Читать книгу Misfit to Maven - Ebonie Allard - Страница 9
ОглавлениеALWAYS TOO MUCH, NEVER ENOUGH
I moved to a proper high school in the spring of 1992. Big school. Fucking HUGE school. I went from a class of 21 children and 8 classes in the whole school to a class of 35, 10 classes in a year and 5 years in one campus. Mind BLOWN.
It was scary, but it was also exciting; the ultimate chameleon test.
The lessons were boring, the teachers were boring and most of the people were boring, but this was normality and I had arrived. Some of these kids were cool and I wanted to be like them.
I wanted to engage, I wanted to make friends and be a part of their world, but I’d joined in the spring term and everyone already had a best friend and a group that they hung with. I didn’t know how to act in this environment, I hadn’t worked out the rules yet. So I just loitered in between the groups, flitting from one to another and trying to figure it all out. I desperately wanted to belong, but I didn’t fit anywhere. I saw this move into normality as an opportunity and I was determined to make the most of it.
Why won’t you like me? What are the rules? How do I play?
Outside of school I had festivals, not the big music festivals you might know of, but smaller camps organised by peace-loving, art-making eco warriors. Some I went to with my family, some I went to alone or with festival friends and their parents. At these festivals there was always a space especially for teenagers like us and I could relax and be myself there. I didn’t feel like I fully belonged, most of the other juves1 knew each other outside of these camps, their families and lives were intertwined beyond the time we spent in a field and in my mind this was their space. I wasn’t the same as them either. They didn’t seem to have the kind of ambition I did. They weren’t interested in things and stuff like I was. I wanted consumerism. I wanted the status a job title gave. I longed for the badge a fancy car provided. I ached for external validation and proof that I belonged. They belonged here, and I was an inbetweener, I wasn’t quite one of them and I wasn’t quite a normal person.
However these people were kind and inclusive and so I was accepted as one of them, and with them was the one place I felt most like myself. I am grateful for every single one of those people in their fields of tents and yurts and tipis for what they taught and instilled in me.
I lived for the summers and half-term holidays. There was always a gathering or festival to go to and I got to feel briefly that I was somewhat part of something. The people at these festivals have huge open hearts, it was always a big extended surrogate family, and they were kind enough to include and love me. I got to be out in nature and I could be all of myself there, I was just really unsure who that was.
Back in term time I still just could not figure out how to get the normal kids to like me. I tried my best to blend in, but I just didn’t get it. They didn’t get me and I so desperately wanted to get them. I felt sure that if I figured them out I could work out how to fit in. I could bend and sculpt myself to be one of them.
ME?
WHEN I THINK, WELL WHO AM I?
I TAKE MY TIME AND PONDER HARD,
I REALLY CANNOT SAY IN WORDS...
I’M FAT AND SHORT AND FUNNY AND PROUD!
I STAND UP TALL AND WATCH THE CROWD.
I LIKE TO LOVE, AND LOVE TO BE LIKED.
I JUMP, I HOP AND LEAP AND SKIP,
(AND WISH THAT I COULD BACKFLIP)
BUT MOST OF ALL I SLEEP AT NIGHT, AND DREAM...
AND HOPE...
THAT ONE DAY I’LL FIND A PLACE I FIT.
– EXTRACT FROM MY DIARY IN THE SUMMER OF 1993 AGED 12, NEARLY 13.
One day a group of girls invited me to come to the fairground with them.
Oh my God they like me!
So I went. As we dawdled at a snail’s pace along the pavement, dragging our heels and sprawling across the entire walkway, completely unaware of anyone trying to get past, one of the girls pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
‘I stole these from my mum. Who’ll smoke one with me?’
And I was in, I belonged.
I decided that the goal was to be normal enough to blend in, but edgy enough to be cool and hide the fact that I was not really at all normal. This meant pushing the boundaries in every direction but not drawing attention to my rebellion or recklessness in a way that would alert my parents or teachers who might raise the alarm.
During the years that followed I did many things to prove that I belonged, including but not limited to:
• Skiving off school, particularly maths lessons
• Shoplifting – I used police cars as taxis for a while, and tried to steal only from large corporations and not independent storeowners.
• Hitching from the countryside into town to drink in pubs
• Clubbing from the age of 14
• Kissing doormen and men about 20 years older than me who might buy me drinks and pay my cab fare home
• Drinking and drug taking
• Sex
• Starving myself, binge eating followed by throwing up, and a whole host of other creative ways to try and be skinny.
I wasn’t the only one playing this ‘how the fuck do I stop being a misfit and fit in’ game. I had a great friend who also went from a Steiner School and a ‘weird’ family to a ‘normal’ school. She and I went to different ‘normal’ schools, and in discovering each other’s secret we formed our own little gang. We smoked cannabis together, hitched rides together, snuck into clubs together and ran away from men together.
