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About MeMy name is Hayley Deakin and I was born in 1981 just outside of London. I have two brothers; the eldest is 11 1/2 years older than me and the other is 10 years older. My mother, at the time of my birth, was a long-term user of tranquilizers, and over the first three or four years of my life, gradually came off them. As she was addicted, she found this very difficult and although I had no idea what was going on at the time, I think I must have sensed her desperation. I was quite a serious child right from a young age, and didn't like silliness. By the time I started school I was so used to the constant feeling of mum being edgey at home and remaining on guard as a result that I started on the wrong foot with my new classmates. I remember telling mum quite early on - I was probably only about 6 - that I felt they were being unfair to me. She told me brusquely that I should 'learn to toughen up'. This was the start of many years of feeling alienated and being bullied. I developed athsma when I was young, and although it disappeared long ago, I suspect it was stress-related. My father was depressed during those years and I picked up on this too, which didn't help my attitude at school either. I remember one instance in which I 'learned' that it was a good idea to be miserable: I'd recently seen the film Sister Act and was particularly taken with one of the characters, the obese nun. She was very bright and cheerful, always laughing, and seemed to be very happy. I commented on this to my dad, and he replied in a monotone that people who pretended to be happy were hiding from something in their lives. I understood from this that happy people were lying to others and themselves and that to be honest in the face of your troubles (read 'be miserable whenever you feel it) was the best thing to do. Right from when I was very young, I remember them both having titanic arguments. Dad worked long hours and got up early. Mum was insecure and felt the need to test the people around her - me, my brothers, and dad included - by teasing us, pushing us away, denying our affection for her and generally making herself as unloveable as possible to test how strongly we felt about her. It would happen quite often, and dad would start by remaining quiet and calm. He'd talk more quietly and in a more measured fashion as she wound him up more and he got angrier, and then suddenly, past a certain point, he'd start to shout. That scared me, even when I wasn't in the room at the time. Over the years I heard them tell eachother they didn't love eachother, that they wanted to divorce, that she was a bitch, he was a madman, that each talked crap. Twice, she made him cry. Often, he'd walk away. She made fun of him over this for being a 'sulky little boy'. However, she used to bait him so much that I could see why he might be tempted to hit her, hence the walking away. When he calmed down sufficiently to come back, she'd test him all the more to make sure he loved her. My response to all of this was to disappear inside my own head. I imagined myself into cartoons I'd seen, films, books and T.V. programmes, into places where the people were happier, where I could rely on them not to scream at eachother, where I could control events. I kept this habit for a long time afterwards and still indulge in it sometimes now. Once, when I disagreed with mum about something - I'm not sure what it was, but I think I held my own more resolutely than I had before - she started crying, picked up her handbag and collected her keys. She found her cigarettes and then sat on the sofa, and told me she was going to leave because I didn't love her. I begged her not to go; she didn't answer, but continued to cry and occasionally picked up and put down her cigarettes or jangled her keys. I didn't realise at the time she was just manipulating me, but eventually I must have begged her enough and she agreed to stay. Another time, the details of which I can't remember, she threatened not to love me any more. I have curly hair which has a lot of body and, if it's cut reasonably short, it stands up. As much as I'd like to tell you this is an exaggeration, I can't: I can pretty much pull off an afro look. This ended up being my nickname at school: Afro (along with Christmas Tree and Bog Brush). I hated it and after a while, I asked mum if I could grow it long. She offhandedly said yes, but still took me to the hairdresser's every 6 weeks to cut it to 'encourage it to grow'. I believed her at the time and had faith that it would grow. It seemed to take a very long time. Of course, it never did. She always told me it looked beautiful; the afro look had been the fashionable hairstyle when she was in her prime (in the 60's and 70's.) I grew up in the 80's - 90's - the time of far sleeker hair. Of course, the kids I went to school with thought it looked ridiculous. When I was about 7, mum decided to go to college. She'd had so many years of counselling for her tranquilizer dependance that she wanted to 'give something back'. What followed was 7 years of counselling training, specialising in (legal) drugs and alcohol. There are many incidents of bullying in my past, but the kids who did it, I can forgive. They didn't know better, after all: they were just kids. But a small