I love my life as it is, free from meaningful sexual interaction, and in my head I run through the many, many reasons he and I cannot work. Nope. Just can’t have this. Can’t.
He is looking at me quizzically.
‘What?’ I say somewhat aggressively but I don’t want him to know what has just been flashing through my mind. Not any of it.
‘You were saying your shit isn’t like mine but you didn’t argue that you had none...’
‘Ah yes, that.’
‘Well, go on.’
Empathy is pouring out of his eyes. Oh no, he thinks I’m all far away and fretting because of some perceived trauma, not because I’m panicking about the fact that my lust seems to come with a side serving of emotion. He’s been telling me about his dead dad and I’m sitting here thinking sex. Well, trying to think NO to sex, obviously, but it’s still all cantering around the same subject area. He obviously rates me way too highly. I should probably remedy that.
‘It was nothing really. I feel like a bit of a twat talking about my stuff when you’ve just opened up about your dad. Like I said my dad is alive and well, living with my mother in a three-bedroomed house on the outskirts of Clacton. They are really good parents.’ That is true. I do feel like it would be wildly disrespectful to continue this thread, when my struggle really was around teenage school stuff, whilst his at the same age centres around becoming orphaned and being thrust into care with the responsibilities he felt to his younger sister.
‘You feel you shouldn’t tell me about times you’ve struggled as a young girl because my dad died?’
‘Yeah. My stuff is silly.’
He removes his hand from under mine and looks up at me. ‘Let’s not play top trumps of trauma, it’s not a competition. I wouldn’t feel better talking to you if you had lost a dad as well. I went through some shit, and I imagine you went through some shit too. I don’t know a single person that hasn’t but I do know that I don’t want you not to tell me your stuff. In fact, I can’t tell you how much I want to hear about your stuff.’
‘Sadist.’
‘Damn right.’
‘Really. Oh God. I guess what I was trying to say –’ and I take my eyes from him because suddenly I feel a bit shy, and regardless of what he says I do feel a bit of a dick ‘– was that my adolescence was pretty easy compared to what so many girls go through, but the emotions I felt, they were intense. They led me to some really dark places and I felt so bloody alone. Even with my next-to-perfect family. My parents didn’t have a clue what was going on; both of them just saw me as their absolute treasure who was so golden that her life must be golden as well. It would be beyond their comprehension that I was having such a rough time in school. Such a rough time.’
‘Go on’
‘I don’t know that I want to...’ I say and then I realise maybe I do. I haven’t told anyone the details about what happened at school, not even Kevin. Conjuring that lost girl to the surface of my memories again is making me hurt so much for her.
I use the methods I am forever encouraging clients to use and immediately visualise adult me standing over teenage me and wrapping her up in her arms, resting my head on the top of hers and telling her she is good enough, she is safe and everything works out okay.
‘Everything is okay now,’ I say out loud, and it’s true, it is. ‘But when I became adolescent and all the hormones kicked in, I developed a condition known as PCOS. The side effects at that time were that I got fat, fat and really hairy.’
His eyes widen.
‘That’s wild,’ he says and I’m not sure how I feel about that. ‘I mean I would never have guessed,’ he adds hurriedly, ‘and I know that stuff shouldn’t matter but I also understand that at that age particularly, it really does. Kids are harsh over that stupid superficial shit. Did they give you a rough time?’
I nod. ‘Yeah, they were pretty grim, but you know it was just teasing, we all have to put up with teasing.’ And another image flashes into my head, one that often revisits me at night. One that I have never had the courage to tackle, arguing with myself that I don’t need to; that I am safe now and no one can hurt me again. I carry that memory a lot and as I look across at Jay I wonder if I’m going to tell him about it.
‘I think we label a lot of things teasing which are actually way more than that, and it can, and often does, have a massive impact on our adult lives, the way we perceive ourselves, the way we interact with others. So you know, and I know you do, that the throwaway we-all-have-to-put-up-with-teasing doesn’t really do it. I have heard so much from my girls that they write off as bantz, or boys being boys, or even the catty shit that goes on from other girls, and rarely, very rarely does it deserve such a minimising approach.’
He’s right, of course he is. I close my eyes and before I know what I am doing I let the words spill out. I tell him all about the time the boy I spoke to on the bus – the boy I thought of as my sort-of-friend even though he didn’t talk to me inside the school gates – sent me a note asking me to meet him in the science labs at lunchtime.
Jay is holding me tight and stroking my hair as I speak to him about what happened next, my eyes closed because I don’t want to see any of the things that may be flitting across his face: disdain, pity, revulsion at my stupidity. I can feel the tears rolling down my cheeks as I speak of how those boys, Scott Oakley and a group of his friends, six of them in total, pushed me to the ground and, using a skipping rope, hogtied me on the floor behind the chemistry bench. How I didn’t know what was going to happen next, how I had no power to move, the rope stretching my arms and legs out and making me unable to do anything other than wobble from side to side. How they shoved a football sock in my mouth to stop me from screaming, and how I was too terrified in that moment of what was coming next, of how I was powerless to stop it as they danced around me making pig noises, as Scott Oakley knelt beside me and started undoing the buttons on my shirt.
‘God, Lily’ is all he says as I gulp and open my eyes. I can hear the horror in his voice, and the empathy. He has tensed and is holding me even tighter now, my head on his chest as he strokes my hair. ‘I am so sorry you had to go through that, I am so, so sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘One of the popular girls came in, I can’t remember why, something trivial, and Scott and his mates ran out, laughing as if they had done nothing worse than tied my shoelaces together. She sat next to me, removed the sock, untied me, gently buttoned me up. They didn’thurtme. I skipped out for the afternoon, went and sat in the park until it was time to go home. I was always so grateful to her. She stopped it getting worse and she never said a word to anyone. I could have become the laughing stock of the school but she kept my secret. I don’t know what they planned, if anything. All I know is I spent the rest of the year making sure I got a different bus home.’
‘That’s not teasing, you know. That’s assault. They did hurt you, so don’t do that, don’t dismiss that.’
‘I know. I know what it is. I think it’s part of the reason I do what I do, you know? I wanted to protect every young girl I could, I wanted to be there, give them the tools to get over the sorts of things girls are subjected to on a daily basis, the things that society constantly says are dreadful but that never change.’ I move away from Jay. I could be happy having my hair stroked for ever but I want him to understand why the opportunity he has brought to me is so important.
I turn and look directly at him, amazed that after the telling of my story, I do not feel ashamed or dirty, I feel angry and I feel safe and those two things are a surprise to me. ‘I’ve got lost somewhere along the way. Somehow I’ve become this Love Doctor persona, and that’s worthwhile, but it’s not what I got into psychology for. What I got into psychology for is what you are doing, so asking me to be part of this wellbeing project means a lot. That type of work has always been my goal. Girls as young teens, they’re why I’ve been working so hard, gathering the expertise and the knowledge to be able to do something with it, to support them at what can be the most challenging and confusing time of their lives. It was tough enough being a Nineties kid but to grow up in this world of social media, of never being allowed to switch off that unrelenting pressure of images being thrown at you, of needing to make them, post them, the insane sexual pressure alongside it – that’s such a lot. The opportunity you’re offering, to show these girls that it is okay to be them, to say no to what they don’t want to do, to take charge of their bodies, to embrace their autonomy, to treat themselves as they wish others treated them; all of that means the world and I am so grateful you have come into my life and guided me back to that path. Thank you. You have allowed me to stop, recalibrate and adjust myself so I’m back on the course I wanted to be on.’
‘Lily, you don’t need to thank me.’
