HelenzArt-life-musings

Tag: ordinary childhood

  • On a path of self neglect.

    So between leaving junior school and going to secondary school, we were supposed to move so dad could start a new job with more responsibility and better pay. That didn’t happen, his boss found a way to keep us in the same place. He was where he wanted to be I suppose, I was just a kid that wasn’t told anything, which was simply the way it always was. My mum had been through various jobs from shop work to barmaid, trying out nursing was the next thing. My parents developed a social life, they started playing darts for a pub team in town. New friendships for them and I was often included in the extra social events that happened. So for me pubs were simply another place to be, part of growing up, talking to strangers or half familiar faces. Nothing felt as threatening in that environment. Rarely were there other children around, if there were then I played with them. If not, I wasn’t bothered as I would talk to the other people if they started to chat. Some did their best to include me.

    My brother was never with us, he was already going his own way. Sometimes in trouble, so the police would visit but he was often just a passing body.

    My mum left home for awhile when I was 13. Stayed with some female friends, I suppose she was trying to sort out her life. She came home. Within a year she was gone. In town for 3 weeks at a friends flat and then, poof! Gone. My summer of being 13.

    Now, I will admit that although I was probably seen as a ‘daddies’ girl, that was more because I spent most of my free time out in the fields and sheds where he was working. Yet, she was my mum. She bought me my first pair of ‘grown up’ shoes, small platforms that were the trend in the ‘70’s. We weren’t best friends nor was she someone to take into ones confidence. Yet she vanished off the face of my world. Never to be heard from again until I was married and had a girl of my own. I went back to school with that, my best friend knew. Huh! my only friend knew.

    To be brutally honest I wasn’t actually that bothered. Yes, it hurt, yet I wasn’t outwardly emotional. It certainly stung when my 14th birthday came round and there wasn’t even a card from her. Yet even then I had a matter of factness to it. A ‘that’s the way it is-ness’. Practical acceptance. My dad and me just got on with running our home together. He didn’t talk to me about her leaving, and I never asked. My brother wasn’t really home much so we didn’t talk about it either. A big, non-event. That unknowingly shaped my behaviour.

    I say unknowingly because I didn’t consciously think I would become a searcher of tender touches from where ever I could. It wasn’t promiscuity to start with. As I have said before I lost my virginity very early, to a semi stranger. Since then I had a couple of boyfriends at school, one was physically very mature, as was I, and we did take things all the way. The summer of being 14, I began a relationship with someone older by a few years. I didn’t disabuse him of what he thought my age was, though he knew I was still at school. Our school had sixth form years, to do ‘A’ levels, as they were then, so it was an easy assumption to make on his part.

    I sank into the fact that he was wanting to be with me, even if it did seem that there was always an expectation of sex on his part, and I willingly obliged. Why? Because that’s what I did, I never said no. Yes, on reflection the relationship wasn’t healthy. But I had someone who seemed to want me. He wasn’t keen on me being with my friend, or doing my own thing. I was to be with him and his friends. And yes, sex was an expectation no matter how I felt. I did what he wanted, that was how I thought things were meant to be. Our sex was unprotected so the inevitable happened. I was pregnant just after turning 15. I knew fairly quickly and went to my GP. I also knew that I couldn’t have a child and bring it up myself so I chose to have an abortion. The Doc called my dad to the surgery and the arrangements made. All very matter of fact. No, histrionics, little emotion shown. Again we had no discussions, I went to hospital, had the procedure spoke to a Doctor before discharge. Refused contraception and left. Did I feel guilty? Honestly? Not on the surface, but I did feel that I had done the right thing in that moment. It was just another thing that happened, was dealt with and then sank to some underworld beyond caring. Never raised as a subject between me and my dad ever again. No social workers came to talk to me nor any police. That my dad spoke to the police I did discover a few months later when the ex boyfriend caught up with me outside the school gates and began to make my life miserable!

  • What changes!

    What follows in the next few blogs, is simply to set the scene of my landscape as a child, teen and young adult. The who, what and how of accessible memories of my growing up. 

    I say everything changed when I was 8, yet that’s not quite true. My life was   simply that, my life with family.  No seeing of things being anything other than they ought to be. No felt undercurrents of trouble between my parents. We were never overly huggy as a family,  I was just an ordinary kid in an ordinary family. My brother was  often in trouble with dad. Leather belt or a beating went his way. Not often but memorable. 

    So, as an 8 year old, I had to share my brothers room and bed because family were staying for Christmas.   I recall my brother asking me if he could put his hand between my legs!!  To which I said no, and that’s it.  No running to tell Mum and Dad. Taking it that he didn’t press the request. Going to sleep as if he had never asked, that it never happened yet it is remembered. An existent, on the surface, memory to be recalled should it be required that my brother had respected my refusal.  As far as I then recall is that I went to sleep.  It was the same year that I started smoking. Yes, I was young. Yes, I had 2 parents who smoked, and my brother offered me one!  I took it.  I guess I wanted to be on his ‘good side’ that I wanted to fit in, be seen as an ally.   I just did it, and there’s no thinking that this wasn’t good for me, or how cross my parents would be at me or him.  With the hind sight from where I am now,  it’s easy to see the people pleasing aspects that I was already cultivating, that I was already conditioned into. Along with a disregard of personal safety. 

    Apart from school, I didn’t have peer friendships. Most of my daily interactions were with other adults.  The casual summer workers that worked the nursery of roses. The older couple next door.  I don’t even recall much interplay with my brother, and those there were, were often of a mean-spirited Chinese burns type game, to which I never said no. Or me being in goal as he practiced at football one summer. Me simply happy to be included.

    So that sexual encounter wasn’t spoken of and pretty much wasn’t felt to be of great consequence then. It simply was. Our village school closed down and it was now catch the bus to a bigger town school.  Earlier start. More kids.  Doing well, I like to learn and like to please. I got on with most of my classmates, never not able to fit in. Though I didn’t really understand the popularity contests or the cattiness of some of the girls.    Nothing felt to rock my sunny nature.  Puberty comes all of a rush in the summer between junior and secondary school.   I see how adults react to that.  I see my brother even less now. He’s at school in a different town.  He’s drawn by the city too. 

    Settling in to senior school, start having independence to visit with a friend, go to the cinema.  A Sunday job in a newsagents. Have a close friend and we share confidences. Giggles about sex education, whispered desires and wonderings. Not sharing how I’d walked in to the living room to see my brother sat on the chair with his trousers round his ankles. Our pet dog reversed up to him!!  I dont tell anyone. I don’t recall any threats to keep quiet, so I just don’t feel the need to tell on him.    I spend time at her home, I get to experience family life other than my own.     Boys showing interest.  Older boys, men too!  I do like the attention. 

    The body develops at a different rate to the brain, exploring the sensual and sexual side of this pre-teen and teenage body that looks like a grown up, self-satisfaction to orgasm.  I lost my virginity to a semi stranger at 12 and a half. He’d always been kind when we met at the pub where my mum or my friends sister worked.   Offered me a lift home one day from the bus stop.. We chatted, and things moved along.  Was it consensual? Yes.  My body responded to his touch.  Did I feel unsafe or threatened? No. Did it feel wrong? No, not really, I knew it was legally wrong, but that’s all. Did I like having his attention? Yes.  

    Ahh, now it’s teenage years of change.  Abandonment, promiscuity, who cares? Seems like nobody does, not even me!!! Til next time.