Never Will I Be the Same Again // Rowlands and Abbott
A Performance Writing Collaboration between Rowlands and Abbott who brought “Way to the Pretty” to Calm Down Dear (2017) to Camden People’s Theatre.
If Survivor of Violence is a trigger warning for you then this is that kind of piece but here at MW the Survivor and language shouldn’t be the trigger, the trigger should be the way survivors are treated and demonised because never will I be the same again.
Never Will I Be The Same Again
They hate survivors, by the way.
They hate you – they think you’re – they’ll call you manipulative and like you’re therapising the group with whatever you touch or describe because your tongue is dirty now
It’s grubby
It taints art
And people.
But if they like what you’re saying they won’t hear it come out of your mouth.
They’ll say to someone else “Yeah wow it’s like…” repeating your words in the same way out of their mouth and everyone will hear it and be like wow yes
But those were my words, and I just said that.
Btw. in case this is already resonating with you:
You’re not – by the way (manipulative) though they’ll attempt to say you are until you’re black and blue.
They’ll say you’re controlling
Controlling all the time.
That you are, because when your world has been controlled by another in a way that breaks you every day, then you can’t… let spaces be without uncertainty for time… people place I need to know intentions, transparency
Because I’m already locked up in a glass case.
Because we already have a wall between us
Because breathing isn’t something I do very often.
they’ll watch plays about rape, women having breakdowns, women getting beaten, they might even call for equality and diversity, hidden voices, voices unheard.
They’ll campaign and advocate
They don’t understand that the surviving woman of violence
Is the voice they’ll hate the most and no matter what they advocate because you’re a neurodivergent woman they’d rather you shut up.
PTSD does not need to be diagnosed
My crying out of nowhere or the way I react, over-react, cry, cry, cry
Is seen as
Unprofessional
Hysterical
Crayyyzzeeeeee
Cray cray cray
Inability to form relationships
Let people get close
Pour your heart n soul in others
Gotta love yourself first
Perhaps I do love myself,
That’s why I cry, when you don’t listen
That’s why I cry, when you don’t have time
That’s why I cry when you interrupt me smiling with your patronising smile and you’re
“ah.. Hmm.. yeah.”
or
“yes, yes… anyone else?”
That’s why I cry when you’d never cry
Perhaps I cry for the world of voices squeezed out by your narrative with half truths, half songs, half whispers for BLM and women.
But you don’t BLM or like surviving women.
“It happens to men too. .” you chorus. “Worse for them actually”
Because it happens to everyone else because everyone else is surviving too
But they’re not being pulled up on their crying or behaviours or traits and I am…. So that’s why I’m
Never will i be the same again
are you trying to say i shouldn’t open my mouth?
and here you are:
Being mean and nasty and pointing at me and
Parroting off my Neurodivergent traits:
Okay… so why are you here? Why write such awful things to me - haven’t I paid you? Haven’t I put you in a magazine and paid you £75, when you complain about Outside In who haven’t paid you at all.
And now you’re slagging me off
Being super nasty
And being super awful
And just being
Being being awful
(anti autistic)
You say you’re passionate about autism but you’ve just slagged me off about my autistic traits and demonised me in the letter…. you’re treating me like a neurotypical person even though you’re in the wrong for not being transparent and for thinking you could profit off my naivity
Yes I’m naive but I can also lead
they’re two different things
They don’t tell wheelchair users to get up and run - but they burn holes in our skulls for not behaving like them even though we say it loudly again and again we are - I am autistic and ADHD
even my mum said “disability is just so wide but no one understands autism and ADHD it’s the most demonised of them all because they misinterpret your behaviour all the time. and they don’t think or even realise it but they’re blaming you for your behaviour which is a direct trigger or reaction to them not being transparent, explicit or doing the tasks you asked them to carry out.
I cry loudly down the phone to her:
But they’re just so Nasty cruel horrible to me
Your email: how dare you use your heart condition as an excuse. (I didn’t, I told her I was really very sorry but was very unwell and have a heart condition and it’s Covid19 and I was very dizzy with vertigo so couldn’t facilitate that day, I knew it would ruffle her feathers but not to the point she’d violently beat me up with words.
