I always find it hard to sleep after watching I May Destroy You – it’s something I’ve heard a lot of people say. It can be haunting, complex(I cannot watch it while also looking at my phone, your brain is required to be fully alert), but mostly it can get you thinking about your own experiences.
Michaela Coel’s 12-part drama is based around a lot of biographical details (from the initial assault where she wakes up at her desk, typing, to the outing of Zain and his sexual assault on stage). But for lots of women, watching IMDY opened up a lot of triggering conversations about their own lives and experiences – foremost, of course, about their sexual experiences and how they may be viewed through a 2020 lens.
This week though, episodes nine and 10 got me (and I’m sure lots of women) thinking about the 'girl code' and the idea of ‘no woman left behind’. In other words, the dilemma about what to do when your perennially – or even just occasionally – messy friend wants to leg it/refuses to go home/doesn’t realise they need to go home/screams at you when you suggest they go home/disappears/
In episode 10, one moment of dramatic tension emerged from Arabella’s discovery that on the night she was spiked and raped, Simon (Aml Ameen) had called Terry and asked her what to do and whether he should leave Arabella. The audience has known for a few episodes that this happened. And while Terry is clearly a good friend, the panic in her eyes in recent episodes has shown her determination to ‘make’ Arabella ‘better’ is at least partially motivated by what she feels is her guilt.
‘She’s the one who gave me approval to leave,’ Simon says apparently accidentally (hmm?) revealing the truth. ‘She’s the one who forced me to lie and tell you I walked you home.’
The dilemma around leaving your friend is something that Michaela has touched on throughout the series. In episode two the friends discuss it.
‘How could he just leave?’ says Arabella about Simon that night. ‘It’s making me think back to Italy… We should make a pact never to disappear.’ Now, we understand why Terry reacts angrily, saying: ‘I told you I was going!’
‘Yeah but I’d taken so many drugs babe, I was fucked,’ says Bella.
‘I didn’t disappear, I told you I was going, you just can’t remember,’ says Terry. ‘I came and I told you. I told you,’ she says as she starts to cry while Arabella falls asleep. We see in the next episode, what did happen that night in Italy.
I’ve found myself on all sides of this, as I’m sure most of us have. I’ve put friends in taxis as they screamed at me they weren’t drunk. I’ve left friends and woke the next morning, panicked and messaging them to see where they ended up. I’ve promised not to sleep until I know they’re home, then dropped off as they veered through London. I’ve made friends call me in taxis that were decidedly dodgy pre-cheap Ubers. I’ve left and embarked on three-hour night bus journeys home as friends begged me to pay for a taxi (Uber-gen kids, you have NO idea). I’ve had screaming rows with friends I considered vulnerable trying to get them not to go home with a guy. I’ve had ‘those friends’ who always seem to make it home and have waved off worried acquaintances away with a ‘Oh don’t worry she’s always fine’. I know horror stories that aren’t mine to share of what can happen when friends are left alone. When I was spiked, my friends did stay with me. The only thing that calmed the anxiety the next day was their constant reassurance about what happened every second of that night - that they were with me and saw what was happening at all times, until they realised, and took me home.
‘If I didn’t leave you, none of this would’ve happened,’ says Simon.
Most of us have had our fair share of tackling the wasted friend, or being the wasted friend. Sarah tells me, ‘I was a total nightmare. I remember once my friend put me in a taxi, and I just scooted out the other side, let myself out and ran off down the road like a gremlin. My friends were amazing, but honestly, I’d have ditched me on several occasions. It’s a weird one because it’s one of those things that ‘girl code’ is very clear on, but we’ve all had those friends who are such a handful that it becomes impossible or wrecks every night out, and that in itself is pretty corrosive behaviour. But then my sister is 13 years younger than me and is a massive faller asleep in the corner-er on nights out, and I’m always really grateful that her mates are really ace and always get her home.’
‘If I didn’t leave you, none of this would’ve happened,’ says Simon.
Is that true? In some ways, factually, yes. If he’d stuck by Arabella’s side, physically, it couldn’t have happened. Would it have happened if he’d accidentally, rather than purposefully have turned his back on her, though? And would it just have happened to another woman in the bar if it hadn’t been Arabella.
Yet again, Coel refuses to turn to the obvious though, when she seeks to answer whether the girl code of ‘never leave a friend’ stands up or not. As she meets Terry in a bar, and it becomes clear Arabella knows Simon called her that night, we are ready for confrontation.
‘You are amazing,’ Arabella says, instead. ‘Thank you for being a really great friend and looking after me this past year.’ The pair repeat their mantra: ‘You birth is my birth, your death is my death.’
It’s disarming – what we thought was the dramatic build, wasn’t after all really. Perhaps Arabella feels Terry has absolved herself? Maybe. Perhaps it’s going to be taken further in the final two episodes, and it’s not done. Perhaps, as with how she later reviewed her argument with Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), Arabella has realised that things just aren’t as straightforward as right or wrong. We’re all living in the grey Sliding Doors moments where one day it’s fine, the next day the same actions are not.
Perhaps Arabella also realises the innate unfairness of Simon asking Terry for ‘approval’ (even to use his words!) to leave her. That he put Terry in an impossible position, laying any future blame at her door rather than taking responsibility and actual care for her himself. He used her as a safety-net for future wrongs. Unfairly.
Undoubtedly it’s also about Arabella realising something more – through her father. ‘You left the window open!’ her father says at dinner with her mum and brother, recounting a time they were apparently robbed. ‘How else do you think they got in?’ Arabella flashes back saying, ‘Oh no, it was me…’ before her father says it doesn’t matter because ‘The past is the past.'
'She’s asking where the blame lies and I’m telling her,’ he laughs. ‘Struggle in this country for decades and lose everything in a few hours, because of this wonderful tyrant!’
The truth, as we then see, was more complex, involving her father’s infidelity. But it’s not just that which Arabella comes away with. She – or we – come away understanding that laying the blame is far more complex and that often, we can look to attribute blame the wrong way and often to cover for our own faults.
Yes, if you leave a friend you’re ‘opening the window’ to what might happen to them. But, ultimately, an open window is only a problem if someone, with ulterior motives tries to break in. Not to even get into whether that person really did leave the window open, or just thought they did.
In other words, while we (and Terry) flagellate ourselves with girl code, there’s only ever really one person to blame for a sexual assault. In the same way we no longer blame outfits, lifestyle and sexual history when we talk about rape, Coel, in tricking us into believing ‘being left’ was going to be the dramatic denouement has reminded us once again: No-one is to blame for sexual assault but the perpetrator.
READ MORE: We Can’t Stop Thinking About The Period Sex Scene In I May Destroy You