Growing up is an interesting period of your life. At some point, you stop being a child; you don’t really notice when it happens. You just suddenly lose interest in toys and began to pay more attention to the world outside your personal bubble. New surroundings, new smells, new interests… and most of all – new people.
New people means exposure to other bubbles. Some similar, some not so similar and some totally different. Some dangerous, some influential, yet all equally interesting. As children become teenagers, the innocent interest slowly turns into a kind of obsession. We discover that terms, such us love, trust, honesty and many others have new meaning. We learn that some of those terms mean something else, depending on the environment. For example: motherly love vs. peer love. New terms come to the picture: sex, drugs etc. Most of them still “forbidden” at the teen stage, but at the same time, gradually open for exploration.
This transition can be extremely dangerous, if a child is not prepared for it. It is imperilling for both sides – parents and the child, should there be no adequate preparation beforehand.
Unfortunately, in my home such preparation was not a top subject. As far as I remember, my parents never really discussed things. Each of them was doing their own thing and every time one of them didn’t approve of the other’s idea, there was a row, often ending in beatings. The fact that my father came home drunk almost every day didn’t help.
To me, about 6 years old at the time, but also in later times, that was something normal. That doesn’t mean that I liked it.
The school wasn’t great either. Although I was getting on with teachers really well and my grades were excellent, I was always an object of bullying. The main factors were: me being overweight, red head, and freckled face. Sounds not much but… The same sort of bullying was happening at home, I was constantly reminded how fat I am and how ashamed I should be because of that. And I was… I was ashamed of my existence and sorry that I was brought to this world. I was lower than anyone else and there was no one to tell me otherwise.
I’m not going to make any excuses, I was eating quite a lot. I learned much later in my life about comfort eating, as a result of being stressed and/or constantly under pressure. I was constantly peckish. I hated going outside and socialising. I didn’t belong. I remember, once my mother wanted me to go out and play but I refused, so she pushed me outside and shut the door. I spent half a day crying and hiding. I remember it very clearly, like a flash memory. When I consulted my mother recently, she denied it and everything else bad whatever happened. Sad really…
My mother had a habit of belittling me in front of others. Especially where my or her friends were present. I think, she was trying to make up, as someone being in charge, since she was completely powerless when my father was around. He was the money and he was the fist. I was just a handy pawn, so was my brother; however, he was treated in utterly different manner (at the end of the day – he was a boy), and he was never bullied.
So there I was, alone, sad, confused, yet full of life and gagging for a friend and social acceptance… Little did I know how this wish was going to turn against me in the future, and I just wanted to be “normal”…
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