on suppressed feelings and stories and the epic two-year court battle i can't write about
an update from the cracks
Back when I worked as a style writer at a newspaper, I received many letters like this:
Dear Leah,
How on earth can you write about the return of thigh-high boots when there’s a terrible war raging in the Middle East?
To which I’d reply:
Dear Mister,
For Money.
Most (but not all) of these letters were from old and inexplicably angry men. Part of it, of course, was straight-up sexism. The cranks, I realised, had stumbled across something in their High Brow Paper of Record they felt was silly and beneath them, but which they also found strangely stirring. This fizzy sensation (arousal) made them feel conflicted and by extension, vulnerable. Because vulnerability is an uncomfortable feeling, the cranks then catalysed it into blame. But who to blame…? The writer of course! To discharge their anger, they then sat down and wrote me a letter, licked a stamp and popped it in the post.
What astonished me about these responses wasn’t the obvious: sexism (endemic), but the sheer boneheadedness. A broadsheet is a curated collection of stories which serves a large number of reader interests. Admonishing a style reporter for writing about fashion was as ludicrous as shouting at the stock boy in the Walmart the toiletry department for re-shelving bath salts when he could be restocking bread and milk because people need food to survive. The cranks believed they were making a killer argument when in fact they were just lashing out to make themselves feel safe.
When we refuse to acknowledge big scary emotions like vulnerability or fear, this is often what happens: Our feelings come back again but this time they trick us by masquerading as savviness and superiority. Our arguments become muddled and stupid. This is how suppressed emotions get the better of us in the end.
I’ve been thinking about all the nasty letters lately because I’ve been feeling a bit cranky myself. All my life people have been telling me to shut up. My career, for better or worse, is a testament to the fact I don’t take well to it.
For a couple of years now I’ve had to shut up, by law. As a writer who specialises in narrative non-fiction, memoir and long-form investigative journalism, it’s strange to suddenly find myself at the centre of a real life epic court battle that truly beggars belief and — weirder still — find I am forbidden from telling it.
Technically I could be subject to a massive fine or even go to jail for discussing my case with anyone but my lawyer, even verbally among friends (for instance at a dinner party). This is madness of course, but the British courts take their publication bans very seriously for good reason (see phone hacking). The fact that all family court proceedings have, until quite recently, been subject to a complete publication ban is an absolute travesty for women and children, who are disproportionately the victims of all manner of abuse including, most notably, financial abuse and coerced debt, which the system itself reinforces by making it impossible for anyone who is not either wealthy or actually starving to access legal counsel.
In order to qualify for Legal Aid in the UK, you need to be poor as well as have demonstrable material evidence of domestic violence (not just abuse but physical assault) in the form of hospital records, witness statements and/or police reports. The application process alone is agonising, it took me six months. I will write more about my experience of qualifying for Legal Aid at some point in future, but suffice to say the UK Family Courts are about as inclusive as the Garrick Club. 1
Fighting this battle in court has thrown my family’s life in to financial chaos. This crisis is longer just a part of my life, it is my life. I used to want to write about it in order to contain it somehow, but lately it’s become so maddeningly Kafka-esque even I can barely bring myself to talk about it with my own family. In truth, I’d rather talk about the election. Or the wars. That’s why I haven’t written about it much lately, even in oblique terms as I’m doing now. For those of you who’ve been following my story since the beginning, please know it’s not because the battle is over. In fact it’s barely begun.
For privacy reasons what follows will be for paid subscribers only. If you or someone you know is in a similar situation, please message me directly and I will make an exception on compassionate grounds and lower the paywall.
This much I can share with without breaking the law: