I feel as if I have opened a rich vein of things to dig at, but I have to dig past the things I have already looked at and examined to get to where the trouble lies. I have no idea what the little nugget of pain that will not leave my Inner Child alone is, so I will just keep writing about the episodes of my life that come to mind and keep going and going until I get there.... It is however nice to feel that I am writing about the things that made things better as well as the things that made it worse. This is not digging for the sake of oh woe is me, honest!
I have trouble remembering when exactly the glandular fever first began. Life got very fuzzy, fuzzier than normal. I remember I was 14, just started my GCSE's, so I guess sometime between my birthday in September and the following Easter. Right slap bang in the middle of this time is one of those little life stories...
I had had boyfriends before and I had had minor crushes before, but this is the story of my first love I guess. Let's call him A as that comes first.
My sister had her birthday in January and for the first and last time, my parents decided to open the house to a group of drinking teenagers. The lounge carpet was being cleaned and all the furniture was moved out. My parents barricaded themselves in the end room with the TV and the dogs and we had the run of the rest of the downstairs.
My sister has similar music tastes etc to me so her group of friends was exactly the sort of people I liked, goths, rockers and other alternative sorts. Although my sister was never particularly wild, she floated on the edge of that scene and some of the people who came were a little wilder than her.
I met a man. (Obviously) I don't remember too much of the evening (how frustrating is it to try digging away to get to the hurt when you just can't remember it all clearly?). I remember he gave me a key ring with a rude but complimentary message that I shall not repeat here. I remember kissing him outside and it being so cold we went in to the outside toilet (*laugh*) but my Mum decided to come out with the dogs and to use the facilities (*double laugh*). She was a little surprised to find me in there with a young man......
He was an arty type and oh so different to me. i think he was perhaps on the side of art that is a little dark and that I don't always get. He tole me some story about some art project involving syringes and bits of animal or some such. He was cool. He was good looking. He was slightly wild. He liked me.
At least I think he did. I remember there being some issue. I didn't hear from him I don't think. Someone else had sent me a story to read and I sent a letter back with it via my Sister. Neither my Sister or my Mum were overly keen, hence the need for sneakery.
We spoke on the phone a few times and he made me a mix tape. The tape introduced me to some great music, definitely alternative and to be honest, it helped shape my musical taste. I can't remember too much of what we talked about. I think his home life was very different to mine.
He told me about a party in town and eventually my Sister and her boyfriend agreed to take me. We arranged to meet at a pub in town. We got there and he was off his trolley and my Sister and her bloke were not convinced it was just alcohol. He went a bit odd and didn't say a lot and gave my sister some odd directions that no one was over keen to follow... and that was that....
My Sister and my Mum won that round.
A few years later I was at college and let loose on town myself. That same pub became my stomping ground. One of the same group of friends remained at college while I was there. And A was occasionally in the same place when he was home from Uni. It was my turn to go funny and I never spoke to him, even though his friend said he would have liked it if I had spoken to him.
Thing is. I am never sure how much all this affected me. How much it tied in to my glandular fever. I remember seeing the Doctor and he started asking me questions about depression. I did tell him about A I remember. He prescribed me Amitriptyline. I was 14......
I later discovered that amitriptyline and glandular fever do not mix.
This was all around the time that my health went down hill. I may have been ill before hand but I don't really remember.
I think I lost something important in all this. I wish I had been free to meet him as I wished but we lived in the country and I had no means of getting anywhere near him without help. I know it was all timing and I know my Mum and my Sister wanted the best for me, but I wanted him and there has always been wild child lurking inside me. It just had to wait till I left home to get out....
I also see all the hallmarks of how much my relationships with my Mother and Sister were dishonest and damaged me and my confidence. But it was mostly their caring that did it. I can also see how my teenage years were troubled because of my age. My age meant I couldn't hang around with the people I wanted to or do the things I wanted to. In some ways I had a lot of freedom but it was carefully controlled.
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