The new house II

The small town that I came from marked me out as being different from everyone new that I came across. It was said that I was posh, stuck up, teachers pet - yet I didn't really know what these things meant.

I felt sad and very alone. I realised that I had never been in a situation where I didn't know anyone and I had no knowledge of how to get passed it.

On the long bus ride to school each morning I would sit on my own at the front of the bus, too scared to walk further into their den. For half an hour I would try to sit without a reaction as various things were thrown at me. Some missing but many hitting the spot. I spent a lot of break times at that school trying to wash away spit or pull gum from my long hair.

About two weeks into our new house, a large group of older kids followed me from the bus. Spitting, tripping, slapping and calling me names. I tried my hardest not to listen and I tried to block out their words and concentrate on counting how many steps it was from the bus to my house - 539 if you are interested. I ran the last few and my tormentors also picked up pace. As I neared my gate my brother stepped into the path. I guess that I gave him quite a shock. Long hair mangled from their pulling and tears streaming down my face with a crowd of thugs in hot pursuit.

He didn't stop to ask any questions. To him it was plain to see what I was running away from. The thugs disbanded but my bro chased the biggest boy ruby tackling him as he tried to leg it around the back of a neighbours house. The street was suddenly silent. None of the taunts or shouting that there had been and I could feel a collective gasp as my brother rammed the biys head into the wall behind him.

"If you ever touch my little sister again you will be sorry." he said.

"and you can tell all of you looser friends too. Do you understand? If she so much as comes home with a single hair out of place I will come for you. Got it?"

It seemed the leader of the gang wasn't all that after all. My bro said that there was a wet patch on the driveway when he left him stunned and embarassed. I didn't feel my brothers victory though and refused to look at or speak to my family for days.

I was embarassed by their bullying and mortified that my brother had proved that bullying really does work.

From then on they left me alone. The estate kids kind of accepted me but I knew that it was only because they were scared of my brother, still it did make my life easier.

The next House

I can't really say that I ever 'lived' in that house.

Our first night there is lost to me. No matter how hard I think I cannot bring it back into reality. There were odd things that were alien to me. The toilet was not in the main bathroom, the kitchen small and the garden unloved. They are things that would become my norm over the passing months.

As I stepped out of that car - my life had changed beyond all recognition - I just didn't know it.

There was just the three of us now. My mum, my sister and I. My brothers 19 and 18 chose not to make the move with us and there was this unsaid vibe that stopped me from asking about the whereabouts of my father.

Yet boxes and boxes of my brothers unwanted belongings filled the largest bedroom of the tiny little house and my sister and I crammed in on top of each other in a room no bigger than the bunk bed that we shared.

It's easy to see now, that I was in shock. I was nine years old, leaving school on Friday to be wrenched away from everything that I knew to be true.

Monday for me meant a new school. I had come from a small town. Everyone knew everyone else. All of my siblings had passed through the schools before me, my two best friends were born one day either side of me, our mothers meeting whilst confined to the hospital ward and us children thrown together in friendship forever (or so we thought).

I had never had to do anything alone before. Strength in numbers - if my siblings reputation didn't proceed me. Today really was the first day of the rest of my life.

I can't recall going there, to school with my mum on my first day - but I know (hope) that she wouldn't have sent me alone. Again - another marker of that traumatic time in my young life that is missing from my memory.

I do remember a few things from that first day - like what I was wearing (homemade maroon dungarees), what was for lunch (fish fingers and chips) and that from that very first day, my card was marked.

The Old House....

There I was, jammed in between the boxes, driving away from my beloved home.

I loved, that house with all my heart – and I search regularly on the internet, hoping that one day I can buy it back and return to my happy ever after. Of course in my whole grown up life, I have never seen it for sale.

As a child, it was a strange place to live. A house full of spooky goings on but nothing that ever put me on edge or worried me. Nothing that was ever said aloud but felt by us all.

Built in Georgian times the house was a shadow of it’s former self and long since spilt into three dwellings.

The interior simply didn’t pan out to the spirits that roamed and I would often spring out into the hallway outside my room expecting to see someone there when there was just a faint smell of cologne or a sharp chill.

