Monday 20 April 2015

THAT TIME I GOT MORTAL - THE BIG MISTAKE


I have been watching the reality show GEORDIE SHORE recently. It's pretty mindless TV so it's good background entertainment whilst plodding around at home. The only thing is, each episode seems eerily the same. They:

1) Get dressed up to go out
2) The pre-drink at home...
3) They go out
4) They get smashed
5) People start "necking" on..
6) Someone does something they shouldn't
7) Someone cries
8) They go home all stumbling around fall over... a lot!
9) They do more things that they shouldn't
10) They all sleep with each other

That's my GS review in a nutshell. Still... I watch it...lol

It triggered a memory in me of something I shouldn't have done, a memory I tried to bury deep for it conjures up feelings of shame and embarrassment. Yup... SHAME.... we have all felt that at one point or another and we have all made mistakes. I think you know what I may be referring to. We have all been there. I feel brave enough to share my mistake with you all now because it may help someone to stop and think about what they doing and getting themselves in to a potentially dangerous situation.

"Dangerous? Did she just say dangerous? I thought she was going to tell us about that one time (at band camp) she did the walk of shame?".

Well... I am, so hear me out!

I was travelling in Europe and without giving away where I was or who I was with... I woke up one morning in a hostel dorm room, as you do. There was 8-10 beds in there, all bunks and it smelt like travellers and dirty laundry. The problem is... This was not my dorm room. I have committed a cardinal sin of backpacking travelling and woke up along side someone in a dorm that wasn't mine, thankfully we were on the bottom bunk with a sheet shield around us but as people woke in their beds gradually I noticed one thing familiar about all of these people.... they were all men.

So I am sure many of you have travelled and stayed in hostels. You always come across a time where someone is getting a little funky freaky action going on and the metal bed is creaking, swaying and groaning (and people are groaning and moaning) and it's so uncomfortable and you just can't sleep a wink while it's going on. You would even go sleep out in the hall if that was quieter and your earplugs have gone missing, of course! That couch at reception is seeming mighty fine right now! It's so uncomfortable when you see them in the morning, it's sometimes a blessing that your train leaves early and you are out of there before they emerge from under the covers.

Here I was, as the bodies rustled and turned and then gradually woke up. The European summer sun already well up and peaking in past the dodgy floral curtains. My bright blue bra in clear sight, the sheet slowly falling away from it's tucked position in the top bunk to reveal a semi naked me.... oh dear lord! How do I get dressed?! How do I get out!!!???

The problem with this situation is actually more serious and dangerous than I thought at the time. Yes, I got clothed somehow, yes I was travelling with this guy for a couple of days so i somewhat new him, yes I did the walk of shame and yes the dickhead never spoke to me again after we parted ways... apart from feeling like complete shit after it all isn't the worst of it.

I woke up IN A ROOM FULL OF STRANGE MEN, and I was the only woman.

In this world anything could have happened. The guy I was travelling with may not have been the person he appeared to be and we were under the influence of alcohol. He could have been a real bastard (actually, he is a bastard but that's beside the point!)... and taken advantage of me and invited his friends, if they were his friends. Who knows who those men were, where they were from, what they were like. All of them against me and being drunk, I would have had no protection. Anything could have happened, things could have been a lot worse. I think they were all passed out of heavy drinking... I was lucky, this time.

So my lesson is simple. You can have fun travelling and meeting knew people and "hooking up" as the young people in Geordie Shore do. Many people are still in that "free love" mentality and sex is part of being young and free and all of that. I don't want you to stop having sex.... no, no, no, no, no, no! I just just think it's not wise to shag in a hostel room full of people you don't know, especially for a woman. My travelling friend didn't know where I was, I had no phone with me, the hostel has no reception on late at night or security... I was drunk. I could have been taken advantage of. I was also in a foreign country where English was a second language and who knew where the nearest police station was (there was no travel safe app invented yet).

It's times like that we should have both chucked in for a hotel room of our own, or better yet...I should have called it a night and gone back to my own dorm bed to pass out.

Lesson learned. I never did that again.

.....I wonder what the Geordie Shore gang are up to tonight....Mmmmmm

#travelsafewithyourmates

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