Part 5: On being a victim of rape culture

TRIGGER WARNING: This post may be triggering to those who have been a victim of sexual assault.

LANGUAGE WARNING: There is an excessive use of profanities thought this post. 


On being a victim of rape culture

Part 1: The day before
Part 2: Where am I?
Part 3: The day after

Part 4: Reporting the crime

Drunk or sober I am not to blame for being raped

I have spent most of the last six years blaming myself for being raped by a stranger. Why? Because on the day it occurred I had been drinking heavily. In fact, I was hammered. Like most Friday and Saturday nights and a few other nights during the week as well, I drank a lot.

Of course it was my fault! I gave over all my rights to protect myself when I took away the ability to control my physical actions, mental cognitions, and the ability to verbally give consent or otherwise by drinking a shitload of booze with a group of work colleagues on a Friday night. I might as well have been wearing a sandwich board over my shoulders with the words "FUCK ME FOR FREE" printed on both sides.

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!

Yes, there's a good chance that I wouldn't have been raped on 19 April 2007 if I was sober that night.

But there's an even greater chance I wouldn't have been raped that night if the man who committed the crime had any respect for women. Or the law.

Mia Freedman published an article regarding the correlation between sexual assault and alcohol a couple of days ago. It's caused a bit of a shit storm around the interwebs.

On one side of the argument is Mia, and a hell of a lot of her commenters on the post, saying that we need to teach our daughters, sisters, nieces, girlfriends to stay sober while out because if you get yourself inebriated some randy bloke might just come along and stick his dick where you don't want it.

Mia says "Some people are angry at the idea of highlighting the link between drinking and sexual assault. Some people insist that when we mention the connection, we are victim blaming."

Mia, if what you say isn't victim blaming, why have I felt so responsible for what happened to me that night?

And then there are other commentators (Clementine Ford for Daily Life and Kim Powell at the news with nipples) who are crying foul on Mia's argument, saying women have the bloody right to walk the streets at night, drunk and teetering on sky high stilettos, scantily clothed should they wish, without the fear of coming to any harm.

I think I, as a victim of drunk rape, sit somewhere in between the two arguments.

Women should be able to dress up in all their finery, go out and get a little tipsy, drunk if you like, and feel absolutely safe from harm.

But the reality is there are fucking arseholes out there that will take advantage of our drunkenness. There are fuckers out there that will see that lovely cleavage we are showing off as an invitation to sex. Some men will even buy us the drinks to get us to that state of willingness to leave with them. Hell, he could chuck in a rohy to make it a sure thing.

While I was in hospital recently, a blogger friend posted on her timeline this image. It sent me into a spiral of PTSD flashbacks and depression because it brought all the memories back to the forefront of my mind.

Image source

And there it is!

Victim blaming lies in the culture we live in that lectures women to prevent themselves from being raped but doesn't put nearly as much emphasis on teaching our men the meaning of consent and that sex without it is morally reprehensible and against the law.

My right to give consent that night was stripped away from me. By alcohol, yes. But mainly by the man who coerced me by force to his filthy apartment.

You would think waking up out of a drunken stupor while a stranger is violating you, and has been for hours while you were unconscious, is one of the worst things that could happen to a woman.

I've only realised this recently. As bad as being raped was, and I still feel the pain of it every time I sit down on my permanently damaged coccyx, the actual act wasn't the worst part.

The worst and most damaging effect of being raped, for me anyway, is the way I was treated after the assault; once I became the rape victim. 

I've written all about what happened that night in detail which you can find under the tab above titled "From Rock Bottom to Parenthood". The last post that I wrote in the series, "Reporting the crime", is not the end of the story. I've been meaning to write that final chapter for six months but haven't been able to get my head in the right space to do it. I just haven't been well enough to go there. I'm probably not well enough to write it now, but I'll take the risk and go for it anyway...

The interrogation

Even before the night I was raped my life was a slowly, yet surely, moving train wreck in the making. Heavily addicted to cocaine, ecstasy and alcohol I partied hard and I slept around all while holding down a 9-5 office job with a prestigious investment bank. I never, ever blacked out and I never went to a one night stand's house. I always brought them back to mine where I felt safer because my flatmates would be sleeping in the next rooms and could come to my aid, should I need it.

The last chapter ended with me being accompanied by two London Metropolitan WPCs and a friend through what would turn out to be a 17 hour interrogation of my story, my character and my body.

Back in April this year I wrote:

Fear returned to me then as I thought over my life and how by being there, at the police station, it could be put under scrutiny. I've watched a lot of Law & Order and countless other crime shows and I realised that my life was turning into an episode of Special Victims Unit or The Bill. If the cops ever got this guy and it went to court all my secrets would be exposed. All the lies I'd told to my family and my employer would be dragged out in court. Everyone would know about my addictions, my financial debt, my promiscuity. I had visions of my friends and work colleagues being questioned in the witness box as to my character: "Yes Your Honour, Vanessa loves to party. Oh yes, she's known to have slept with a few blokes from the office...".

At some stage in the evening the two WPCs, my friend and I were driven to a rape crisis centre in Whitechapel where I was prodded and poked by two nurses taking swabs of fluids and blood in the hope of finding some DNA evidence. I knew the exercise was superfluous because I'd showered several times since the assault two days before. This was all just routine. I knew I was being put through a series of procedures to be ticked off a standard "girl raped while drunk crime report" as we went from one examination to the next. I remember my friend pointing out to me, while they measured how tall I was and what I weighed, that I was shaking. I hadn't even realised until that moment that I was trembling. I was petrified and in shock. I still hadn't really grasped the idea that I was a victim of a crime. This was all actually happening to me and that my life had been changed forever.

It was heading well toward midnight, if memory serves, when we arrived at what I remember to be a massive police complex situated north of the Shoreditch/Hoxton area I was familiar with. As my girlfriend waited outside I was escorted into what looked like a store room. The WPC asked me to take my top off so she could photograph the bruising on my right shoulder. Photos were also taken of my face from various angles. Instructions to move this way or that were given in cold, well rehearsed lines.

I think it was not long after that the detectives arrived. A male and a female detective. The two WPCs that had been with me all day had done all the hard work now I just had to repeat everything I'd already told them to the female detective while sitting in front of a video camera. This must have been at about one or two in the morning.

I sat there like a good girl, shifting from side to side to avoid sitting directly on my damaged tailbone, and repeated the story of what had happened on the day and night of Friday 19 April 2007. I think one of the WPCs was present as well as the female detective who was asking all the questions. She went over the notes that the WPCs had taken through the day, I guess looking for holes in my story.

Exhausted does not even come close to describe how I felt in those early hours of the morning as they questioned me over and over again. I'd been interrogated for hours and I just wanted to go home. But the questions kept coming: How much exactly had I drank that day? How could I possibly drink that amount and remain standing let alone get myself where I ended up? Is it any wonder why I can't remember anything? What did the perpetrator look like? What kind of black man was he? African, West Indian, Arab? I don't know, I kept telling them. Can't we finish this another day, I asked. When I've had some sleep. No, it was better to do it while it was all still fresh in my mind.

When the WPCs finally drove my friend and me back to my flat in the early hours of Tuesday morning I felt worse than I had before I went to the cops. All those questions asked over and over. The doubt in their eyes said it all: another drunken girl got herself into more trouble than she could handle.

