So much love and hugs,
Chrissy xxxx
I swear when I see the amount at the bottom, frantically doing some maths in my head to add in the cost of train tickets and meals and ‘of course we can’t let Chrissy pay for anything on her hen do so let’s all pitch in to cover it for her’.
Katy jolts me out of my thought-processing. ‘So?’ she asks, leaning around her computer, big smile on her face. ‘When are you going to meet Mr Mount Kilimanjaro?’
I take another sip of coffee. ‘I’m not sure if I am going to meet him. He’s not asked me out yet.’
‘Feminism remember!’ she shrills. ‘You can totally ask him out, you know?’
‘I know I can,’ I say. ‘But I’m not sure I want to.’ Plus, the books say you shouldn’t. Everyone says you shouldn’t. Men need to hunt and gather you. Plus, Gretel isn’t sure yet. She’s too busy getting her nose fucking pierced or something.
‘Oh hon,’ Katy sighs, her face sinking into sympathy I don’t need or want right now. ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Simon, but I think it’s important to keep putting yourself out there, you know? You’ve got to keep the faith.’
‘Who needs Jesus when you’ve got a man who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro?’
She laughs. ‘You know what I mean. I really do have a good feeling about this one. Honestly, from the moment I saw his picture, I felt something. I get things like that sometimes.’
I glance back at my emails and a reminder jumps out to remind me I’ve got my clinical supervision this afternoon. ‘Did you have a good feeling when you met Jimmy?’ I ask, only half-interested in the answer.
‘I did actually. I remember it so clearly. After our first date, I came home and wrote in my diary, “I know this sounds dramatic, but I think I’ve just met the man I’m going to marry”.’
I smile and say ‘aww’. And think: literally every woman thinks that after a good first date. If I’d actually married all the men I thought I was going to marry then I’d be like Henry VIII combined with a sex cult-leader and multiplied to the power of Katie Price. ‘That’s cute,’ I say.
‘I know.’ I watch her soothe herself with the memory, its magic making her think fondly of her husband for a moment or two.
‘Well, we’ll see. He’s not asked me out yet.’
‘He will.’
‘Well he might not.’
‘He will. And like I said, I’ve got a feeling about him.’
‘Don’t tell me, you think maybe this one could be different?’
It’s too hot to be asked such pressing questions.
‘Have you considered, April, that it might be time to think about retiring from this particular role?’
My clinical supervisor for work is a psychologist called Carol. She’s arranged neatly in her chair, pretending to be all wise and knowing, despite the fact it’s about ten million degrees in this office and I can see sweat glistening on her top lip.
‘Why would I want to do that?’ I squiggle about in my plastic chair, wipe the sweat from the underside of my thigh and cross my legs.
‘Well, some themes are starting to repeat quite often in this supervision. Most notably, how these shifts are altering your general view of men.’
I nod. It’s true.
‘You’re coming up to two years working on the front line of this charity, that’s right, isn’t it?’
I nod again, knowing where she’s going with this. Front-line workers tend to break around the two-year mark, especially in roles where you’re helping victims of sexual violence. I was warned about this by Mike when I first took the extra work on. It’s almost expected that you’ll resign before you get too soured and angry.
‘I don’t want to stop,’ I tell her. ‘I know it triggers me occasionally and makes me angry, but I don’t want to stop.’
‘Why not?’
I don’t answer. I dodge her gaze and look around the cluttered, sweaty mess of our office’s meeting room. A brainstorm from an earlier meeting about new revenue streams droops helplessly from the wall, with the words, ‘become a donkey sanctuary’ scribbled across it as a joke.
‘April?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’ve discussed before that this may be linked to your own personal experience of rape?’
I wipe the sweat off my legs again and re-cross them. ‘Well of course it’s something to do with that.’
‘You used to say that this role helped you work through what happened to you, but do you feel like maybe that’s changing? That maybe you’ve hit your limit? There’s nothing wrong with that, you know.’
Once more, I don’t reply. My skin feels like it’s erupted into cactus spikes.
‘I have to do something,’ I tell her. ‘I have to feel I’m resisting somehow.’
‘To make up for the fact you weren’t able to resist when you were assaulted?’
Why didn’t I tell him to stop? Why did I let him do that to me? If I ‘let’ him, then surely it wasn’t rape? No no no. You know it was, you know it was.
I dig my fingernail into my thumb, take a breath, and look back up at my sweaty supervisor. ‘Probably.’
‘Are you OK, April?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. Look …’ I pick the skin around my nail bed. ‘What’s the psychological perspective on revenge?’
‘Revenge?’ she asks, writing the word down on her notepad, probably with a red flag symbol.
‘I’m just asking hypothetically,’ I say, in case she blabs to Mike even though these sessions are supposed to be private. ‘Have there ever been any studies into whether revenge is helpful?’
‘Embitterment is a common emotion for victims,’ Carol says, dodging the question. ‘It’s not unusual to desire that someone who hurt us should hurt too.’
‘What if it’s not just one person you’re mad at though?’ I ask. ‘What if it’s a whole group of people?’
She makes another note then puts her pad down. ‘April, we’ve spent many of your supervisions talking about how this job, combined with what happened to you, has given you a negative view of men. And, despite me trying very hard to work through this with you, it only appears to be getting worse.’
‘That’s not my fault, that’s men’s fault.’
‘We’ve spoken many times about how every man is different, every human is different. A few bad apples do not reflect half the human population. You help a lot of alcoholics and drug addicts in your role, and yet you’re not coming here telling me everyone is an addict.’
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. I resist the urge to do a lot of things that I really want to do: scream, swear, force her to read the emails I’m forced to read every day, and then yell ‘Do you blame me? Do you get it now? Do you?! DO YOU?!’ Get her to break. Cave in. Lean forward in her sweaty chair and whisper, ‘Look, I’m a woman too, I get it. Yes, men are awful, fucking broken and awful, but I’m not allowed to say that because then I’ll get struck off, but I promise you I’m secretly agreeing with you’ …