I began International Women’s Day by injuring myself. It was Sunday morning and I was having a swim with my kids when I slipped, crashing down hard on the edge of the top step.
Twisting in midair (sounds acrobatic but I think it was just a fluke), I narrowly avoided landing on my coccyx and my bum cheek bore the brunt of it but the agony was intense.
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Instantly, I cried out in pain, my face contorting while my children watched in horror right in front of me. “Mum, are you OK? Mum! Mum!” they cried, immediately swimming over to me. Through the blinding pain, the kind that takes your breath from you, I heard their fear and quickly tried to reassure them. “I’m OK,” I said in a strangled voice, hoping that was in fact true. “It’s OK.”
Over the next 72 hours, as the red mark on my bum turned into the most extraordinary bruise I’ve ever seen, I began to take a peverse pride in how bad it looked. “Look at my bruise!” I kept saying, pulling my pants down at every opportunity to show them. I never knew human skin could turn so many colours all at once.
You want to see it, don't you? Here we go (click here to see Mia's bruise in all its glory).
I was part amused, part enthralled by it, mostly because it didn't hurt very badly. Soon though, I started to think about it in a different, unsettling way.
My bruise had been caused by an accident, but what if I'd been injured deliberately? What if someone — someone who claimed to love me — had hit me or kicked me or pushed me over? Shoved me into furniture? What if my children had witnessed that instead of just me falling? They were terrified enough to see me so vulnerable and hurt. Their safety, their security, their whole lives are anchored to mine and their father's. In their minds, the safety and wellbeing of their parents is inextricably linked to their own.