We looked out for each other. We took risks, knowing that we had each other’s back. One time I found her being assaulted by a guy 20 years older than us in a car park stairwell. One minute they were just behind me as we walked to find a taxi rank. The next they were gone. By the time I found them he already had his hand up her skirt and she was trying but failing to wriggle free. I screamed at him, kicked him and grabbed her hand – pulling her away from him with all my might. We ran away as fast as our drunken teenage legs would carry us and jumped into a taxi, laughing.
One time we jumped out of a moving car because the guy we were hitching a lift from started to lock the doors and was freaking me out. I was in the front, she was in the back. I got a bad feeling about the guy so I made eye contact with her in the mirrors and signalled with my hands and then we jumped, hitting the grassy verge with a teenage bounce and a giggle.
Another time I tried to stop a guy flirting with an uninterested friend in a bar and ended up being hit by him; I don’t really remember very much of what happened, only that I came to outside afterwards surrounded by a doorman and my friends. Up until that moment I didn’t think a man would hit a woman in public. Shocked and shaken, I was taken and lifted by a group of celebratory friends to sit high up on a red letterbox. All bloodied and eating chips I felt the familiar mix of significance and shame.
By the time I got to sixth-form college in 1996 I was snorting speed in the common rooms and giving boys blow jobs in bathrooms. I was so cool.
NOT.
It seemed that whatever I did I was still not cool enough.
Inside I just wanted to be seen for being me, but I was so scared of being rejected as myself that I perfected playing the role of ‘cool girl’2 instead. When people fell for my creation I secretly dismissed them. Every time someone made friends with, employed or fell in love with her, a piece of the real me got stuffed further down and away.
Looking back now, I realise that I even though I decided that I had become an adult at 14, I was still so young. So self-absorbed. Not in a good way or a bad way, just still learning who I was and how I fitted into everything. Somehow believing that there was a definitive answer. Fourteen was a big year for me; my parents separated and began divorce proceedings, I dyed my hair black, and I began numbing my feelings with drugs, sex and food.
My parents’ separation meant that on the one hand I got a whole heap of freedom and on the other, a whole heap of responsibility. Initially they tried splitting custody half a week each. Within six months we had moved to one week on, one week off, which was slightly better, but not much. The leap from year 9 to year 10 at school and the start of my GCSEs was also a big deal. My life suddenly got much more complex than it ever had been before and my hormones were all over the place. I got a stepmum and a stepbrother and sister, whom I now consider to be as much family to me as the rest of them, but who were then an added complexity to my ever more unpredictable life. I started having periods, often ones that would knock me over in complete agony for two to three days. I also started to feel feelings as if they were going to swallow me whole. My mum and I were at each other’s throats A LOT. By November of that year I was going to live with my Dad full time because my Mum and I were not finding it easy to live together. As with so many mothers and daughters, as with her own earlier relationship with her mother, the relationship between me and my mum was complex. I understand it a lot better now, I love her and have learned so much about myself and life because of the way that we push each other’s buttons. But then, when I was 14, I didn’t understand it or appreciate it as I do now. I was rebellious; I had fire in my belly and passion in my heart. I was free spirited and dynamic but I was not dangerous or out of control. Or at least I didn’t think I was. One of the many strategies I had for coping with the ever-growing uncertainty in my life was to snoop through stuff; somehow knowing what was in people’s pockets, or mail or handbags meant that I felt more in control. One day when I was snooping, I found correspondence from a mental health clinic, which led me to believe that there was a possibility of my being sectioned.3 Like the time on the street when I was seven, and no longer sure that I could trust myself, this letter reinforced that belief and added a layer of evidence which had me questioning my sanity, telling me that I was ‘crazy’ or out of control.
ANGRY
ANGRY, YOU MAKE ME MAD,
I CLENCH MY FISTS AND GRIT MY TEETH,
MY HEAD BEGINS TO TIGHTEN,
MY EYES GLAZE OVER,
THE LUMP IN MY THROAT INCREASES BY MORE NUMBERS THAN IMAGINABLE,
I PERSPIRE RAPIDLY,
MY MIND RACES,
MY FLESH CRAWLS WITH ADRENALIN,
I SMELL FEAR! I LOVE IT!
MY ANGER SWELLS.
SLOWLY EACH ASPECT SHARPENS, I AM AWARE OF ALL...
I FIGHT VERBALLY
I KNOW WHAT I AM SAYING IS CRAP, BUT I PURSUE
I KNOW THAT SOME (AND ONLY SOME MIND YOU) OF WHAT SHE’S MUTTERING IS TRUE, BUT I PURSUE.
MY FINGERNAILS DIG DEEP INTO MY PALM,
I AM DESTROYING THE FORT, IT IS WEAKENED,
MY EYES CAN TAKE THE STRAIN NO LONGER,
THE BOUGHS BREAK,
THE SHIP SINKS,
THE ANGRY SEAS FALL AWAITING THE NEXT STORM.
HUH?
SCARED, SO SCARED,
AFRAID TO SPEAK FREE,
ASHAMED TO BE ME,
WORRIED ABOUT THE PAST,
WHAT MY FUTURE BRINGS,
THIS AND LOTS OF OTHER THINGS.
