It’s a Sunday afternoon, I am on
the couch watching the X factor from last night, huddling next to the radiator,
its freaking freezing at the moment. It’s
so cold that my fingers are not registering on my smart phone. And I am braving Norway for Christmas!
Anyhoo, it’s been a while since I
have blogged and there are some very good reasons for this, a whole heap of
shit has been happening. Least of all a
wee assault. Yep that is right, I was assaulted,
attacked or grabbed, whichever way you want to say it, it happened.
I was involved in the annual
electoral canvas for the second year in a row.
The first year went by with very little drama. Its hard work, in the freezing cold, knocking
on people’s doors to get them to register to vote. Whilst I am not really political, I do
believe that not that long ago, a generation gave their lives so that we could
have democracy, and we owe it to them to exercise that right. So, our job is to knock on the doors of the
people who have not returned the forms that have been sent to them. It was during the course of this exercise,
that a not very nice man, tried to pull me into his flat, after a 5-10mins of
stalling me, trying to get me to come in and being creepy in general.
That is obviously the light
version of events, edited for public consumption. The reality is that it was a very frightening
and very upsetting encounter. It still
upsets me that someone, who does not know me, who has no idea of who I am,
where I come from or who loves me, wanted to do me harm. However, I am very lucky. I got away.
I was strong enough to do it and I have worked for the last 6 weeks especially
to ensure that the rest of my life is not affected by those unfortunate few
minutes. As it happened during the
course of my working, my workplace has been incredible and organised
counselling for me. Which has been
invaluable in helping me to get over this. And I have a large group of people who were
horrified and upset that this happened to me, who have given me an endless
supply of hugs and drinks to ensure that I am ok.
In the week after this moment, I
was encouraged to take leave, to try this, to try that, to do this, to do
that. I had a wee holiday to Lisbon
booked, so I chose to try and keep things as normal as possible until I could get
out of London. Sadly, that worked for
about 20 minutes. I had nightmares and
could not concentrate for long periods of time.
By the time that Wednesday rolled around, and it was time for us to head
out to Gatwick, I was a bit all over the place.
But I was lucky enough to have my bestie who looked after me on those
few days. We headed to the lounge and
had free drinks, dinner and grabbed some magazines for flight. We spent the flight watching music videos,
laughing and drinking some more. When we
arrived in Lisbon, we were happy to check into our posh hotel. I felt awful for barely having slept, and I
still did not sleep much that night either.
The next day, we decided that
massages were in order. We spent the
morning drinking herbal tea and relaxing.
It was just what the doctor ordered.
I just wanted to sleep and chill in the spa for the rest of the day, but
I felt that it was time to see some of Lisbon.
We headed out to Sintra that afternoon.
We ate delish pastries, the local delicacy, and they were amazing. We climbed up a huge hill, in the mist, we
could not see the top of the hill and there was not a view when we got there,
but it was beautifully atmospheric, it felt as though we were the only people
in the world. A few weeks later, a
friend showed me her photos from the same spots, with the view and we laughed
at my matching ones with the mist. We
decided to stay in Sintra for dinner and some more drinks before heading back
to Lisbon, for an early night. This time
I managed to get some sleep, not unbroken but ok.
The next day we slept in and
headed up for Bario Alto, in search of lunch and wine. We found both! And a whole lot of fun along the way. We had a great day that day. We drunk way too much wine, and I wrote
postcards home, that were, I am sure hilarious to read, if you could read what
they said! We ate amazing food and
laughed some more. It felt good to be
myself again, to not worry about London any longer, to be laughing. It was a fragile happiness though, the
smallest thing reminded me of what was really going on and it only took a
second to break. I am again so thankful
for my friends here, their patience and kindness to me on this holiday was just
amazing. Enough gushing.
So I guess that the point of this
blog is to say, it is hard to write when there is so much going on in your
mind, you either need to write about that or give up. I chose to give up until I was ready to share
my story with the world. I have been
lucky to have wonderful friends and family, work colleagues and also a
wonderful counsellor who worked with me to get over this. And to me there is no shame in saying that
this helped no end. I am very certain
that should I have tried to get through this alone, I would still be having
sleepless nights and unhappy holidays.
And I now chose to be thankful for these things, rather than focusing on
a very scary time in my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment