day 17
I didn’t feel like being funny today. The conversation dominating Twitter, all of the news about Sarah Everard’s murder makes it hard not to think of anything else. It has sent shock waves through all the women I know. Shock in that kind of awful way, a resigned shock, like you saw it coming. Things you were told to do by your mother when she packed you off and sent you to uni, or dropped you at your first house party. You share your location, hold your keys in your hand and walk swiftly and with purpose thinking it will somehow help. The strange thing is you do all of these arbitrary things in the hope that it will save you or protect you somehow. But the really scary thing, and what Sarah’s horrific murder has shown, is that it doesn’t. Because she did all the things you’re supposed to. It’s a painful reminder that living in a woman’s body carries with it a heavy realisation, that that in itself is a dangerous and potentially deadly fact.