HelenzArt-life-musings

Tag: parents

  • 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!

  • Why the guilt?

    I’m angry, so why did I feel guilty too? With all the emotions that were being felt in waves, there was always the sense that I was feeling guilty too. It was an under current, yep I’m back to my ocean analogy! In fact my mother-in-law said something that was reminiscent of guilt when we told her of Gavins passing. She was in hospital having had some stents fitted. She simply stated that it should have been her who was taken, she had lived a long life and it ought to have been her passing not Gavin. He was too young, with a life ahead full of potential. Yet we all said that’s not the way it goes, he was called and she wasn’t, not yet. Maybe that’s where bargaining can come in when it’s someone young who has a potentially terminal or life changing disease, yet something like an embolism isn’t necessarily foreseeable. Though Gavin did have symptoms that were misdiagnosed. 

    So why guilty? For me it was expressing regret and wishing I had done more. Yet once more I come back to that being a mother who was allowing him to be the man he had become. Still my boy, but old enough to make his choices, to make mistakes and learn. The apron strings were loosed. Yes, I could express concern yet it was still his life. I felt guilty of failing him, of failing in my role as mother. Yet a mother has to stop mothering and smothering. That is not to stop caring but it is to stop interfering, as too much of that can be detrimental to a healthy relationship. There’s also the guilt at not going to his home and finding his body earlier. He went silent in the Tuesday, my husband went round on the Friday. In all likely hood he died either Monday night or sometime on Tuesday. The thought of him laying there all that time is difficult to bear. Yet bear it I do, I made the choice to allow him privacy and space as I have done as he was growing up. As I chose to do when he was at University, I never needed or expected daily contact. That we spoke regularly was enough. To be honest that has always been my way, I didn’t speak daily to my dad once I left home. 

    There’s also the looking back over events through our life together as mother and son, nurturing and disciplining that may prompt a guilt that perhaps if.. .. Yet that past can’t be changed, no matter how much one may wish it. If I could have done things differently I would have. Over the 5 years since his transition I have have transitioned too. That guilt is part of who I am, its OK to feel it so it can find its place. It doesn’t ‘eat’or ‘nag away’ inside, because its accepted as having a place within. I give myself permission to feel all that needs to be felt. Opening up to the learnings they offered in their time. Gavins departure gave me a gift, and yes we all like to find a meaning to events in our lives, yet this was more than just finding a reason to his passing this was finding a pathway to living fully in what is left of my life.