(yeah, words hurt, as much as sticks and stones, and she beat me real good, with a bat as I’m down on the ground, she caved in my head.)
I cry for me.
And for me
And for Gem, who didn’t experience this in 2017, when I’d invited her to be in my play about it. (Way to the pretty).
She saw a man get violent in front of me and though she murmured, he was inappropriate to me, and was always and has always been an ally it took until she was a survivor too for her to delete him and realise the extent of his violence, and so many more people’s violence for that matter.
“I get it now”
She always got it - that’s why I don’t mean to patronise her or any of you back, but until you’ve been violated
Had violence poured all over you in equal measures
Then it dawns on you.
He was at the play
about surviving rape and courts
and a court case that ripped you apart
and now you’ll never will i be the same again
and he watched that play
and had raped her too. and been violent. and been violent. and he had watched my play.
I feel guilty for casting her in it.
Guilty
Guilty
I’m guilty of being Neurodivergent.
It’s hard for you to get but see a crying body face soul as
Pathetic, unfit, unprofessional, not well.
Not well.
Not fit for purpose. Can’t function. Isn’t human.
Reflections:
Maybe, I cry
To protect me against your hate
Your hierarchy
Your shaming ways
Your exclusion (though you champion equality, diversity, justice, liberal left wing ideals, etc though, etc, though, etc, though.)
Oh god here we go again
Oh god this isn’t disability this is cray cray cray
We’re professionals not like you who sits on grass like dew.
Articles are written that tell us to be trusting
To be vulnerable
To be caring and kind
To say yes yes yes to everything
To gush
To be attentive
To be passionate
To contribute ideas
To say YEAH, let’s make.
But they speak about autistic people as if they need to overcome the struggles.
Don’t talk to me as if I talk about struggle.
Talk to me as if I am you’re equal.
You can’t.
(Game plan: They don’t mean the above, (as in above above) unless you can do it in the way they want it)
Soooooooooo Never will I be the same again.
Never will I be the same again
After you hit me in the playground
After you called me names because I asked to play with you the wrong way
Never will I be the same again
After you told me to show my wee wee to prove I was a girl on the school bus
You teased me and your sister telling us both we weren’t girls
You were her brother making her show your vagina to you and you now have a daughter. That’s fucked up.
You told me to turn my face away in school because URGH you’re so fucking ugly.
You told me my name and asked me without letting me answer you, why I always do that, why do you always have to ruin things?
What things? I want to ask but it took 20 seconds for my mind to catch up and by that point you’d turned your head back to the blackboard and I didn’t know how to answer you
(these are all different people, but they are all men/boys)
What do I do
You ask to be stop me using my eyes to look to see to … use them as they were given to me to use.
Stop staring
I’m not I beg to tell you I’m just looking sorry I won’t look. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now, I stare down now at the book of words I find hard to read as is but Mum forces me to read, I have no choice but to read,
So what do I do when i am told I am wrong
I am not good at what is easy to them in a body behind skin blood bone
to do anything I do, how my body moves is wrong
At home I’m too fat, my body needs to be skinny
Or I’ll be at fault for my clubfoot’s pain.
Which is why and what my swimming teacher says she’s marking me down in swimming for
As it’s not fair to the others, is it Elinor?
They can all do the crawl and so because , just because your foot can’t flex, doesn’t mean we mark you differently, we mark you down.
But I’m the fastest swimmer in the class.
She shrugs.
It’s not fair if I give you a high mark because the others can swim the crawl and you can’t and that isn’t fair is it?
But I have a clubfoot, my foot doesn’t flex.
Exactly, so I’m having to mark you down.
But that’s not fair.
No, but it’s not fair on the others if I give you a high mark.
But apart from the crawl I can do every other stroke and I’m the fastest in the class.
There wasn’t a special olympics in my day, in the country I grew up in.
Maybe life would have been different if I’d gone to an SEN school, learnt in ways that excited my brain and my heart and I wouldn’t feel like there was so much more I should be doing with my life, instead there’d be simplicity,
Or the time I said to the Dance therapist during placement how I liked hanging out with people with Downs Syndrome in Wales because they are good dancers, many of them, And he corrected me and began to patronise me that they were individuals and not all of them like dancing. He made me feel very small - but he was being patronising because he’d never dream of hanging out with them - they were just his patients or clients and I stared through him, losing respect for him, oh I said, well all my friends with Downs love dancing.