But to me that was simply part of being in that house. Some of my friends felt it too – and not in a good way. Not all of them liked to come over and play. Our house was often suddenly chilly, draughty and void of sound.

When I dream, I'm always in that house. Like it's part of me - through and through. As my life has moved forward - as I have grown into a mother myself, in my dreams my children play there - in my house, as I did as a child.

My sister.....

I grew up in a small Town not unlike the one that I have chosen to settle in with my own family. I loved it there. I had lived there all my life.

We, as a family knew everyone - and everyone knew us. My paternal grandfather and my father's brother's family lived there too. Though not close emotionally we were all tied by geography.

I am the youngest of four children. I have two brothers who are ten and nine years my senior and a sister - seven years older.

We are not - and have never been a close family. From my earliest memory I have been told that I was a mistake. Maybe that was meant in jest - but it has been said to me so many times through my life that it has become an engrained part of who I am.

I've always looked up to my brothers. But they are not of the same generation as me - and in fact I now also have two children myself with a ten year age gap and I can see the love and admiration in the little ones eyes every time he looks at his big bro. He is his hero, plain and simple.

For me it was a little different with them being boys and me being a girl - but I loved being allowed to sit in with bro no2 when he was on his illegal CB radio - I thought he was the coolest.

Things with my sister are and have always been a little different. When I came along she was seven and used to being my parents number one and only brown eyed girl.

My father was/is a photographer and their are piles and piles of images frozen in time from the period before I was born but next to nothing to celebrate me.

There was a time - before I realised that she hated me, that I would have done anything for her. After all she's the only sister I have. We shared a room for most of my childhood and I wanted to be her friend more than anything.

I was seven when I first realised that she hated me with every ounce of her soul.

It was the summer. Both of my parents worked full time. The boys were by sixteen and seventeen and off doing whatever boys of that age did in the late 1970's. Getting high and listening to heavy metal.

By contrast my under achieving sister was landed with looking after me - day in day out whilst our parents worked.

The first week of the holiday, I remember was pretty cool. I trailed round after her and her friends. Around the park, up the canal, across the fields. I didn't complain - I was just happy to be around them.

The second week - something changed. Off our parents went to work and we went up to get dressed.

"You're not coming with me today", she informed me - and threw 10p onto my bed.

"keep yourself entertained - I'll be back before they get home from work."

And that was it for me.... Off she went with her pals. I was ruining her cred. Not cool to have your little sister hanging around.

That summer - the summer when I was seven - the same age as my beautiful daughter is now. I roamed fields, canals, streets and building sites looking for something - anything to keep me entertained. Always on the understanding that if I wanted my 10p to spend on sweets that I would be back home by 4pm.

And I was - I didn't let her down. But it frightens me to death to think of my little girl in my childhood shoes....

The wrath of my sister came the day that she didn't turn up to pick me up from school. I was in the first year of Juniors - so year 3. Her upper school was just around the corner and came out five minutes before us.

That day I waited, and waited and waited - but she didn't show. As I was fresh from a summer of roaming the streets and spending all day alone - the two mile walk home didn't bother me in the slightest. I knew she wasn't coming to get me - so off I went.

As I walked around the corner - there she was with a group for her friends, trying to look tragically cool, cigarette in hand. I didn't say anything but she panicked and handed the offending article to one of her pals.

I wasn't stupid - I'd seen her and she knew it. I just kept on walking, I hadn't got far when she caught up with me. Full of apologies.

"It wasn't mine.... I was holding it for someone..... I don't smoke..... pleas dont tell....." and I didn't.

But for the first time in my life I had something on her and I knew it. Is that a good place to be at seven?

Hell yeah...

I threatened every time she pissed me off until one day she snapped. I was laying on our bedroom floor and she kicked me, breaking four bones in my hand.

That shut me up.

My hand was killing me - but she made me say that I had fallen over something in the knee deep mess on our bedroom floor. That's not an exaggeration - I don't think we saw the carpet for years. There was never a cleaning regime - and I even remember that once I couldn't go to ballet cause I could only find one shoe - and I'd been looking for at least an hour.

