My drink was spiked... and everything changed
Notes on rebuilding yourself.
Warning: the post below contain references to drink spiking.
I was standing on the street. I was upright, breathing, functioning.
I was awake.
I don’t know where I had been.
I found I was screaming.
I did not know why I was screaming.
Hours had passed. They were blank pages in my mind.
There was a man beside me. A man I did not know.
Faces came up to me, “are you OK?” they asked.
“Tell them you’re OK,” the man said.
“I’m OK. I’m OK.” I said back, robotically. I did not know the words I was saying. I did not know why I was saying them.
It had been one glass of prosecco. That’s all.
In the days that followed, I cowered. I curled up in a ball, on my window seat and I watched cars past. Each one a threat. I became convinced that each driver was someone I knew, someone out to get me.
I tried to leave the house. I found I couldn’t.
Days passed and my blood no longer carried spiky terror. That drug, whatever it was, disguised in bubbles, had dissipated. But… so had I.
I stood on my cold kitchen tiles and I felt a grey descend.
Click, click, click. Pop, pop, pop.
I had created a new shell of myself, released her from the old mould. I couldn’t find any parts that remained, it was like I was scrambling around, looking for any remnants of who I once was.
I couldn’t find her.
In the background, a song played. Taylor Swift. Evermore.
“I couldn't be sure. I had a feeling so peculiar.
That this pain would be for
Evermore.”
I need you to know I was safe. I was saved.
Nothing bad happened to me, in the hours I lost.
Years later, I watched a Derren Brown show where he stole time from us. Five minutes passed, in the blink of an eye. It was a clever trick and was meant with no malice, but still.
Time had been stolen from me before.
My heart sped up. I wanted to grasp at the air, I wanted control.
I did not like that I had been existing in my body, moving limbs, making sounds, and that I would never know what I had done, who I was in those moments.
It was a show. The time before, that wasn’t a show.
It wasn’t just that night that broke me. That night was just a segment, after months and months of unspooling. Slowly, I had been falling apart.
I’ve been writing about lost time. In March, it will be five years since we went into lockdown and I have been interviewing people and examining how that period - where our seconds, minutes, hours did not belong to us – has impacted us, still today.
I keep hearing the same words, over and over again:
“I lost all that time. Time I could have been…”
And:
“Who I was before lockdown is entirely different from who I am now.”
For me, I unravelled for many tiny different reasons. I felt silly and weak for feeling so deeply impacted by it all, and I told myself I had no right to feel this way, not when so many others were suffering, not when so many others were going through worse.
Each time I denied myself a feeling, it was like I was swallowing down a tiny dagger. Daggers that were building up, cutting me open.
I also realise now we had all lost trust, trust in the air that we breathe, in the safety of others.
We had all our time stolen.
When I was spiked that trust was eroded further. Not just in others but in myself. In my ability to recognise who would keep me safe.
That night, everything exploded. I had to face up to how I had been damaged, where it had left me. Leave behind the casing of who I once was, step into who I would become.
I wouldn’t say that I am altogether again. I don’t think that we are ever altogether again.
But… I am no longer grey.
Recently, I was at a club night where they play non-stop Taylor Swift. I was dancing with a friend when a girl came up to me, offered me one of the friendship bracelets stacked up on her wrist. Red beads, one word.
Evermore.
I was having such a nice time. It has been years since I felt the pull of danger, since I stumbled into its path.
The pain, pain I thought would sting me forever, had passed.
We never know what’s going to knock us over. As we write lists and goals, and turn pages in new diaries, we don’t know what is waiting for us.
When 2020 came, I had plans to visit 12 countries, in 12 months. We can’t really plan for what’s ahead, we can’t control what lessons we want to learn.
2025 could be brilliant. 2025 could pull me apart again.
Maybe something has knocked you over, battered you, pulled you apart already.
If it has, know this. The one thing I know for sure…
One day, maybe this year, maybe next, you’ll be dancing, smiling and the pain that tore you apart, tore you into someone brand new, will be gone.
Our very worst moments are only one a fraction of our lives.
Soon you’ll be in your new iteration.
Thank you for reading - and I’m sorry it’s been a while. I only ever really want to write when I feel I have something useful to say, and my brain has not been playing ball. I appreciate you sticking with me.
Below are two poems I wrote, one shortly after that night, one reflecting on how I feel now, after lockdown. If you have a story you’d like to share with me, as to how you think lockdown impacted you, please get in touch - it’s for a feature in Cosmopolitan. I can explain more via email, or DM me on Instagram.
Here’s something I’ve written on the topic before…
Fizz My legs are in stirrups As he asks me "Is it always this angry?" I think of a fuming magnolia One that snarls, as it tingles and pops I'm breathing in the blue of the curtain The mask and my sticky breath No one will meet my eyes in the waiting room We all look at our feet Afterwards he meets me So we can drink vodka and chew watermelon fizzies As the night turns navy In a silent Soho Passing the spot where I Emerged from the blankness of my body To find I was screaming Is shame pink, blue or navy? Or is it the colour of the water in a paintbrush jar? We want to soak ourselves in it But it's far too murky To ever make us clean Can someone help me find her? My feet have glued themselves Stuck, circling Round, and round, and round That last zero Of 2020 Seconds dissolve, snowflakes To grasp at, panicked, screaming "Don't go, not yet" Please. Wait. Stay still while I figure it all out They're not an avalanche. Years, it's been years. I have become a puzzle I cannot solve. Patting myself down, confirming that Snap! The mirror matches old photographs. I am that shell, that skin, those tendons But how? When inside, I'm scrubbed clean Entirely different, also Exactly the same What I need to do is Prod at my past, retrieve whatever it was That once propelled me forward Instead, I remain Brand new blankness My head singing with nothing Searching, looking For who I once was Before they closed our doors