Simon and Garfunkle wrote:
“I am a rock
I am an island.”
Growing
up alone. Marginalized, left to my
own devices.
In
a weird and wacky dysfunctional family. Dysfunctional mum. I
had to grow up self reliant and self motivated.
By the time I was
a teenager, I felt more and more stifled.
More and more alone. Cast out, cast aside because it wasn’t “cool”
to hang out with me. When friends were
made, they were valued like extended family that I didn’t really have. Then, I always drifted along, either to a new
place or environment.
I was “never
popular,” never “in with the in crowd.” I just sort of
drifted to whoever liked me, whoever would let me sit with them at lunchtime.
More often than not, it was with what folk-singer Tori
Amos called the cornflake girls. Not the
cheerleader types, that’s for sure, the ones who always got voted as class
president or wore all the popular names on their jeans… Yet, not the “bad girls” either, not the ones
who got in trouble for smoking in the toilets or who wore deliberately
see-through tops and had boys hanging off them like flies around a
sweet-smelling garbage can. No, if I
hung with anyone, it was the ones who wore hand-me-down clothes and got teased
for it. The ones that the cheerleaders
would turn their noses up to, or the “slut girls”
would make snide remarks about.
So I escaped from
the craziness. In my early twenties, that is, was marginalized from
family. I got on my own two feet after
moving back to
So I went back to
Working in fast
food I got to be friends with Christy, a tall blonde with green eyes who
attracted men like bees to a honey pot.
Me! Huh huh! I’d have odd conversations with the geek who
always went on about how much homework he had.
Typical greasy-faced sixteen-year -old boy, but at least he “talked to
me.” That, in itself, seemed to be something to appreciate.
By the time I was
twenty-three or so, I didn’t see Christy.
She lost a baby from a guy at the grease-pit and was seeing another guy
she was pregnant from. I got another job
working at a free ads paper; taking ads over the phone for cars, washing
machines, cats and dogs etc. The other
people talked to me there, but I never got asked out for drinks after work, the
boss’ wedding etc. I was just there. Just worked there. Just literally came to work, went home, ate
maybe a TV dinner or read. Sometimes at
weekends, I’d catch the bus on my own and go the short distance to the
beach. Then sit there, on my own on the
beach, a bit like a spare part. The odd guy would say something to me, soon see
my eyes and quickly make a B-line for somewhere else.
It makes me think
of the Rolling Stones song “Faded Black,” where everyone is totally repelled by
you.
At this stage, I
was so used to the loneliness that I didn’t know anything or anyway else. I started feeling real attracted to headshops and ethnic/tie-died clothes. I felt more and more distanced from the
“mainstream” of things. I even started,
somehow by accident, finding swapmeets where loads of
handcrafted stuff was up for grabs. I
felt more in tuned with this freer environment than the glossy plastic backdrop
of the shopping malls. Not that I
thought shopping was everything, but everywhere I went, I went alone.
Then one day at
work, a guy who had called in an ad for, I don’t know an amp or something,
asked me how old I was. When I told him,
it didn’t seem to matter that he didn’t even know me, what I was about or
anything. He invited me to this party he
was having a few miles down the coast.
Well, he turned out to be this twenty-six year old waste of space. Thought he knew everything about life and, as
soon as he saw me, the vibe and enthusiasm totally changed. “Oh uh, I guess you could still come.” He was clearly put off meeting a “visually
impaired” girl, who would probably ruin his ego/image thing. I was just glad to be going to a party! I mean whoever in their right mind invited me
to a party? Let alone asked me out!
At the party, I
lost John to a group of young girls in the big shed, while the band was getting
set up in the back garden. I drifted around
not knowing anybody, feeling weird, chatting to the odd person or John’s nextdoor neighbour.
She had just gotten out of this black magic ring and hey, she “talked to
me.” Later I met Martin, an English guy
who started hanging with me sharing a drink etc. I was interested because he was English, his accent, he was tall, longhaired and less arrogant than the
American guys there. Unbelievably, he
went back to mine… We went driving a few
days later; down the coast to a not-so-populated beach, but he was distant and restless, not wanting to stay too long.
I didn’t see
Martin after that. He just turned me
down when I tried to get him to come out again.
Nothing new.
I was extremely rarely taken up on going out, or even going out at all.
Martin had planted
a seed, though. In fact, he had planted
a seed he would never even realize! He
had told me while sitting on the beach, that he would work in
That sounded so
totally free, so totally uninhibited to anything I had ever experienced. I couldn’t get it out of my head and had
decided somewhere along the line, to “get out” of the stagnant, predictable
same same sameness I had gotten myself stuck in.
It was all around
me. Everyone wanted to look the same,
dress the same. It wasn’t about who you were as a person, but how you looked; your makeup,
your clothes, your job, even the car you drove etc. I never felt like I fit in there, which
wasn’t anything new. I didn’t really fit
in at school either, but at least this time, maybe I could go somewhere else.