My friend told me that while I was being interviewed on film by the female detective, the male detective sat with her in the waiting area of the police station. He asked her all sorts of questions about my character. Did I like to sleep around? Did I have a thing for black men? Did I get drunk a lot? Had I made this sort of complaint before?

If that line of questioning isn't pointing the finger directly at me, the victim, I don't know what is.

Over the weeks that followed, the police would phone me with questions about everything I'd told them. From the description of the building where the assault occurred (taken from the drawing they'd got me to do from memory which apparently didn't match that of the building I pointed to in the drive-by of the crime scene) to my belief that my drink was spiked which was why I had no recollection of getting to where I did (the toxicology results, obtained from blood taken two days after the assault, came back negative of any stupefying substances).

Learning that my blood was clean was devastating. Even though I knew the chances were slim given the time between the crime and when I was tested, I wanted so much for them to find rohypnol or some sort of date rape drug in my blood to give me a reprieve from the responsibility of the destruction of my life.

Appointments with a counsellor at the rape crisis centre were made and on the second occasion I went the social worker told me outright:

"The police would hate me telling you this but do not go through with the complaint. If they do actually find the man who did this to you his lawyers will do everything they can to undermine your character. From talking to your friends and family, to getting information from your colleagues and employers. Your entire life will be dragged before the courts. They will find a way to say you asked for it."

I don't know why this warning from the social worker shocked me, but it did. I had convinced myself that my previous concerns that my private life would be made public was just paranoia. An overreaction from watching too many cop shows on the telly. But when the social worker confirmed my fears I realised that we, as a so called civilised Western society, had not progressed past the bad old days of victim blaming.

To protect myself, I had to protect the rapist.

I didn't even tell my parents back in Sydney what had happened for nearly a week because I thought they'd blame me too. I turned out to be wrong, but that was how deeply I felt responsible for what had happened to me.

I felt like gutter trash. A drug-fucked whore who deserved everything she got. I stopped seeing the counsellor and started drinking from the moment I woke up through to the moment I went to sleep, if I slept at all. I had my hair cut short so the rapist couldn't recognised me should we have the misfortune of passing each other in the street and I was constantly on the look out for him. I tried to keep up appearances by turning up to work when I could because I was so scared of losing my job.

The company I worked for sent me home to Australia for a couple of weeks so I could get some rest and see my family. As I flew back to London two weeks later I knew deep in my heart I should have stayed in Sydney. I was flying straight back into the path of self destruction. The burden of blame and disgust was so great that I wanted to die.



There are so many messages out there for women to keep a look out for baddies ready to jump on them at any given chance. Just as Clementine Ford puts it, us women are told:

Don't drink. Don't walk by yourselves at night. Don’t wear provocative clothing. Don't flirt with men you don't intend to sleep with. Don't be rude. Don’t lead men on. Don’t accept drinks from strangers. Don't sign a check you don't intend to cash. Don’t go to parties without your boyfriend. Dress like a lady. Understand that the world isn't fair. Look out for evil monsters, but don't make normal men feel like rapists by avoiding their attentions. Smile. Don't imagine for a moment that you have an equal right to take up space in public without having to endure touching, groping, objectification and jokes at your expense. The world is what it is, yo.

The message has to change from telling women to protect themselves to telling men that sex without consent is wrong. We must teach our sons, brothers, cousins, all men from all cultural backgrounds, that NO MEANS NO!

Being unconscious and therefore unable to give consent, means fucking NO!

From the time sex education begins, at home and at school, boys and girls need to have it ingrained in their psyche that non-consensual sexual activity of any type is unacceptable and is a crime.

In an ideal world women should be able to go out and get pissed and walk home alone without fear of being attacked but until we ramp up the message directed at the perpetrators and would-be perpetrators of these crimes, we still must do whatever we can to protect ourselves.


As difficult as it is for me to truly believe I am not responsible for what that man did to me back in 2007, I know deep in my heart I did not ask to be raped. An unconscious body cannot say yes or no. But when I live in a society that is constantly bombarding me with messages like one in Mia Freedman's article, it's a hard not to feel I am somewhat to blame.

I chose to have a few drinks with some colleagues after work.

     I accepted the free rounds of vodka shots that were handed out in the name of lifting office morale.

              I am the one who must have followed that stranger back to his flat...




V.

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And linking up with Maxabella Loves for

Day 1: The story of my life

Day 1, Wednesday: The story of your life in 250 words or less (or one paragraph... no one will be counting your words... probably)

I was born in NYC to Australian parents but I'm a True Blue Aussie. Moving to Sydney at two, six months later my sister and best friend was born. I grew up in Newtown in Sydney’s Inner West. My big brother and SIL lived up the street in a house that has been in my family for four generations.

At 15 I moved to Melbourne, attending boarding school until my family followed a year later. We lived by the MCG until mum and my sister decided they'd had enough and headed back north. After leaving school I worked as a secretary in the CBD until dad and I also returned to the Harbour City.

I continued to hold down great office jobs while courting my two new best friends: Drugs and alcohol. My parents kicked me out. 18 months later I attempted to escape addiction by moving back to Melbourne with my first love. Drugs were replaced with food and depression and when it all went sour I moved back to Sydney.

Three years, more depression, drugs and alcohol with another good office job until I ran away again, this time to London. But there was never any escaping myself.

Work, party, travel. Repeat. Until CRASH, it all came tumbling down.

Rock Bottom. Back in Sydney. Rehab. Depression, PTSD, anxiety, polysubstance abuse. Hell. Three long hospital admissions. Pregnant. Hope. My boy was born.

Slowly, surely new life. Both Noo’s and mine.

V.

Amazing. 241 words! Can you write your life story in 250 words or less?

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Part 4: On being a victim of rape culture

Warning: This post could be triggering for people who have themselves been victims of sexual assault.

On being a victim of rape culture

Part 1: The day before
Part 2: Where am I?
Part 3: The day after

Reporting the crime

As Monday morning dawned and the familiar smell of freshly baked croissants filled the air, the butter seeming to permeate my pores, I became conscious one again of the constant hum of the air conditioning units below. There was a split second before I was completely awake that I forgot what had happened. Just a few tiny moments where I was free from the horror that was my life until - BANG - it all came flooding back. This was going to be a very difficult day.

I dressed for work wondering what I was going to do about sitting down at my desk all day. My coccyx continued to throb in excruciating pain and even sitting forward, putting my weight towards the edge of the seat, was insanely painful.

The walk to work was uncomfortable. Had the person who had assaulted me found me walking home along these streets on Friday night? Is that what happened? Was I not able to get a cab out the front of the office so decided to walk home after all? Maybe I'd fallen over and that was why my coccyx screamed in agony every time I shifted my weight? The questions were never ending.

The first thing I did when I got to the office was stop by the kitchen to get a coffee. One of the young guys who'd been at work drinks Friday night was there making his breakfast. I don't remember his name now. I spoke to him while I waited for the coffee machine to do its thing. I can't remember word for word what I said. To quote myself now would be complete conjecture. I think I made a comment about the night, that I didn't remember much. He seemed embarrassed. I was embarrassed. I didn't know this bloke enough to question further. Now, in retrospect, I wish I'd ignored my fears and made him go over with me every frigging detail that he recalled. Someone must have seen something!

