women are my lifeline

i was eighteen, and i had drank myself into the kind of state where the entire night tips a little gold into the corners and you feel adoration for every stranger you meet in the bathroom.

i had wandered off, looking for the loo, or the smoking area, i can’t quite remember which, and when i came back every girl i had come out with had dissolved into the dark and noise of the nightclub. (later, when i had better phone signal, i unlocked my phone to see a long string of missed calls and texts — it turned out we were playing cat and mouse, trying to find one another). but, unable to find them, i started walking.

york at that hour, with my heels swinging from one hand and my handbag in the other, was the loveliest thing i had ever laid eyes on. the minster sat floodlit above the rooftops, shifting into view at the end of every street. over the river ouse, i stood watching the water, dark beneath the night sky as it dragged the streetlights out into long rippling ribbons. i meandered down cobbled lanes, past dark tearooms and cute bow-fronted shop windows. each street was dressed in a warm glow of fairy lights. and there wasn’t another soul in sight.

i felt safe there. it was a drastic contrast to the city i grew up in (which i would never, at any cost, walk through alone at night).

i made it across the city, feeling light as anything, and hopped onto the last bus.

the bus was almost empty. every window was furred over with breath and i pressed my forehead against the cold of the glass. i started to drift off into a light sleep, before we’d pulled off the kerb.

i woke up to a hand on my shoulder and two faces leaning in over me from the behind seat. two girls i had never laid eyes on before, presumably the same age as me. one of them had a few streaks of glitter across her cheekbone, and was wearing a dress far too thin for october (which told me she was a northerner, like myself, before i even heard her accent). the other girl was holding a fat paper packet of chips against her chest like a hot water bottle (my kinda girl).

one of them was already unscrewing a fresh bottle of water. she pressed it into my hand and folded my fingers shut around it, prompting me to drink it in the manner you’d speak to a much younger sister in. the other girl grabbed a handful of her chips, still warm and greasy, and placed them in my other hand. without a word, i shovelled them into my mouth and gulped down the water, still feeling a little drowsy.

then one of them said something that snapped me out of the daze.

“a friend of mine, back in manchester, was followed home and attacked a few months ago” she confessed.

my eyes suddenly pinged open.

noticing how concerned i looked now, she added “i know it’s less likely to happen here, but we saw you sitting alone and wanted to make sure you get home safe”.

of course, not wanting to be a burden, i unconvincingly told them i would be absolutely fine. but, they firmly stated that it wasn’t a question, nor up for debate. they were taking me home, whether i liked it or not.

the three of us got off the bus at my stop, which i later found out was two miles past their own. they walked me to my flat, with one of them on either side of me, an arm hooked through each of mine. they weren’t exactly sober themselves, so we swayed in unison down the road, talking utter nonsense.

they waited until the door locked behind me before walking away, back into the dark. i watched them from my window before briefly opening it to yell “thank yoooooou!!!” in the midst of the night. the sheer volume clearly startled them before they broke into laughter, waving goodbye and blowing kisses.

i woke the next morning with a thumping headache and a text from a number i hadn’t saved: “just making sure you got in okay last night x”

we exchanged messages for day or two, but i never did see either of them again. that, i have found, is usually how it goes.

i have turned that night over so many times. it feels so remarkable, yet when i look deeper, it’s actually quite ordinary for womanhood.

the story we are raised on tells it the other way around.

you are the girl in a tower or the hundred-year slumber, and your only hope of survival is if a man you have never met comes in, probably on a horse, wearing armour, and carries you out. but, at least for me, that was never true. it has been, every single time, a woman coming to my rescue.

and it reaches back so much further than either of us could have seen. somewhere right now, as you read this, a woman is typing “home safe x” to another woman.

it happens millions of times a night, this small census we take of one another, this counting of heads in the dark.

“text me when you’re in, doesn’t matter how late”.

my mother did it to me. i did it to my friends. their mothers did it to them.

it is the oldest love letter there is, passed down the female line, and underneath all its wording it only ever says one thing: please. just get home.

we are told the deepest love is the love that knows you. they say, to be loved is to be known, right?

that love is real, and i would lie down in traffic for mine.

but there is another love that asks even less, and i am no longer sure it isn’t the purer of the two: the love of a woman who does not know you from anyone, who owes you nothing, who wants nothing back and slips away before you can thank her, and who steps out into the cold for you anyway, for no reason on this earth beyond the fact that she is a woman and you are a woman and the night is what it is.

nobody writes songs about her.

she isn’t in the fairy tale.

she got off at the wrong stop and went home and never told a soul.

and she has saved more of us than a knight in shining armour ever could.

i have carried those two girls with me since that night, like a debt i have made my peace with never clearing. they changed me.

now, if i am ever in trouble, and my fiancé and father (who would charge through flames and tear the world apart just to reach me) are simply too far away, i already know my hand will reach out for woman first.

so i spent the following years trying to become one of them.

i have walked women home at 3am.

i have crouched on the sticky tiles of more nightclub bathrooms than i’d care to admit, gathering a near-stranger’s hair into my hand while she was sick into the bowl.

i have stood guard over a drink, one hand flat across the top of it while she had her back turned.

i have become a woman’s girlfriend for ninety seconds. they grab your hand whilst announcing to a creepy guy who won’t leave her alone “look, this is my girlfriend”. you never question it. you just step straight into the role until he finally wanders off.

i have caught a woman’s eye across a bar, held it, and tipped my head a half-inch towards the man who’d been hovering around her for far too long.

once, i lightly shoved a man who would not leave my friend alone, and because he was three pints past standing up properly he went over backwards like a deck chair, and somehow that became my problem, so i spent the rest of my friend’s birthday on the wrong side of a velvet rope, arguing with the incompetent security guard.

there was never going to be a prince from a fairytale coming to rescue us.

there was only ever this.

a long line of frightened women reaching back for the next one.

women are my lifeline.

-o.c.