It took a lot for me to commit to watching Michaela Coles’ I May Destroy You, I didn’t need another series to convince myself of her excellence as a writer and actress, I had already fallen in love with her through Chewing Gum. The question was never, would I enjoy I May Destroy You? It was rather, when is the right time to commit to something that I knew would force me to be so introspective. I don’t regret waiting, the impact of the series on my life actually came at exactly the right moment. 

I haven’t written a word in months, I haven’t even tried. It always takes experiencing other people’s writing to remind me of how powerful it really is to share stories, and I May Destroy You is one of the most undeniable examples of what representation of experience can do for people. To a naïve viewer, I May Destroy You, is a seemingly never-ending reel of trauma, but what I value so much is Michaela Coles refusal to hold back, she didn’t depict the trauma of the series’ characters as isolated, uncommon incidences. She revealed sexual assault for what it is, a common place occurrence, that can happen multiple times, in quick succession to both you and the people around you. 

Straight after finishing the series, I knew I wanted to write. There were seemingly endless threads of thought I could have picked up and made sense of in my own words, but at the time of watching, there was one specific theme that I couldn’t leave untouched. I May Destroy You, reaffirmed something I had been going over and over in my own head at the time, that in the wake of trauma, it often takes a team to heal an individual.  While protagonist Arabella must ultimately find resolve within herself, the series serves to show us that her steps forward are always guided by the support of friends. Where main characters often overshadow other cast members, best friends Kwame and Terry are just as central to the plots progression and the series themes as Arabella herself.

Challenges to our sense of self that we encounter so frequently throughout our early twenties are sometimes only reaffirmed by the people who remind us of who we are to them. These people don’t always congratulate our errors or affirm our misjudgements but they reassure us that despite our personal flaws and mistakes, we exist as valuable parts of each other. Perhaps I am not entirely whole as a solitary individual, and this concept can be poked and prodded and questioned by anyone who cares enough to dive into the logistics of it. But I am an amalgamation of the people I know, I borrow their mannerisms and reclaim their sayings as my own, but when I do this it is because these are the very best parts of them in my eyes, these are things that I hold close to me, that reassure me, like the familiar comfort of a favourite jumper or a childhood toy, they remind me of who I am. And while we all, in a sense, become united by these collective brandings, we are individuals who fuel each other’s sense of self. 

Perhaps I would not be wholly confident in who I was if I were to be stripped of these people, if they were to disappear and I were to be forced to exist entirely independently of anyone else, and perhaps there is a complete, untouchable power in being so completely, uniquely alone. But for me, the friendships I share, the ones that wholeheartedly reaffirm me as me every time I am knocked down, are what make me whole, and stop me from falling off the beaten track. Much like in Arabella’s case, justice isn’t always served, and where we often look for validation and closure in the people who have hurt us, accepting that this may never come can be entirely isolating, it may destroy us. But no one that has hurt you or caused you trauma can truly validate your emotions, and we have to learn slowly not to give them any more power over the way we feel. Arabella plays out multiple endings where the possibility of confrontation might cure her, because we all dream of being given a space to justify ourselves to the people who have weakened us, to be able to speak face to face without interruption, for them to just listen. But even given the chance to replicate how they made you feel, as Arabella does with her rapist, does not end in any kind of satisfying resolve. 

Friendships exist as testaments to who we are without our trauma. The people whose identities we raise up in a crowd of acquaintances, whose names and work we shout out loudly about, they serve as reminders of the traits we value. What’s so beautiful about I May Destroy You’s central trio, is that each character is inherently flawed, they are complex beings who have destroyed people themselves and who are wholly capable of destroying each other. But where they do at times, fall apart, personally hurt by one of the others misjudgements, they heal and resolve accordingly. Even after acknowledging their wrongs they are capable of affirming what they know to be true, who each of them really is. Friendships come with the burden of second-hand trauma, we feel the pain, guilt and anxiety of anyone we hold close, but these are mutual bonds of affirmation, I will pick you up as many times as is necessary, on the understanding you will always do the same for me. For me, these bonds represented the hope within I May Destroy You, they were the warmth within the unflinching portrayals of life shattering experience.