The Curved Opinion Short Stories: A Familiar Face Part 2

 To read Part One

The walk to my train that night felt like the longest of my life.  

I reached the station but instead of boarding my usual train, I caught another, to a station a few stops away.  To the place that had been calling me since I saw his face yesterday.  

The alley.

It had been twenty years, but I knew exactly where it was.

The snow was gone now, obviously.  The blood stains on the floor had long since been washed away.  There was no little girl there, screaming until her throat hurt.  My father was not there, dying on the ground.  

It was just an alley.  A dirty, ordinary alley.

I stood there for a long time.  I did not know why I had come, but every muscle in my body had drawn me back there.  

Then, I heard footsteps behind me.  I didn't turn around.  I didn't need to.

"Funny place to come for a walk."

Tom.

My hands curled into fists.  My body moved into a fighting stance that my Krav Maga instructor had taught me.  

"You followed me."

"I wanted to talk."

"I don't want to talk to you."

"I think you do."

I turned around.

He was standing there with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat.  The same weasel-like face that haunted my dreams.  

Only now I could see what time had done to him.  The wrinkles around his eyes. The grey peppered through his hair.  A slight stoop in his posture.   The smile that still did not reach his eyes. 

The man I had dreamed about for so long had become the size of a monster.  Evil incarnate.  But now, standing there, he just looked like an ordinary middle-aged man.

Somehow, that made it worse.  I needed him to look like the monster of my dreams.

"Why?" I asked.

He looked at me.

"Why what?"

"Why did you kill him?"

For the first time since I had met him, the smile disappeared.

"So you do remember."

It wasn't a question.

"Every.  Single.  Second."

He looked down at the ground.  "I wondered if you would. When I saw you in the bank yesterday I knew immediately who you were."

"You recognised me."

"Of course I did."

"You could have just left me alone. Why come after me, why follow me here?"

He was silent for so long that I thought he wasn't going to answer.

Then he said something I had never expected.

"Because your father had a debt to pay and that day was the day he paid for it."

I actually laughed.  It was a horrible sound.

"A debt?  So you killed a man over money?"

"The debt was not about money.  The debt was a life.  My daughter's life.  He ran her over and left her to die."

"I don't believe you.  My father would never kill anyone."

"Well he did.  My daughter was six years old when she died.  My Charlotte.  He ran her over.  Left her for dead."

"How do you know it was him? "

"Because I knew him.  Knew his face.  I saw his face as he carried on driving.  Leaving my daughter, dying in the road.  He moved away shortly after.  I had been looking for him for ten years and that day was the day that he paid."

He seemed serious.  He seemed sincere.  Yet, this could all be an elaborate story.  Because he did not want me to go to the police.

"Why in the world would I believe you?  You are just trying to save yourself."

"Save myself from what?  You have no proof, just as I had no proof to have your father arrested.  But I do have this".  

He handed me an old newspaper clipping.  There was a picture of a pretty young girl.  The headline "Child Slain in Hit and Run".  And the name.  Charlotte Allen.   Further down the article, another picture. A woman, looking broken, with her husband.  It was Tom.

I looked back at him.  "So what now?  You kill me too to keep the secret?"

"No.  I don't want to hurt you.  But you deserve the truth.  I knew my comment about alleyways would bring you here if you remembered what had happened."

"What if I go to the police?"

"Then go.  Tell them.  You deserve justice, just as I did for my Charlotte.  I will deny it, of course, but you needed to know the truth. "

I looked at the man standing in front of me.

For twenty years I had trained my body to kill him.

Karate.

Krav Maga.

Hours and hours spent learning how to hurt someone before they could hurt me.

I had built my entire personality around him, around this moment.

I turned away.

"Lucy."

I stopped.

"I'm sorry."

I closed my eyes.  For years I had imagined hearing those words.

I had imagined satisfaction.  Relief.  Justice.

Instead, I felt nothing.

And that was when I finally understood.

The little girl standing in that alley had died that day.  But the woman who had survived her had spent twenty years waiting for permission to live.

I turned back to him.

"You took my father away from me.  My childhood.  You ruined my life"

"I know."

"I don't forgive you."

He nodded.

"And I don't know if I even believe what you have told me.  But I am walking away.  Don't come back to work.  Leave.  I don't want to see you ever again"

"I understand."

I walked away.

This time I didn't look back.

I didn't know whether Tom Allen was telling the truth.

I didn't know whether the police would ever be able to uncover what really happened twenty years ago.  Prove that he had killed my father.  Find out whether my father really had killed his daughter.

But for the first time since I was five years old, I understood that my life belonged to me and I needed to start living it.

The Backlash of the Instagram Life

I think everyone will know what I mean when I talk about the "Instagram life".

You post your best pictures, present your best self. There are inspirational quotes, posts about "living my best life!" and every photograph or video is of you apparently having a wonderful time.

In reality, life is not like that.

I get it. Who wants to share the mundane? Who wants to share when you are having a bad day, or not looking your best? When the most exciting thing you do that week is go to Tesco.

It creates friction. It creates jealousy. It creates pressure.

There becomes an element of "Keeping up with the Joneses" – except that the Joneses are your online life and the way you portray yourself, and you are struggling to keep up with the image.

I prefer honesty. The real you. The person who admits that they are having a bad day, posts a picture that does not have every hair perfectly in place, with make-up that did not take hours to create.

I remember once having a photo shoot done by a blogger friend. It was a group thing where you could dress up in vintage-type clothing, get your hair and your make-up done professionally and get a few photographs from the package. It was so much fun.

Part of the package was that you received one photograph that had been retouched, as they do in magazines. To be honest, I think I was more excited for that than any of the other photographs. I wanted to see what I looked like with all the imperfections gone. My skin smoothed and looking the best that I could be.

To my surprise, I got the photograph and I hated it. Because it wasn't me. I did not look like that. They didn't do anything drastic to me, but the image that looked back at me was foreign. It was my face, yet it wasn't.

I shared all my photographs from that day, but not that one. I preferred the natural me. The real me. Flaws and all.

The problem with the Instagram life is that it seeps into everyone. You look around at others, supposedly living a perfect life, and you wonder why your life isn't the same.

What you don't see are the twenty-five pictures that were rejected to get the perfect shot. Experiences that were dampened because you took a photograph or a video instead of living in the moment. The bank balance after a clothing haul that was not needed and could not be afforded.

But there is something else.

Because everyone knows about the game now. And that makes it harder to share real happiness. Real experiences. Real thoughts. Because you post and then feel guilty. You feel like you are showing off. Because your happiness is genuine, not for show or Instagram. So you stop posting.

I have used this blog to talk about my life and my feelings for many years. Someone who has read my blog for even some of that time will understand the journey I have been on. Going from someone who was desperately unhappy, to finding my confidence, meeting the love of my life and now, having a life I never thought was in my reach.

I have worked hard for the life I have now.

Yet, even with my journey, with its ups and downs documented, I still feel a pang when I share my happiness now. Because I post, and then I think of someone who is not as happy as me reading it and thinking, "Well, good for you, but my life is not like that."

But I have chosen not to dim my light. I do still share. And it is for this reason.

When I started blogging about confidence, so many years ago now, I was inspired by other people, other bloggers. The journey that they were on inspired my own. I remember even writing to one of the bloggers and thanking her for being my inspiration to improve my life.

Then, one day, I received an email like that myself. Just a girl. A nurse called Amy. She wrote to me saying many of the same words that I had written once in my letter. Thanking me for inspiring her to become more confident.

