Welcome home, to myself.
Emotional relief is not resolution.
Resistance is not regulation.
Regulation, in the absence of emotional curiosity, is simply a coping mechanism.
Self-soothing without understanding, is self-sedation.
When an external, ineffable event occurs, or prolonged stressors are at play; a healthy, functioning nervous system will transmit messages via the body - becuase the brain can not yet apply words to what the body can feel.
It's a survival mechanism; and it's brilliant. But it cannot be allowed to override our ability to process for too long, for emotions that should be processed are instead suppressed.
It’s worth noting that when the body does not provide its involuntary resistance to alert us something needs to change in our environment / state; we are disassociated - we have dislocated brain from body.
It is from here that emotional regulation cannot take place. Only suppression of emotion ensues.
If emotions aren’t metabolised, if they are only purged or oppressed; we engage in the same behaviour patterns over and over.
Emotional evolution cannot take place.
I'm coming to realise why the genpop seek strength in those of us who have harnessed adversity and used it to proliferate something more positive:
Because cognitive coherence is essential to evolve out of one human state and into another. You cant just make up a new narrative to replace the old one. You must integrate your lived experience into a narrative that aligns with who you are now.
Trauma / failure / regret simply don't get erased. They get revised:
We give significance to the struggle.
We turn chaos into context.
We turn stories into strength.
And it makes the rest of you feel safer, knowing it's possible, doesn't it?
We show you that destruction doesn't mean indefinite devastion; that life isn't just built again - its erected, from this coherent connection between our old self, and the new.
The last time I was on this Caribbean island, I called it home. I arbirarily named a popular caribean destination "home" in a pandemic that had cost me my own.
I left my family, friends, a drug habit and my legal identity behind. I took three suitcases and a sausage dog across the atlantic to start over. Since the world was going to shit, no-one noticed.
It was perfect...
Rhiann was bold, bolshy and unboundaried. Rhiann saw rules as general guidlelines that might or might not be observed depending on whether it might be Tuesday, or whether or not the man who mistakenly called himself her byfriend had thrown her down the stairs that day or not. Violence wasn't always his default. Sometimes he just showed up at places like her work; or checked her phone while she was sleeping. Either way, Rhiann felt discombobulated at all times and there was a non-zero chance she wouldn’t be high, fleeing from her trouble-fuelled folly of a life.
The problem with wealthy men is that they are often insecure - born into a caste system of property, prosperity and opportunity that values money, percerived social skills and more money. They reside in the upper echelons only and either edify those below them - or date them - should the specimen be deemed aestheticlly pleasing enough. It musn't say what it thinks though. Ever.
We still dont know if the boy's mummy loved him too much, or not enough. Attachment theory was surely defined by boys who's mums were at the golf club during daylight hours, and at galas signing checks over to charities representing orphans without proper parents. They did so without an incling of irony and always with a Grey Goose cocktail in hand and a facial expression that suggests they've never knowingly hurt an animal; but defintitely would shoot one as a social sport.
Rhiann attended the dinners, the benefits and the galas. The free bar was freedom from financial small-talk tedium and the toilets were for inhaling rails of cocaine without judgment on a Monday. The Dorchester ballroom is cheaper to rent on a Monday, so all charity events and therefore coke-fuelled fuckery would begin on a Monday and last well into Wednesday (the drugs - not the dinner). The come down was a parachute-free plunge into 24 hours of bilataral domestic violence, and then carnal relations to make it all alright again, negating both words and feelings in one passionate, dangeorus liasion lasting forty-five minutes to an hour.
Rhiann would go out and get high again as soon as he climaxed and passed out.
Drawn in by a platinum Amex and a funtioning phallus, this pattern of toxic codependency continued for years. But the drug bill increased exponentially, as did the accompanying shame to cover it all up.
She started to sell the expensive jewellery he bought her for half the price - she was street smart and knew the guys to sell to - she'd lived on Hatton Garden when she was at ballet school. Sometimes she sold his jewellery and watches too - not out of neccessity, but fuelled by solid spite that he valued wider social opinion over her. Later she would steal his things to pay one dealer who found out where the penthouse was.
As the mask slipped, the drug consumption compounded. The last invoice Rhiann recieved from a sel-employed member of staff at her studio was for £1900. She had £2100 left in the account. The staff member got paid one last time, the studio simply disappeared into oblivion and Rhiann went missing in St Tropez, probably with another older, unsuspecting wealthy bloke and with better quality coke.
Rhiann was eventually dispatched into a court-ordered drug rehabilitation requirement. It worked.
She changed her name to Scarlett (it was number ten on Tatler’s top ten baby names that year) and moved to the Caribbean.
She had the luxury of designing a whole new life - one driven by sobriety, better decision making and free from crime.
Scarlett was the edited version of Rhiann. But in order for Scarlett to take the reins in their mutual mortal meatsuit, Rhiann was erased.
This Fellowship has taken me all over the world; I was told it would change me forever.
Truth is, it’s really only brought me right back to myself again.
I haven’t travelled alone. Rhiann has been with me every step of the way, reminding me where we came from and why we’re doing all of this. I have slowly started to colour in the space where Rhiann once was.
Rhiann was the desk-climbing disruptor who didn’t fit in the box; the nail that stuck up that must be hammered down. Rhiann was the crazy, neurotic tornado whose noisy emotions only quietened on stage.
It’s entirely possible that Rhiann’s entire DNA was “cabaret.”
Scarlett is not here to fix Rhiann; rather to create a more habitable world for others like Rhiann.
The last time I was on this Caribbean island, I was terrified others would discover Rhiann behind the curated character of Scarlett.
Today, 3 years on, I sit free from shame that both of these women are me.
Rhiann - welcome back.
S xxx