’s not the same thing. The problem is letting someone else get close to me, in order to be able to give me exactly what I need to stop me feeling that way. And that takes courage and trust, neither of which I feel like I truly have.
Chapter Nineteen
Jo
2 4 November 2015. Fifty eight days after.
Ethan is not at the session today. There is an empty chair where he usually sits, and a hole in the group more noticeable than a hole in the roof would be with rain coming through it. We wait for ten minutes to begin the class, all a little unsure if we should proceed at all. Katy calls his mobile, but he doesn’t respond.
“Maybe he’s gone on holiday”, Patricia says, “Didn’t he mention something about family back west?”
“He could be doing something for his birthday, you know as a kind of belated birthday present”, Paul adds.
We spend the first half an hour discussing his possible whereabouts, before moving on from that and beginning the session. It never really gets going. It seems like Ethan is the glue that gels everyone else together. Without him, they all seem a bit lost, Katy included.
I tell them about the court date, because it’s bugging me, and I want to know whether anyone else has already gone through what I’m going to have to do in the new year. Patricia is the only girl who took her attacker to court and spoke up in her defense against him.
“Seeing him there was the hardest thing”, she says. “The lawyers try and trip you up, you know, mess around with what you’re saying about where you were and shit like that, how much you’d been drinking and what went on before consent wise, but that was a piece of cake compared to being stood there in the same room, his eyes on you like they must have been when he was doing it. My trial went on for three weeks because he was a sick sonofabtich and there was a lot of stuff he was accused of doing. It got easier every day, but it still wasn’t no walk in the park, that’s for sure.”
Patricia was raped on her way back from a night out like me. Dragged into the bushes at the edge of the park and forced into the ground with a knife across her throat. She still has the scar. The guy that was responsible? Someone who had tried it on with her at the club she’d spent the evening at, and she’d turned down. It was as simple as that. If she wasn’t going to agree to giving it to him, he was going to take it himself.
“I didn’t want to, but I had to go. They sent him down for what we said about him. Plenty of the other girls didn’t take to the stand, but there wasn’t any DNA evidence on me, so I had to talk and tell my side of the story. I was glad I did too. That was the first time apart from to my sister and Mom. I came here after that case went to trial. He denied it of course, until he was red in the face. Said I’d agreed to it, that we left the club together, that it was my idea we fucked in the park-.” She excuses herself for swearing and it makes the group smile. “-They’ll say anything
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