In my team's room everyone was busy either looking at Excel spreadsheets or speaking to clients on the phone. I attempted to sit at my desk wincing as I lowered myself onto my chair. The first thing I did was email the female manager I remembered talking to just before I lost all awareness of was going on. I asked her what she remembered of the night. What did I say to her out the front of our building?

While waiting for a reply I told my boss, who had become a friend over the years, that I'd hurt myself falling over and needed an alternative seating arrangement. I ordered one of those funny backless ergo chairs that you kind of kneel on.

I couldn't concentrate on work. I wanted answers! Surely someone would know something! But who to ask? I desperately wanted that manager to email me back and say that I'd said I was going to another bar. It would explain why I ended up where I was. Kind of. Maybe that would have meant that I met this person the normal way. That I wasn't stalked and attacked. That it wasn't premeditated.

Finally the email came through. She wrote that I had said to her that I was going to catch a Black Cab home and that she caught the Northern Line home. She said she was really drunk too and fell asleep on the train, waking up at the end of the line.

My heart sank. To me these words confirmed my worst fears: I had been attacked and raped. I retrospect, either way you look at it, whether I went there willingly or by force, I was raped. An unconscious woman can not consent to sex. An unconscious person cannot consent to anything! It has taken a long time for me to accept that.

Blood rushed through my ears, my vision blurred, I thought I was going to vomit all over my keyboard. I had to get the fuck out of there before I exploded. I had to tell my boss, my friend. I couldn't speak to him even though he was only sitting on the other side of the petition. I knew the only thing that would come out of my mouth if I opened it would be a scream or a sob. I didn't want anyone else in the room to know what was going on. So I emailed him: "I need to speak to you privately. Now."

He looked through the glass dividing us and could see my upset face. "Let's go for a coffee", he suggested. I got as far as through our office door. To the left was a door that led to the fire stairs and goods lift. I lurched left, quickly yanked that door open and went inside, my boss following me, and collapsed in a heap as I wailed "I've been raped".

I lost it then, fell apart in my boss's arms as what little hope I had of things getting back to normal finally disintegrated. He held me and I knew he was crying too. Pulling himself together he stood back and said I had to go to the police. I argued that they would just say it was my fault. I was drunk! What sympathy would they have for me?

My boss said no matter what happened I had to do it for me. By going to the police I would be acknowledging to myself that something had happened to me. That I was not to blame. That a crime had been committed against me.

Next my boss told me to go downstairs to one of the cafes on the ground floor. He would call the manager who I'd emailed and ask her to come and talk to us about what she remembered. It felt so good that someone was on my side! Someone was taking me seriously.

The manager sat down with us for a coffee and repeated what she remembered of those last moments of the Friday night before everyone headed home: I had categorically said to her that I was catching a cab home. She had no reason to believe I would have gone back into another bar. By that time, all the venues but the nightclub were closed anyway. I thanked them both and walked to the police station.

Not understanding that the City of London had it's own police force I went along to the only cop shop I knew. It was the Liverpool Street Police Station. I used to catch my bus home to Battersea when I lived there from the bus stop just along the way.

(Source)

The entry to the police station was unassuming and quite small. There was a police officer behind a counter and a couple of people waiting to be seen to. I had no idea what to do. I just walked up to he counter which was in earshot of the people waiting and told the office that I needed to report a crime. He asked me what crime would I like to report. "Um, I ah, yeah, I was raped", I stuttered out.

I felt about sixteen again. Scared and alone in a foreign country. I wanted my mum - anyone familiar to me - to be there with me to hold my hand.  The officer looked embarrassed, as if he didn't know what to do. Finally he ushered me in through a door on the left and along a hallway to an internal waiting area. I wasn't there long before a WPC (woman police constable) led me through what turned out to be a massive complex of rooms and offices.

It was about 10.30am by this time I think. I remember the hallway was wide and long. On the left I noticed an open door that led through to what looked like a classic London pub. Off duty police offices who must have just finished the nightshift were drinking beer. At least that's what I thought I saw. People have doubted me when I've told them that part of the story. I swear it is true. Later in the day, walking down that same corridor, I remember seeing bar snacks on the counter. Like pickled onions and cubes of cheese. Maybe I imagined it.

I was escorted up to a room that was especially designated for victims and witnesses. It was comfortable yet clinical. There was a sofa, a TV and some toys. Posters advertising crisis centres and other such services were up on the walls. I was left there while they figured out what to do with me. You see I'd come to the wrong place. The crime had been committed in Shoreditch which is in the Greater London area only a couple of kilometres away. That area came under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police. As I waited in that beige room for victims and witnesses I felt a loneliness and despair that is beyond description.

Fear returned to me then as I thought over my life and how by being there, at the police station, it could be put under scrutiny. I've watched a lot of Law & Order and countless other crime shows and I realised that my life was turning into an episode of Special Victims Unit or The Bill. If the cops ever got this guy and it went to court all my secrets would be exposed. All the lies I'd told to my family and my employer would be dragged out in court. Everyone would know about my addictions, my financial debt, my promiscuity. I had visions of my friends and work colleagues being questioned in the witness box as to my character: "Yes Your Honour, Vanessa loves to party. Oh yes, she's known to have slept with a few blokes from the office...".

The wait dragged on as I frantically searched my own handbag and wallet for remnants of cocaine. It would be just my luck for the cops to find an old wrap of lotto paper with scratchings left behind. When I came up empty I scanned my mobile phone for dealer contacts and deleted every single one. Of course I was being irrational. The police weren't going to search me. Or were they?

Finally two Met WPCs came and sat with me. They had come from a large police station in the area where the assault had taken place. They asked me to tell them exactly what I remembered. I think they left again. I just remember waiting. A lot. Next thing I recall the two WPCs, who would be my escorts for the entire day, drove me to my flat. We were to collect the clothing I wore on the Friday night. I text my flatmate to warn him that I'd be home soon with a policewoman in tow.

My jeans, top, underwear and socks were all on the floor of my bedroom where I'd stripped them off just two mornings earlier. I half expected the WPC to crouch down by my dirty knickers and pick them up with the end of a pen from her pocket like I'd seen done so many times on Law & Order. Instead she donned latex gloves and bagged each item in separate brown paper bags. I wondered why on the telly the cops used plastic evidence bags. Why didn't the shows' producers ever get that detail right?

Back in the police car the three of us were to do a drive by of where I thought the assault had occurred. I can't tell you how horrific it was to return to the scene of the crime. I was so scared I'd see him on the street! That he'd see me in the back of the police vehicle cruising past the flats where he lived. I slouched down in the back not wanting to be seen. That rush of adrenalin, as the urge to run overtook me, whooshed through my senses and I couldn't focus any more. I had to get out of there. I think I pointed at the building and we left.

(Out of morbid curiosity and/or to challenge myself I looked up the place on Google Maps just two days ago. I really didn't think I'd find it but I did. The building is just how I remember it. Those streets I walked along they are still there just as I recalled.)

Back at Liverpool Street I was returned to the room for victims and witnesses. I waited some more. In that time a friend called. She didn't know what had happened and when I explained the story to her she said she'd come to me immediately. It was around three or four in the afternoon by then. This friend of mine, who I'll be forever grateful for, left work early to come and be with me.