So, as much as I wrote about when I was sad, I will write about how happy I am now. Because I have been on that journey. Because I deserve to have happiness and celebrate that happiness.

Instagram life be damned. This is my real life, and I bloody love it.

Rescuing Yourself

One day I woke up and realised that I no longer need to be rescued.

Because I rescued myself. 

Knowing that is the best feeling in the whole world.  And the most important one.  Better than anything.  Better even than falling in love with the right person.

Because rescuing yourself requires growth.  It requires hard work.  It requires looking at yourself in the mirror, really looking.  It requires staring at your demons in the face and fighting back.

It is becoming strong enough to know that you can win.

Anyone who has ever experienced sadness, pain and depression in their lives know how hard it is not to wallow.  Not to sink into it.  Not to throw your pain in a chained up box in your mind.

The thing with locked boxes in your mind is that you can hear those chains rattle.  They may be invisible to the naked eye, but they weigh you down.

Going through pain and sadness is sometimes like trying to walk through treacle.  With quick sand underneath.  The more you try to move, the further stuck you get and the more you sink.

But you can come out of the other side.  I did.

I always knew that there was a fight in me that one day I would win.  The voice inside my head that once screamed “don’t you dare”.  The being inside me that still, after everything, had hope.

Over the past couple of years, I did the mind equivalent of cracking myself open like an egg and letting all the bad things slide out of me.  The locked boxes were torn open.  The chains were thrown away. 

I will not lie to you that each time I did that, there was pain.  Because the pain was no longer in a box.  No longer hidden.  It is staring right back at you in the face, daring you to fight back.  It circles you, unsure as to what you will do next. 

Sink once again, or swim?

But I am strong.  I am brave.  I had fought the fight once before and gained some ground.  This time though, I knew that I was the strongest I had ever been. 

And I fucking won.

The last time I cracked my eggshell was nearly a year ago now.  It was and will always be the most perfect moment of my life. 

To walk around in your own mind, with sunshine pouring in all around you.  Open.  Calm.  Free.  Peace.  Happy.

Before, I kept my sadness inside.  Hidden as best as I could from the world. 

Now, I let the world flood into me.    I am open.  I embrace happiness.  I feel peace.

I rescued myself.   

And so can you.  

The Curved Opinion Short Stories Part 11: The Woman Who Could Not Speak

For twenty-five years, I lived my life with my tongue firmly pressed against the roof of my mouth.  Except that I did not know that I was doing it.

It was just a part of me.  Like going back to the front door and checking the locks twice.  Then a third time. Like never crying in front of anyone. Like saying I'm fine before anyone has finished asking.

This week, the HR department at work held a “How is your mental health” week.  They had brought in a counsellor, and we were all required to have a mental health check-up as part of their new drive to “keep their workers happy”.  A pay rise would have been better to be honest.

The counsellor shot question after question at me.  Work life.  Home life.  What made me stressed.  How did I cope with it when I was stressed. 

The questions alone were giving me stress. 

Then suddenly, the questions stopped. 

“Take your tongue from the roof of your mouth.”

“What?”  I said, pulling myself out of the inner world I had been drawing myself into as she fired questions.

“You are clenching your jaw and pushing your tongue against the roof of your mouth like your life is depending on it.   It’s almost like you are stopping your words from coming out.  You need to relax.”

I looked at her, properly for the first time since entering the room and realised that she was right.  I was.  Tongue, firmly at the roof of my mouth.  It felt almost glued there.  As if it was supposed to be there.  Except that it wasn’t.

It was her words however that stopped me in my tracks.  It is almost like you are stopping your words from coming out.  Was that true?

Later that night, once I had escaped the counsellor/interrogator from hell conversation and was in bed, memories started to flood through my brain.  Hundreds of tiny moments where I wanted to speak but didn’t.

The arguments with my husband John where I swallowed what I really wanted to say because it would make him angry if I argued back.

The funeral where I refused to cry because I had been told that I would embarrass him.

The night when John told me something unforgivable, and I simply nodded in agreement that it was my fault somehow.

The time my daughter Casey asked, “Mum, are you happy?” and I had changed the subject.

It was if every time I silenced myself, my body remembered.  And now, apparently, it won't let go.

More memories.  My mother.  Telling me that I should be grateful that my husband had even taken me on when I told her the way that he treated me.  The affairs that were blamed on me.  The way he spoke to me with such contempt.  The way he expected me to be his servant.

As the memories of the last twenty-five years of being silent flooded through my head, John came into the bedroom.  “Why is my blue shirt not ironed?  I need it for tomorrow.  Get up and iron it.  Come on, move!”

I looked up at him.  My tongue, fixed in its position, to stop me talking so for long, gave a wriggle.

“No”.

His eyes widened in shock and then, his face contorted with contempt.  “What do you mean no?  Get up you lazy bitch”. 

“Iron your own shirt.  I am not your maid, and I work just the same hours that you do.  Do it yourself”.

I don’t know who was more shocked.  Him or me.  Apparently him, as he stormed out of the room without a word.  I could hear the storage cupboard door banging open downstairs.  The iron and ironing board being torn out.  I am amazed he even knew where they were.

A few minutes later there was a roar from downstairs.  “My shirt!!  It is burnt!  Why didn’t you tell me the iron was so hot!”

Something started to bubble up in me.  Something that I had done in front of people before but forced.  Performative.  Not real.  I laughed.  A real laugh, the kind that starts in your belly.  For once, the streams of tears flowing down my face were not from sadness, but were from laughter.

I heard him barrelling up the stairs.  “Are you laughing at me?  What is wrong with you?  Have you gone mad?”

“Nothing is wrong John.  At least not anymore.   For the last twenty-five years you have been telling me how pathetic I am.  How incapable.  Yet you, at 45 years old cannot even iron your own shirt”.

I got up from the bed, got dressed and started to pack. 

“What the fuck are you doing now?”

“I’m packing John.  I am going to Casey’s.  I realised tonight that I don’t need your approval.  I don’t need to listen to your insults, your taunts anymore.  I am done.”  For the first time in twenty-five years, I was no longer asking permission.

“You have lost your goddamn mind” he said.  But quieter.  Because he could see that I was serious. 

“No John, I’ve found my mind.  And more importantly, my voice.”

I finished packing my overnight bag and headed for the door. 

“I’ll be back for the rest of my things.”

I went downstairs and paused when I reached the kitchen.  A small smile rose on my face.  Remembering a film I had once watched where another woman finally found herself again.

I grabbed some post it notes from the counter, wrote three notes and placed them around the kitchen.  “Oven = hot”.  “Fridge = cold”.   “Whirling thing – clothes”

I picked up my phone and sent a message to Casey as I headed to the front door with my car keys. “Can I come over?  I am leaving your father”.

The message notification bleeped as I got into the car.  Just one word. 

“Finally”.

The Space Between Who I Was and Who I Am

The problem with growth and self reflection is that you do not realise how far you have come from the person you used to be and how you are viewed by others.

I am not the same person that I was twenty years ago.  Ten years ago.  Hell, one year ago.  

The problem with finding out who you are, becoming that person and living that life is that you change a lot in the process; and some people will not like the new you.

Ironic really, isn't it?  You spend so many years trying to become the person that you knew you could be, and now people don't like or are unsure about the new you.  

