New Year, Same Fight

I have a list of women's names a mile long. Women who are no longer here because their husbands, boyfriends, exes, partners or blood relatives snuffed them out, by their own hand or a hired hand. Some of them took hours to be caught. Some months, some years. Some still haven't been. Some, like Tom Sharkey and Brian Laundrie, took justice into their own hands, slamming cases shut before they could be confronted about their cruelty. Victims' families then had to find a new way to grieve, a new way to live, a new way for life to make sense.

To those who believe this theory doesn't fit with Nicola Bulley's fate, I want to say: It must be nice to be you. It must be nice not to have ever wondered if being pregnant, having independence, having your own money, wearing certain clothes, having friends, or encountering another male at any point in your day, will get you verbally abused or worse. To not wonder if standing up to verbal abuse, or to infidelity, dishonesty, financial abuse, controlling behavior, or merely hypocritical behavior will get you physically injured or worse. I think anyone who has ever known abuse, known someone who has, or has merely read or watched material about domestic abuse victims, has the imagination to see what could have happened to Nicola.

And our lived experience, the documentaries we've watched, the books we've read, the podcasts we've listened to, the reports on abuse and femicide and homicide we've pored over, makes us, I think, open-minded to all the possibilities. Not blinkered, not tunnel-visioned. I'm as in the dark about what happened to Nicola as the next person. But I see every possibility clearly. To those who don't, I question you. I question why you are interested in this case. Why you're following it. To whom your allegiances may be. Who you even are. I am frustrated by your tired, broken-record defenses, which ignore the dozens of red flags this case has thrown up from day one, in favor of paltry, porous and clichéd explanations for why everything was just fine in the family home and, in Nicola's absence, still is.

There's no smoking gun here, but there are little wisps everywhere. Readily apparent financial problems. A welfare callout that appears to have been concealed from Nicola's parents for more than a month. An overly verbose story about a "bit of tea" and "gym stuff" that may well be innocent but is worthy of scrutiny. A too-short CCTV clip that looked doctored and explained nothing. Friends arguably played like puppets while the puppet master was mostly sat at home—again, arguably justified, but worthy of questioning. A lack of a publicly united front between partner and immediate family. Rumors from two different locals of her partner's jolly evenings at the pub in the days and weeks immediately following Nicola's disappearance. Rumors that someone close to her was controlling, constantly texting her when she was out with friends on at least one occasion, to the point that she had to leave early. More rumors from locals about public physical altercations between Nicola and her partner. (Yes, I accept and emphasize that these are all still only rumors.) A Fitbit—conveniently?—disconnected from a phone three days before her disappearance. A Fitbit whose step and heart rate data makes no coherent sense. Money grabs that were never fully rationalized and just kept coming. Witness statements that were vague and contradictory. Witness statements that, in time, vanished just like Nicola. Public and police-held CCTV footage that either doesn't exist or is being deliberately kept from view. Social media choices by her partner that suggest disrespect and a wandering eye at best, and an inclination toward infidelity at worst. (I was standing in my kitchen on February 20 when I saw that her partner had that day changed his Instagram handle to paulydances, and it made my hairs stand on end.)

I've painted a picture here, just a picture. A theory. But it is a richly detailed one, at least to me. How does it look to you? Not something you can just easily walk past, is it? It demands a closer look. I maintain that I don't know who is at the center of the picture, or rather, lurking in the background, still camouflaged. I am just imploring those who defend the source of so much confusion in this case to question that source. Question everything, including that source. If you can properly explain all of the things I've mentioned in the previous paragraph, I will gladly never speak of the domestic homicide theory ever again. That source, at the very least, knows more about what went on here. That source could, for one thing, tell us where Nicola got those bruises. If they don't know, they should want to know. Nothing indicates that they do.

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What a way to start the New Year. I rung in 2024, longtime sober person and indoor cat that I am, at home watching Superchuffer's cozy stream. It was sweet, fun and uplifting. It brought tears to my eyes at one point that he's brought all these people together, many of us first finding him because of Nicola. In the early days, early February, joining his streams felt like a warm fire in the face of something truly chilling. It's important to have those moments. Hours-long moments. But it's his deep empathy and curiosity that kept me coming back. When an event in the public consciousness raises more questions than it provides answers, we need more voices like his.

I've asked myself every day why I'm grieving a person I never knew. I think it's because death and grief of the personal variety changes us forever. My dear friend and ex-boyfriend took his own life 20 months ago and, as these things go, it was the worst pain I've ever felt, and an event that somehow changed my life for the better. Woke me up. A loss like that opens the floodgates between life and death, and the water flows back and forth eternally. Death becomes a new friend of sorts. Life becomes an old friend we've had a temporary falling out with. If you know, you know. I'd prefer to have him back, but this permanent alternative is something I've accepted, embraced. I wouldn't have it any other way, because I can't.

But the fine print is that empathy is now at volume 11. That the sensory experience of grief is felt even for people I can never know but only relate to. Women. Mothers. Women trying to find their footing after having children. Trying to find their way into intellectual, financial and ontological independence alongside their partner and children. We all have our reasons for fighting for this particular woman. I want to remind myself and all of us that it's OK to care this much about strangers. And it's OK to care about them one at a time.

Happy New Year, and thank you to every one of you who've cared so much and for so long. I couldn't do it without you.