And he was the fucking Dance therapist for goodness sake, I was trying to be complimentary of his profession and his work. Instead it ended with him making me feel like an awful human being, and like I should top myself (RSD).
Then he said, Friends?
I nodded. Yeah. Friends.
Because that’s when I saw it - the break in his humanity.
We can’t be friends with Downs but we can correct people for saying they don’t all like dancing because we are social justice types but we pick people apart to make them feel small by being social justice types.
Do you ever write down what you’re going to say before you say it?
She asks me for my notebook.
I see her breathe as her shoulders, throat and face relaxes, breathes, strains, heavy, looks on
You write beautifully,
You write creatively on the lines
But here in the corners sound like conversations, like every day ones… you’d say to the waitress?
Cocks her head to the side.
Never will I be the same again.
She hands the book back, before reading out what I’d said to the waitress earlier.
They’re what I have practiced to say, whenever I’m asked to introduce myself.
In classes, courses, meetings, helps me keep to the page, but I don’t I go off page and don’t do it right.
And the waitress?
I didn’t know how to pronounce the word so spread it out with gaps so I could spell it out easier.
Never will I be the same again
When I was made to do things against my will
When I let you because I wanted to please you and didn’t want to be rude and I kept saying no but you wouldn’t stop and you knew I was scared but you knew I wanted company but not that kind of company.
Never will I be the same again
When you saw me crying and let me run through the corridors, outside and crying
When you were my boyfriend and I asked why you didn’t run after me and you shrugged and said that kind of behaviour was over the top behaviour
I was in distress
No you weren’t. He told me.
Or that time I was tired and wanted to sleep and the others wanted me to go on to the night club but I have fatigue and needed to sleep and you kept pestering me to go and I said to you that you should go and you said no you were going home with me but
I wanted breathing space, I wanted to sleep
But you came home with me, we watched TV, I was tired and needed to breathe. You came home with me but wanted to be in the pub and nightclub with me
And I wanted to sleep in my bed.
Did you
Did you
You did didn’t you
Yellows the barrister - yells it loud and loud
I didn’t realise he’d lie, I realised how idiotic that sounded about a year after it happened. (a rapist, lying? ) well i thought, you know, i just thought.. I was about to say he’d tell the truth
But i catch myself
Because i realise then that i am stupid
It’s a revelation of sorts.
That I’m slow. I’m stupid
But it’s easier to demonise us who went to mainstream school deemed too bright for SEN but I need and want a community centre to do puzzles, and eat sandwiches, and play pool and paint in an art studio and exhibit and make art and show it world over
i’ve written so many times to SEN communities and all have slammed the door in my face and said …
well they didn’t reply.
nor did UCL autism centre, or any other academics who say they’re dedicated to women and autism.
But I shudder stutter
I annoy yell rutter
I mutter tutter
I am
I am
Never will I be the same again
I haven’t read a book in 4 years.
I am tired.
My eyes are cross eyes, astigmatism glory,
Knickerbockerglory
But your knickers were in the bathroom
Oh
I don’t know I can’t remember
My mouth is burning the crowd is looking at me
Never will I be the same again
Rape survivor
Not victim they say, but i was a victim, I am also a victim to every single neurotypical I come into contact with
Every blaming email
Every long worded letter that accuses me of (being too autistic and too ADHD) but in their words it’s all the traits and behaviours of autism and ADHD… so….. maybe they’re stupid?
(They sound it - says a friend, I mean, they’re treating you like a neurotypical, expecting you to be a neurotypical whilst supporting you as an autistic person….. that’s thick as pig shit.
that’s disgusting
i mean, another voice pops up - it’s pretty …. insulting actually.
Or the support worker who accused me of being too slow and never being ready in the morning because i’d needed her help but she was too busy smoking weed outside and then made a complaint about me not having lunch ready when that too was her job to pack the lunch and call the time to eat, because I forget to eat and don’t eat.
it certainly reads stupid.
(and that the whole world is out to demonise autistic people… autistic women).
You’re rude and how dare you do this and how dare you do that (their voice)
How dare you accuse me (their voice)
I’m not accusing, I’m pointing out you weren’t transparent - it’s as if they forget the paper trail evidence.
You failed me and I can’t work with you because you’re not transparent. Did that warrant a full blown longest email ever from you tormenting me for my autism and ADHD and disability because you didn’t make explicit your costs or your hours
May I point out to you how completely Unprofessional you are. (their voice)
My voice:
It was you who didn’t do the work
Who wasted our time
I’m telling you the truth
Why are you making it personal being nasty ganging up on me with your anger
When you know I’m autistic and I’ve probably got a lot of trauma from receiving these threats (because they are let’s face it, anytime you think you’re better than someone else and telling them they’re crap - you’re basically saying, you’re crap, I’m great and you should be so lucky. Then threatening me because I can’t do human being because I’m autistic.
Well….. We don’t want you because you don’t work well for my autism. Does that warrant death threats?
(They weren’t death threats)
No, but they made me cry.
They aren’t listening they’re just slinging dog poo at you.
What’s it like having dog poo thrown at my face?
It’s f***ing disgusting that’s what it is.
And you’re the one who's wrong, I’m very clear, it says so right here - I find all the paper evidence in the paper trail but they think their lies can redeem themselves. They tell my assistants to go look in the paper trail…. Where it clearly shows that they’re in the wrong. But instead of identifying my memory for details (because I’m extraordinary) they
Rattle rattle like that.
My mouth is burning
The crowd is staring at me
Like a child, my child self was called Cry Baby all the time, every day from when I was 4 until I was… hmm 11?
7 years of being called Cry Baby every single day at school.
Pleasant memories.
I’m now Cry Adult
Always crying
Stupid stupid
Eye rolling
Slow
I dreamed of going to a SEN autistic only school
I saw a C4 documentary on it when I was 15. Mum this is me.
She knew it yes but couldn’t say it.
Because all the doctors had told her I was too intelligent to be autistic when she brought me as a baby because she knew I was autistic.
I still remember the way he wiped his hands against the sides of my body to feel up my breasts.
I still remember the way I was locked in the classroom by the teacher, making me late, and she’d almost forgotten to let us out but had remembered halfway to the teacher’s meeting (I couldn’t find the sleeve in my coat)
Or the time, I couldn’t find pens in my bag.
Or lost my passport in Rome and forgot my bag in the taxi after securing the passport
Or lost my keys in my hand and looked everywhere for my keys and then only when i wondered what that sharpness of metal was in my hand realising then that
My key was in my hand. Never will I be the same again.
Stupid
You just need to have more confidence in yourself
If only elinor tried harder
She isn’t living up to her potential
Elinor should listen more
It never happened did it
You’re a liar
You’re a liar
Pants on fire
Pants on fire
Just die already
Just die already
Just die
Never will I be the same again…
and you can’t stop talking the words are out
they’ve escaped
and they won’t stop
but they’re not heard because you’re an autistic woman survivor and people don’t respect or care for autistic women survivors of violence.
I don’t need to overcome anything. Nor heal. But maybe, you need to change the way you listen to us? Change the way you organise, read our access forms.
Change the way you expect us to meet you on your terms?
Maybe you could try to make space for us?
And if the answer is still no. I’ve got a tribe. I’ve got a tribe. (or so they tell me I do.)
I listen and pay attention to the moods that sway in my brain and print in my body
I open my eyes and know there’s something better than this
I’ll just push on
I’ll just push on
I’ll
By Elinor Rowlands
The hardest thing so far
Has been realising that it doesn’t go away
That you will always be left needing to do the work
It takes
Just to get out of bed in the morning
Just to feel like you deserve to have another day.
And that
They probably don’t even think about you
Not day to day
You are in the past
A discarded possession
But they are in your present
They are still hurting you
Every single day
And it is exhausting.
I don’t sleep well any more.
Every little noise on the street is a worry,
Because he knows where I live
Because at night
He knows I will be home
Alone.