What is important to realise is that not everyone is going to like you and you need to realise that that can include people that you know.  You need to understand that people change, not just you, and the relationships you had before were based on the person you used to be.  Which can be quite different to the person you are now.

I never used to have an opinion on anything.  If I did, I kept it to myself.  I looked to other people's expressions on a topic before forming or showing my own.  I was quiet.  I gave up pieces of myself in the hope of being liked or loved.  But I always knew that that was not me.

Now, I have thoughts and opinions on everything.  Some controversial (to some), some not.  I know who and what I am and I like it.  I like who I am.  I have no wish to change.  I change for me, not anyone else.

I am the flip coin side of myself and while I am happy with the person that I have become.... No.  That is wrong.  I have changed, yes, but become is the wrong word.  Because this is the person I was meant to be.  It is akin to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar to the butterfly.  

The butterfly was always meant to be.  As was I.

I have not become somebody else.  I have removed the things that were stopping me from being myself.

I think that the problem I have not fully realised until very recently is that I have lived inside all of the changes inside me within my own head.  All the updates.  Others have not.  I have always been a person who had seemed to be one thing for a long time, but then moves quickly and that change can be jarring for people.

Seeing someone improve their confidence, their outlook, their happiness is one thing.  Seeing someone who appears completely different from the person that they knew, is another.  They may not like that new person.  You have to accept that.

That, I think, is the hardest thing about becoming the person that you were meant to be.  That relationships may change or you may lose people.  The latter is the hardest to accept.  That the person you have fought so very hard to be is one that they no longer like, or perhaps just understand.  

They may just need time to adjust to the new one, or, they may distance themselves from you.  It is important to take a step back and re-evaluate.  Do you need to take a step back from trying with that person.  Do you need to simply wait and see how things are.  

Decisions do not need to be made overnight.  But relationships cannot be forced just because they were the same way for a long time.  You are different now and as such, so is that relationship.  That does not mean that you have done anything wrong.  It does not mean that they are wrong for not liking or understanding the updated you.

Ultimately, that is the final (and hardest) lesson in accepting yourself.  Not everyone will like your butterfly self, and that is ok.

No Is A Complete Sentence

I think that it was the Olsen twins that coined the phrase "No is a complete sentence".  

I have a checkered past with the word no.  Something suggested to me that would push me out of my safe zone, past the walls I had built; that was an easy no.  Saying no to someone wanting me to do something, change myself for them, give in to what they wanted over what I wanted, impossible.

But I grew slowly to discover is this.  Saying no is liberating.  Not changing or giving in, feels wonderful.  Every day, I take a step further away from whom I was and walk towards who I am.

Take hobbies for example.  I love writing and usually try and get something written down, even if it is only a paragraph or two, every week.  At the moment, I try to write a post a week but it depends on how I feel on any given day.  You cannot force writing.  It just comes.

My partner has many hobbies.  He is always doing one hobby or another in the evening and one night he suggested that I should get another hobby for when the writing did not come. He doesn't watch TV and does not understand the binge watching of TV series.

I laugh now, but I thought that getting another hobby would please him so....I came up with knitting.  

I got some needles, some wool and one night, I gave it a go.  Except.  I did not want to fucking knit.  I wanted to watch the damn TV.  I lasted a night.  There was a lot of swearing.

I think that probably shows just how comfortable I already felt with him back then.  Giving up after one night.  The old me would have tried, and tried and tried.  I would have made it my vocation to please him.  To succeed.

I remember him laughing the next night when I threw away the needles and gave the wool to the cat to play with.  He said "Baby, just because I suggest something, doesn't mean you have to do it.  You don't have to try to please me.  You already please me, just as you are.  You need to please you."

You need to please you.  How often do we just stop, and please ourselves?

That was one of the many steps that I learned.  You don't have to try and please people for them to like you.  They either like you, or they don't.  You do not need to earn anyone's approval.  If they think you do need to earn it, screw them.

I have discovered that there are many phrases I that I did not feel comfortable saying.  It is only in the past year that I find myself able to start using them again.  

No.  

I don't want to.  

You can do that yourself.

I was always the caretaker, the organiser, the fixer.  

The one who always said yes, even when I secretly thought no.  

On the outside, I was the good organiser, the one who you could count on to take care of the "thing" that needed sorting.  But the truth was that I was trying to find love and acceptance by giving, then more giving.  I gave so much of myself that I thought that there was nothing left.

I am still the organiser and the fixer.  I have found that it is a part of me and I do enjoy it.  But the difference now is that I take a step back when I want.  I say no when I have too much on my plate.  I say no, just because I do not want to.

The temptation to help people will always be with me and is part of who I am.  But now, it is on my terms.

Trying saying no.  I don't want to.  Leave it to someone else for once to arrange.  If you are like I once was, it will be hard.  But you can do it.  You owe it to yourself.  You deserve it.

And if you fall off the bandwagon, just remember, no is a complete sentence.

The Curved Opinion Short Stories Part 10: Where Did You Go?

I heard the bike before I saw it.  But I did not need to see the bike to know what it was and who was riding it.

I had heard the sound of that motorcycle going up and down our driveway every day for twenty years.  Like clockwork.  6.15am and 4.45pm on the dot.

Except I had not heard that sound for the last two years.  Not since my husband had left for work at 6.15am on a Thursday, 13th February 2024 and never came home.

There was nothing special about that day.  I had made his breakfast as usual, packed up a large lunch for him as I always did.  A flask of strong coffee, two huge turkey sandwiches which were his favourite.  Another flask full of homemade soup.  Working as a machinery mechanic he put in a long day overhauling and fixing the equipment for a local factory and he worked hard.

We had spoken that morning about it being Valentines Day the next day and he told me that he planned to take me out for a meal.  This was unusual.  He did not normally do romance.  He showed me he loved me in the things that he did, but he did not like what he called "performative love".

Adam and I met when he was 21 and I was 18.  It was more than just love at first sight.  It just was.  We were together; and that was that.  We married two years later in a local orchard.  He worked hard to provide for us, I ran the home.  It worked for us.  Children were wanted, but that turned out not to be possible.

I remember the day that we found out that we were to be a childless couple.  The problem was with both me, and him.  It could have broken us, but it didn't.  We created a beautiful home, cultivated our hobbies, him with his love of motorcycles, me with my love of felting, crafting and baking.  It worked for us.

So when the day came, 18 years into our marriage that he disappeared, there was no reason.  We were happy.  He just drove off on his motorcycle that morning and did not come back.  He did not arrive at work, no one remembered seeing him.  It was as if he had been simply plucked from the earth.

I reported him as missing, but the local police did not seem to take that much interest.  They did all the usual things of course that you expect when someone goes missing.  They interviewed friends, work colleagues, his family; although there was little of the latter.  They checked the local woods and canvassed door to door.  But after three weeks of searching without a lead, they lost interest, suggesting that he had left me for another woman.  But that was not Adam.  Cheating in any form was something he could never abide.

My heart was broken.  To never find him, never get an answer as to what had happened that morning was more than I could bear.  Yet, somehow, I knew that somewhere, somehow, he was alive,  I felt it.

With no money coming into the house now I got a job with a catering company.  I loved baking so it seemed an obvious choice.  I made cakes and desserts for weddings and events.  My career flourished, but the rest of my life did not.  I could not move on.  I would not.  He was out there, somewhere.

So when I heard the familiar rumble of the motorcycle that evening, when the skies were black and the world was quiet, two years after he had disappeared, part of me was not surprised.  I had been waiting.  Waiting to hear the sound of that engine that told me that he was home.

