Our Stories Are Like Arseholes

Sure, everyone has one, but it's so much more than that. You know there's gonna be some shit to deal with at some point: sometimes it's normal and predictable - you get a warning that it's coming and you know what to expect; other times you're caught off guard. Very few people talk openly about theirs, and many people find the discussion uncomfortable. But once you start to share yours with other people, it can be empowering and a lot of fun - albeit, you know that sometimes it's still gonna hurt!

Butt-jokes aside, I am a firm believer in the power of authentic story-telling in the battle to make the world a little more inclusive. Not only does it give us as the ones with lived-experience the opportunity to own our narrative, but it also helps anyone in a similar situation to know they're not alone. I'm all about the difficult conversations, because I know that without them nothing can change.

Buckle up: I've crammed a lot into the first quarter of a century! It's gonna be long!

Trigger warnings in advance for, well, basically everything!

I had a good childhood. Your typical happy nuclear family, for the most part. I was a really bright kid; I could read and write before starting nursery, and was in the 'gifted and talented' group all throughout school.

My mental health challenges started far too young. I was about 6 when I first had suicidal thoughts. I was 7 the first time I made myself sick "to be skinny like the other girls". I remember laying in the bath one night, thinking about the best way to cut off my belly so the bullying would stop. I never quite felt like I fitted in, but was never really sure why or how to fix it.

But, I was academically very bright and my struggles were very much internalised, so it all kind of slipped under the radar.

I was always much bigger than other kids, which led to a lot of childish bullying. I started puberty young - there's not many 7 year olds with a half-decent pair of boobs  - and started having periods at 8.

Top tip: if your child starts their periods young, don't demonstrate how a tampon works by putting it in a pint glass of water! I was traumatised by this and was genuinely terrified of tampons until I was about 16!

Other than that, my childhood was pretty unremarkable.

When I was 12, my parents got divorced. Me and my brother stayed with my dad up North, and my mum moved down South. The whole thing was really traumatic, and life was suddenly very different from what I knew. I didn't feel like there was the space to ask for help, and so I further internalised a lot of my struggles.

I'd lost my mum. I thought "if I'm a good girl, then maybe my dad won't leave too".

Their divorce isn't completely my story to tell, so I'll leave that here for now. I will say though, that I developed a messed up sense of self and felt like my only value was what I could give to other people. I didn't matter, as long as I was useful to someone else.

I lost my virginity at 13 to a boy I had only just met that night. Two weeks later, I was lured to the woods by him and his friend, and I was raped. God, that fucked me up.

Still feeling like I was alone in life, I tried to bury it as deep within me as I could. I thought it was my fault; if only I'd made better choices, if only I was a better person, none of this would have happened.

I'd leant on my friends a lot during this time. My best-friend helped make a plan to get emergency contraception. I took it at another friends house, hiding the package in the bottom of the bin to make sure that no adults would find it. Another friend was the one who first said "Clauds, you've been raped. It was not your fault". I could not have got through it - the days and weeks that followed - without my friends. Stuff that no 13 year old should deal with, but they all rose up and helped in whatever way they could.

The next few years weren't easy. I tried to move on: I got my first horse, I focused on getting good grades, and I tried to forget.

But, I couldn't.

I struggled with self-harm. I had a plan to end my life. Horses are the only reason I'm still here today, able to share my story and still getting to experience the many wonders of being alive.

I wasn't a bad kid at all, but I wasn't always the easiest daughter: being a teenager is hard. Being an undiagnosed ND teenager going through traumatic shit is even harder.

But, I did it. I got good grades, started college, and got accepted to med school. I finally got some answers for some health issues I was dealing with, being diagnosed with a couple of somewhat managable disabilities. I was building a life, chasing dreams, and had a future I could look forward to.

Then, at 17, I broke.

A couple of weeks into my second year of college, I saw one of my rapists for the first time since it happened. I was on the bus home when he got on. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. Instantly, I was taken back in time. I could feel the dirt underneath me as they took turns raping me. I felt the fear, the shame. It was like going through it all over again.

I was an absolute mess. I stopped going to college, I was self-harming more than ever, and I didnt care about anything anymore. My mental health was in the gutter and I couldn't envision any kind of future. I became hyper-sexual, trying to grasp back any sense of self-worth by, at least temporarily, being something to someone.

I started seeing a guy from college - a Muslim man who emigrated from Pakistan as a baby. This was a totally unhealthy relationship from the start, and somewhat ended with him being cautioned by the police after he - rather pathetically - threatened me with a gun. It was, however, the first time I got to witness racism first hand.

As a White-British girl from a very non-diverse area, I'd never experienced the effects of racism. Suddenly, I had a taste of what it's like for ethnic minorities in the North East. I could see how racism impacted him, but I also had comments directed at me. I remember a friend's mum saying "you'd never be good enough for my son now, not after you've slept with, ugh, one of them". Seriously? Are you for real?

After his caution, he managed to briefly worm his way back in. The final end was when he threatened to share my nudes. He'd been using a ghosting app on Snapchat, and unbeknownst to me, had screenshot many of the pictures I had sent him in confidence. He said if I didn't send more, he was going to share them all.

I spiralled, and I was genuinely scared of myself. I woke my dad at around 3am, to ask him for help.

This was all too much to deal with at 17.

It was at this point that I knew something needed to change. I got diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, withdrew my uni offer to study medicine and decided to go solo-travelling around Europe instead. I owned my trauma and began to share my story for the first time.