Anyway, my hand swelled. It was the first of many, many broken bones that I would endure through my whole life - but as we lived twenty miles from the nearest hospital - taking me there was not a priority.

It was two days later that I sat in the plaster room for the first time. I kind of liked the attention and looking back I can now see that the pattern in my behavior of harm and cure started right there as my arm was wrapped in that cold wet plaster cast for the very first time - even though (that time) I was not the cause.

Moving on...

My parents car was packed as full as the removal van as it pulled away from my beloved home... I was jammed in between the boxes. No seat for me in the car, as I felt there was no seat for me in life. At nine years old I knew without anyone telling me that the stable life that I knew had gone forever.

We'd had a cat you know... for my whole life. A ginger Tom, he never really had a name other than Puss. He was 15 the day that we left and the poor thing had had a troublesome couple of years that had seen him run over and nursed back to life in the last four years. Before he was sentenced.

I remember the day so well...

I (as always) was the first one out of bed. I must have been five - for I know that I hadn't started school. Our front door wasn't locked (it was 1977) but I heard him crying. I opened the large heavy door and there he was covered in blood, he was in such a state. To this day I have no idea how he made it back to our door. He spent weeks in hospital, he lost all his teeth from one side of his jaw, his pelvis was shattered and both of his legs too. But the vet was my dads friend and he promised to do his best to put him back together. And he did.

My mum and I nursed him, we fed him via pipette during the Terry Wogan radio show and Pebble Mill on BBC 1.

He made a full recovery too. They said that he would never be able to run or jump but by 1978 he was enjoying pride of place in the top bunk in the room that I shared with my sister.

Anyway, poor old puss, with his cute tongue lolloping out the side of his cute little slobbery chops was the lucky one. He never made it past my childhood home. His life cut tragically short by owners that didn't care for him any more than they care for me.

The Beginning??????

To be honest, it is very difficult to know where to begin, because I'm not really sure where the beginning is.

I think that I was a normal happy kid till we were wrenched away from our middle class suburban lifestyle shortly after my 9th birthday. Suddenly, one day my dad no longer went to work and our beautiful house - the one that I loved and adored with all my heart went up for sale. No one told me why. Suddenly there was no money. My beloved ballet classes had to stop, my parents friends stopped visiting and no one told me why.

I suppose with hind sight my parents did manage to shield me from all that was going on but at nine you are not a baby. As I look back now - I recall some people coming to view my beautiful house - the one that I loved. I knew that my parents were trying to sell it and deep down I knew that ultimately meant me leaving everything that I had ever known and I was clinging to my happy life with everything that I had.

It must have been in the winter, cause it was dark enough for my dad to need light to show the people my bedroom. The room was big - large enough to have two light switches. I hid behind the wardrobe, next to my Animal Crackers poster and pulled the light cord (just slightly). I knew that this would stop him from being able to put on the main light. I don't know how I knew this. He was frantically flicking the main switch and I could feel his anger.

"I am really sorry" he kept saying - "I have no idea why this light isn't working - maybe it's the bulb?"

My room was big (or at least in my memory it was big.) I shared it with my sister - we had shared since I was born. At sixteen, she is seven years older than me. She must have known what was going on - but no one told me.

Then one day the removal men came, I tried to hide so that they couldn't take me too. First all the furniture and then everything else - even the carpets. I sat in my bedroom, my beautiful bedroom with my dog and cried and cried and cried. I pulled at the floor boards because I could see lost toys and bits of lego not wanting to be left behind. I would gladly have changed places with them and stayed there lost forever.

An Introduction

When I was 21 years old I thought that there was no place for me on this earth. Though I had a family, a child, an estranged husband, a boyfriend and friends - no one chose to help me. Some would later say that they had known that I "wasn't right" yet I remained alone with the demons that would try to end my life.

The positive to this sad, sad story is that fifteen years and a whole life time later I am now living a happy life with a family that I love and who love me with all our hearts. Through my story I reach out to all those sad and vulnerable people who can't see an end to the pain. I hope that what I have to say offers some hope to a positive life.