I raced through the kitchen and on to the porch as he pulled up.  He looked the same.  No helmet because he said that his head was hard enough.  The same leathers.  The same stubbly beard that I loved.  That look of love in his eyes that he had whenever he saw me.

I shouted, no, screamed at him "Where the hell have you been?"  He looked at me as he climbed off the bike, looking more serious than I had ever seen him.

"Do you still love me?" he asked.  "I never stopped" I whispered as he approached me and pulled me into his arms.  "Do you trust me?" he said looking directly into my eyes.  I shouldn't.  He had been gone for two years without a word.  Yet I nodded.  I did.

"Then pack a bag.  As much as you can fit into a rucksack.  No time for questions.  Will you come?"

I looked into his eyes once more for a long minute and smiled.  "Give me 15 minutes to pack".

Women's Rights And The Two Elephants in the Room

So, my thoughts have moved on from my recent post about women's rights.

This is not a pleasant post to write. But this is what I have in my head right now. It will no doubt come out in a jumble, because my brain is jumping from thought to thought at lightening speed.  This is not a happy post so I understand if you do not read further.  That is as close to a trigger warning as you will get from me.

So what am I talking about today? My fear.  That women may lose our rights, we just cannot see it yet. 

In order to look at where we are now, it is important to look back at where we were.

It is 98 years since all women were given the vote (some women were given that right in 1918 at the same time as men). It is 56 years since the Equal Pay Act was introduced (but was enacted 5 years later). It is 51 years since the Sex Discrimination Act.  It is 35 years since rape in marriage was recognised as a crime. (All UK) 

Only one of these is in living memory for me.  Aside from the vote, all are in living memory for my mother.

In the space of 100 years we have gained the vote, the right to equal pay, the right not to be discriminated against because of our sex or marital status.  We have gained the right to have credit in our own name with needing a male co-signer.  We are able to report sexual violence by our husbands to the police and it be recognised as a crime.

It is shocking to be honest that it took until 1991 for the last one to happen.  Before that, it was deemed that a woman gives irrevocable consent to her husband when she marries him.  

Could modern day women even comprehend that the women who came before us could vote, work, have a mortgage and hold our own money, yet access to our bodies by our husbands was permissible until one Judge said different.  Because it was one case that changed the law, not an act of parliament.

Therein lies one of the problems women are facing. Unless you are Gen X or older and live in a first world country, you do not truly know what it was like to be treated and deemed as secondary to a man in terms of our worth. Treated almost like a child who needed supervision.  Whose bodies belonged to our husbands. 

Women today are more independent than we have ever before. We have money, we have equality, we have choices. We can choose to marry if we want, or not. We can choose to have children, or no. We are free. 

Or are we? 

Because what I have come to understand more and more over the past few years is freedom is an illusion. Because we are not free. You cannot be free if that freedom can be taken away. And it can. And possibly, it will be. 

We have already had the precursor. Abortion rights in the US. 

I am not starting an abortion debate here.  It matters not whether you are pro life or pro choice.  My point does not focus on that.

It is the way that the law is being implemented that is the truly terrifying part. Because abortion bans could be just that. An abortion ban, either limited to a number of weeks or none at all. But they have gone beyond that. 

 There are some women have been prosecuted for having a miscarriage despite evidence that this was the case. Women have died because the fetus inside them was worth more than saving her life.  Women have been forced to carry a dead baby to term. Women have been forced to carry a baby that will not live outside of the womb. A brain dead woman in a coma was kept alive until a time when her baby could be retrieved by caesarean.

That isn't about healthcare or the rights of a fetus. Can you even imagine the horror of carrying your baby, knowing that it's survival is impossible, for months, until you deliver and that baby that you wanted so much, is dead.  

That is torture. 

You also have to look how the actions of some women are blamed on all women. 

For example, the girls who have made their career on Onlyfans. I don't agree with it or their actions, and I wonder where their actual self worth and self respect have gone. But the rhetoric is that because some women/girls do this, it is apparently proof that all women are clearly whores when left to their own devices. 

I now touch on the Clancy trial, which is a mess from beginning to end. All of it and from every side.  I do not agree with the women protesting at the Court house and I think some of the women who have posted about it on TikTok have lost their goddamn minds. But I understand that that is their opinion (and their right to have it and say it). But again, the actions of some women are being judged against all women. 

Calls to remove our right to vote. Worry about women being in any kind of important position. How can you be a doctor, a teacher, a solicitor, anyone in charges if our hormones can one day make us go psychotic. This is simplistic, of course. Psychosis affects only 0.1% of mothers and the majority of those get the help they need and they recover. 

But we are not judged the same way that men are. And we never will be.  

Men commit the majority of violent crimes. They commit around 90-95% of all whole family murders (US stats). What I am afraid to to say is, that it does not matter.  

The double standard of not all men, but apparently, yes, all women.   

A man commits an atrocity and the response is “Not all men.”  Worse, what did she do to provoke him, what was he going through etc etc 

A woman commits an atrocity and suddenly there are questions about women's judgement, women's hormones, women's suitability for responsibility, women's emotional stability, women's ability to hold office, women's ability to make decisions.

I mention in the title to this post about there being two elephants in the room.  I will touch on the second later. 

The first is that, I hate to type this, I hate to think this, but the men who say "take rights from women because ......." are not saying it for mere effect. They understand that it can happen. May happen. Yes, may happen.  Because rights that are given, can be taken.  And that it what we have forgotten. 

We didn't take out rights by force. We fought for them, yes, absolutely. But ultimately, we were still given them.  It isn't even just ordinary men (and some women) who are saying that our rights should be taken away. It is some of the people who run the country (US). 

Think about it. 

Again I look at abortion rights in the US and the examples I give above. Women can vote, have our own money, run our own lives, hold power, run for office, rule the country. Yet in a country where women can have it all and many do, the rights to their bodies were taken.  

In an increasing amount of cases, that were nothing to do with the rights of a fetus.  And there was nothing that women could do about it. 

I hate to agree with what some men say on the matter, because the fact is, we have forgotten that men are stronger physically than women and that is important. We cannot physically defend ourselves and if men chose to subjugate us again, there is nothing we can actually do about it. See above as the clearest example. 

Physical strength does not enact laws of course. Power does. And that is why the physical strength comes into it. Because if laws change, we cannot physically fight back as a man can. Our voices will matter none. 

Margaret Atwood knew it. Deep down, so do we. 

We live on a tightrope that we have forgotten we live on. We have become complacent. And that is a massive fucking problem. 

I know what I don't want to do, and never will. I will never look at another woman's actions, thoughts and beliefs and think that that it applies to all women. I believe that each person is responsible only for their own actions. 

But what I am beginning to realise, way, way too fucking late, is that this will be our downfall. 

Because we do not live in the same world as men. 

We have spent decades presuming that every generation of women would have more freedom than the one before it. Perhaps that is the most dangerous assumption of all. Because history doesn't work that way. 

Rights aren't a staircase that only goes upwards. They are laws. And laws can be changed. 

We do not have our rights because the world finally decided that women deserved them. Women fought, protested, campaigned and sometimes sacrificed themselves for them. Some suffragettes were tortured in prison for it. 

Perhaps the thing we have forgotten is not how far we've come. Perhaps it is that we can go backwards. 

And we can go backwards.  The rights of women will be judged as a failed social experiment.