I've just done the numbers in my head again. If I arrived at the police station at around 10am by the time my friend turned up at 4pm I'd been with the police for six hours. We didn't make it back to my flat until three the next morning so there is 11 more hours of this story to tell you. For both our sakes I'll save it for the next post in this series.

Thank you once again for reading and for your supportive comments.


V.

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Part 3: On being a victim of rape culture

Warning: This post could be triggering for people who have themselves been victims of sexual assault.

On being a victim of rape culture

Part 1: The day before
Part 2: Where am I?

The day after

Grief and shock overwhelmed me. Pain, both physical and emotional threatened to completely engulf me but I tried to hold onto some hope. Maybe what had happened was something I had wanted, it was just a bad, stupid, drunken one night stand. I couldn't sit down because of the pain in my coccyx. I looked in the mirror at my naked body and saw that I was bruised all over my left shoulder and on my forehead and I knew these injuries did not happen willingly.

Questions kept ringing in my head:

What happened to me last night?

Why can't I remember anything?

Why was someone having sex with me when I was out cold?

How long was he taking advantage of me before I came to?

What exactly did they do to me?

Why was my coccyx so damaged?

How did I bruise my forehead and left shoulder?

At what point in the night did he meet me? In the forecourt of my office building or somewhere on the way home between the office and my flat?

Had I been complicit or did I struggle, causing the bruising and coccyx pain?

I rang the girl who I had started the evening with. I didn't really know her at all, she had not worked in our office for long. I can't even remember her name now or what she looked like. I felt awkward talking to her on the phone. I can't remember the conversation very well which is weird but I remember the feeling it gave me. She didn't want to know about it. I felt I was making her uncomfortable when I told her that I didn't remember anything from about 10.30-11pm when we were all leaving to go home. I told her something bad had happened to me. I think I asked her if she'd seen me talking to any strangers. I didn't get any worthwhile answers from her and the conversation was over quickly.

For some reason I couldn't stand the thought of sleeping in my own room. I set myself up on one of the three large sofas in our lounge room. With my pillows, doona and the TV going, I had to lay on my side because of my coccyx that burned in agony. My flatmates offered to go to Boots the Chemist to get the morning after pill which you can buy over the counter without a prescription in the UK. I took a stack of Tylenol PM which I'd bought from the States. It was an over the counter painkiller with a sleep aid in it. I just wanted to sleep and wake up with this nightmare over.

In my head I tallied up the amount that I'd drunk the day before: 1 third of a bottle of white wine with lunch, 2 bottles of beer between 4.30-5pm, 1 whole bottle of white between the two bars, 2 vodka shots. Quite a lot but I doubted enough to make me not remember anything. I never black out. Ever.

It got me thinking: Maybe my drink had been spiked. The use of date rape drugs in the UK is a significant problem. In this article I just found from early April 2007 on the Guardian newspaper website the author states that date rape drugs are used in one in three sexual assaults in the UK. Maybe that's why I couldn't remember anything from 10.30pm through to 3.30am: someone had put something in my glass. Remember we had been sitting/standing at two tables near the entrance to the bar. It could have happened when I went to the toilet. Or when I went outside to call my dealer.

But who would have spiked my drink? My first thought was that I'd got into a minicab out of the front of my building and the man whose flat I ended up in was the driver. A version of this is still one of my theories.

Minicabs in London are 'private hire taxis'. They have to be pre-booked and are not to be flagged down in the street unlike a Black Cab. But they are always found touting their service out the front of pubs and clubs on busy nights looking for fares. Minicabs are not put under the same level of scrutiny as Black Cabs. Anyone with a car with a satellite navigation unit can look like a minicab driver.

The message is everywhere not to get into minicabs off the street. I just found this latest advice from Transport for London. It basically says do not get into a minicab unless you have booked it through the minicab office yourself. I remember adverts on the back of toilet cubicle doors in clubs with statistics about unlicensed minicabs and rates of sexual assaults against women.

Pretty much everyone I knew got in them despite the warnings. You come out of a nightclub in the small hours of the morning and all you want to do is get home. The drivers mill about at the exit to venues and call “taxi, taxi, taxi!” trying to get your business. You then negotiate your price home. It’s a flat rate, not on a metre like a black cab. If you've only got twenty quid left in your pocket who’s to debate it when the driver offers to take you across London for that price?

The not knowing what happened was driving me insane. I had to know! A very vague image came to my mind. One of me struggling. Of putting my arms up and pushing someone away. The memory is so hazy that I don't know where I am but I think it is dark and that maybe I'm outside. Maybe I'm on the ground and I'm trying to get away. I don't know. I've thought over that tiny shred of information for six years. Has it changed in that time? The mind plays tricks.

From Saturday morning through Monday I laid on the couch popping painkillers, smoking cigarette after cigarette and drank beer. I wouldn't sleep in my room. I kept the TV on for distraction. I did everything I could to avoid processing the events of Friday night but the image of his face kept popping into my head no matter what I did to try and block it out.

I don't know why I didn't just go straight to the police. I guess I felt like it was my fault. I asked for this. I got drunk and went home with some guy, passed out and he fucked me. It was my fault. I was so drunk I must have deserved it. My luck had finally run out. No longer could I brag about living dangerously without a cost.

I felt lucky I hadn't paid the ultimate price for my stupidity and irresponsibility: my life. The shame that crept over me was all consuming. What would they say at work? Did my colleagues see me with this person? What would they think of me when I asked them on Monday morning to help fill in the gaps of Friday night?

My reputation at work was already pretty bad. I often came to work hungover. I had got pretty good at hiding it but sometimes I would come to work on a Friday morning still drunk from the night before. The year round sniffle was speculated to be cocaine addiction which was of course true. And to top it off I had slept with a couple of men from our office after drunken work functions. I might as well have had "Drug Fucked Slut" tattooed across my forehead. I knew that's what they all thought of me. My work colleagues would think I'd finally got my comeuppance.

And that's exactly what I felt like: Scum of the earth who'd got what she deserved.

So began the victim blaming.

And I blamed myself for everything.




V.

Linking up with the #IBOT crew at Essentially Jess.

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Part 1: On being a victim of rape culture

Warning: This post could be triggering for people who have themselves been victims of sexual assault.

I've been avoiding writing this post. I know it is going to be long and it is going to be painful. It is going to hurt to dredge up the memories. It might free me or it might bring back my post traumatic stress disorder flashbacks. I don't know. I just feel I should write about it and tell my story of being a victim of rape culture.

The recent case in Steubenville, Ohio, in the United States has brought it all back to me. I've read article after article about the appalling crime that happened against an innocent 16 year old girl. I've also read about the disgusting backlash against that young women. The victim blaming she has suffered because she was drunk and passed out at the time two men raped her while her peers looked on and did nothing has been reprehensible.

It is six years this month since the night I was raped. 

Me in a pub in Shoreditch four months earlier

This is the story:

  

It was Friday 19 April 2007. The day had started like any Friday. I woke up hungover and tired and in a bad mood. I was living in Shoreditch in East London in a three bedroom flat that was inconveniently located above a bakery. You might think it would be lovely to wake up to the smell of freshly baked croissants but I can assure you, it is not. Hot, humid and buttery the air made me feel a constant hum of nausea just below the surface of my skin. Probably because I was hungover most of the time.

That day it was cool, but not as cold as it can be mid April in London. I dressed in my favourite blue Lucky Jeans jeans, a black knit sleeveless cowl necked top, black velvet blazer from Gap and my cherry red Doc Marten ankle boots and headed off to work.

