"Red Red Red, oh!"

Meanwhile, alongside all this, I have dyed my hair red. A friend and I were chatting about red hair, and how we both fancied it, and how red could we get away with going, when suddenly our conversation tipped from 'could we/should we' to 'let's just do it!' I went for the reddest red I could find in a permanent dye, so that I can go out in the rain or have a bath without the colour running out. I used to dye my hair bright colours in my teens, but I used this dye that was only semi permanent. It was vivid, until it got wet, and then it ran down my shoulders and I was left with orange hair. But this time it's red and it's going to stay red. And it's beautiful.

It's so beautiful, that on Tuesday, when I was curled up in the armchair in the living room, crying hysterically after a run-in with my brother, (when I tried 3 times in a row to explain how he was speaking out of turn and he just became more aggressive until I and gave up and lost my composure and my temper, because if having a patient radical feminist sister isn't enough to get a man to recognise his excess of male privilege, what hope is there?), as I curled my hand around a tuft about to pull it out, as I do when I'm really anxious or unhappy, I managed to stop myself.

* * * * *

The first time I remember pulling my hair out, I would have been about 14. I was old enough to have a "down-town pass" which was something Year 10 and 11 students could have to allow them to leave school premises. Printed on red card, and about the size of a debit card, you were given one if your parents wrote a letter at the start of term saying that you had their permission to go into town at lunchtime.
We had a white shirt as part of our school uniform, and I must have left the red pass in the top pocket of my white shirt before putting it into the wash. Mum had recently bought a new set of cream towels, which went in too and I didn't realise what I had done until the washload came out with red spots everywhere. Everything was ruined, and it was my fault for forgetting to take the pass out my skirt. I told my Mum; I had to. And she was really angry. I think these towels were a considerable expense, and I had ruined them. She lost her temper with me, and me apologising wasn't enough because I couldn't undo it. I remember her having to go out somewhere, and me sitting on the tiles on the kitchen floor with my back to the dishwasher, crying and crying, and then pulling at my hair and working out that if I wrapped some of it around my hand I could get enough leverage to pull it out. I pulled out enough to leave a bald patch about the size of a two pence piece. The hair grew back, slowly. First I had a bald patch, then I had a tuft which I had to clip down to the rest of my hair with a kirby grip, and then it grew long enough to blend in with the rest of my hair.

* * * * *

For quite a few years, my hair was too short too pull out in any volume. If it's shorter than a couple of inches, it's hard to get the leverage. You can pull out the odd hair but it's not the same, it doesn't make you feel any better.

* * * * *

In a relationship a few years ago, when my hair was longer, I became so routinely stressed at trying and failing to be the sort of girlfriend she wanted that I started pulling my hair out again. I learned not to pull out whole clumps from the same place as this was too visible, so I started pulling out smaller amounts from all over my head, which made it un-noticable as I have fairly thick hair. I'd do it when we were in bed in the dark together, when we were having yet another state of union conversation, as I became more and more upset that I couldn't match up to her last girlfriend, with whom she had bought the house we now slept in. I'd lie there, as she talked about how our relationship wasn't working, and I'd twist strands round my finger and then pull them out, putting them under the pillow. When she realised what I was doing she got mad with me. I wonder if her new girlfriend pulls her hair out to cope with the things she says to her?

* * * * *

On Monday, I felt them same level of anxiety that I usually cope with by pulling my hair out. My brother has been living here for a little under a month, and historically we do not get on, due to his displays of privilege and offensive sense of humour. But he needed somewhere to live in Leeds, and I thought I should make an effort to help him out. His girlfriend is also living here, sharing his room with him.
He has an incredibly offensive sense of humour, which I try and ignore as much as possible. But he makes it hard, when he will sidle up to me and say (so quietly that only I can hear him) "I don't like black people". He knows I will call him on it. I don't think he actually means it, but he thinks it's funny to pretend he is racist. And I hate it, which makes him do it even more.
Then there's all his jokes about rape. He was spending time with me and some of my friends, and the film Thelma and Louise came up, and he said in response to the rape scene that "well she was asking for it, as she was wearing a short skirt". I don't think he actually believes this. He just thinks it's funny and controversial to say something so offensive.
So I called him on it and I said "I know you don't actually think that wearing a short skirt means that someone is asking to be raped, but it's not on to even joke about it. Rape is not something to joke about. For many women, it is a reality. There will be women you know who have been raped and sexually assaulted, and for them to hear you joking about it so casually would be incredibly hurtful." To which he replies that if someone told him they had been raped and found his joke offensive, he would stop. I try and explain, through gritted teeth that is really not the point, and survivors of sexual assault shouldn't have to out themselves to him to make him stop joking about such a serious issue. He shrugs his shoulder and says I take everything so seriously.