What do we do with/about what I have said above? I have no clue. That is again is the problem. We are way past the starting gate. We just didn't realise, or we forgot, about the rope that tethered us to the starting gate. That can be pulled back. 

We were so concerned about freedom and our rights, that we forgot that we needed to protect them and keep them safe. We shouldn't have to. But the sad fact is that we do.  And we may have to fight, all over again.

Women as a whole are not prepared for what may happen. And that is fucking terrifying and makes me angry as hell.  That women as a whole are judged on the views of a few.   That is not equality.  It is a game that was played as part of a whole.

On that point, we move on to the second elephant in the room. That goes way further down the rabbit hole. The problem actually is not men versus women, women versus men. We have been pitted against each other. And never more so than today. Because the puppet masters, the people who are actually in charge of this world want us to fight with each other. 

They want the drama. They want the distractions. Which go far beyond men versus women, women versus men. 

Because the people who are in power can only operate successfully if no one notices the man behind the curtain. 

They pit us against ourselves and create new issues for us to fight about (look at the trans debate for example) in order to distract us from the laws they change, the plans they make and want to enact. 

While we squabble, the whole world is changing around us and not for the better. 

In short, we are all screwed. 

Or, perhaps we're not. 

Perhaps the first step is simply remembering that the tightrope is there and the majority of the planet are balancing on it. Unlike the circus. we do not have a safety net below us. But collectively, we can choose to get off that tightrope and face the puppet masters. 

Stop fighting each other and face the real enemy in the room.

That ship has not yet sailed.

Life Does Begin at 40

Everyone knows the phrase "Life begins at 40".  But I don't really think that it is something that you can ever understand, until you actually reach your 40s.

Let's face it, being in your 20s and 30s is a lot of fun, but also has a lot of pressure attached to it, whether you are a woman or a man, but I am a woman, so here is my perspective.

Your 20s and 30s are all about goals, societal pressures; family pressures; trying to find "the one".  Educate yourself, find the right career, establish yourself in that career, find your partner, have a family (if you choose to), look after your children, juggle, everything.

They say that your frontal lobe does not fully develop until you hit 25, but it isn't really until you reach your 40s that you actually start to become yourself and more than that, own who you are.   You care less what people think.  You have spent enough time with yourself to actually know who you are, what you want and what makes you happy.  What makes you, you and what makes you tick.  You no longer feel the need to fit in.

These days I think of life as being in two halves.  The life you had before 40 and the one you have after.  Each can be amazing, but different.

The first half of my life was not amazing.  But everything after I turned 40 has been on an upward trajectory that still has not stopped.  I am happier every single year.  I remind myself of that every day.  How lucky I am.  

I think what I have realised as I have grown and especially since I hit my 40s is that we are not passengers in this life.  We need to interact, move through life and not become stagnant.   We need to truly look at ourselves.  Our flaws, our talents.  Things we would like to change.  Things that we would like to promote.

And then do it.

Take the leap.  Do the scary thing.  Say the thing you aren't supposed to.  Do, whatever the hell you want to.  Say no when you want.  Say yes when you want.  Look into yourself and heal your demons because now you are stronger than they are.

When you hit menopause, ride that wave.  You will find that you no longer give a fuck, about anything; and that is just wonderful.

I will always remember my grandmother who used to be such a well dressed lady, with beautiful auburn hair.  When she reached 65, she stopped bothering to dye her hair and she cared much less about what she wore.  In one way I think hell yes, embrace who you are and don't dress for other people.  

But the reason she gave for the change in her ways was simply "I am old now".  She accompanied this by not doing anything else with her life, apart from sitting and watching television.  She ended up having over 20 years more in her life, yet she had decided that her life had ended at 65.  I never want that to happen to me.

Since reaching my 40s, I have grown more as a person than I have for the previous 40 years.  I have had the courage to try new experiences, see and do new things.  For example, I love music and there have been DJs that I have always wanted to see.  In the past few years I have seen the majority of DJs that I have always wanted too; with the remaining two coming up in the next year. 

My 20s and 30s were the grounds on which I started to learn who I was.  Now I know who I am, what I am and what I am capable of.  I advocate for myself now.   I am proud of who I have become and the journey I have taken to get there.

I care nothing now of what other people think about me.  If you like me, wonderful.  If you don't, goodbye.  I will not waste my time, energy and love on people who do not deserve it.  I will not waste my thoughts on people whom I would not take advise from.

Reaching your forties equals freedom.  Freedom of your mind.  Freedom to be yourself with no apologies.  The freedom to go and have that meal in a restaurant on your own if you want to, or indulge a spa day for some self care.

Everyone has dreams and aspirations.  Be it a successful career, a family, being married, goals you have set for yourself.  All of those things are good, but if you are not happy in yourself, there will always be something missing.

Being in my 40s now means that there is nothing missing.  I found myself.  I found the life I wanted to have, and I am living it.  I have friends, loved ones, my partner.  There is no lacking in my life because I do the things that I want.  

Your earlier life was work.  Working on yourself, who you wanted to be, what you wanted to be.  Living up to expectations, or at least trying to.  Trying to please other people, meet their expectations.  Saying yes when you really meant no.

Reaching your 40s means that that journey is over.  Your new one begins and the best part, you can take the rest of your life wherever you want.  On your terms.

Embrace it.  Enjoy it.  We only get one life.  Let's really live it.

Women’s Rights – Is Equality Something That Can Be Taken Away?

There is a conversation spreading across parts of the internet that should concern every woman, regardless of her politics, views and beliefs.

In the manosphere, and increasingly among some women who support it, people are openly asking whether women should still have rights.

Not because women have done something collectively wrong.  But because in their eyes, some women have.

Women have spent centuries fighting for the right to make decisions about our own lives.

We wanted to vote. We wanted the right to be educated and to work, gaining our own financial independence. We wanted rights over our own bodies. We wanted to be able to leave an unhappy or abusive marriage without being treated as though we had committed some terrible social crime.

We fought for those rights, and we won them.

But here is the uncomfortable question.

What happens when the freedom we fought for is threatened to be taken away because some men do not agree with the views of some women?

Ultimately, women do not need men to agree with us.  We don’t need other women to agree with us either.

One of the biggest things the women's rights movement achieved was establishing the principle that women are capable, able and allowed to make decisions for ourselves.

This sounds so obvious now.  But it wasn't always.

For the majority of history, women’s roles were expected to be wives, mothers and homemakers. In some cases, particularly among working-class women, they were also expected to work. Unless you had money, women have always worked, but wife, mother and homemaker remained our primary expected roles.  We have always burned the candle at both ends.

Those roles were restricted by law, by money, by societal expectations and, quite often, by our fathers and later, our husbands.

Women knew that we were worth more than the value that had been placed upon us, and we fought against it.

But equality was never supposed to mean that women would be deemed as incapable of making mistakes and if some women did, that that equality would be questioned and taken away.

Freedom includes the freedom to make bad decisions.  And that is where things get complicated.

Because if we say that women should be trusted to make their own choices, we cannot also argue that every choice made by a woman is automatically a good one, simply because she is a woman.  We also cannot argue that if a section of women do not make good choices, that their choices stand against all women.

That isn't equality.  That's infantilisation on the one part and a puppeteer kind of control on the other.

Those two positions might be completely different, but they have something important in common.

Neither of them treats women as fully autonomous adults.

