Wading through the darkness

(Trigger warning: indecent exposure)

I’ve been finding things hard recently, I text some of my friends. Life’s been a bit up and down. I’m struggling to find the words to convey my feelings in the pixels of my phone.

I’m plodding through a working day at the office, trying to marshal my brain into being productive and efficient (when it wants to be soft and reflective), and I get a call from the police. The photo I took wasn’t good enough quality to identify the man who exposed himself to me a couple of weeks ago. Even though this is a repeat incident, the case will be closed. There’s nothing more they can do.

Perhaps I expected a sense of closure: this chapter is over, done. That’s that. Perhaps I expected a sense of validation: yes, this has happened before here, this is real, we checked.

But instead, a wave of darkness washes over me, a cloak of midnight velvet. Thank you, I tell the police, thanks for your help. I go back to my desk and stare at my laptop screen. Could I have taken a better photo? Perhaps if I hadn’t hesitated, perhaps if I hadn’t already been crying, could I have snapped a clearer picture of his face? Not good enough, echoes in my brain.

I text a few friends, my husband, about the news. Case closed. The words feel inadequate.

Recently, I’ve been circulating around this idea of community. I keep telling my friends ‘I just want to live with you all in a commune somewhere, everyone together!’ It’s a joke, but it isn’t. Family feels far away. Friends are scattered across the city, or moving away, abroad. I keep wishing we had a community. A village raises a child; where’s our village? Who is invested in her life, rallying around her, raising her? And in the aftermath of that phone call, a darker thought hits me. Would they rally around her if I wasn’t here? The thought pops into my head and it takes a little time to shake off, like a bit of gum on a shoe that refuses to be scraped off.

*

Back in the last week of October, I keep thinking: this isn’t the Halloween I wanted! This isn’t the Halloween I deserved! A vomiting bug (for me), an ear infection (for my daughter), a nasty cough (for my husband). I try to join a zoom call with someone I want to impress on the 31st and my toddler screams behind the door for the entire hour: “Mama, mama, mama!” The screaming is so excruciating I can’t hear myself think. My husband tells me to take five minutes: it’ll help, go to the park, get some nature, be by yourself for a moment.

I resist but I go. Alone. I think I should change first, but I don’t. I’m practically wearing pyjamas: an oversized t-shirt, a shapeless puffer coat, my comfiest joggers, inked with my toddler’s crayon markings.

It’s lunchtime. Halloween. I arrive at the small nature garden. This space used to be the private back gardens of two large Victorian houses on this road, long since pulled down, and the space of green now joined together for the public. A volunteer gardening group, together with the local council, has made this place special: ponds, areas left wild, a home for insects made out of recycled pallets. The wildness is new, with recent local planting alongside older non-native trees, like a red cedar or cypress conifer planted over a century ago.

There’s a little black cat, staring very intently at a mass of brambles. I recognise it as a neighbour’s cat, I’ve seen him around. What is he looking at, I think. There’s nothing there. I stand next to him, and I stare too. He is very still. And I realise this small, overlooked corner of the city is humming with life. All sorts of insects, so many I can’t name. A cluster of bees, moving flower to nettle. A squirrel, Tarzan-ing across to the next tree. There’s the scuffle of something that might be small and furry, maybe a mouse. And ivy, nettles, wildflowers I can’t name. The roots of trees: oak, rowan, conifers. It’s a scruffy patch of wild in the middle of such a big city, full of life being lived.

I feel the grit in my soul being washed away by the greenery and the wildness. My cries come in heavy sobs. I feel raw, split open. I walk over to the pond, lean on the fence, and take ragged breaths through tears. This place is a haven.

Then — I sense there’s someone behind me. Before I turn around, I already feel intruded upon in a moment of serenity. I wipe my tears surreptitiously and turn around.

What I notice first is the look on his face, there’s something smug and challenging there, a hard glint in his eye. An invitation to react. He wants me to scream, to be afraid and unsure, I know this in my bones. But it takes me a second to realise what is happening: he has undone the fly of his jeans and lowered them and his underwear, and is masturbating, his genitalia fully exposed to me. We call this indecent exposure or flashing, but why is it that, while he is the one exposed, it is me that feels naked and vulnerable? I want to describe his erect penis as angry looking because that seems conventional in these sorts of moments, but it isn’t, it is long and slim like an umbrella. This is the first new, in-the-flesh penis I have seen since my husband’s, 9 years ago, and I didn’t expect to see another. He wants me to run off, afraid, knowing there’s nothing I can do.