number of teachers decided they would join in. Miss. Murdoch was the worst. Athletic, smug, chiding, she enjoyed showing me up in front of my classmates. I wasn't equipped with the courage to deny her or answer back, but her actions got me down. Eventually I told mum about it, and she came into school to have a word with her. Murdoch went off into the staff room crying half way through the meeting, and I didn't get too much hassle from her after that. The people I felt most alienated from were the girls in my class. Most liked make-up, ponies, bright colours and so on. They liked to gossip and socialise with eachother - which meant, of course, that the conversation occasionally turned to me, and they decided, as a group, that they disliked me. I decided to dislike them in turn, on principle. I developed a dislike of fashion and clothes, of hairstyles and jewellery and pop music. Anything that characterized girliness, I decided to make a big issue of disliking. I eventually resolved that, because they were clearly so absorbed in these things that were ultimately of no consequence, I was clearly a better thinker and therefore a better person. The habit I developed of putting myself on a pedestal like this caused me huge problems later in life, but it took a while to realise what I'd done, as the habit was learned so early. Whenever I mentioned the other girls' apparent opinion of me to my parents they reinforced the idea that they were nothing but cheap tarts. Or maybe it was my parents who planted the suggestion in the first place. I don't know for sure. The bullying at school continued until I was 14, when my mother finally saw the bullying in action for herself. It was a Sports Day and she turned up to the stadium my school hand rented for the event. I was sitting with my classmates on the terrace and they were winding me up again. I responded by first shouting at several of them and then, when one of them pretended I was making my point by karate-chopping them, physically attacking him. I've never been much of a fighter, so my attack was ineffectual, but I curled up and cried after that. All this mum saw, and she finally realised that I had a problem. In a talk after this had happened, she asked me in dramatic tones whether I had a school phobia. I hadn't heard of such a thing before, and didn't know how to support the idea that I didn't have one. She seemed to have decided that I did, so I simply said yes. I don't think I did. She took me out of state school and found a smaller school nearby, thinking that the size of the school was the problem. For a few years prior to this, I'd become so introverted that I kept my head down all the time - literally. I didn't dare to look anybody in the face, and I looked mildly hunchbacked, so I'm told, and I talked to myself. It took me a few years to straighten out these two problems. The place she found was a Christian school with a capacity for around 40 children of all ages, that used the American ACE (Accellerated Christian Education) system. There I stayed for about 18 months. I found the kids and parents there to be mostly very kind, and decided that it must be their Christian beliefs that made them so. Therefore I attempted to become a Christian myself. Although I managed it for a few months, the contradictions, the obvious cherry-picking, the capacity for manipulation and the simple unlikeliness of many of the assertions of the faith bothered me, until in the end I decided to stop trying. My schoolfriends accepted this well enough, although did show concern for me. During the time I went to that school I began trying to socialise. Previously I'd avoided other people at all costs, believing them all to be horrible, bent on making a fool of me and laughing behind my back. The first step, for me, was to be able simply to open my mouth and talk to others without expecting a snarky reply, and I found that I could do this at the school (although on occasion I still felt sure I was being made fun of behind my back. That took a long time to fade. Sometimes I think it still hasn't, not quite yet). Because I found people didn't deride me for talking, I got bolder and tried to be funny, outgoing, bold. The other kids didn't like this very much as I was being too in-their-faces, but although I vaguely realised this, I was relieved enough by being able to speak to other people at all that I didn't pay much attention to the fact that I was upsetting them. I have many memories of being caustic there that I heavily regret now. When I'd finished there I went to college. Convinced at first that I wanted to work with animals, I booked myself on an animal care course. This consisted of cleaning animal cages and learning biology. The students were mostly school-leavers who weren't terribly interested in continuing their education and even the tutor acted mostly as if he was on holiday in Ibiza. This, of course, didn't suit me at all and I eventually got fed up with my classmates and joined a different class - dog grooming. I stayed there for 2 years. I had a few unpleasant brushes with the students there too, despite the fact that they were generally in their 30's and 40's and I'd at first taken this to mean we'd get along well. Nevertheless, I learned pretty well and stumbled through the course. When I left college I began to seek paid employment, albeit in offices, not dog grooming parlours (these offer a very low wage). I looked for office work instead. I found it very hard to secure a position for myself - I hadn't yet learned enough of the skills - social or otherwise - necessary to convince a recruitment consultant that I was a good candidate. However, I did manage to find short-term work here and there, and scraped together a reasonable wage. I tried to make friends in these workplaces but, of course, I didn't manage to. All I succeeded in doing was alienating myself from them. As in the ACE school, I tried being outgoing and 'crazy', believing that this would win me friends. After all, it was outgoing people who had the most friends and outgoing people did crazy things, didn't they? Still unalbe to see how overbearing I was being, I managed to convince myself that these people must have been at fault for not liking me and put the idea out of my mind as best I could. Because I didn't socialise, I spent a lot of time on the internet. Here, I could be whatever I wanted to be. I didn't have to worry about my looks (in which I've never had much faith), or how I would come across visually in any way. I could pretend to be someone else entirely. And before long, a man I spoke to took interest. His name, he said, was Ziggy. We began to email, chat online and phone eachother almost every day. I quickly fell in love with him. Early on in that relationship I asked if he wanted to meet up. He always told me he wanted to, but never got around to it. About a month into the relationship something strange happened. He told me, at the end of an IM conversation, that he had been to a fortune teller and she had told him that he was due an early death. I said that there wasn't much point in listening to this kind of thing too much, but he was adamant that he was due to die sooner rather than later. Distraught, he signed off. The following day I spoke to him again and he seemed to cast the incident off as if it were nothing. I thought this was a bit strange, but mentally shrugged and forgot about it. Because I was now in love, I began to see real benefits in trying to understand other people. I had a rough awareness that maybe I didn't come across as well as I'd like to, and suddenly I was keen to learn. I wanted Ziggy and me to be closer so that I could watch him with his friends and get a better idea of how my age group worked. Remember that I still spent a lot of time with mum and dad, and they never were the best people for making friends. I waited patiently; I did the best I could to show him what a sparkling personality I had and hoped, gradually, that we'd get closer. This, on the whole, was how the first 4 months went. The second 4 months of the relationship felt increasingly strained; he never did seem to be able to meet me, although he insisted he did. He began to mention girls on his campus that he liked the look of. He told me that an ex had called him and asked to meet up. He complained of feeling alone even though I talked to him often and by his accounts he had a busy social life. Although I didn't want to see it, in retrospect he was trying to give me the elbow without any confrontation. It got worse and worse, until one day he called me and said that the reason he couldn't ever meet up was that he was HIV positive. He revealed that he'd found this out at the doctor's at the time he'd told me he'd been to see a fortune teller. Understandably, this changed things between us, but I was still in love with him and didn't want us to end. I offered to still be his girlfriend even knowing his status; he told me not even to think it. I asked him if he was telling the truth; he got angry. I wrote him a letter by hand and posted it to the campus he lived on. When he still hadn't mentioned it after a couple of weeks, I asked him whether or not he'd received it. He said he'd had no idea to expect one, and I told him that I'd sent it. He cringed audibly and told me that the name he'd given me wasn't real, so the letter couldn't have got to him. This, of course, changed things too. Eventually, the calls and emails simply fizzled to nothing. To this day I'm not sure whether he was telling the truth about his HIV status or not. I became depressed. I still didn't have the social skills required to be popular or get a decent job, so I decided to try to find a job in which I'd be with a group of bubbly, devil-may-care people, and I thought I knew exactly where to try. I found a job as a barmaid in a local pub, thinking that if I worked with a group of bar staff I'd be able to learn some social skills. Having very rarely been out (or even stayed in) drinking before, I had no idea what most of the drinks were. My trainer, however, skipped that part of the training session, assuming that I already knew about them all. I didn't want to look ignorant so I didn't tell her I didn't know about the different drinks, what they tasted like, their strengths, what mixers they went well with. I figured that I could get by on that score on my own as the customers would all ask for what they wanted anyway. However, I didn't have a good memory for large orders and made lots of mistakes. I began to get a reputation for getting orders wrong (for drinks and for food), and the more I worried about this, the more mistakes I made, so