My office was about 20 minutes walk from the flat. The not so fresh London air woke me up as I pounded the back streets to get to the centre of the Square Mile in time for work. I had that usual Friday morning feeling: Gagging for the end of the working week so I could party all weekend.

Lunchtime came around and a couple of the girls from other departments asked if I wanted to go for lunch. We went to a restaurant not far from the office. It was Italian if my memory serves me. We shared a bottle of white wine between us. I remember we talked about our party lifestyles. The other girls both had boyfriends but they still liked to go out and drink with their mates. I remember gloating about the risky, outrageous life of sex, drugs and music I led. About how trashed I could get on the weekend without anything really bad happening to me.

In those days I was proud of my ability to consume vast amounts of alcohol, cocaine and ecstasy. Either alone or, usually, together. I thought the double life of corporate slave by day, drug loving rock chick by night was so incredibly cool. But the reality was that during the day I hated myself. At night the drugs and the booze set me free from that hate. 

To stop the self loathing I was drinking earlier in the day, every day. On the weekends I often woke up (if I slept at all) and began drinking not too long after. My hangovers stopped seeming so bad because they just kind of felt normal. I bruised easily and always had the shakes. My nose ran constantly and the excuse of year long hayfever was starting to wear thin. 

We returned to the office late from lunch and as the buzz from the wine started to fade I felt agitated and annoyed that I wasn't tipsy any more. By 4.30pm our trusty Friday arvo drinks trolley made its rattly way around the office floor. Drinking a couple of beers in quick succession took the edge off but just upped my desire for more.

My flatmate had text me to say he was making a roast lamb dinner and did I want to share it with him and his girlfriend who was practically living with us now. This really annoyed me. Why the fuck would I want to spend Friday night home with a couple? As if on cue, one of the girls I'd had lunch with emailed and said she was going for a drink in one of the bars on the ground floor of our building, did I want to join her? Yes, bloody oath I did.

We shared another bottle of white wine. If you've started to total up the amount of grog I'd had that night you're probably thinking I should be pretty wasted by now, at least a little tipsy. But as I said earlier, I was used to drinking one or two bottles of wine a night during the week so a couple of beers and half a bottle of wine (not to mention what we'd drunk at lunch) was really not a lot for me.

We discovered there was a group of people from our office drinking in the bar next door so we went there hoping to score some freebies. The corporate credit card was over the bar and the drinks were flowing thick, fast and without cost to me. My friend and I shared another bottle of wine. By this stage I was definitely on my way. That familiar edginess started to overcome me and I went outside to call my dealer. Alcohol just made me want coke and vice versa. There was no answer so I went back into the bar.

All my work colleagues were as pissed as girls on a hens night while a couple of trays of vodka shots were passed around the group. I pretty much always stuck to beer, wine or cider in those days but not to be outdone, or to miss out on free grog, I joined in and downed a couple. Things started to get hazy then.

There must have been at least six people from our office there. They weren't from my department so I didn't know them well but that didn't matter. We were all pissed and having a laugh. We milled around two high circular tables near the entrance to the bar which was pretty busy being a Friday night.

There were four bars in our building, one of them being a nightclub. When it was near last drinks at the bar we had been drinking in a couple of people suggested going to the nightclub for a dance.

I vaguely remember going down the stairs to check out the club and then coming back up the stairs. I remember the girl I had originally gone out with had gone back up to the office to get her bags before heading home. I remember standing in the forecourt of the building with a manager who had been drinking with us and we talked about how we were each going to get home. She was getting the Northern Line to go home to South London. I was going to get a cab because I didn't like walking the backstreets late at night. It must have been around 10.30ish.

I have no recollection of what happened in the five hours that follow.

Over the last six years huge amounts of my mental energy have gone into trying to piece together what happened to me in those five hours.

Right now I am overwhelmed by emotion just writing this. My breathing has become shallow. Noo is in his bed behind me so I'm trying not to dip too deep into this chasm of fear lest I start crying.

I've often wondered why I need to know. Isn't it better that I don't know? That I wasn't conscious?

Thank fuck there were no smart phones, no Twitter or Instagram to have recorded it. Facebook was so new that only a few of my friends had started using it. Not like the 16 year old Steubenville victim who had her photo taken as she was carried by her hands and feet by two animals who managed to gain the sympathy of the mainstream media because their lives were going to be ruined by the evidence they spread around the world via social media.

I feel weird right now. I'm just typing for typing sake. What comes next? What does come next in this story of the night that changed my life forever?

V.

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Stilnox: My experience

That horrid sleep drug Stilnox is back in the media again after it came to light that the Australian men's Olympic swim team had used it to get high before competing in London last year.

What the f-word (as Noo would say)?

Stilnox is a horrible drug. I've had a fair bit of experience with hypnotic prescription medications such as the benzodiazpines Zanax, tempazepam, Valium and I even once took half a Rohypnol, but never did I feel more out of control as I did when I was on Stilnox.

Stilnox has been linked to up to 91 deaths in Australia
"including 31 poisonings and two falls from great heights involving abrupt or bizarre behaviour".

Don't get me wrong, it felt good at the time, but the next day I felt like shit. I couldn't move my limbs because they felt so heavy. So much so that I had to call in sick for work. I had only the vaguest recollection of the night before and when I checked the Stilnox box I discovered I'd taken four tablets, instead of one. That was the scary bit.

I was staying at my boyfriend's place at the time. I was supposed to just take one tablet and go to sleep but it must have felt really good and I swallowed another. I remember feeling like I was on a floating bed on the sea. I felt chilled out and relaxed and euphoric, kind of like being on ecstasy but without the speedy edge. I must have taken the other two not long after and floated around until I passed out. I was just lucky I was in a safe place.

I actually didn't take the drug to get high. I was prescribed it by my regular GP as a sleep aid for my first flight to London. In the week leading up to my departure I was anxious as hell. I was about to relocate to the other side of the world and I was leaving Australia for the first time in my adult life.

In 2003 when I had been prescribed Stilnox I'd never heard of it. I had a routine appointment with my doctor to get all my check ups done, like a pap smear and breast check, before heading off to the UK. I asked my doctor for some help to sleep on my 24 hour flight across the world. My doctor told me Stilnox was considered the better drug over tempazepam because it wasn't as addictive.

I'm pretty sure that advice has changed over the last decade as more research comes to light suggesting that Stilnox is not a safe drug. In this article from the Sydney Morning Herald the misunderstanding that Stilnox is the safer than benzos is discussed further.

When the time finally came for me to leave my family and friends and head overseas I had my trusty little pack of goodies in my bag for the flight: lip balm, moisturiser, magazines, and Stilnox. In the airport I was desperate not to cry. I was doing possibly the most scariest thing I'd ever done and my anxiety was through the roof.

As soon as I was seated on the aircraft and the seatbelt sign was turned off I proceeded to make my way through several Jack Daniels and dry. The aircraft was half empty which was a blessing as I was seated in economy. I had three seats to myself and I remember stretching my legs out across them, bourbon in hand, while watching the movies after having popped a Stilnox and waited for sleep to take over. I just wanted to close my eyes and wake up at Heathrow.