How about everytime a man makes a rape joke, someone rapes him. Let's see how funny he finds it then, and how many times he needs to be raped before he stops seeing the funny side. Ha ha, only joking...

See, it's not funny is it?

My brother is the sort of man who thinks that rape and racism are issues he can pretend to support for comedic effect. And if we don't get the joke then we're clearly too uptight and take everything far too seriously.

But that wasn't even what made me break down on Monday. The issue then was his use of male privilege to try and dismiss the things that are important to me, belittle my feelings, make me feel that I am the problem and then ultimately silence me. It's the fact that we only had around a month living together; a month where he was living somewhere that has been my home for seven years, when he knew that I was having a hard time getting ready to leave, but where he still felt the need to try and control me and manipulate me so that he had his way even with things that weren't that important to him.

He mentioned that at the weekend, his gf's parents would be bringing up some more of her stuff including a kettle. As I am trying to pack non-essential items ready for my move, I said that I would maybe pack the kettle after this weekend and we could use hers. I also have some pale pink cast-iron kitchen ware I am fond of, which matches the pale pink of my kitchen walls. My brother has some similar kitchenware in blue, so he suggested that we could pack mine away and use his. I challenged this and said I would like to keep mine in use for as long as possible as it looked so pretty in the kitchen, and wouldn't match as well in my new house (as I am moving somewhere we probably shouldn't paint).

He replied dismissively that I might live somewhere else with pink walls in the future. (DISMISSIVE OF MY POINT/CONCERNS)

I took a deep breath and said that whilst it was possible this might be the case, it wouldn't be so immediately in my new home, and so for that reason I would really like to keep using mine instead of his for the next two weeks before I went. I also told him that I didn't feel up to having a big debate about it as I wasn't feeling well (the kind of headache and period pain that make you stay up all night blogging because you can't sleep and don't have any painkillers in the house).

He then said to me, in a patronising, babyish voice "ok well we'll do whatever is best for you then". (BELITTLING & PATRONISING)

I called him on this, and told him he was patronising me and I didn't appreciate it.

He said I was over-reacting and being hypersensitive. (DERAILING TACTIC TO TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL FOOLISH FOR BEING UPSET ABOUT SOMETHING 'TRIVIAL')

I told him I wasn't over-reacting, that I had *heard* him talk in a babyish voice at me and I didn't appreciate it and that it was unreasonable for him to try and dismiss my view and feelings out of hand like that.

He then responded that if I didn't like the way he was talking I could leave the conversation. (ATTEMPTED SILENCING TECHNIQUE AND REFUSAL TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY)

At this point, feeling like crap with cramps and after giving him three chances to realise that the way he was talking to me was out of order, I lost my composure. I told him he couldn't use my pink kitchenware anymore, he would have to use his own. So he retaliated by demanding a quarter of the kitchen space to keep his things in.

Now, when he moved in, he said that he didn't have very many things so wouldn't be needed a quarter of the entire house. He's even previously chided me for having so many things and being so sentimentally attached to them. When he moved in, we discussed the kitchen space and the fact that as I had been here for seven years, I was using a lot of it. But he assured me he had space for the things he needed. And a lot of my things, like crockery and saucepans and cutlery and chopping boards are things he uses as he doesn't have his own. So my things take up space, but everyone in the house can use them.

Him suddenly demanding a quarter of the kitchen space, despite the fact that he didn't need it, that he didn't have things to fill it with, that all my things would be gone in a matter of weeks, that the space I was taking up was taken up by things that he enjoyed using... this demand was him throwing his weight around.

And because I wasn't feeling well, because I had already repeatedly tried and failed to rationally challenge his male privilege-powered attacks, and because I am feeling upset about moving out of this house, I got upset and gave in. And then I rang my mother.