Do something about it…
The first time I used
the tool of determination to make something happen, was astounding. Through the newspaper I worked for, I had direct
access to putting in an ad for pen pals
in
Before the first
trip to
Shelly was okay
at first, but then we didn’t really gel.
She was the embodiment of
I stayed for two
months in the end. Getting to be good
friends with Kathy, an American girl from the YWCA hostel I stayed at for the
last month. We did the pubs, hung out at
this one basement grunge club in the middle of Soho. It was simply the kind of diversity I’d never
seen in the likes of California.
Not wanting to, I
went back to the States, and for the second time used every resource within my
grasp “to permanently get out.” Within
six months I had saved money from tax returns and the last of my work money. It was easy to “not go out” to save money,
because I never got asked anywhere anyway.
Returning to the
UK for the second time felt like coming home.
It was bizarre to think you had to come half the world from where you
grew up, where you had spent your whole life, but never feeling a part of it;
just to find opportunity for change in a foreign country. I was twenty-four, leaving behind nothing or
no one. I had no idea, not even a plan
for the future and my new life, just knew I was here
this time for good. All I could see was
a window of opportunity, a door that had suddenly open
at the end of one long corridor of firmly closed doors.
I couldn’t sleep
on the overnight flight over from LA.
Once the plane got into morning and then British airspace, I felt dazed
and amazed. What the hell was I
doing? Whatever it was, it was big. I had never been given the credit or
encouragement that I could ever do anything “that amazing.” I knew that I was coming with every intention
of staying. But, at that time the
questions, “What would I do? Where would
I live?” weren’t even in my head. I just
knew I had a six-month working visa that was valid the moment I touched down;
that was enough, that was my foot in the door.
The next five
years was to be the most unpredictable, adventurous up-and-down roller-coaster
ride anyone could ever imagine going through.
It was getting a ridiculously low-paid job, moving to the
We all had our
own sordid baggage and being a part of even that was something worth
savouring.
Then, there was
the opposite to those high times. A nasty cat and mouse game with
immigration. A twisted hell bent
stranger, determined to stalk me, follow me and write me letters to remind me
what he saw me wearing that day.
There was going
homeless. Living in
squats. Living with some pretty
okay people and people who got up at
The time being
with no fixed abode lasted for two years.
I ended up ill, in the hospital, defeated. Hit rock bottom with a slow, gradual painful
agonising ascent to somewhere between the bottom and the middle. Being on the very outer
fringes of society felt great. It
was free. It was liberating and you got
to look at people to see just how totally blind they are. How they walk through life like the living
dead. Or how they base happiness on
material things, a job, 2.3 kids just to look
normal. Everywhere you went though,
people just wanted to maintain “normal normal normal.”
The unplanned
pregnancy preceded a move to
The isolation was
back like it had never been before.
People who said they knew me or squatted with me in
Acquaintances
came easy, as they always had. Real
friends though, huh, it took years, struggling, agonising, disheartening,
soul-destroying years! When real friends
finally did show their faces like one of life’s afterthoughts, I had already
suffered too long for people to “really” understand.
The time came to
turn another page, take another step up on the road to recovery, because I had
never “truly” recovered. I had never
grieved. Jasper the child in my life had
taken such precedence with his extra needs, what little of me there was left
had been swept away. My identity,
huh! I was a mum now, a visually impaired
mum. Marked woman. With a child who couldn’t see so well,
either, and couldn’t hear too good. His father and I knew far too many of the
same people and went to far too many of the same places, parties and festivals
for it to be comfortable anymore.
The whole place
was claustrophobic and there were far too many trendy things happening for me
to “ever” be able to keep up; not with Jasper, not just being me.
I had been
introduced to
So,
university? Coming to
It’s like being
back at school though. Only this time, I
don’t even sit with the cornflake girls or misfits. The one true unwanted follower has kept with
me like an unwanted shadow, the loneliness. There are no misfits here, no good
freaks. Everybody has both shoes on their feet.
No, I don’t even have the pleasure of the freaks, the outsiders. I’m still doing what I’ve always done: eat
alone, go to lectures alone, leave lectures alone, walk alone, do my research
alone and of course, sleep alone. I doubt “any of these people” have had to
sleep in
People said to me
when I got on the course: “Wow, it’ll really open doors for you!”
When I try to put
feelers out the vibe is uneasy, not comfortable. I observe people walking and talking in
couples or groups at ease with each other.
“Uh, can you manage the stairs?
Are you alright?” is all anyone ever says to me. Young old lady! Not, Do I wanna
join them for a drink or a chat. Or even
go to hell.
Feels like I’ve
been given a three year sentence to get a degree, do the work and work
hard. Juggle between Jasper, the
domestics and work work work,
and expect to go through the motions, because no one “really” wants to know the
one with the white stick and different clothes.
The good-time
protest band from
“Julie was a
lonely girl
said she was born that way
she always felt that way.”
I always get kinda tearful when I hear that song, it reminds me so much
of myself. About a girl who, the more
she “tried” in the world, the more she got put down, stifled, shunned, pushed
aside and ignored.
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