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The grey area

Dear diary,

Last saturday was the college ball. And oh my God. 

It is a funny thing to become a statistic. It all seems so binary before it happens to you. Are you the zero, or the one? Two distinct states of being, two entirely opposite sides. The “me” and the “not-me”. But what is unclear, is the wide expanse between – the grey area. The rose-tinted glasses, the nights spent crying over “nothing at all”, the times you felt like you never left that room where it happened. For those of you who find yourselves consumed by the “grey” – whether you perceive it to be an off-white or a charcoal grey, know that you are not alone. 

They encourage me to text him, which I wasn’t going to do as he ignored me in Atik and  Bridge in 7th + 8th weeks, and made out with another girl infront of me in 8th week Bridge. But still, I don’t think I was completely done with him as I wouldn’t have done it. So I call him, and he texts me, and I invite him over and he actually comes. 

It is also a strange thing to be so vulnerable in front of an audience of strangers. To tell you all a story that has previously just been known, in this detail, between me and him (and a few close friends, naturally). It feels strange to let you into my first year bedroom, to show you all this scene of the both of us on that single bed, a scene I now know by heart. It makes me feel vulnerable. My favourite teacher, Miss Oxlade, used to teach me Drama. She always said she could never imagine singing in front of a crowd – acting is different, you are playing someone else entirely, but singing is you. I used to like drama a lot, I never minded the crowd. In a lot of ways I feel more comfortable like that. Under the bright theatre lights where you can barely see the audience but you know they are there. It is nice to feel listened to. It is nice to have some distance. 

I take X to my room + we lie on my bed and cuddle and talk. I’m still in my dress and so drunk which he knows cuz I keep telling him he has 4 eyes and the first thing he said to me was “how drunk are you right now?” 

… Anyways, we are in my room, talking. I learn his actual name, X is just a nickname. He sprained his wrist in a boat crash and he has 6 meals a day (I keep trying to feed him breadsticks). He’s in my room from 2am-5am…

Whenever I play this scene back, which I often do, there are three of us in the room. It feels a lot like acting and less like singing, because that girl is not me. In the room, is him, the girl in the green dress, and there is me, the observer. I think about how lovely she looked that night. I envy her sweetness; the way she tried to feed him, to understand him, to show kindness in a way I haven’t quite been able to manage to since. But most of all I pity her, because no matter how many times I replay the scene I cannot save her. I still wear her pretty green dress though. After all, it wasn’t the dress’s fault. 

We start making out (I initiate). He keeps asking if I’m ok with it. Then he takes off his shirt and asks again  “are you ok with it?” and I’m confused + literally think “Oh I guess we are having sex now” which I did want. But maybe not then. I only initiated cuz he seemed like he was going to leave and I didn’t want him to. I never took off my dress – I think I was insecure about my body.

This is probably the time to say if you are a family member or a future employer  – I would prefer it if you clicked off. I want to be able to tell this story, I want to get the words out and as far away from me as possible, and I can’t do that if I feel certain people are reading this. It will be easier for me if my audience is hordes of faceless strangers. Once, I sang a solo in school, in front of a crowd of my friends, in a room with too many windows. It was too bright, it was awkward, and it has been burned into some deep recess of my memory. All I ask is that you are a courteous reader and you don’t make me feel 8 years old again, singing “Hallelujah”. 

After, he cleaned himself up and  then almost looked like he wasn’t going to lie down again. But he did. He also gave me a hickey at one point which now means I am reminded of this bullshit whenever I look at myself. My mum only just noticed it today. She asked “what have you done to your neck?”. I don’t know if she knows what it is or not – probably does. I replied “I don’t know”. But I do. I know what happened and why I did it; that doesn’t make it any better that it happened.

I watched Bridget Jones’ Diary for the first time a few days ago – a super weird way to start this paragraph I know. But I felt so seen by the way that she felt noticed by someone for like 5 seconds and immediately imagined their entire future together. Not to say that I really saw a future with the boy I have been describing, but for a short time before this night he was undeniably important to me. He made me feel noticed, seen, desirable – in a way I hadn’t felt before. I suppose that’s part of why I thought for a long time that it was my fault, because he meant so much to me, because he came when I called. But this still does not excuse his behaviour – my crush did not force him to take advantage of me, my little obsession did not cause him to forget his decency. 

After, he got changed and asked if he was the only guy I’d got with this term. I said something like “why are you asking?”. He tells me we aren’t going to become a “thing” as in a serious thing and that I shouldn’t text him sober. If I drunk texted him, I asked, would he reply? He said “I might” with a smile. So if I want to be used for my body I know who to call. 

When he said to not sober text him I said “why would I do that?” because I never have, and I never will and HE IS THE ONE that came over sober when I was so drunk and took advantage of me in every possible way. But he did ask and I did say yes so maybe I’m so repulsed by him to hide how repulsed I am in myself that I agreed, that I even called him, that I decided, somehow, at some point, that it would be better to be disrespected and used than to be alone. 

I hope for anyone that reads this and sees themselves in my words that you come to a resolution. I hope the endless ways you make it your fault fade away. I hope you see that your story does not have to be air tight – you are not in a court of law, you do not have to cross examine yourself. In truth, it doesn’t matter what you did. If you are in the grey area, then something has happened to you that you know is not what you wanted. That someone has hurt you, properly hurt you – and I hope you see that hurting yourself with these sharp words will not make it better. 

That’s not to say it doesn’t take time to realise this, and you have to realise it for yourself. No matter how you choose to deal with it – spending an entire term in your bedroom because that’s where it feels safest, closing yourself off from anything difficult, and listening to the same songs on repeat, being irredeemably and uncontrollably angry that this happened. If that makes you feel better for a time then that is what must be done. But I hope you will see, eventually, that this fixation will not get you anywhere. That when you spend too much time lying down your joints seize up. That when you stop seeing your friends it makes you more miserable than before. That you have to live your life for you. 

And, with time, you can reconcile yourself with the person this happened to. You can become you. In time, I hope, you will come to be proud of yourself and the way you acted. You will learn to love that person you try so hard to pretend isn’t you. For me, I am proud of the way I tried to show him kindness, I am proud of the way I tried to humble him and ask why I would even think to call him sober. And, ultimately, I am proud of the way I froze up, because it was me trying to protect myself in that impossible situation, and so I am proud of myself for having my own back.

So this article, for me, is what I hope to be the final words in a chapter of my life I would like to move away from. It will always remain a part of my story, and it will certainly affect the way I behave from now on, but I cannot linger here forever. If there is one thing I have learnt from this whole experience it is that I deserve better. 

And a final message to you. You who has read this and thought this sounds oddly similar to a strange night you had in Hilary of your first year. Yes, you. You cannot imagine how many times I have thought over what I would say to you directly, if I could. But really it all boils down to this. I was drunk out of my mind and you were completely sober. I wasn’t, however, drunk enough to forget. While I know you have only ever met me drunk and ditsy, you don’t know the other side.

Because I remember exactly what happened. And I am not afraid. 

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