Before my brother moved in, I was very worried about this type of situation occurring. Him using his male privilege to try and get his way, so that I either have to give in for an easy life, or fight it and cause a scene. I had spoken to my mother about it, and she had said that if that sort of situation occurred then we could have "a family discussion about it" but obviously I had not explicitly used the phrase "male privilege" because when I rang her in hysterical tears, she tried to calm me down and said that it wasn't 'because he was a man' that he was doing these things.
I then had to take time out from the issue to explain the concepts of male/white/middle class/thin etc privilege to her, and how people possessing those privileges can use them to oppress people who don't have them, often in such subtle ways, so built into society that many people don't even notice what's going on. I was surprised that she wasn't aware of the concept. And that made me despair a little, because people who don't know it exists aren't going to be a position to spot it or call people out on it. She spoke to him to hear what he had to say, and then told me that he had said he hadn't meant to upset me, but I had become upset. He is playing her, convincing her that he hadn't meant to upset me. So I come across as the one who is irrationally upset, a view which isn't helped by my hysterical crying down the phone.

* * * * *

I give up. I just give up. If I had been talking to any male friend, any male colleague, and the conversation had started going down the route it went with my brother, where I felt he was patronising me, or belittling me, or silencing me, and I calmly raised that, I am *sure* they would either have taken the opportunity to back down and apologise for being out of order, or if they genuinely hadn't meant to, they would apologise for making me feel that way. But he just carried on, as he always does. If any man in my life repeatedly used his privilege to try and control me, and didn't back down or apologise when I called him on it, I would cut him out my life. But as I know from past experience, that's harder to do when you have a biological tie to a person.

It was suggested by my mother, that I was expecting things to go this way with my brother, and that my negative thinking wouldn't help matters. That when I said, before he moved in, that I was concerned I would end up with as situation similar to one with strike three housemate (see previous post), where his controlling manipulative behaviour made me feel uncomfortable in my own home, that I was being irrational.

I know she was trying to help, but I call do not agree with her. I don't think it is past negative experiences that are causing me to worry that situations will repeat themselves.

I think it's that I'm getting better at recognising the men who use their privilege to manipulate and control the women in their lives, and the more times it happens the less patience I have.  I am growing stronger and braver and I will not stand for it anymore. Some people will see me as a jumped up feminist upstart, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.

* * * * *

When my friend and I decided to dye our hair red together, she sent me a message which said

"and the red we dye our hair will be the red of rage, passion, new starts and fun times altogether."

Hell yes. Bring it on.

Why I am looking forward to moving to my new home

I've been reluctant to give to many specifics about my current housing situation as I am trying to keep a degree of semi-anonymity, but I'm coming to the realisation that if you already know me then you will know that I write this blog, and if you don't already know me the specifics I give won't be enough to conclusively work out who I am. And I can't talk coherently about what's going on at the moment without giving some context.

* * * * *

I rent a room in a 3 bedroom house that is owned by my parents, but it is in my name. It is not our family home, it is a house they bought nearly seven years ago when I was at the end of my first year of university. Put simply, the idea was that I would rent a room and be responsible for finding two other people to live with me and together the three combined rents would pay the mortgage taken out to pay for the house. This house has now gone on the market, as I've decided I don't enjoy living here anymore, and it's becoming more like a burden than a blessing. The new house I have found is one I will be renting from a private landlord, allowing me to keep separate my family situation and my living arrangement.

Living in this house has had its ups and downs, the ups being that I have had the freedom to decorate the house as I wish, and that I have had stability that I wouldn't get by renting privately. But the downside has been continually finding people to live with me. The house isn't in the part of Leeds typically favoured by students & young professionals, and whilst my room is lovely, the other two rooms aren't as great. The rent isn't extortionate, but it's not cheap, and bills are relatively high.


As the house is legally mine, I have had to handle a lot of the "landlord" responsibilities as well as also being a tenant and paying rent. Whenever a housemate claims housing benefit, it's me who has to fill in all the paperwork (and it's happened several times) and yet when I was out of work, I couldn't claim housing benefit because of the situation where I was renting from my parents/"owning my own house".
When one housemate let the bath overflow and water came through the ceiling, which then grew black mould all over it from the damp, it was me who had to clean it up when he wouldn't, even though I was effectively just a co-tenant.

