Not My Father's Son

by Alan Cumming

my theory that Shakespeare, if he were alive today, would be writing for TV. But somewhere classy, though.)

Memory is so subjective. We all remember in a visceral, emotional way, and so even if we agree on the facts—what was said, what happened where and when—what we take away and store from a moment, what we feel about it, can vary radically.

It’s hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I’m sad to say that this method works. If you don’t give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy.

All I know is that I am the product of all the experiences I have had, good and bad, and if I am in a happy place in my life (as I truly am), then I can have no regrets about any of the combination of events and circumstances that have led me to the here and now.

It was great to be able to see him, not just hear him, and for this I am grateful to modern technology. But at the same time, seeing the one you love but not being able to touch, when their comfort is what you crave most, actually makes you feel worse, and more depleted, than if you had not seen them at all.

The most important opinion, of both my work and my conduct in life, is my own.

You can’t go through sustained cruelty and terror for a large swathe of your life and not talk about it and be okay. It bites you in the arse big time.

For yes, being a woman, even one with a penis and for the purposes of drama, really made me feel that women have been coerced into a way of presenting themselves that is basically a form of bondage. Their shoes, their skirts, even their nails seem designed to stop them from being able to escape whilst at the same time drawing attention to their sexual and secondary sexual characteristics. And I think that has happened so that men feel they can ogle them and protect them in equal measure.

my belief that it’s really important to be honest and open and to have no skeletons in the closet. Cos, you know, the truth can hurt, but not knowing can hurt more.”

the scariest thing about abuse of any shape or form, is, in my opinion, not the abuse itself, but that if it continues it can begin to feel commonplace and eventually acceptable.