If I am allowed to vote, work, earn my own money, choose whether and whom to marry, choose whether to have children or not, and decide what happens to my own body, then I am also capable of being told that I have made a bad decision.

I am capable of being criticised for that decision.  I am capable of being called out on it.

I don't suddenly require a counsellor and a participation trophy because someone disagrees with me.

Women are adults.  We can deal with disagreement.

At least, we should be able to.

And this is where the manosphere which lurks primarily on the internet comes into it.

There is a second, silent sentence when it comes to women's rights.

“Women want equality? Fine. Give them equality. Let’s see how that works out for them.”

It is the equivalent of handing someone enough rope to hang themselves and seeing what they do with it.

We sometimes talk about “women” as though we all want exactly the same things.  We don't.

Women disagree with each other. A lot.

We disagree about abortion, sex and gender. We disagree about pornography. We disagree about prostitution, sex work and OnlyFans.

We disagree about marriage. We disagree about motherhood. We disagree about whether women should prioritise careers.

We disagree about what equality should actually look like.

That is perfectly normal.  In fact, it is inevitable.

The problem we have is that a movement founded on giving women individual freedom can sometimes become incredibly uncomfortable with individual women who exercise that freedom in the “wrong” way.  The wrong way deemed by some men, but also some women.

You are free to choose.  But please choose correctly.

That's not really freedom.

Women are as capable of participating in the same behaviours that harm people as men are.  But why does that lead to calls online to remove women's voting rights, question whether women should sit on juries, or argue that women taking antidepressants should not be allowed to work?

Women are not infallible and some attack our own sex just as well as some men.

Women can be sexist.  Women can bully other women.  Women can shame other women for their choices.

Women can judge mothers, childfree women, married women, single women, older women, younger women and pretty much anyone else who doesn't fit whatever particular definition of “womanhood” is fashionable at the time.

Some women have decided that men can become women, and other women strongly disagree with that.

But if true equality is the goal, then you have to accept the entire package.

Women are capable of brilliance, courage, leadership and compassion.

We are also capable of selfishness, hypocrisy, cruelty and spectacularly bad judgement.

Just like men.

Equality isn't about women being better, or worse than men.  It is about accepting that we are human too.

Sometimes women simply make a bad decision.  I don't have to respect every decision a woman makes in order to respect her right to make it.

Perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate what I mean is to use myself as an example.

I do not support illegal immigration.

I do not support men who identify as women.

I do not support women who choose to put themselves on OnlyFans.

I do not support the women protesting outside the Lindsay Clancy trial and I certainly don't believe that experiencing motherhood, mental illness or postnatal difficulties makes someone Lindsay Clancy.

Empathy for someone experiencing those struggles is one thing.  Suggesting that her actions somehow represent motherhood or mental illness as a whole is something entirely different.

And this is where the idea of women as a monolith becomes particularly dangerous.  Because some men do see us as such.

They look at women who support certain things and choose to believe that because one group of women believes a thing, this means that all women do and all women are therefore responsible.

And from there, it becomes very easy for them to argue that perhaps women shouldn't have the rights and freedoms we fought so hard to obtain because, apparently, we can’t handle them.

We have seen this most recently in the Clancy case.  There have been calls to take away women’s right to vote.  The right to serve on a jury.  That if a woman is on anti-depressants, she should not be allowed to work.

But here's the thing.

I don't need every person on the planet to agree with me.  I don't even want them to.

If women are more than capable of making their own decisions and forming their own views then you have to accept that they are capable of making those decisions and forming those views that you think are wrong.

That is what autonomy means.

Some men (and women) seem to think that equality is a mere experiment.  That they have given us enough rope to hang ourselves with.  That our actions will somehow prove their point that women did not deserve rights in the first place.

These people have lost sight of what equality is.  Because if we are handed that rope, it now belongs to us too and cannot be taken away.  We are not children. 

We are allowed to be wrong just as we are allowed to be right.  A group of women does not speak for the whole.   They do not represent the whole.

If that was truly the case, then surely the eye would have to turn to men.  Men commit the majority of murders, rapes, assaults.  When a woman is murdered or raped, the questions that rise are “Was she asking for it” – “What did she do to provoke him?” or my favourite, which is not even a question “Women lie”.

But do not look at men this way.  Nor should we.  Because those that commit a crime do not represent the whole.

Perhaps the ultimate victory of women's rights is proving that women are strong enough to get things wrong, learn from bad decisions, disagree with one another, change our minds and carry on making our own choices anyway.

Because equality was never supposed to mean that women would have to live, view and perform under the terms of what men agree.

It was supposed to mean that we were finally allowed to be wrong on our own terms.

The Lindsay Clancy Case Has Turned People Insane

I don't want to talk about the whys and wherefores. I don't want to talk about whether she did it, whether she was insane at the time, whether her husband did it.

I have my personal opinions of course, but that is not the point of this post today.

This trial has proved, beyond any other before it that cameras do not belong in a court room.  Reporters, yes.  But the wave of insanity, pardon the pun, that has come around with this case is like nothing I have ever seen.

Everyone has an opinion.  But respect, and thought of those three poor children who died, who were murdered; seems to have gone out of the window.

Opinions have been decided, camps have been formed and honestly. at this point, everyone has lost track of what is important.

This case is about three children.  Three children that should not be used as a political football.  Three children that are being used to push agendas.

There are those of course who have looked at the evidence, looked at the testimony and have formed their own opinions.  That is their right.  That is our right.  But people have taken this case and blown it so far out of proportion that everything else has been lost.  

No one, except Lindsay Clancy and possibly Patrick will ever know what actually happened on that awful day.  The jury will make the decision from a legal stand point.  

But the focus of this case has moved away from the actual case itself and has moved into two main camps.  Both to be honest at their extreme points have lost all reason.   They have moved the case into men versus women.  Women versus men.

On the one side you have women protesting at the Court house.  Wearing pink shirts and decrying "We could all be Lindsay".  No, we couldn't.  Post natal depression turning into psychosis is rare.  

Statistics tell us that it affects 0.1% of women.  This rises to 20% if you have bi-polar 1 disorder or schizoaffective disorder after a first baby.  If you have had previous post natal psychosis with a pregnancy, this rises again to 50%.

So a woman can have experienced post natal depression with a previous pregnancy, as is the case with Lindsay, and still only at 0.1% risk of psychosis.

Is post natal depression awful?  Yes.  It can be.   But it can also be treated.  With medication.  With counselling.  With support.  But it is not the same as post natal psychosis and it is disrespectful to say "I could be Lindsay" when you truly have no idea of how far down that rabbit hole can take a person.

The women that are attending the Court, protesting, claiming to know how she felt, really have no clue and again, it is wholly disrespectful.  To her, to the proceedings and to those children.

Then you have the other side.  The people, both men and women, though more of the former; who claim that if Lindsay Clancy "gets off" and by this they mean is found not guilty by way of insanity; that it opens a flood gates for all women to kill their children and get off scot off.

Firstly, if she is found not guilty by reason of insanity, that is not getting off with anything.  She will be placed in a mental facility.  As a side note to this, I believe that anyone, men or women who receive their verdict should be placed in a mental facility for life.  If you have taken a life, you do not, should not, get a second chance.  That does not mean however that those people belong in prison.  They belong in a secure mental facility and should stay there.

There are nine women and three men on the jury.  Apparently that means that the women will be biased, as if women do not have logical thought and reason.