* * * * *

I've had a number of good friends live here over the years and a lot of good times, but I've also had a few nightmare housemates...

Strike one
One housemate used to be a friend of mine, which made it harder when things broke down and I had to tell him I didn't want to extend his contract for another year. We'd got on well when I was younger, and enjoyed going out and drinking all the time. We'd stay up late, go out together, get drunk, have fun, and come home and carry on. I grew out of this, but he didn't. I'd been temporarily out of work, where as his unemployment continued. He lived almost completely nocturnally, which meant he had lights on all night, and he had two computers running 24hours a day. He'd go out clubbing and leave almost every light in the house on, and when I tried to suggest this was why our fuel bills were so high he said that wasn't it, that fuel was just expensive. (When he left, my next quarterly bill was over £100 lower even though it was at a colder time of year.) On the occasions he came out to feminist discos with me, he'd often hit on women and behave in an inappropriate sleazy fashion towards friends of mine leaving me embarrassed that I'd invited him out with me.
When I told him he couldn't carry on living there because I couldn't cope with living with someone like him, giving him plenty of notice to find somewhere else. He acted like I was a monster, and we lived out our last month together in awkward silence. He now lives with my sister, and whenever I go round he stays in his room, even if I'm there for Christmas dinner.

Strike Two
Then there was the housemate who came well recommended by a friend who has since admitted she would never live with him. He was also long term unemployed, and spent most of his time in his room. He refused to pay council tax as he didn't have a job, but wouldn't apply for council tax benefit as he said that was the landlord's (ie my) responsibility to sort out, which left me paying proportionally higher council tax because it clearly wasn't my responsibility to sort out, as I couldn't claim the benefit on his behalf.
When temping agencies rang up to discuss his situation (ringing up on my landline which he refused to contribute to, no less) presumably with a view to trying to find him work, he would be rude to them on the phone and then once the call had finished he would rant about how it was completely out of order for them to disturb him like that.
He would moan about having to go collect parcels from the sorting office, even though it was less than a mile from our house and he had plenty of time to go get them what with not having a job.
He also seemed to lack the social skills to know when a conversation had run it's course, meaning that you would often get trapped in conversations with him for literally hours unless you bluntly and forcefully excused yourself from the conversation. He was incredibly negative, and we didn't get on at all.
Halfway through a year long contract, I knew I couldn't live with him for another year, so I politely told him, with six months notice, that I wouldn't be renewing his contract and he would need to find somewhere else. He took this badly, claiming that he now had "another thing to worry about", presumably another thing on top of getting your rent paid, and not having to pay council tax, and being paid to sit around in your room listening to music. Boo fucking hoo.

Strike Three
Another housemate started off not as a housemate, but as the boyfriend of a housemate I got on really well with. He stayed over a lot, and we got on reasonably well, so eventually it was decided he should go on the contract with her and contribute properly to rent and bills. There were a few things I didn't like about him, like his tendancy to control and manipulate my housemate/his girlfriend by sulking when he didn't get his way, or kicking off when he was upset so that she compromised her position for an easier life, but I figured that was their relationship and not my problem. That was a misjudment on my part, because it soon became my problem. Controlling men will try and control anyone in their life where they think they can get away with it
The day his new contract began, his behaviour got a lot worse. I came home from work to find he had emptied the entire contents of my garage (which he didn't rent as part of his tenancy agreement). He was sat on the roof of his car, overseeing the contents of my garage, which was now piled up all over my lawn. As I walked up the street to the house (on my way from work), he shouted out to me that he was wondering when I was going to be home, as we needed to "sort all this shit out". He started going through the items one at a time, suggesting things we could get rid of. This was my stuff, a rocking horse I had when I was a child, a bicycle that had great sentimental value but couldn't be ridden since someone had kicked the front wheel in. Bits of wood and paint from when various work had been done on the house. The sort of stuff that you keep in a garage basically, but that crucially was not his to move around or get rid of.

I tried to explain that he was out of order, calmly at first, but when he wouldn't listen, getting more upset and agitated. He then told me I should go inside to have a cup of tea and calm down, so I told him to put the stuff back and left him to it. A short while passed, and it started to drizzle at which point he got cross because no one was helping him put the stuff back in the garage. His girlfriend agreed with me that he was completely out of order, and 'had a word with him' but it seemed to have little effect.