It is this thought that ignites a rage so close to the surface I surprise even myself: I yell at him, furious, I’m calling the fucking police! I get out my phone, it is slow to unlock, to open the camera. He realises what I’m doing and runs off, hand remaining on his still erect penis, his other hand clutching his jeans. I run after him to take the photo. He jumps a wall with the ease of someone who has done it countless times and runs off into a housing estate. The wall is too high for me to jump or to see where he has gone. I stand still for moment, considering, breathing heavily. The cat has gone, I notice. I take a photo of the wall. I zoom in on the photo I took of him: you can see his left hand wrapped around his penis, but his face is unclear, obscured by his hat and a hood, half turned away. But, perhaps, it is clear enough?

I feel oddly calm for a moment. I open a browser on my phone to report the incident online, typing out p e n i s carefully into the form. I open WhatsApp and spell out the news on my phone’s keyboard to the volunteer gardening group. I text my husband and then ignore his call. I don’t utter a word aloud for a few moments. I’m still and silent. I don’t want to leave this spot, what if he comes back and I can catch him? I want to do something rash. Perhaps I could beat him to a pulp, somehow. I walk a loop of the nature garden, heart beating fast, and I consider whether I could crawl into the fox hole my dog found a while back to hide and pounce on him. And then I think, perhaps it was best he left; if he couldn’t leave quickly, would he have done something worse?

I resign myself to feeling helpless. The police call back later and send two police officers round to take a statement. I sit in the living room with my toddler on my knee and tell them what happened. They will do what they can. Once they’ve left, I think — violated! That’s the word I was looking for. Is it too late to add it to my statement? I upload my photo to the police portal. I consider deleting it, there it is among the photos of my dog and my toddler, tarnishing my phone. What if they need it again, though? I leave it there.

This isn’t the worst thing that’s happened to me, but it hits different now I have a daughter in my life. Are things getting worse? I have told myself they are getting better, but I can’t help look at who has just been voted into one of the most prominent elected roles in the world, and feel like it is a vote in favour of violence against women.

I’m stewing in these thoughts when my friend calls me, concerned about me. She’s just moved to the other side of the world and is driving home from work. It’s my lunchbreak so I answer, standing in the corridor of the office by a toilet. It’s just been a bit of a hard time, I say, aloud this time, and it cracks something open, suddenly I’m sobbing down the phone. I cry and cry in hiccupping gulps and then I feel a bit better. A week later, I ring another friend, in Italy, and we talk and talk late into the evening. We tell each other about our darkness, and the next day we both feel lighter.

Here is my community. It isn’t a single village. It is a network of people in different stages of life, spread across the world, all with their own hardships and joys, who want to be there for each other. It may not always be perfect, it may not always be local, but it is something I want to treasure and nurture. Nurturing our communities isn’t something we necessarily spend a lot of time thinking about — it doesn’t come up in new year’s resolutions, for instance, but it’s what makes life worth living. I’m realising that a community is one you show up for. You have to be the person you need in your life. Set an example: you want friendship? Be a good friend. You want community? Show up for yours. It’s not the advice we want to hear, but it’s what helps us grow.

I’m starting each day by lighting candles before I put on the harsh overhead lights. Something has shifted since Halloween — a desire to embrace the darkness, to welcome it kindly, to accept it. Not to wallow in it, but to recognise it. I light candles, put on cosy clothes, get out blankets — anything to romanticise the cosiness of this season. I know from listening to various ‘bro science’ podcasts that getting light — bright, bright sunlight — into your eyes first thing in the morning is key to setting your circadian rhythm. But after Halloween, after reaching this final chapter of the year, it doesn’t feel like that’s seasonally grounded. I want to start each day in darkness, by candlelight.

Still: I want more closure. Somehow, writing about it doesn’t feel enough, this time. I want to do a spell — a banishing spell, perhaps — cast this out. I want to burn something. I want to dance around a fire. I want to chant and scream and be held.

Instead, what I do is talk to my friends, and share and laugh and cry with them, and this is a kind of spell, too. A spell to nurture that thread of my community, that wraps itself around the earth, tenderly.