before long I became very unpopular with the other staff. Eventually, the manager put me on graveyard shifts every day until after 2 months I couldn't stand it any more and left. The graveyard shift was mostly full of elderly people but generally pretty quiet. Most of whom saw that I was a teenager and that I looked quite sullen, and several therefore condescended to me about not knowing I was born etc. At this time, mum and dad seemed to be becoming quite disappointed in me. I couldn't seem to fall out of love with Ziggy - or stop hating him for stringing me along. It didn't feel normal to love and hate the same person simultaneously - I wondered if I was going mad. I thought about suicide every day; the fact that the pub also served food and that there was a cache of steak knives at the end of the bar did nothing to help me forget about this. One of the regulars at the pub started talking to me. He was 36, lived with his mum, and was an alcoholic. He had a very strong cockney accent and worked locally as a dustman. His name was Steve. He kept on telling me to smile every time I walked past one evening and, flattered that somebody had even bothered to speak to me, I accepted this as friendship. I asked him if he wanted to go on a date and he accepted. For the 4 weeks we were a couple, he told me what to do, how to speak, and what to drink (although I still didn't really like alcohol; he told me to drink bottles of beer, then complained at my choice as bottles of beer are more expensive than draught pints); he insisted that I go on the pill because he didn't like to use condoms, and so on. One time, he told me I wanted sex even when I said I didn't - he told me I didn't know what I wanted and raped me. By the end of those 4 weeks, I felt utterly sick of being bossed around and called it a day. As mum had trained long ago to be a counsellor, I would have guessed at about this time that she'd be supportive of me, perhaps give me a few words of encouragement or advice. I was depressed, I felt utterly lost and alone, I had no idea where I was going in life; I felt suicidal. It all seemed pointless. And yet, when I told her how I felt, her only reaction was that I was a teenager and was therefore in the middle of the most wonderful time of my life. It would never be this good again! If I didn't enjoy it then I was being a spoilt little child. The funny thing is, I almost believed her. I knew I wasn't happy, but the fact that I wasn't when she clearly told me I should be made me wonder if I was, in fact, wrong to be so miserable. I couldn't work this out and that made me more depressed still. I worked for a while in the local hospital, clearing a backlog of outpatient reports that needed to be input onto their computer system. I cried a lot while I worked there, and felt bitter that, although I worked, I didn't feel like part of the team. At one point, one of the physiotherapists there chatted to me about depression and told me, 'well, you're only young so I'm sure you've no idea what depression is like'. I was galled, but didn't feel I could say anything. One day my eldest brother called me to say that he and a few friends were going out clubbing. I had been clubbing once or twice before while I'd trained to be a dog groomer, but I'd hated it. I don't mix well with alcohol (not in large quantities, anyway) and the cheesy music I'd heard so far in clubs wasn't to my taste. Another thing that made me feel alienated from the rest of my age group was that everybody else seemed to adore clubbing. Although I got bored in nightclubs easily, I figured that maybe I'd 'get' it sooner or later, so I took up my brother's offer. The day after this he called again to say that there was only enough tickets for his friends so I couldn't come. I decided there and then that I'd commit suicide. My plan was this: I'd ask to come along anyway and stay at his house, I'd wait for him and his friends to leave, and then, after they'd gone, I'd slit my wrists. Hours later, they'd return and see, to their shock, me - either dead or dying. I didn't particularly care whether I died or not, I was prepared to let whatever happen happen. Then, I reasoned, people would understand how unhappy I was; then they'd see that I wasn't lying or being dramatic when I told them I felt so low. So I asked him if I could come along and stay at his home. I'd see them when they got back and sit and chat with them, I said. He sounded surprised by my proposal, but agreed to it. The day came, and I travelled to the town he lived in - our home town. I got there early, and walked around for 3 or 4 hours waiting for the time we'd agreed to meet up. I've always hated that place, and I had so much negativity going around and around my head that by the time he picked me up, I must have looked wretched. He asked me whether something was wrong and I just burst into tears. He said that I looked like I'd just about had enough, and I told him everything. I told him about mum's manipulation, about the failed relationship with Ziggy, about the jobs I'd been to and hated, about how isolated I felt. Everything. By the time I'd finished I felt better; he told me that mum had been difficult to him too and that he understood how I felt. I was relieved by all this; at last somebody understood. At last somebody knew I wasn't being a spoilt