The second incident with him came about because my bike that I used for riding everywhere needed some work doing to the back wheel, something to do with the sprocket. I hadn't had chance to sort it out immediately, as the bike repair shop was a way away from my house so I was waiting til I had a day off. On my day off, I went into the garage to get the part of my bike that needed fixing to take to the shop, only to find that he had moved it. I tried to ring him to ask him what he had done with, but it rang out and then went to answerphone. So I went to the shop and bought a new part instead of fixing the old one, and returned fully pissed off. When I challenged him about it, and explained that it wasn't his bike to touch and that he had massively inconvenienced me, and that I tried to call him to ask where it was before having to give up a new part, he told me his phone hadn't rung. I repeated that I *had* rung him, at which point he asked aggressively if I "was I calling him a liar".  I snapped. It wasn't just the bike, or the garage, it was those two things as symptoms of his desire to control people around him, of his disregard for other peoples feelings or possessions.
He also owed me over £300 in bills, as all the bills in were in my name and came out of my account, and had to be paid on time. He had been claiming he didn't have the money as he had been out of work for a while (and he was self employed.)
I told him I didn't want him to live there anymore, and that I was giving him a month's notice (as I could do legally as per his contract.) At this point he stopped making eye contact and acted like he was very engrossed in his computer and said "fine, whatever you want, I don't care". He moved out a week later and his girlfriend went with him, and I still have concerns about their relationship, and the control he has. I tried to discuss them with her before they left but she didn't want to hear me. Fortunately, I did get my money back before he left.

* * * * *

These three men ultimately made me feel uncomfortable in my own home. The stress of having to keep finding new people to move in, and the risk that it could dissolve into another one of these situations made me realise that any benefits I got from living here were not worth it. It's not like a situation where if you rent a house with a group of friends, and things don't work out, you can leave. This was my house, and what started off being stability ended up being something I felt shackled too. So I spoke to my parents, and we decided to put the house on the market. It was decided that once this house sold, they would buy somewhere for my brother and his girlfriend to live in.

And then, as a temporary measure, and because he needed somewhere to live and I had a spare room, and because our parents effectively own the house, my younger brother moved in less than a month ago. Slowly at first, and then all at once, things became very unpleasant, as I will explain in my next post.

The Life That is Waiting

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."  

(Joseph Campbell)

I bought these flowers last week from my favourite plant nursery, the Vale Stables in Meanwood. I discovered the nursery when I was going for a walk with two of my friends last year, along the ridge of woodland in between Meanwood and Woodhouse, heading towards Meanwood Park.
It's absolutely charming, like a nature trail where the specimens are for sale, with plants in teapots and boots and a chair made out of horseshoes. At the centre of it all the people who run the nursery sit round an outdoor stove hanging out and drinking tea. They also sell firewood, and I'm sure I remember there being chickens roaming around at one point. On one visit I saw a cat who was the *spitting image* of a cat I used to know. 

I've been talking about moving house for a while now, but I now have a house to move to and a date to move in. The new house is in Meanwood, a hop, skip and a jump away from the woods and the nursery, and it's ours from mid May.

We'll have a cellar to keep our wine in, and I'll finally have the attic bedroom I've been dreaming of since I left home nearly nine years ago. The two alcoves in the living room could have been made for my pair of 6ft bookcases. There's a lovely light bathroom I can grow houseplants in, which is something I've been longing for after living in a house with a bathroom with an extractor fan instead of a window for the last seven years.

But in order to move into this new house that is waiting, I have to leave behind my home of seven years. This house has seen me through so much, so many relationships have begun and ended whilst I've lived here, so many housemates have moved in and out.  The cliched "good times and bad" and the weight of everything I have lived through here is suddenly pressing heavily on my heart.

I have a month to work out how to give this part of my life the respectful goodbye it deserves, before moving on to the life that is waiting. I want to take it all with me, in case I leave the wrong things behind. I want to hold on to every last memory, everything every person ever said to me in this house, every regret and every celebration.
I've spent the past seven years building a shrine to the person I promised myself I would become but now I finally have a chance dismantle it, and build something new.