My story

I was a fairly happy child. From others perspective at least. I don’t actually remember being happy myself. But in retrospect I had a good life, I still do.

When I was a child, we lived in a small town. My mum and dad were together, I had a brother and two sisters who loved me (despite arguments and other things I’ll go into). I had a group of friends in my primary school, though I didn’t always hang around with them. Sometimes getting shut out from my friends and bullied by classmates (usually the boys in my year), I would spend break and lunch with my cousin or teachers. Looking back, the situation at school was fairly miserable. But at the time, I was kind of oblivious to it. I had a supporting family and a few coping mechanisms that helped me stay positive.

I have always been overweight, I was a ‘chocoholic’ as a child. In hindsight that was probably because of all the endorphins chocolate would’ve given me, making me happier. At home, I got on most with my brother, Andrew (even though he’s ten years older than me). He got me into reading and Harry Potter. He would sometimes be mean, but he would just be playing around giving me Chinese burns on my arm and tipping me over the banister by my ankles. I always knew I was my brother’s favourite sister though; he kept my picture on the cork board in his room and not my sisters’.

It may be important to mention that I’m the youngest in my family.

My oldest sister, Cirsten (her being nine years older than me), didn’t interact with me much when I was a child. I shared a room with both my sisters. Cirsten wouldn’t let me or my older sister, Nikki, touch her stuff or watch her TV or do anything associated with her or her belongings. The only memory I really have of Cirsten as a child is the one time she was nice. She let Nikki and I watch the film Stardust with her on her portable DVD player.

Nikki (her being three years older than me) was both my best friend and my worst sibling. But at the time I didn’t see her as my best friend. She was probably my best friend because she would always play with me at home, she’d play with toys and we’d make up games together for my sake. Plus, I have always looked up to her. But then she’d be with her friends and I’d be all alone again. So, I’d try to join them. But my sister’s friends as nine year olds were very mean. They would play this game they made up called ‘Zombies’. They’d run away from me. Which felt pretty shitty.

Then when I was eight years old everything changed.

First, there’s this good memory which I think I should talk about. My mum and dad took me and Nikki camping. (Andrew and Cirsten didn’t come, I’m assuming because they have different dads than me and Nikki). On the camping trip I took books and spent any spare time reading in my ‘room’ in the tent. My dad and Nikki went on walks together. (I’m going to talk more about this later). We went to visit a few castles and even saw some people from the Olympics while we were in Edinburgh. I even made two friends on the campsite. There was this amazing moment where I was sat with my two new friends, it was night and someone had this campfire going and we sat on this hill type think looking and it was such a beautiful and memorable moment. I haven’t seen those two since the campsite. I never found out their last names or any contact information so we lost touch immediately.

I think it was about a month after we got home, in the September, that my mum and dad sat me and Nikki down in the living room to tell us that they had split up. Two years later I would find out that they had split up before we went on the camping trip. I think they wanted us to have at least one family holiday to remember.

Extra note. My dad was always… distant, in a way. He would concentrate on work (he owns his own business with his dad), the mountain rescue (he was a volunteer), he’s also a Freemason. Any spare time he had, would be spent with Nikki. My dad would take her climbing, to Later Quest, on walks, etcetera. I only have one good brief memory of being four years old, with a plastic wand and turning my dad into a frog. He went along with it and started jumping around the kitchen.

October 2008, a month after finding out that my parents were separated, my Nanna died. At the time I didn’t have much of a reaction. I didn’t cry. I sat on the bottom step and stared quite vacantly into the living room. My dad had told me, my mum having gone to sort things at my Nanna’s house. (My Nanna lived a two hour drive from our house and we would go see her every summer holidays – my dad would never come though and it was often just my mum, Nikki, and I).

A year later in the November, me, my mum and Nikki moved to the town where my Nanna had lived. At the time, my mum and dad were going to court and fighting for custody of me and Nikki. My dad was going to try to stop my mum from moving so we moved as soon as we could and got a really crappy house.

My mum had a new boyfriend, who I hated. My mum knew I didn’t like him, but she didn’t care for my opinion. Especially not an opinion that she believed to be because I wanted her to be with my dad. (This is quite significant and I will go into this later.)