Just as was my previous experience I didn't fall asleep. I was careful on that first leg as I knew I had to disembark in Singapore and then reboard for the final stretch to London so I only took one pill. I drank a shitload though. Free booze, what can I say?

Back on board and I was determined to sleep the remaining 12 or however many hours it was until we arrived in London. Still alone in my aisle I continued to drink and pop pills. I vaguely remember sloshing bourbon all over myself and asking the crew for cloths to wipe myself down. I must have been a right sight.

Next thing I knew I was asking for yet another bourbon and dry when I was curtly told by the cabin crew that we were shortly to arrive at LHR and would I please take my seat for landing. But we were just in Singapore! We'd only just left, hadn't we? How could we possibly be flying through British airspace already?

Confused and bewildered I sat down. Looking out the window it was clear that it was in fact morning and I had arrived in the country that was to be my home for the next two years. Scary.


I have never taken Stilnox on a flight since or in any other situation and I never will again.


Now, back to those silly swimmers, what were they thinking? All those taxpayers dollars to send those kids over to London to compete for Olympic Gold and they spend their "bonding" time wasted on Stilnox and Red Bull. Not good, fellas. Not good.


Have you ever tried that evil drug? What was your experience? What do you think about our Aussie swim team living it large on prescription meds and energy drinks?


Hope you're all having a great weekend.

V.

What about the high life?

Have you ever taken a close look at my blog's banner?

The subtitle to babblingbandit.me is "From the high life to parenthood via rock bottom".

I've written a lot about that filthy place called Rock Bottom and a lot about parenting but next to nil about the High Life.

Despite where it got me (ie on the slow train to Rock Bottom) I actually had a lot of fun while living the High Life before it all turned to shit. And believe it or not I miss it sometimes.

Me just before heading off to a music festival on New Years Day 2007

This morning Noo and I were driving around looking for a place to park the car in the inner west of Sydney because I was gagging for a good piccolo latte. While swearing my way around several blocks of Marrickville (Sydney's latest centre for good coffee) we were listening to my favourite radio station, Triple J.

Zan Rowe, who does mornings, had a couple of the fellas from The Cat Empire on the show talking about some of the all nighters they'd had and their top five favourite tunes to party on to. You can check out the podcast here if you want to listen to it. The Cat Empire absolutely rock!

Anyway, the show got me thinking about the all nighters I used to have. Boy, have I had a lot. In the almost four years I lived in London I would guess at least once a week I missed a night of sleep because I was out and on it. Or in and on it. At least once a week.

I guess I've never written about it here because I don't want to glorify drug taking and boozing. I also worry that I couldn't do the stories any justice if I didn't.

Those were heady days as the cliché goes. Debauched, risky, exciting, arousing, demented, exhilarating. An escape from reality that I don't get any more. There's a reason why people get addicted to the party life. When you're on a high, up all night, breaking all the rules it feels fucking fantastic.

In rehab they call it "dry drinking". Basically talking about past experiences of drinking and drugs can give a sense of euphoria with just the memory it. You're not allowed to talk about using while you're an inpatient. It's counter productive to getting sober.

I enjoy it. Not that I do it often but I can sit with my buddies I used to take drugs with and talk about our past nights out until the sun comes up. It makes me feel good. I get tingling body sensations as the memories shoot through my brain, travelling along the same neural pathways that used to be filled with alcohol, cocaine and ecstasy.

Just writing this post is having a mild affect on me. But, don't worry, I'm not gonna run out and try to score. For me those memories are just that. Ghosts of my past.

I don't yearn for drugs any more or for booze. I don't even crave cigarettes which is amazing. But I would never be tempted by any of it lest I get hooked once more.

There will need to be stories written one day. Perhaps I'll veil them loosely as fiction. Names will have to be changed to protect the guilty.

Until then I will just savour my fond memories alone.


V.



PS. I just want to say thank you to all those who read and commented on my last post about my anxiety attack on the weekend. You have no idea how wonderful you all are and what relief you provided me with your acknowledgement of my blog and support for what I tried to express. A million times, thank you!

Floggin my bloggin over at With Some Grace.

Part 5: The dad question

The first four parts of The dad question can be found here:

Part 1: The day we met
Part 2: A new addiction
Part 3: Walking into the abyss
Part 4: The opposite of rehab

_________________

Together alone

The couple in the back ran the joint. They collected everyone's rent and paid the landlady who would call by once a week. They dealt small amounts of pot which guaranteed a steady stream of weirdos making their way up the hall and past our room, through the lounge room and to their bedroom via the yard at all hours of the day and night. They didn't like him because he was unreliable with the rent and I guess they knew stuff about him that I didn't. He was rude to them and constantly started arguments. They liked me though because when I moved in I always paid the rent on time.

Living off disability pensions, both of them made weekly trips to the nearest methadone clinic which was a bus ride away. In their forties and in bad health it amazed me how they survived. He had no teeth and an incredibly strange pallor to his skin. She was always doubled over with cramps. They did heroin when they could afford it which freaked me out completely. They obsessed over the tiniest issues with the house. There was always some reason to have a go at us or any of the people that lived there: The rent, the garbage, recycling, the kitchen, the lights being left on.

Sharing a tiny sun room off the lounge room were two teenage boys. They were skaters and deviants but sweet and harmless. I liked these kids the best. I felt hope for them. One had completed his HSC and said he was just having a year off to bum around on the dole before going to uni. I could tell he was smart and he was still in contact with his family. The boys would deal a little LSD on the side to make some extra cash. They would do anything to get high: inhale nitrous bulbs, sniff paint. Anything. This also freaked me out. It felt so desperate and dangerous.

Opposite our room lived a single man in his forties or possibly fifties. He worked a regular job at a local supermarket stacking shelves. I had respect for him because he worked and paid tax. He was an ex crim and a functioning alcoholic but he was trying to make his own way in life.

On the other side of our room was another couple. They had the nicest and largest room in the house. Ex junkies as well, the woman also had no teeth when I first arrived to the house. She was waiting for her new Medicare provided dentures. She was thin, with long hair down to her waist, also in her forties. Apparently she was a stunner before heroin stole her looks. She also made regular trips to the methadone clinic and smoked bongs all day but was strict with herself and her partner when it came to booze. No grog til after 5pm. She was a massive INXS fan and when her partner was at work as a painter she played Michael Hutchence and co at full bore. She was fastidiously clean and tidy and was the only one who cleaned the two bathrooms and the kitchen.

Her boyfriend worked when he could. When he wasn't working he was at the house smoking weed and sneaking drinks with my partner who was still enjoying a steady supply of beer and cans of Jim Beam and Coke provided by me. This bloke was a huge Star Wars fan and had a replica light sabre that he would prance around the hallway with as if he was Skywalker himself battling an imaginary Vader. Around the same age as his partner, but short, with a beautiful Japanese koi tattooed on his right arm, he often came to blows with us over silly things. Or should I say, come to blows with him.

The final tenant lived in the other front room. He was a man in his twenties. He lived like a pig. He had a funny little Jack Russell which, when I arrived at the house, was pregnant. The dog lumbered around looking half stoned thanks to the thick cloud laden with THC that permeated the air in the house. Finally giving birth to about four pups we discovered she'd been having it off with a red Pomeranian. The puppies were gorgeous and, in my secret pregnant state, I fell in love with them.

