Replying to Ryan T
|No you won’t, Ryan T!BLOCKED.
Paul ProudDadtoDaughters
|rabid feminists are wat is wrong wiv this country
Alice Edwards
Replying to Paul ProudDadtoDaughters
|I’m sad you feel that way Paul, because feminism is about helping men, too. I hope you understand that one day, and that your daughters grow up to be proud feminists.BLOCKED.
Randy Howels
|pathetic. can’t even take a bit of banta
Alice Edwards
Replying to Randy Howels
|I don’t think the word banter should be used as an excuse for being cruel to each other, Randy.BLOCKED.
Hollie Baker
|I am afraid to block people on here, what if they get angry?
Alice Edwards
Replying to Hollie Baker
|Ah, Hollie, we don’t know each otherbut I want you to be brave. I want you to not care if strange men are angry with you for standing up for yourself. It’s not easy I know. I know that as women we are conditioned to be nice at any cost, to run around making sure we are not upsetting the men we meet, for fear of retaliation. But you are worth more than being called a bitch on the internet for no reason. Block block block!
AWOL MODERATOR
|Hi Alice, thank you for doing this, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to stem the tide of trolls. It’s too much – too hard. My bosses won’t let me block them, I’m just supposed to encourage trolls to be nicer using pally corporate speak. I have never said ‘bantz’ or ‘chill pill’ in my life, but there is a script. I can’t keep it up though. How is this a life? Trawling awebsite for badly spelled abuse and begging people to stop being pricks? I hate myself. Luke
Alice Edwards
Replying toAWOL MODERATOR
|You deserve better than this, Luke.
Looking around, my insides hurt from longing for this place. Not the house itself – but everything it represents. A family home. A safe space. The things themselves, too, so old and familiar. So fullof my childhood. So full of memories I’d forgotten.
The picture on the wall of me smiling widely at school sports day, and how I cried forever after it was taken because I dropped my egg minutes before the egg and spoon race.
Those chairs over there, which Mum used to build a den for us, draping sheets across them, and jumping out to surprise us when we got home from school. And thenHannah saying she was too old to play, but caving ten minutes later when she saw KitKats being brought in.
That clock in the corner that belonged to my grandma. We were all convinced it was haunted so Mark and I did a ouija board underneath it once, and ran out screaming when a ‘demon’ came through called – with hindsight fairly suspiciously – ‘Mark’.
The ancient computer in the corner– the ‘family computer’ – that I would bet good money still operates on adial-up modem. Just looking at it, I can hear the sounds it would make. That awful, shrieking, whirring noise it made as it climbed slowly, tortured, online. I can still feel the excitement of waiting for it, waiting to visit chat rooms to flirt with teenage boys, who were definitely actually predatoryfifty-year-old menliving in studio flats.
Even the crisps Mum has just brought in – emptied out into the ‘special visitor bowls’ – are making me emotional. I blink hard as I remember Mum shouting at the three of us that time for raiding the pantry a week before Christmas. We had opened the ‘Christmas crisps’, bought to be consumed only in that vacuum time period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Eventhough we never once got through all the food she’d bought for the festive period.
And yes, there are the bad memories here, too. The ones I don’t want to remember. But I’m realising now that I have blocked out all the good memories along with the bad. I have blocked out how much my mum loved us.
I came straight here after my encounter with Constance/Janet Janet and standing on thedoorstep again, I found that the fear was gone. I was suddenly way more afraid of staying in my safe space. Afraid of never moving forward or changing things. We all get so stuck – trapped – infear-glue. It’s such a human thing to stay forever in a miserable position rather than chance changing things.