I started a new school, which I loved, where I wasn’t bullied (At least not as heavily as I was previously). I made new friends and things were looking a little better. The little amount of bullying was based around my accent and in particular how I pronounced ‘no’. Because of this I trained myself to hide the majority of my accent. There was also a boy I sat next to in class that kept calling me fat and ugly, ironically he had a crush on me and we ended up being really good friends (but we never dated, and now he likes guys).

A year later I was in my final year of primary school. I was eleven years old. A while ago I was looking at my diary from this time and it was full of feelings of guilt and regret and things like, “Why am I always feeling so bad?” I never really got an answer, but I tried to move forward. I was still getting above average good grades in school and was put in higher classes. I had a relationship within this year, I don’t remember how long it lasted, but in the end it was me who hurt the guy. I was so focused on my negative feelings and I found that I didn’t have room in my mind or heart for another person to care about so deeply.

Extra note. I’ve felt guilty about this ever since. Me and Nikki would argue a lot. Up until I was around thirteen. But after moving house I became mad at everyone, and arguments got worse. I hit Nikki on multiple occasions, and would often lash out at my mum too. I was abusive, and that makes me feel sick.

Secondary school. I got a new best friend, Megan. For a while, it was just that. She made me really happy when we were together and we did everything together. A few months into year seven, my friends and I were talking about crushes. I didn’t know who I liked at the time and so I told them the only decent guy I could think of, a close friend called Kai. My friends told him and later that day he asked me out. We dated for three months. While in this relationship I had a dream in which me and Megan kissed. I told her about the dream, but it changed nothing. We carried on as we were and I liked that. At the end of my relationship with Kai, Megan had tricked us into climbing a tree and wouldn’t let us down until we kissed.

Extra note. Bullying started again. A friend from primary school had posted one of those tag pictures on Facebook. Only, one girl was extremely unhappy that she wasn’t tagged. I replied, trying to defend my friend. The girl threatened to smash the windows of my house. A few days later she and one of her friends beat me up after school. I fought back, but that’s not exactly easy when there’s two girls who’re bigger and stronger than yourself. I had cuts on my face and a slight concussion from them bashing my head into a tree, digging their nails into my cheeks, and pulling my hair from my scalp. My mum called the police. But due to my mum’s unpredictable and late working hours, the police couldn’t talk to us and left it to school to deal with. School did nothing and I got very anxious around them girls and their group.

Extra note. My best friend from my home town told me on my birthday that she no longer liked me. (This isn’t important but it has caused me to not see any old friends there while visiting my dad.)

Megan and I flirted a lot over the first year of secondary school. Even after she got a boyfriend. We both had come out as bisexual among our friends. There were a lot of moments when we were together that Megan and I almost started dating. But we remained best friends and nothing more.

In the summer between year seven and eight I started acting out a bit. Not heavily. I was out of my comfort zone and doing things behind my mum’s back. Me, Kai and Megan decided to camp out in a local park. Us being idiotic twelve year olds, told out parents that we were staying at each others houses. We didn’t have a tent and brought multiple blankets. We played truth or dare and we ended up kissing each other. Only pecks again.

In the summer holidays I started to dress/act like a Kandy Kid. I started listening to electronic, upbeat music and wearing lots of homemade jewellery and bright colours. I tried so hard to cover up the slightest idea that I was sad. But I was, am.

I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning of year eight. Megan’s ex boyfriend (who was friends with Kai) told us that she had been talking about us behind our backs. I believed that. Megan had talked to me about other people on a daily basis. I confronted Megan and we had a massive fight. Nothing has been the same since. She was now best friends with Katy and I was shunned from the group for a long while. At the end of of the November that year I started talking to Megan again and ended up asking her out. She said yes and we dated for a month. She broke up with me on Christmas Eve.