There are calls for women to lose the vote if Lindsay Clancy is found NGRI.  That women should not serve on jury trials.  That women should not hold important positions.  That questions should be asked in job interviews.  Because "hormones" can kill.

This is far more than hormones.  This is psychosis.  Rare.  But real.

If you have killed with intent, you deserve prison.  But claiming that a woman experiencing hormones can be capable of murder is, and again pardon the pun, insane.

This trial has shown that the internet, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter have no place in showing trials.  It has brought out the absolute worst in people.  A trial belongs in the court room, not on social media.

Neither men nor women are coming out of this looking good.  From the "I could be Lindsay" crowd to the "women can't be trusted, take us back to the 18th century crowd".

Three children are dead. They died horrifically. however and whoever did it.  But they have been lost in this trial and the social media furor.  It is time that they were found.

Why Perimenopause Set Me Free

 I have always been a person who internalised their emotions.  Not just internalised, compartmentalised.

What I have come to realise since hitting perimenopause is that I am no longer that person and letting my emotions out is something that I am not used to.  At all.

When you internalise and compartmentalise your emotions, it becomes all about control.   You become fully in control of your emotions in respect as to who you let see the real you.

When I was at my lowest part of my life barely anyone knew and if they did; they had truly no idea how far down the rabbit hole to depression- and yes, suicidal thoughts - I had fallen. 

Because I did not let them see.

There were reasons, and more reasons, as to why I became this way.  But that is the way I was.  For decades. 

On the outside, I was happy. Smiling.  Easy going.  On the inside, I was far from that.

The brain is a clever thing.  But it can also deceive you. 

Because it turns out that if you try to convince the outside world for long enough that you are happy and not sad, you start to believe your own lie.  And when you do that, something else happens. 

You stop feeling. 

Not completely. You still function. You still laugh. You still go out. You still have conversations and live your life.

I remember with absolute clarity one day - thankfully a good ten years ago – when I realised that I was not feeling.  Because that one day, the world decided to let me. 

I was walking down the street with my dog, sunshine on my face, with a night out with friends ahead of me.  I suddenly realised that I felt happy.  That I was excited for the night ahead.  I felt it.

The next second after, it hit me.  I could not remember the last time I felt a positive emotion.  Actually felt one.  It felt like I had been living in a dark cave for over a decade and had crawled out, finally escaping into sunlight.

That day was the first day, of many, of the path back to myself.

I regained my ability to feel again and I am truly happy in my life, yet I still try to hide my emotions.  I was still so tied to the idea that people shouldn’t experience me experiencing negative emotions.  I had to put my good side forward.  Even after healing so much of myself, that was a hard one to break.  It was locked in.

Then, perimenopause hit. 

Suddenly, the control was gone. 

Emotions hit where they pleased and there was no hiding them.  It was impossible.  When I am sad, it shows.  When I am angry, it shows.

Perimenopause gives no fucks frankly.  You feel when you feel.  If your body wants to cry, you are damn well crying.  If your body decides you are angry or frustrated, people know about it.

And you know what?  It is liberating as hell. 

Firstly, because I know that these emotions are hormonal.  They are not because of any pain or sadness.  That is behind me.  I’ve dealt with that.   Which makes feeling them is easier, because my body is doing what my body is choosing to do.  I am not actually sad, or angry.  It is my hormones.  It will pass.

My hormones are in control of me right now.  Not my brain.  Which means, the control that I desperately held on to for decades was gone.  I am free from the walls that I built.  There is nothing but dust left. 

What perimenopause has given me, surprisingly, is freedom.  Because I can no longer, and frankly do not want to, hide my emotions anymore; they are forced out.  Which means people see me and want to check that I am ok, I answer honestly.  I do not hide and say, “Oh I am fine!” and smile.

There is a lot of temporary stress in my life at the moment, which will be sorted and will pass, but is not helping my hormones.  So I am letting, for the first time in my life, my hormones rule me.

I let myself stress out and have a mini meltdown.  Because I feel better afterwards.  I let myself cry if I need to.  Because I feel better afterwards.  If I need to talk or vent I do.  Because I feel better afterwards.

Perimenopause has set me free from the constraints that I imposed on myself in showing emotion and my life is better as a result.

What life has taught me in the past few years is look for the positives and embrace them.  Because they are always there if you look hard enough. 

And surprisingly, this is the benefit of perimenopause.

It took away my control.  And gave me my freedom.

The Joy of Writing

 I have had my little blog for fifteen years now.

I have always loved to write, but this year is the most prolific of my life.  When you look through my blog over the years, I have written more in my earlier years, that is true.  But in terms of writing like I am now, thoughts and ideas flowing through my mind constantly; writing content that means something to me, that has never happened before.

My old content with fashion based with some opinion/thought pieces thrown in, and then I was a commercial writer for a time.  But now it is different.  My content is solely my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions and sometimes, my short stories.

I write as though I am talking to someone/a group of people.  I have always done this.  The number of people reading my content has gone up and down and up again throughout the years.  There was a time when I cared a lot about numbers and strove to get more readers, a better "domain authority".  Now, I don't care.  If one person reads the words that I write and enjoys them, I am happy.

I write now purely for my own enjoyment.  I am constantly inspired.  Blog post topics regularly appears and start to write themselves in my brain.   It feels, wonderful.

I like to look through my old content sometimes because it records a journey of who I have been.  The journey of the long search to heal, to find out who I am truly am to now, being unapologetically myself; is something that I am truly proud of.  And I should be.  I did this myself.

I love writing my short stories.  These are the only things that do not come to me that often, but when they do, I feel like they almost write themselves for me.

Writing for my is an outlet for my creative side and where I am the most "me" that I will ever be.  Words flow through my fingers unfiltered.  This is my happy place.  Well, one of them. 

How lucky I am now.  I have gone through most of my life with no happy places.  Now my life is full of happy places and I am grateful for each and every one of them.   My partner, my home, the people that I love, my blog.  All give me joy.

There can be no better thing than that.

Gen X - The Way We Were

 

The year was 1993.  D Ream brought out a song called "Things Can Only Get Better".  We all sung it.  We all loved it.  We all believed that things would absolutely get better.  Life was good. There was no reason it would not continue getting better.

Reader, how wrong we were.

Gen X is infamous for saying that the 90s (and early 2000s) were better.  Not just better, looking back, perfect.

You know the saying, "You don't know how lucky you had it?"  That is Gen X.

Everything was better.  Hope, dreams, aspirations; these were all things that seemed possible and attainable.  Our music was full of hope and joy and love.  Listening to music made you feel lifted.  Happy.  Like you were unstoppable.

We talked to each other, not just through our phones.  We danced all night and into the next morning without a phone or camera in sight.  We worked hard and we played hard.  We lived.

We were allowed to roam as children and were actually allowed to be children and play.  Not living our life through Ipads, phones and social media.

Whether our school lives were good or bad, we could come home and that was our sanctuary.  Our safe place.  Now children still come home, but they cannot escape social media, or the bullies.  There is no safe space from the online world.

We were free.  Actually free.  Life was on the up.  Do you remember everyone always used to say "It's a free country!" (That might just be a UK thing).  But it actually was.

Anything was possible.  And we believed it.

Now, you cannot escape social media.  

We have had the mess that was Covid, locking people away for years in what we now realise was a experiment by the ruling powers to see how far they could push us.  

The US has school shootings, practically every other week.  

We have had a terrorist bomb a concert and kill young girls, but were told not to look back in anger.