brat. At last I knew I wasn't being a spoilt brat. So by the time he and his friends left for the club, I was genuinely happy just to sit and watch television until they returned. Mum's always liked psychological thrillers and nothing else. She'll even think twice if the film doesn't have Morgan Freeman in it. Dad never got a look-in when we went to get a film, so most times it was the same narrow genre of films. They weren't really to my taste, but I wouldn't have a say on the film chosen either, unless it was a choice between two psychological thrillers. That night I watched Gladiator. I watched nature documentaries and random bits and pieces on SKY. I got myself a snack, I lay on the sofa, quietly holding the T.V. remote. It was bloody fantastic and the most relaxed I'd felt in years. On arrival, my brother and his friends all sat down on bean bags and cushions in the living room and settled comfortably to chat about everything and nothing. My brother sat by me and looked tense for a while; then he offered me an Ecstasy tablet. I hadn't had much of a drug education at school; we'd just been told that if we were ever caught trafficking drugs then we'd go to prison (something of an example of just why I hated my hometown; it was assumed that you would grow up to be dole bait). My parents certainly hadn't taught me anything about drugs - not even mum. I learned later that they were both too afraid of drugs even to talk about them. How good a drugs counsellor that made her I'll leave you to judge. I figured that, as my life was in such a state, I had nothing to lose. I accepted the pill and swallowed it. I asked him what it would do and he told me that it would make me feel better than I'd ever felt before. While I didn't mean to disbelieve this, I internally questionned it; how could a beany little tablet make such a difference? Surely he was overstating the effects? I forgot about it. Half an hour later, I felt a warmth in the core of my body; a buzz that felt like warm sunlight. British readers might be familiar with the term, The Reddy Brek glow - this was it! I found my tongue - I'd so far been rather quiet, because I didn't know what to say and was afraid of saying the wrong thing - and began to talk. I must have talked so hard and so much that eventually my brother gave me a notepad and pen to write down all that I felt. So, not talking, I wrote and wrote and wrote (the same thing many times over, I might add - E gives you an awful memory while you're under the effects and I simply didn't realise I was writing the same things repetitively as a mantra. Did me good, though!). When I ran out of inspiration I thought; and I remembered a time when I was about 5, and at school. It was an autumn day and me and a classmate called Glenn were running around, catching leaves from the trees before they reached the ground. I remembered how carefree and happy I'd felt at the time, and then realised I'd thought for months that I'd never feel happy again. But it was right here. To my amazement, I felt truly happy! And that was perhaps the biggest turning point of my adult life. I kept all of this secret from mum, although she seemed to get an idea that I'd taken E. I wasn't quite sure how she guessed this, but I denied it for some time. I visited my brother's place again about 6 more times to chat and take E with them, and loved the escape, the freedom and happiness, each time. I mentioned it to people I'd got to know online. I was truly in an Ecstasy Honeymoon! A few weeks later, my brother stopped inviting me down. I think I must have said the wrong thing too many times and he didn't want me around any more. This was upsetting, but I was on the right road, I felt. I was confident I knew how to make my life right after my experiences there. Eventually, after being needled by mum for long enough, I decided to come clean with her and told her I'd taken E. She'd insinuated that she'd be okay with it if I told her, and, as I didn't know what her opinion on illegal drugs was at the time, I suspected that her experiences with tranquilizers would make her rational about them. However, when I told her, she looked around the room... and then ran outside into the garden, where my dad was. He came indoors a few seconds later and said, 'I didn't know how I could be so stupid'. For the next couple of weeks they both tried to tell me how bad what I'd done was and that they wouldn't have it. On one occasion when I was in my room, mum came in and sat on the end of my bed, holding a cigarette in one hand and a triple sherry in the other (she's always liked sherry and has one of this approximate size most days). She told me that it was wrong to take drugs. I told her not to say that to me when she had what she was holding, and she hissed, 'how dare you! How dare you, how... dare you!" and stormed out. But as manipulative as mum had always been and was trying to be now, and as overbearing as dad had been about this issue, I refused to let this one go. To me, it was worth more than my relationship with them; more than my life was worth. Eventually they gave up trying to lecture me, seeing that it was futile. Perhaps they were also afraid of hearing about the drug - I'd even found one or two drug helplines for them to call if they were that worried. They refused the offer. In a conversation