It wasn't long - maybe thirty seconds? Less than a minute I am sure. But I can still remember the looks on their faces - one holding an arm out to hold the other back.
"Let's wait for the next one. I think she's on drugs," one said. In one of those "whispers" that isn't really a whisper. And they didn't get into the lift. It isn't them not getting into the lift that bothers me, a decade later. It's that they didn't care that they heard what I said.
It was a whisper because that's not a polite or nice thing thing to say, but it was loud because I wasn't a person enough for them to care if I heard. I think that to them I wasn't a person enough for them to think I understood.
I don't remember what I looked like that day. I assume I was crying. Was I slumped on the floor? Likely. Was I drooling? Humming? Rocking? Where is the line between unacceptable and inhumanity?
I've been thinking about it a lot this week.
Last Sunday I wasn't sure I was on the right side of that line. Terrified of the looks they might give me I pulled my shirt over my head and gave myself a slit through the collar to see out of.
And of course I knew - I knew - that even if I was still skirting the wrong side of unacceptable before I was probably way over it now, behaving in one of the ways that makes people feel like they don't need to watch their volume before making fun of someone in public.
So I put my fingers in my ears and hummed all the way home. And I laughed in the street like a mad person is what I want to say. But don't want to say. Because I don't want that to be true because (I'm not like those people/I'm probably just faking anyhow/I don't want you to talk about me as if I'm not hearing you. As if I don't count)
And I didn't fall down and I didn't see or hear anyone laugh at me. And for me, that day. That was a win.
This September I am taking part in Liptember raising money for Women's Mental Health Research and Lifeline. I'll be taking selfies every day (which I try to do anyway) wearing my liptember lipstick and posting them to my whatmyhairdoes tumblr.
(Lifeline 13 11 14)