Telling my dad is still, to this day, the absolute hardest thing I've ever done. I'd initially wrote him a letter, but I just couldn't give it to him. Finally, I told him one night as we drove home from the stables. I genuinely thought he was going to crash the car. I can still feel the words leaving my lips. "Dad, I need to tell you something. I was raped".

Fuck, that was harder than I expected to write out.

The conversation with my mam was a little easier. The more I said it out loud, the easier it became. I'd set up a blog to share stories from my time travelling, and made my first post talking openly about what had happened.

I was blown away by the kindness and support of those around me. Moreso, I was shocked by how many people shared their own story back. The more I spoke to people, I quickly realised sexual assault was far more common than it should be. Everybody that I spoke to had their own story to share.

I left college at 18, and that week met my ex-husband. I'll be forever grateful to him for the ways he helped me heal, and for showing me what a good partner looks like. We weren't each others forever, but we were exactly what we both needed at that point in our lives.

I was such a broken person when we got together. Months later, I then saw my other rapist while I was working in a nightclub. Seeing how messed up I was, my ex-husband 'encouraged' me to go to the police. The next 18 months were a whirlwind of happy memories mixed with horrific mental illness.

When I was 19, we got engaged, and I started a degree in psychology and counselling.

At 20 - between 30th June and 1st September 2018 - I bought my first house, had the court case for the rape, got two little puppies and then got married! It was a heavy couple of months! I ended up dropping out of uni during my second year; it was too difficult to study whilst trying to deal with so much.

Life seemed to be on the up. I was settling happily in to life as a wife, safely knowing my attackers were behind bars, and I founded a charity for the education, prevention and intervention of rape, sexual violence and abuse, in the hopes of being able to use my trauma to do some good. Unfortunately, I didn't have the business skills at that point in my career to make it a success. Looking back now, I know what I should have done. But at the time, I just didn't know what I didn't know.

I started a new job with a huge global company, and then 8 weeks later Covid hit!

I'm not denying that the lockdowns were shit, but Covid was the best thing that could have happened for my career. As an ambitious disabled person living up North, getting to work from home was great! Roles that were traditionally out of reach suddenly became a lot more accessible, and I didn't have the challenge of getting in to the office 5 days a week. I began building the foundations of a flourishing career, seizing any development opportunity that came my way, and I quickly progressed through different roles.

By chance, in mid-2022, I'd heard about the inclusion Employee Resource Groups at work and learnt there was one for disability. Within a couple of weeks of joining the network, the position of network Chair became available. I knew I wasn't in with a chance - I didn't even really know what the networks did, and who would be willing to take a risk on a random low-level employee up in Middlesbrough? - but it was a fixed term of 2 years, so I knew this was my only chance. Lo and behold, I got the position!

I'm fantastic at what I do for work, and I really was an incredible Chair.

I'm so proud of the positive impact I had through my tenure, and how I managed to create a supportive network where disabled talent felt they were valued, respected, and had the autonomy and confidence to thrive. More than anything, I'm proud of the safe-space I created for other people to own their narrative. Like I said earlier, I fully believe in the power of sharing our lived-experiences. This was one of my leading principles from back in the charity days, and has only strengthened through my work in inclusion.

When I took on the responsibility of being Chair, I was working as a data analyst. By the end of 2022, this secondment was coming to an end so I started exploring what was next. Because of how successful my first few months as Chair had been, a colleague recommended a role in the Engagement and Culture team, working in Corporate Responsibility. I applied, and started the new role in February 2023.

Around this time, I decided to start losing weight. Belle, my young horse, was coming up to the point where I was thinking about her ridden career, and I had about 10 stone to lose before I could ride her. I'd got in to fasting, and the weight started to fall off.

I'd been questioning the future of my marriage for a few months at this point, realising that we were moving in different directions. We wanted different things out of life.

In June 2023, I'd asked my husband of 5 years - my rock, my only serious relationship, the man who had helped me grow from a lost and broken 18 year old kid to a stable(ish) 24 year old woman - for a divorce. I knew I would never be able to take those words back, but believed it was the right thing for us both.

There's no exciting story here. There was no scandal, no fighting, and the divorce was as easy as it could be. Just two best friends who only wanted the very best for each other. I'm lucky that he's still a huge part of my life, just now in a different way. I love seeing him get to be his authentic self, the him that was diminished through our marriage, and genuinely wish him nothing but love and happiness.

The last 2 years since then have been a rollercoaster. Work has had it's challenges, the divorce and life as a single home-owner was financially hell of a lot harder than I expected, and there's been a lot of new hurdles to overcome. I got diagnosed with another crappy incurable condition that's been hard to deal with, my mental health has really suffered through all the stress of everything going on, I've spent more than I care to think about on vet bills and car troubles, and I've lost my job through redundancy.

But alongside the bad, there has also been a lot that's worth celebrating. I've found myself again, learnt who I am, got my diagnosis of ADHD and awaiting my Autism diagnosis, fallen in love again, travelled, built deeper relationships with friends and family, and grown much more than I would have ever thought possible.

I've survived.

There's a lot of really exciting things coming up, and I'm feeling really good about what the future holds.

So, that's my story. Are you ready to share yours?

Little Clauds - aged 6 or 7

Year 6 prom - aged 11

A month before I was raped - aged 13

The horse that kept me here - aged 14

Med school interview time - aged 17

A young bride - aged 20

June 2023, 2 weeks before asking for a divorce - aged 24

Now, aged 27 and happy, with Alfie and Lola