with my brother a while after all this, he revealed to me that she knew I'd taken E because of the notes I'd written that first time, and because she'd looked in my hotmail inbox. I'd put the notes in my bedside drawer under a couple of books, so I know she snooped to get those. And I'd always kept my inbox open for convenience, not really thinking that anyone would be interested in its contents. I was furious - and, of course, logged out after every session from then onwards. I decided at that point that she simply wasn't to be trusted. At about this time I began to chat online with another man. His name was Mike. He also took E; he was funny, talkative, and always up for a laugh. Although I only thought of him as a good friend to chat to, he eventually told me he was beginning to *like* me. We agreed to meet up in London for a date. We did, and had a pleasant day. We were both shy, but had agreed beforehand to spend the night together in a hotel. When we got there, we each took an E and had a very physical night together. It was wonderful! The next morning we parted and I felt a wrench as we did so - I'd really enjoyed his company. Unlike Steve, he'd treated me as an equal, and I liked that. We both confirmed by email later that we'd both thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing and became a couple. We met up more times after this, usually in London, which was pretty much the central point between us. Our love grew more and more; we really liked eachother! He was as quiet an individual as I was; we didn't have to talk all the time, we could just be quiet and enjoy ourselves. that was great too. But there was a problem: mum. I felt sure that mum would insist I didn't go out with him if she knew it was a man I was meeting, so I kept the relationship as secret as I could. It was tricky telling her that I would be away for a day or so, as this was out of character for me. So I lied, saying that I was just meeting internet friends; conjuring girls of a similar age, saying that we were going to see musicals. I confess now that I also enjoyed showing her that I could also be in control, but home was like a battleground at the time. Over time she made it clearer and clearer to me that she didn't like me going off like this; I argued almost constantly with her over it, but enjoyed having the power of standing up to her. Tensions rose between us and eventually I had to tell Mike the problem. Thankfully he was level-headed enough to appreciate the issue, but I had been afraid since the relationship had started that my overbearing mum would frighten him off. After seeing eachother for 6 months we moved in together in a place in Brighton. I told mum when I was due to move out in 1 week and she was relieved that this was why I had been being secret. She made a big show of being pleased I was part of a couple, although I still maintain that she would have been far less in favour of the relationship if I'd told her what was happening right from the beginning. Mike and I have been together since, and are as happy as ever. I thought at this point that, as I wasn't living with mum anymore, maybe we could get along together at last. We were out from under eachothers' feet and I hoped that that meant we might be able to get along properly. We were, effectively, equals now. We met up to have coffee and shopping trips, and for a little while, all was well. She liked Mike. My brother, however, didn't. Although he didn't seem to like my company any more, he reacted badly to the relationship. I was keen for him and Mike to meet eachother, but after their first meeting, my brother complained that Mike had been secretive and 'kept his cards close to his chest'. I tried in vain to get them both to warm to eachother. I even took my brother's side at first just to make him feel cared for, as he was the one with the problem. He started playing games in which he'd send emails intended only for me and expressly not for Mike's eyes. I asked mum if she knew anything about it and she always told me that my brother had been unkind to Mike because he had been through difficult times lately but 'was better now'. But he never acted any different, just continued to be bitter. On one occasion, I got a bruise. On a family visit both mum and my brother saw it, and I explained how I'd got it. A few days later, mum offered for us to go out on a day trip and asked me - seriously - whether Mike had ever hit me. Of course, he had not. She looked dubious, but 'believed' me. I asked her why she thought this, and she said that my brother had thought my bruise was very suspicious. I mentioned this to Mike and, of course, he wasn't happy. He didn't, however, take it up with her. From this moment I saw that mum and my brother were trying to drive us apart. I took Mike's side. My relationship was the most important thing to me and I didn't want it to be ruined. The moment I didn't take my brother's side on the issue, he became verbally abusive. Mum decided that I must have taken Mike's side because I was afraid of him, which rekindled her idea that he was hitting me. To this day I'm not sure why either of them had such a problem with Mike, but it set off a couple of years of dispute between us and them. Mum tried to get me to forgive my brother. At first I did; but any message from me was