This bloke, when I said he lived like a pig, I was not exaggerating. He worked in a record shop during the day and while away the women of the house would care for the puppies. At night he let the Jack Russell and her pups sleep, eat, pee and shit in his room. Anywhere in his room. It was fucking disgusting. That room was like one big dog pen that was rarely cleaned out. That guy didn't even shower regularly and his feet stunk like they had some sort of fungal disease. I would retch every time the smell would drift up the hall.

Arguments amongst the house's residents could be easily sparked when everyone had been drinking. Especially on dole day because the inmates were flush. He was often at the centre of the blues that could rage for hours. Voices were raised and violent threats were made but it never came to blows. The others knew he could kill them if he wanted to so no one was ever brave enough to throw the first punch. For some reason he never actually hit anyone but it always felt close.

The house was like a little micro society in itself. Every little thing that happened seemed important because there was not much else going on in our lives. Us three women who lived there didn't leave often. The men came and went. We all kept to our rooms, especially at night. He and I sometimes sat in the lounge room for a change of scenery when we were off our trolley before I fell pregnant but other than that the skaters were the only ones who used that space. Oh, and the Poppy Seed Man, but I'll come to him in a minute.

There was a couch and a lounge chair and an ancient TV that I remember watching reruns of Godzilla on while tripping off my brain. The walls were covered in old band posters, bits and pieces past tenants had pinned up, and graffiti. There was a mannequin dressed in black lace in one corner and an old wall unit filled with pantry goods that had been obtained from the local Salvos. I hated walking through there in the dark on my endless trips to the toilet during that first trimester.

By mid year there was a homeless guy sleeping on the couch - it was too cold for him to sleep in one the caravans in the yard. Cockies scuttled across the split lino floor as I tiptoed out the back to the loo, desperately trying not to wake the transient artist who had passed out after consuming yet another pot of tea he'd brewed from poppy seeds. Yes, poppy seeds.

(I've actually seen Poppy Seed Man recently at our local shopping centre. Total freak out. He's the only person from that time that I've seen in over four years. Guess what he was doing when I saw him? Buying a single bag of poppy seeds from Bi-Lo.)

When it came time for my 12 week scan I was in cautious contact with my family and some friends. A girlfriend came with me to the private clinic and all looked good on the screen. We left and went for a coffee. I got a call from clinic not long after asking me to come back. I'd left before getting my results. I told my friend I'd be ok, everything would be fine so she should go get on with her day. When I returned to the clinic I was called into the doctor's room and told that the baby's nuchal fold was a little longer than normal and they wanted to do a CVS test immediately.

I didn't give myself any time to think about it and agreed to the test. On my own, holding a nurse's hand, the doctor then inserted a massive needle into my uterus to extract some fluid to test. It was scary and painful and I held my breath as I realised my escape from rock bottom could be whisked away from me.

I remember walking away from the medical centre and vomiting in a garden on the way to the bus stop. The chances of a Downs Syndrome child were still slim but not remote enough to not risk a miscarriage by putting a needle in my guts. I was supposed to be in a relationship with the father of this child growing inside me but I was alone and had no one to feel this pain with me. No real partner to hold my hand and tell me it will be ok, if there's anything wrong, we'll just try again.

The next ten days as I waited for the results were the longest ten days of my life. I was starting to see sense in my situation. I was seeing the man I was sharing my bed with for what he was: An addict who was never going to get sober, never going to get a job to help provide for me and my child, a man who didn't really love me but was living off me while he waited for his ex and mother of his other children to take him back.

When it was time to make the call to the pathology centre for my results, I sat alone in the room that had been my home, my prison, my sick bed. I gave my details to the woman who answered the phone. Without having to wait a moment longer she told me everything was fine. There were no chromosomal abnormalities with my baby. The anonymous woman on the end of the phone asked me if I wanted to know what sex the baby was, I immediately said no because he had told me he didn't want to know. I hung up the phone and sat quietly with the knowledge that my baby was OK.

My baby.

My mind flashed through with what I'd learnt of its father over the previous four months and made projections of what kind of person he would be into the future. I picked up the phone, pressed redial, gave my details again and said I'd like to know what the baby's gender was.

"You're having a boy".

I started crying then. With pure joy and happiness. It was all real for the first time. After three months of vomiting, pissing dozens of times a day, doctor's appointments alone, hours spent in the ER with a drip inserted in my arm to rehydrate me, and lying around going over and over in my head questioning if I could possibly stand another minute of this pregnancy, another day, another month...

Sitting alone in that room I named him Noo.

And I wasn't alone any more.

Mid October 2008, six weeks before Noo was born

I took stock of where I was and I made the decision I had to get out of that house. We had to get out of that house. I needed to feel clean and smoke free and back in control of my life and my surroundings. I had to get back to my world. I had to do it for us.

While that seedy little house provided shelter when I needed it, it was now time to leave.



_________________

Sometimes when I think about that period of my life I've described above, it doesn't seem real, or like it happened to me at all. I don't feel bad about it. Not at all. What I do feel is lucky. Lucky to have made Noo, lucky to have my family, lucky to have the support of my employer to give me time to work shit out even though it has taken years. Lucky to have a team of medical professionals over the years that have helped me get to this place I am now.

Noo and me today

Most of all I feel lucky that I gave myself a chance to wipe the slate clean. To start again and begin a new life. It has been a hard road but worth every battle won, every backwards step, every struggle with self doubt, just to look in my beautiful son's eyes and know I love him and he loves me and together we are going to be just fine.


Thanks again for reading.

V.

Part 4: The dad question

I've been avoiding writing the final part to this story for months now. I have to get inside my head and find those memories and feel, smell, breathe them so I can convey the tale to you accurately. I'm coming to the end of the story that forms the bridge between my old life and my new. I don't want to fuck up a detail and it is turning out to be a longer story than I first remembered. I'll have to break it up over a couple of posts.

Make sure you read the first three parts before you get stuck in here so it all makes sense:

Part 1: The day we met
Part 2: A new addiction
Part 3: Walking into the abyss


_________________

The opposite of rehab

The cab I ordered from the hospital took us straight back to his share house in the Inner West of Sydney. The house was on the corner of a busy road and a tree-lined avenue that lead up to the main street. All six bedrooms were occupied and there were two dilapidated caravans in the yard that sometimes housed random transients.

It was one of those old single story inner city homes that had had any trace of garden ripped out and replaced with concrete. The front door was never locked because there was always someone home and people were constantly coming and going. It was always dark inside to keep the power bills down because of the nine regular residents, only three had legit jobs.

The smell emanating from the joint was of weed, nicotine and damp. You could smell it from the footpath out the front of the house despite the constant stream of heavy vehicles which passed throughout the day. Every single one of the people who resided there smoked both marijuana and tobacco which bellowed out of the house like rotten dragon's breath. They each had a host of other drug and alcohol issues to their names as well. This was the only thing I had in common with them.

This house was the opposite of rehab, the place I had just escaped from: it was where people who didn't want to recover or couldn't afford to recover went to eke out the best life they could while maintaining their addictions. I could have gone back to the room I was paying extortionate rent for in the next suburb, but I felt comfortable and oddly safe here amongst society's dropouts.

His room was the second on the right. It was smallish, about three metres by four or five. He had an old wardrobe in the corner where the few clothes he owned were piled. Also, sitting on an upturned milk crate, was an outdated rear projection TV, alongside a kid's motorcycle, a chair and finally a single mattress made of foam laying directly on the linoleum floor.