We have had the Epstein files released, with victims doxed, perpetrators at the highest levels of society, but without one prosecution.  

We have had hundreds of thousands of girls raped and tortured for decades, but we let more and more of the same kind of perpetrators into our country, while telling us that we are racists for objecting.

Music is no longer inspirational or uplifting.  Half the music in the charts are remixes of 90s dance music.  The rest talks about guns, violences, whores and sex.  It isn't music to make us happy.

In the 1990s we thought "what next?" because life was good and we wanted to see where life would take us.  In 2026 we now say "oh god, what next?"  Because there is ALWAYS something around the corner and these days, it is never good.

So other generations, don't judge Gen X.  We had what was a perfect decade or so of life.  And we lost it.  We feel sorry for you because you will never experience it and we feel sorry for ourselves because we had it, and never will again.

The Curved Opinion Short Stories Part 9: A Familiar Face

Story Prompt - Your character witnessed her father's murder when she was 5 years old, and now, at work, she wonders why her co-worker looks familiar.

Photo by Juan Ordonez on Unsplash

 I remember the day like it was yesterday.  

Every Sunday, my dad and I would take a ten-minute walk to the local shop to get a newspaper for him, and a packet of cherry lips sweets for me.  It was a tradition, every Sunday, no matter the weather.

On the day in question, we went out much later than usual.  Dad had been in the garage for most of the day and had lost track of the time.  It was winter and the nights were setting in early.  He came into the house at 3.20pm apologising and telling me to get my coat and winter boots on.  I remember Mum say that she didn't want us to go.  Getting too dark, she had said.  You don't know who is out there.

Dad was a big man and scoffed at the thought.  He said "Come on love, have you seen the size of me? No one would dare!"  Dad was a tall man, with broad shoulders that he used to carry me on.  I  used to think that my dad was a superhero.  Unstoppable.  

By the time we were ready to leave the house, it was dark outside and the snow had become thick on the ground.  But with my dad, I felt completely safe.  I miss that feeling, because since that day, I have never felt truly safe again.

After leaving home and a few minutes of trudging through the snow later, we entered an alleyway which led to the main street.  There was a man entering at the other side.  It was unusual to see people in the alleyway, which was more of a snicket between two rows of houses.  I looked up at the man approaching, and saw something glistening appear in his hand as he removed it from his pocket.  His face reminded me a bit of a weasel.  

I heard my Dad loudly say "You!" in a surprised tone of what I now realise was recognition and then, a cry.  The other man barely stopped in his momentum, carrying on up the alleyway as my dad fell to the floor.

I did not understand at first.  Why my dad had fallen over.  Why the man did not stop.  Why there was red liquid starting to cover the white snow around my dad.  Why he was not moving.

I do not remember any more about that day.  Or many days of my childhood since then.  My dad died on the ground of the alleyway that day and a part of me died with him.  The police investigated, but the murderer was never found.  We knew found out why.  

Twenty years on, I still think about that day.  How could I not?  People tell me that they are happy that it happened when I was so young.  That I must not really remember my dad and what happened.  But I do remember and the memory of the blood seeping into the snow and his dead eyes, shock still registering on his face staring up at me from the ground will never leave me.

I still live with my mum.  Except now we live two towns over from our previous home.  We could not stay there. 

I was always a happy child, friendly and trusting; but after the incident I changed.  These days I am quiet, reserved.  I tend to keep to myself.  As a rule, I don't trust people.  Because a person killed my dad and I don’t know who it was or why they did it.

I started working at the bank five years ago as a junior.  Now I am a banking clerk, studying alongside and slowly, making my way up.  I am known to be a hard worker.  But not that friendly.  But I am reliable and get the job done and that is all my bosses care about.

The reason I tell you my story today is because of yesterday morning.  I went into work as usual and was told that there was a new accounts manager.  Tom Allen they said he was called.  I thought nothing of it.  Accounts managers tended to come and go.  I suspected that he would be no different.

We met in the break room at 10.15 when I was making my coffee.  “Lucy! Come and meet our new recruit”.  I went over to the manager who was sat with an older looking man who sat opposite.  “Lucy, meet Tom, our new accounting manager”.  I turned to look at him, a practiced small smile on my face and my hand outstretching to shake hands but then, I froze.  Everything stopped.  I think time may have even stopped for a second.

It was him.  I was sure of it.  That weasel face.  It was him.

I managed to recover and hide my shock, although I retracted my hand.  “Hi, I’m Lucy.  Sorry, I think I zoned out for a second there!  Welcome to the bank".  Surely, I was mistaken.  After all, it would be impossible.  Yet, I looked into his eyes, those weasel eyes and saw something there.  Recognition.  He recognised me too.

He stared at me, a little too long, as I had done.  “No problem Lucy, it is a Monday after all.  Not a heavy weekend I hope, hahaha!”  He smiled up at me, but the smile did not reach the eyes.  His eyes were searching mine.

Greetings done, I went back to the coffee machine to get my coffee.   I could feel his gaze burning into me as I left the room.  The manager would ignore my awkwardness.  They knew I didn’t socialise or chat. 

By the evening when I got home, I had managed to convince myself that he was not him.  That he was not my father’s killer.  He was just another weasel faced man who looked familiar.  There was no way I could recognise him after twenty years.  Right?

Then we come to today.  I had managed to avoid Tom all day.  Although I knew that another meeting was inevitable.  Yesterday had all been in my head.  Of course it had.  My colleagues knew that I was strange, but damn, I needed to get a grip!

But then, 5.00pm rolls around.  I started to gather my things and my handbag when I heard someone come up behind me.  Close.  Too close.  “Lucy!”.  It was him.  Fuck.

“The manager tells me that you get the train home.  Not safe for a girl like you.  How about I offer you a lift?”  I look up at him.  He is smiling, but his eyes were pointed.  Staring, as if right into my soul.  Stop it, Lucy.  He is just being friendly.

“No, I am ok Tom, I enjoy the train, but thank you for the offer”.  I get up and put my coat on.

No, he says.  “I insist.  It is dark outside.  Too many alleys between here and the station.  You don’t know who you might run into”.

The world stopped right there.  My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest.  It was him.  And he knew.  He knew that I knew.

Fight or flight.  Fight or flight.  I couldn’t fight.  He would say I had attacked him.  What could I say?  He killed my dad?  On what grounds? He looks like him?  He mentioned alleyways?  No.  I had to be clever.

I looked right back at the him.  With the steel in my heart that had started to form all those years ago.

“Oh don’t worry Tom.  I can take care of myself.  Believe me.  Night though.  Have a good evening”.

I walked, not ran out of the building.  I was calm.  For the first time in what seemed like, what was, forever.

I knew three things. 

The first, that that man, Tom Allen, had murdered my father.  I did not know why.  And I could never prove it. 

The second, I knew that he could kill me.  That he was willing to do so.  But I was not that little girl anymore.  And the piece of me that he stolen that day was my heart.  I felt nothing.  I had not felt emotions in years.

I have always been the quiet girl.  Unassuming.  Pleasant but not friendly.  Under the radar.  But, I had started karate when I was ten.  I was a black belt by fifteen.  From there to present day, I studied Krav Maga.  My current instructor calls me the lethal ninja girl.  

I knew that I wanted to be able to protect myself.  I wanted to be strong.  So much stronger than I looked.  I wanted to be ready.  For the day, if it ever appeared, when I came face to face with a monster.  The monster.

The third thing I knew was that I was going to kill him.