Clubbing from the age of 14
• Kissing doormen and men about 20 years older than me who might buy me drinks and pay my cab fare home
• Drinking and drug taking
• Sex
• Starving myself, binge eating followed by throwing up, and a whole host of other creative ways to try and be skinny.
I wasn’t the only one playing this ‘how the fuck do I stop being a misfit and fit in’ game. I had a great friend who also went from a Steiner School and a ‘weird’ family to a ‘normal’ school. She and I went to different ‘normal’ schools, and in discovering each other’s secret we formed our own little gang. We smoked cannabis together, hitched rides together, snuck into clubs together and ran away from men together.
We looked out for each other. We took risks, knowing that we had each other’s back. One time I found her being assaulted by a guy 20 years older than us in a car park stairwell. One minute they were just behind me as we walked to find a taxi rank. The next they were gone. By the time I found them he already had his hand up her skirt and she was trying but failing to wriggle free. I screamed at him, kicked him and grabbed her hand – pulling her away from him with all my might. We ran away as fast as our drunken teenage legs would carry us and jumped into a taxi, laughing.
One time we jumped out of a moving car because the guy we were hitching a lift from started to lock the doors and was freaking me out. I was in the front, she was in the back. I got a bad feeling about the guy so I made eye contact with her in the mirrors and signalled with my hands and then we jumped, hitting the grassy verge with a teenage bounce and a giggle.
Another time I tried to stop a guy flirting with an uninterested friend in a bar and ended up being hit by him; I don’t really remember very much of what happened, only that I came to outside afterwards surrounded by a doorman and my friends. Up until that moment I didn’t think a man would hit a woman in public. Shocked and shaken, I was taken and lifted by a group of celebratory friends to sit high up on a red letterbox. All bloodied and eating chips I felt the familiar mix of significance and shame.
By the time I got to sixth-form college in 1996 I was snorting speed in the common rooms and giving boys blow jobs in bathrooms. I was so cool.
NOT.
It seemed that whatever I did I was still not cool enough.
Inside I just wanted to be seen for being me, but I was so scared of being rejected as myself that I perfected playing the role of ‘cool girl’2 instead. When people fell for my creation I secretly dismissed them. Every time someone made friends with, employed or fell in love with her, a piece of the real me got stuffed further down and away.
Looking back now, I realise that I even though I decided that I had become an adult at 14, I was still so young. So self-absorbed. Not in a good way or a bad way, just still learning who I was and how I fitted into everything. Somehow believing that there was a definitive answer. Fourteen was a big year for me; my parents separated and began divorce proceedings, I dyed my hair black, and I began numbing my feelings with drugs, sex and food.
My parents’ separation meant that on the one hand I got a whole heap of freedom and on the other, a whole heap of responsibility. Initially they tried splitting custody half a week each. Within six months we had moved to one week on, one week off, which was slightly better, but not much. The leap from year 9 to year 10 at school and the start of my GCSEs was also a big deal. My life suddenly got much more complex than it ever had been before and my hormones were all over the place. I got a stepmum and a stepbrother and sister, whom I now consider to be as much family to me as the rest of them, but who were then an added complexity to my ever more unpredictable life. I started having periods, often ones that would knock me over in complete agony for two to three days. I also started to feel feelings as if they were going to swallow me whole. My mum and I were at each other’s throats A LOT. By November of that year I was going to live with my Dad full time because my Mum and I were not finding it easy to live together. As with so many mothers and daughters, as with her own earlier relationship with her mother, the relationship between me and my mum was complex. I understand it a lot better now, I love her and have learned so much about myself and life because of the way that we push each other’s buttons. But then, when I was 14, I didn’t understand it or appreciate it as I do now. I was rebellious; I had fire in my belly and passion in my heart. I was free spirited and dynamic but I was not dangerous or out of control. Or at least I didn’t think I was. One of the many strategies I had for coping with the ever-growing uncertainty in my life was to snoop through stuff; somehow knowing what was in people’s pockets, or mail or handbags meant that I felt more in control. One day when I was snooping, I found correspondence from a mental health clinic, which led me to believe that there was a possibility of my being sectioned.3 Like the time on the street when I was seven, and no longer sure that I could trust myself, this letter reinforced that belief and added a layer of evidence which had me questioning my sanity, telling me that I was ‘crazy’ or out of control.
ANGRY
ANGRY, YOU MAKE ME MAD,
I CLENCH MY FISTS AND GRIT MY TEETH,
MY HEAD BEGINS TO TIGHTEN,
MY EYES GLAZE OVER,
THE LUMP IN MY THROAT INCREASES BY MORE NUMBERS THAN IMAGINABLE,
I PERSPIRE RAPIDLY,
MY MIND RACES,
MY FLESH CRAWLS WITH ADRENALIN,
I SMELL FEAR! I LOVE IT!
MY ANGER SWELLS.
SLOWLY EACH ASPECT SHARPENS, I AM AWARE OF ALL...
I FIGHT VERBALLY
I KNOW WHAT I AM SAYING IS CRAP, BUT I PURSUE
I KNOW THAT SOME (AND ONLY SOME MIND YOU) OF WHAT SHE’S MUTTERING IS TRUE, BUT I PURSUE.
MY FINGERNAILS DIG DEEP INTO MY PALM,
I AM DESTROYING THE FORT, IT IS WEAKENED,
MY EYES CAN TAKE THE STRAIN NO LONGER,
THE BOUGHS BREAK,
THE SHIP SINKS,
THE ANGRY SEAS FALL AWAITING THE NEXT STORM.
HUH?
SCARED, SO SCARED,
AFRAID TO SPEAK FREE,
ASHAMED TO BE ME,
WORRIED ABOUT THE PAST,
WHAT MY FUTURE BRINGS,
THIS AND LOTS OF OTHER THINGS.
WELLING UP INSIDE,
THE TEARS BEING TO POUR,
SILVERY DROPLETS, MORE AND MORE,
LAMENTING OLD SORROWS,
WHAT I’VE DONE WRONG,
HOPING
