Perspective
Nothing - not rejection letters, not weak book sales, not even bad reviews - could compare to what James Rhodes has been through.
As a writer, I admire his dogged determination to see his work to publication.
As a human, I admire that small bubble of buoyancy he's kept alive inside of him despite the horrific things that have happened in his life.
If you are unfamiliar with James' story, click here.
Excerpt of article by Cherrybatched:
"He said he hoped his book would help other survivors of abuse to find the courage to speak up, and that 'it will inspire those in pain to find solace in music'.
Rhodes was repeatedly raped while a pupil at the junior school at Arnold House, a preparatory school for boys in St John’s Wood, north London. His abuser was Peter Lee, who worked at the school part-time, as a boxing coach. Lee was recently arrested and charged, but died before he could be brought to trial.
A graphic passage in Rhodes’s memoir, quoted in the supreme court judgment, describes what happened to him:
“Abuse. What a word. Rape is better. Abuse is when you tell a traffic warden to fuck off. It isn’t abuse when a 40-year-old man forces his cock inside a six-year-old boy’s ass. That doesn’t even come close to abuse. That is aggressive rape. It leads to multiple surgeries, scars (inside and out), tics, OCD, depression, suicidal ideation, vigorous self-harm, alcoholism, drug addiction, the most fucked-up of sexual hang-ups, gender confusion (‘you look like a girl, are you sure you’re not a little girl?’), sexuality confusion, paranoia, mistrust, compulsive lying, eating disorders, PTSD, DID (the shinier name for multiple personality disorder) and so on and on and on.
“I went, literally overnight, from a dancing, spinning, gigglingly alive kid who was enjoying the safety and adventure of a new school, to a walled-off, cement-shoed, lights-out automaton. It was immediate and shocking, like happily walking down a sunny path and suddenly having a trapdoor open and dump you into a freezing cold lake.”
Comments