6. Fuck Around, Find Out

Content warning: Sexual violence

 "Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of human is through love and in love." - Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

I'm a great believer in the comfort and salvation of music.

From yelling along to the original '45' of Mama Mia jumping up and down on an old spring mattress holding a hairbrush to playing and writing my own songs, it's a cathartic medium for me, and a way to emotionally knead issues that can be hard to face directly. To work the lumps out.

When I do excavations into eras of my own songs it amazes me how my suppressed trauma memories were explicitly there all along coded into my song lyrics in plain sight - if I go looking with new eyes and I can see patterns in my poems and drawings - and the reflections of the ghosts of the past visiting lightly through the themes.

When I write longform it's more of a way of either recording and ordering information or trying to convey and share ideas in ways they are accessible to others.

For the past 18 months, I've been in a security cocoon that is barely perceptible while my 'invisible husband' investigated what went wrong and who was responsible for raping and torturing me in my house.

He is a 'High Security Clearance' individual, so when there was a security breach to the arrangements here that was a big deal. He also had to check I could pass a security clearance when he came looking for me hoping to have a relationship - because he been in love with me for 34 years and genuinely wanted a relationship.

I often think about a pearl of wisdom once offered during a lively chat at a party, which went something like:

"Never do anything you don't want to be a headline on the front page of a newspaper.'

Luckily I do try and live in a way I am true to my values even if it's hard because nothing in my life is completely private anymore and that's probably not going to get any better I'm just going to have to live with it. I've made it through quite an ordeal, and it's pretty disorienting in some ways not knowing a lot of what that means right now.

Seriously hoping some people are going to end up in big trouble, fast tracked to prison - this is a truly awful fucking thing that is unravelling.

There are a lot of eyebrow-raising things about my situation but I can also see how it all went sideways for my 'invisible husband' and it was never going to be easy to approach me in any sort of normal way.

As a fan of democracy and rule of law I understand that if we want a robust and just societal framework ultimately someone needs to be willing and able to enforce it at the lines we decide together; and follow through with use of appropriate legitimate force if it comes to that.

People in the institutional 'serious jobs', military, intelligence agencies or specialised law enforcement have to live in a different way to civilians because almost everything is routinely varying levels of secret. These are people who at times have to make decisions that literally mean life or death.

How do you tell people if you have had to invade their privacy to vet them for a date? How do you date? How do you tell someone you've killed people? Which date do you save that for?

How do you have and maintain healthy relationships when you have recurring PTSD? Trauma heals in loving relationship, in community, through rebuilding our relationship with the self and with the world. It's so important to be able to honour our needs as human beings.

I think about the massive backlash and mixed reaction when Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex revealed 'confirmed kills' during his military service in his memoir 'Spare'.

Some said such things should not be spoken of others said that for veterans who struggle with mental health, guilt or suicidal ideation it's important to be able to speak the truth.

Military or public service can sometimes come with a heavy price and some even pay the highest price in sacrifice for their country, the ideal of a civilised and just society, their names line the walls of Memorial Halls around the world and their crosses fill cemeteries.

I have always felt the best way to honour the memories of the people who served is to maintain community values, vigilantly tend structures that uphold the law, and foster the frameworks of cooperation and diplomacy that were painstakingly built to make sure the world had ways of resolving differences other than military intervention or war.

'No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice. … No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

So what now?

My 'invisible husband' told me I can have anything I want.

So I of course asked for world peace.

And a few minutes later I found my white can of Dove deodorant propped up with my medical marijuana on the table.