I dumped the belongings I had taken with me to rehab on the floor: some clothes, toiletries and my doona, pillow and ugg boots which came with me every time I entered a psychiatric facility. No one should do rehab with hospital issued bed linen!

Before I even sat down we were on the phone hunting out drugs. I had to get wasted; as fucked up as I possibly could without dying, although that probably wouldn't have bothered me either as long as I got to enjoy myself and go out with a bang. I just needed something to shut out the voice of reason. The voice of anger. The voice of despair and worthlessness. The echo of the argument I'd had with my father only hours before.

And so began a three week orgy of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Back in London, in my cocaine snorting days, I'd always had the delusional fantasy that I was bit of a rock chick, cool with my constant supply of Charlie and ability to consume vast amounts of alcohol. Now though, spending nearly all of my time with this person on a foam mattress on the floor, off our heads for all our waking moments I felt like Sid and Nancy or Kurt and Courtney: So rock. So cool. So fucked up. But with a couple of glass pipes (one for smoking weed, one for meth) instead of a needle.

The only reason I didn't completely lose my head was a handy supply of Seroquel, an antipsychotic medication that when taken after consuming amphetamines will help bring you down and let you sleep. It also prevented any of the usual come downs I was used to in the past. It made having a three week binge possible.

The other factor allowing us to go on the ultimate bender of avoidance was my UK credit card which I'd paid off with an Aussie personal loan when I first arrived back home. In my "I don't give a fuck about anything" mind frame I just kept withdrawing cash off it. This, in retrospect, was why I think this man who would provide the seed that created my son, hung around for so long: I was buying him drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, paying his rent and feeding him. I even bought him some clothes and a pair of shoes in the short time we knew each other.

We hardly ever left the house. Actually, I hardly ever left the house. In my position as money provider I had all the power in the relationship and I used it to send him on trips for drugs, food and other supplies. I even gave him my pin numbers to get money out of my accounts from the ATM because I just couldn't be bothered to go anywhere.

I occasionally went up the road to the shops. Eventually I got all my stuff from my room in the boarding house and ended my rental agreement with the agent. While I was there I discovered that he had taken money from one of the students that lived in a neighbouring room with the promise to score pot for him. He'd never got the pot or returned the $50. I repaid the debt. Something I had to do on numerous occasions.

About two to three weeks from the day I left the hospital and arrived at the house I knew something was up with me. My last period had been strange: late and it stopped and started. I figured this was because of all the drugs I'd been taking. When it was late again, I thought I might be pregnant but I doubted it. Was my body even capable of such a task? I really thought it was probably the same situation as the month before.

I went to the chemist to get a test seriously thinking I was wasting another $20 bucks or whatever they cost at the time. I did the test as soon as we got back to the house and there were the two purple lines. I was pregnant and everything changed. Strangely enough it was almost one year to the day since I was raped in London, the almost catastrophic event that sent me skidding into the abyss in the first place.

When I showed Noo's father the testing stick he was shocked. The look on his face told me exactly what he thought and it wasn't positive. He actually looked scared.

Even though I'd only known him a short time, he'd already told me he loved me. He told me all the time that I was beautiful, that he was in love with me, that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. We spent all our time together in our room in that house, except when he was on missions for supplies or when on the weekend he would see his kids.

He spent one day every single weekend with two of his children and he loved them very much. Although he talked to me about them in great detail, I won't write about them or their mother because I don't feel that is my right. All I'll say is he was estranged from their mother. I found out she had an AVO (Apprehended Violence Order) taken out against him and he wasn't supposed to go anywhere near her or the kids but they had an agreement he could see them one day a week because she had to work.

He and I had spent so much time talking and getting to know one another that a sort of bond had formed - for me anyway - but I hadn't returned the 'I love you' until that moment I showed him the pregnancy test. All that desperation, helplessness, uselessness I had felt for so long started to lift almost immediately. This wasn't going to be just another day to get high and avoid the reality of my life.

Morning sickness kicked in around three days after I found out I was pregnant. At first I was just a little nauseous but that could have been because I'd completely stopped all forms of illicit drugs, alcohol and cigarettes and my body was in shock. By the second week I was vomiting from 3am through to 5pm every single day and continued to do so until week 14.

Still not speaking to my family or friends I had to think about how I was going to manage my recovery and the pregnancy on my own. There was no way he was going to get sober with me, although I talked about it with him constantly. I was pretty naive and somehow thought that we would work this out together. I'd convinced myself that I did love him, despite the fact that we had nothing in common but a love for being wasted.

His mother was 16 when she had him and he'd been mostly raised by this grandparents who were Ten Pound Poms that came out to Australia in the late 60s. He somehow made it through the school system without learning to read or write. He told me he had excelled at all sports and that was how he scraped through.

His grandfather, a tradesman, took him on as an employee at age 15 and I'm guessing because he was illiterate he wouldn't have had any official trade certificate. In retrospect I guess he got through life with charm, wit, violence and a pathological ability to lie on his feet.

I heard him on the phone to his ex partner all the time lying through his teeth with ease. He was enormously paranoid of her coming around to the house and finding me there, which she never did. He was also overly concerned about any police attention the house might attract. I never understood either because, as far as I knew, they were broken up and, except for breaking the conditions of her AVO against him, the police should have no reason to want him.

As time wore on and I sobered up I became more and more incapacitated by the pregnancy. Vomiting all day had made me extremely dehydrated and couldn't even keep my antidepressants down. I saw our family doctor who was unimpressed with my state and told me he was very sad that I was pregnant. My doctor's connection with my parents was too strong so I opted to change GPs to keep them out it.

As the news I was pregnant made it around my family and old friends the reaction was negative to say the least. How could I possibly care for another human being if I couldn't care for myself? Good question. I had to somehow prove that I could do it. I had to clean up my life.

When I first laid eyes on the screen of the ultrasound equipment reality kicked in as the tiny little blob kicked around for us to see. It was just a little white foetus on a black background but it was moving its tiny little legs furiously and looked full of life. He came with me to that first exam. He showed some interest but he'd done this all before. Several times before.

Weeks turned into months and we were still living in that one room in a house full of misfits. I'd gotten one of those 24 month interest free loans from a furniture store and bought us a queen sized bed, chest of draws, HD TV and TV stand.

I spent day after day in bed vomiting into my red garbage bin. I was given that bin for my 14th birthday (yeah, go figure!).  It had somehow survived all my moves to and from Melbourne, been stored by my dad while I was living in London and made its way back to me when I moved to the boarding house. I love that bin.

My 24 year old red bin today. We've been through a lot together.

I would start every morning retching, head bowed over the rim of that fair dinkum Aussie made red plastic garbage bin, early before anyone else in the house was awake. He was always worried the other tenants would figure out what was going on and constantly told me to keep it down. He didn't want anyone to figure out I was pregnant, but they didn't clue on as far as I know. He told me he didn't want his ex to find out on the grapevine, or in retrospect, he didn't want her to find out at all.

During the day I would get him to clean out the bin of its watery contents. I was obsessed that it would make it back to our room. Anything left outside was fair game for anyone to take. I trusted no one in that house. Not even with my old red bin.


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That is enough for now. Part 5 is written. I'll post it later in the week.


Thanks for reading.

V.