ignored. Because he didn't respond, she pressured me to try harder to get along with him. Again, he would ignore me. So when the bruise issue happened, I decided not to try any more. She rang me on several occasions after this and spent up to an hour a time pressuring me to call Simon and make peace with him, always telling me that 'he was better now'. One Christmas she invited Mike and me over. This was fine, until my dad picked us up and drove us to their house. He told us that my brother was there, too. When we got there, my brother got up out of his seat and came forward to kiss me on the cheek. Fed up of his games, I leaned back. He went to shake hands with Mike, who didn't offer a hand in return. He suddenly looked very distraught and ran into the garden. Mum and dad followed him out and kept on coming from one of us to the other, trying to make the peace. Mum told me that I would make my brother very ill by doing this, that he couldn't cope with being treated in such a manner. My dad told me that this was supposed to have been mum's 'best Christmas ever' (despite the fact that she'd always told me she didn't particularly like Christmas). He drove us back home, telling us that we were 'a disgrace' and telling us that we'd caused 'a rift in the family', and sped off the moment we were out of the car. The issue was eventually resolved when, 2 hours later, mum rang again and asked for us to come over and sort out the problem. She picked us up this time. I tried to explain the situation to her on the way over but she kept on talking over me. I asked her not to do that and got her to agree to it, but the moment I continued to tell our side of the story, she talked over me again. It became clear that this was another 'Hayley, submit and stop being difficult' issue. When we got back, my brother was squirming with discomfort at the whole thing, and asked whether we'd be able to wipe the slate clean. No apology, no explaination of his behaviour, nothing. Fed up by now and keen just for the turbulence to die down, Mike and me agreed, and we spent a farcical afternoon together. My relationship with mum was superficially patched up after this, although only on her side. To her, I was being the obedient little daughter again; to me, she had manipulated me and my partner to do what she wanted again. Mike kept mostly quiet about his opinion of mum, but we were both irritated at how we'd been treated. Four years ago I was looking for a hobby of some kind and found pole-dancing. It had recently come into the mainstream along with burlesque, and was that year's 'it' pastime. I found a teacher, and on a Thursday evening I attended a class. I loved it! It was girly (I'd belatedly realised how fun it was to be a bit girly sometimes), it was healthy, and it had a potential to be sociable! Thinking that this was a great thing to talk to mum about, I called her and told her about my class. She sounded embarrassed, but I didn't think much of that. The following Monday she called me again, and told me that she'd been 'out of [her] head with worry all weekend'. I asked her why, and she told me that the pole-dancing instructor I'd seen was a prostitute, that she was going to get me into prostitution, that one day I'd go there for a class and there would be men there, and I'd leave my drink unattended, they'd put something in and I'd be raped. Furthermore, she told me that 'all' men had looked into prostitution because they had an interest in it. 'All men', she reasserted. 'Not Mike, and not your brothers or father,' she hurriedly continued, but all men apart from them. I decided not to question what made the men closest to me any different, but when I put the phone down I realised that she had damaged my trust in her again. Half an hour later I decided to get her off my tail and called again, saying thank you for pointing the danger out to me and that I'd never go pole-dancing again. She sounded slightly confused about my agreement, but I pushed it until she sounded convinced. I went pole-dancing many times after that as I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've stopped doing it now as I'd hit a plateau on the moves I could do, but for the time I did it, I loved it! And knowing that it was my secret from mum made it more enjoyable still. Two and a half years ago an internet friend of mine, who had recently become a Christian, showed me a website he'd discovered. It was called The Narrow Road - a Christian help site for teens. Intrigued, I had a look. I replied to a few queries and left. The next day, I returned, read the replies, and replied to them again. This continued, and I gradually found that, although the answers I gave were atheist and therefore were rather different to those normally given, my replies were seen to be helpful there. I have been there since. I have used my life experiences, as written above, to do my best to give help where I can, and I've built a network of friends and aquaintances there. After about 1 year there I decided to make a website full of the kinds of tips I was writing on TNR. This is that website. I love my place there; I enjoy being valued and listened to; I enjoy being trusted. I enjoy being able to use my history for something positive. Finally I can make something useful of it all! |
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