And I worry
Because I know how much he could hurt me
If he wanted to
Because he has
Because he had the power to kill me
And I felt it
And I would have been able to do
Nothing
And now he must hate me even more
I worry
I should have just kept my mouth shut
But
It was hurting me to do that
It wasn’t keeping me safe any more
But that’s the trouble
Talking about it doesn’t feel safe either
Because he was so good at making me feel worthless
I can only assume that everyone sees me the same way
That my truth is worthless
And every time I talk about it
It puts me right back
There
Dumbfounded and numb
And frightened for my life
And so so completely crushed
By the loss of self and the loss of trust and the loss of the love that I thought was there
And it is exhausting.
Constantly being in a state of reacting to crisis
Flight flight flight but lost and arms flapping uselessly
Wearing concrete boots
Fixed in time and place
The awful blank space
That means I cut off completely and hid
So far inside myself
I’m not sure I’ll ever come out again
To fight
To fight
At first
Felt like it was sited in ignorance
Denial
Of the scale of it
And when you have spent your whole life learning how to mask your pain
Your mistakes
Your shame
It’s so easy to fool everyone into thinking everything is ok
Better than fine
Can’t complain…
I wasn’t prepared for it
And it was so calculated
Systematic
The breaking down of me
Did he watch the performance I did
About survivors
And look at the disgusting statistics
About the lack of justice
And deep down feel confident he could get away with it.
Even I hate to think it
And I am so ashamed of the compassion I have for him
And at first I thought
Hopefully we can still be friends
Because I can’t believe I was so disposable to him
Except I know I was
Just a clearly dissatisfying object in the end
But hopefully we can still be friends…
Because maybe pleasing him will protect me?
But he told me to disappear
Vanish
And that is what he wants.
To destroy
And leave no trace.
And there are all these fun things that I can do now
And all of this work I can make
I can dance and paint and draw and write and sing and dance and laugh and dance and dance until I drop
And all of these wonderful folk who can distract me
Make me feel safe so long as I fill my time with them
And
Keep myself from staring into the mirror at my own angry terrified tearstreaked screaming face
But it starts to leak out at the edges
Eventually
Eventually
It gets you in a chokehold
Pins you down with all its weight
It tells you to say you are a filthy whore, a bitch
And the moment comes when you either give up
Or stop clamping your jaw gasp for breath
Finally say
No
Finally verbalise
And the words
Just spill out
And once they are in the world
You cannot stop them
But that doesn’t mean you have exorcised the damage
I really hoped that it would
Once the words are out there
You have to take responsibility for them
You cannot just bring them into the world
And then abandon them
I had hoped I would feel more protected
And people have been surprisingly good at listening
Mostly
But there are a few
Who don’t want to believe that they were friends with a fiction
And
I can see how that is hard
Maybe he was right
Maybe I am the problem
Why cant I just get over it
Look the other way
Stop inconveniencing people with the uncomfortable truth
And at the other end of things
The idea that to spew out the words that were poisoning you
Is an act of bravery
When it just feels like an awful fear driven necessity
To be attached to that word in this instance
Feels shameful
I cannot reconcile it with what I have done
Because
Never
Will I be the same
Again
I would like nothing more than to put this behind me
But
He murdered so many things in me
But they are still festering
Attached
Like a rotting extra limb.
And even if I try to amputate
I will still feel it’s ghost
Whereas he
Was just trying me on
And walking about in my skin
Until he got bored
Or it didn’t give him what he expected or wanted
So he peeled it off
Put it in a shoebox under the bed
Because he didn’t want it any more
But he didn’t want anyone else to have it
Especially not me
And he really didn’t want anyone else
To see
Who he really was
Or what he had done.
So I stand on the edge
Of an endless
Dark sea
An ill fitting human
Longing to go home
To find her selkie skin
To be able to be my self again…
But it doesn’t fit me any more
I cannot stop crying
I cannot rest
I cannot see how to move forward from this place where the salt gets into my open wounds and they wont stop weeping
Weeping….
And I can’t stop talking now
Because it’s all I have left
And Never will I be the same
Again.
by Gemma Abbott
Both Rowlands and Abbott are Neurodivergent Survivors of Violence. This piece is in production but we thought we’d share its progression.