Please don't make me say it.
You don't get ready for bed at night, then go sleep outside in your front garden. I'm pretty much willing to bet that instead of a hole marking the entrance to your house, there's a front door. Possibly you lock it at night to keep the world out.
No. Please. I don't want to say it.
If you've ever been anaesthetised, you will have been told to have someone look after you until you are copus mentis. Don't drive. Don't be by yourself. Wait until it wears off. Then you will be safe.
Anything. Anything but that.
There are some lessons a woman never wants to learn. That cannot be unlearned. That stain with an indelible ink you have to just learn to accept as a part of your new history. There are some parts of ourselves we build a cage around. Fence off. Brick it up and leave well enough alone.
You made me say it.
The truth is, women who abuse alcohol have bad judgement. Because of this bad judgement? We place ourselves in precarious situations. Constantly. The truth is, women who abuse alcohol are walking around heavily anaesthetised. Alone. Distracted and overwhelmed by this need for more and more oblivion. Not concerned with where it comes from. Only how quickly the next drink is coming.
And when this is your life? Your reality? Sooner or later you luck will run out, and it will happen to you. The same way it's happened to the rest of us. Yes. All of us. No exceptions.
And yet none of us want to talk about it.
Those of us who have made it past the destruction of the drinking. Who learned to live with the scars our behaviour inflicted upon us? We owe it to you who are still struggling to tell it like it is. That the day your luck does run out? It's unlikely this man will be a stranger in a dark alley. His face will be familiar to you. He will look like your flatmate's friend. Your boyfriend's colleague. The friendly lad who drinks in your local.
And afterwards? Try making your world feel like a safe place. Try getting sober then. Try making it through with your favourite bottle of anaesthetic then.
You don't get ready for bed at night, then go sleep outside in your front garden. I'm pretty much willing to bet that instead of a hole marking the entrance to your house, there's a front door. Possibly you lock it at night to keep the world out.
You sleep indoors, behind a locked door because that is the kind of world we live in. It isn't our right to sleep without protection.
It's the same for alcohol abuse.
No woman has the right to drink to the point of inebriation - to deliberately make themselves physically vulnerable - and expect to be safe from predator. Because the very nature of a predator is to seek out vulnerability and exploit it. And any women who tells you it is Your Right to do this? They do not care about you. They care about themselves. How good it makes them sound to others.
And any supposed feminist who extolls Your Right to stagger around as an inebriated target for these predators in the name of equality? They do not care about you. You are a useful tool for their cause and they will drop you and leave you in the dark, back to your destructive behaviour as soon as your usefulness is over, because they do not understand you or your alcohol abuse.
It is my greatest wish that l did not know this. It is my biggest wish for you that you stop before your luck runs out and you also know this. But until then? It would be great if we could all just start telling the truth a little bit more. No judgement. Just actual support.
I will say no more.