At the same time as all the drama with my friends, things where far from calm at home. The guy my mum had been dating for four years now, Liam, became abusive when my mum wanted to break up. He was in the army, I didn’t like him but I definitely didn’t expect things to get as bad as they did. One night I had heard shouting, so I sat at the top of the stairs. I heard my mum yelling for him to get out, then a dry slapping sound. Silence. And then I saw my mum shoving him towards the door, shouting about calling the police if he didn’t leave. Liam threatened to kill Cirsten and he started to stalk us. He used his “ex wife” (throughout Liam’s relationship with my mum, he kept saying he was getting a divorce, but they never got one) to help harass us after we got him arrested, temporarily ban from Scunthorpe and had a restraining order taken out. Liam still hasn’t stopped to this day. It’s caused me to start getting panic attacks whenever I see a car of the same make as his. My mum drove me and Nikki everywhere for almost two years and the smallest ounce of social life I had got smaller.

During the month of dating Megan I started self harming. It wasn’t her fault. It was me and my thoughts. My mum had been making comments on my weight, and so had people from school. I tried to stop eating and I developed some extremely harmful habits. I had continuous thoughts of me being too fat. And I guess part of it did boil down to the situation with Megan, but it still wasn’t her fault. I knew she didn’t love me, and she never wanted to spend time together outside of school. I felt rejected. I knew that it was because of the argument, that things could never be how they were before and I hated myself for that.

Fast track to year nine. My mum found what I used for self harm and she told me we’d get help. We didn’t. Instead, we never spoke about it again. I think my mum assumed that because we spoke about it once, I would be able to magically stop. I think her exact words when she saw my scars were “it’s not as bad as I thought.” The thing with my self harm is that it goes away. For no reason, I’ll stop for a period of time, and it’ll come back just as suddenly. I was in a period of not hurting myself when my mum found out. And while I know that it was better for her not to see how bad it had been, part of me wishes she knew just so I didn’t have to hear those words come out of her mouth. Her saying that was the same as saying that my problems weren’t that bad. And it reinforced the idea in my head that I wasn’t good at anything, not even hurting myself.

In the summer between year nine and ten, my mum signed me up to a children’s fitness programme. Not that it helped. How can you help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves? I was depressed, to say the least. Spending day after day in bed, eating on the odd occasion I was even awake and when I did eat it was the opposite of healthy. I lacked the motivation to do anything and the ability to care.

Year ten was hell. Constant breakdowns, anxiety attacks and absence from school. I was on 78% attendance and my mum finally realised I need help. We went to the doctors three times to talk about my “low mood” only to get counselling. A counsellor that I saw twice and then I told her that I didn’t want to see her anymore. I didn’t get the chance to talk about anything actually bothering me. It was more my inability to speak than anything. I got her to ask me questions because I had no idea what to say, and we ended up going in circles. Maybe I just didn’t click with her, I don’t know, but if I can’t talk about things how will anything change?

I managed to get through my first GCSE’s, barely. Failing my favourite subject by getting an E in art, I truly did feel shit. Surprisingly, I managed to pass Drama besides my lack of confidence and self esteem. And my French has been sent back because I didn’t pass, but my teacher thought there was a few marks they missed. I was one mark from getting a C.

And now I’m here. After a summer of nothing, and a undying feeling of emptiness. Two contradicting thoughts circling my head. One telling me that I’m going to fail and I’m not going anywhere in life, and the other telling me that I can achieve anything I want to.

And now I realise the only thing I avoided to talk about through this whole thing is my being part of the LGBTQ+ community. Contrary to what I stated earlier. I am in fact not bisexual. Truth be told, I haven’t figured out who I am as of yet. I know I like girls. I have a big feeling that I like guys too. And I’d probably be open to date people outside of the gender binary. Hell, I might be outside of the binary. I’m fifteen. I realise I don’t need to know who I am. I have time. I’ve gone through so many labels, hoping to find comfort or a sense of me. But maybe I’m not meant to be confined by the walls of a label. I just want to be the best me I can be.

This was way too long, and there still wasn’t everything in my life here. I have ambitions, hopes, dreams, and I have a plan for my future. Sure, I know not everything will happen how I want. And I know it will take me a long time to feel happy. But at least I have somewhere I want to be.

I may have told a couple of white lies at the end. About looking to the future. Because, I couldn’t care less whether I live or die right now. I just wanted you to think I was a good, positive person. That’s who I want to be, I’m just not there yet.

Also, I can’t believe I forgot to mention my cat. She was the world to me. She was always right there when I needed her, my entire life. Until she died when I was twelve. Around five months after my first nephew was born. I have two of those by the way.