WELLING UP INSIDE,
THE TEARS BEING TO POUR,
SILVERY DROPLETS, MORE AND MORE,
LAMENTING OLD SORROWS,
WHAT I’VE DONE WRONG,
HOPING THE EVIDENCE WON’T LAST LONG,
MY SHELL SHOWS HAPPINESS,
INSIDE IS WEAK,
AM I A FREAK?
HOPING TO COPE,
SITUATIONS OCCUR,
ALL SEEMS A BLUR...
HEAD IN VERTIGO,
SENSELESS TALKING,
BRAIN IS WALKING,
I WISH IT WAS JUST ME,
PLAYING WITH FOAM,
I WANT TO GO HOME.
– EXTRACTS FROM MY POEM JOURNAL DECEMBER 1995, AGED 14 AND A HALF.
I didn’t feel that I had anyone to talk to about what was going on for me and I was trying to process a lot. Sometimes I would come home and accidently slam all the doors, just trying to get to my room to cry. I had no idea what an empath4 was then, but I did know that often times I would be filled with all sorts of crazy feelings and just have to cry into my pillow until I could breathe again.
Sometimes I would lie on my bed and write in my journal for hours; reams and reams of stuff I felt angry and sad and overwhelmed by. Most of it didn’t feel like mine. Sometimes I would write and cry for the starving children in Africa, or the girl I heard crying in the toilets at school. My belief about life was that it was messy. You couldn’t trust people. I found ways to stop it all feeling too overwhelming. At the time I thought I was doing great. I felt pretty unaffected by my family life. I felt sure that I was holding things together. I dyed my hair a different colour every week and began to find a style that was somewhere between punk rock and flower girl. Looking back I can see that I was incredibly ferocious and angry but putting on a mask of sugar and spice and all things nice. The only time I really felt good was when I climbed out of my bedroom window and sat alone, quietly gazing out over the rooftops and down to the sea, at the horizon and all its possibilities, while smoking a Lucky Strike cigarette.
Most of the time I felt vulnerable and scared and alone, and I didn’t know what to do with those feelings so they blurted out sideways and I acted out. I escaped from home as often as I could. I made myself a home from home. From 14 to 17 I had the perfect best friend. We met at a camp in Wales, but lived just a few streets from one another. She was cool. In my eyes she was the real deal while I was just an imposter. I wanted to be just like her. In term time she went to a grammar school and hung out with attractive, wealthy boys and in the holidays she hung out at the camps with all the attractive hippie boys. Everyone fancied her and I wanted them to like me as much as they liked her! Her mum was liberal and lenient and let me stay over all the time. For a while I practically lived at their house. My friend and I were alike in many ways, but also very different. I aspired to be just like her. I decided that she had the perfect blend of normal and unique. I felt sure that she was more popular than me and my belief was that it was because she was skinnier. I figured that if I could get skinny, then everyone would like me more.
Looking back over my diary entries while writing this book was both interesting and saddening. It became really clear, written there in black and white, that from the age of 14 until really relatively recently I thought and wrote really horrible things about myself over and over. It became habitual to put myself down, to call myself fat and ugly and stupid.
Knowing what I know now about how powerful writing down our beliefs can be for manifesting and creating, it is no wonder that I spent so many years at war with myself:
31ST JANUARY 1996
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS:
I’VE DECIDED TO BECOME ANOREXIC OR SUCH LIKE.
NO FOOD... IT’S ONLY BEEN TWO DAYS SO FAR, BUT HEY – LET’S SEE HOW LONG I CAN LAST...
1ST FEB 1996
TODAY I ATE:
AN APPLE, 4 MOUTHFULS OF SPAGHETTI BOLOGNAISE.
2ND FEB
HALF A CHEESE SANDWICH. 2 RICE CAKES.
A YOGHURT AND AN APPLE.
TEN AND A HALF STONE. FUCK
3RD FEB
CHEESE AND MARMITE SANDWICH, PIECE OF TOAST,
A PIECE OF FUDGE, A PIECE OF PIZZA.
4TH FEB
GOT STONED. BINGED. 2 PACKETS OF SPACE RAIDERS.
CRÈME EGG. PACKET OF BISCUITS.
5TH FEB
I’M JUST A FATTY WHO CAN’T CONTROL HERSELF.
I CAN’T EVEN BE ANOREXIC!
I HATE MYSELF AND I WANT TO DIE.
The conversation I’d had with my dad all those years before about those two anorexic girls swirled around in my head and even though I was smart enough to know starving myself was not a good idea, I so badly wanted to look like I fit in. During the holidays I did my best to make excuses about meals and skipped as many as I could. After the first week I weighed myself at my grandma’s house and saw that I’d lost half a stone. Momentarily I was so proud. Then the hunger for better results kicked in. For those of you who have been lucky enough to escape addictive behaviour, I want you to think about when you get an alert on your phone, or a text message from someone you like. You get a little ‘hit’ – an endorphin rush. You want more. Have you ever messaged someone a question just to get a response? That’s how addictions start, curiosity. What happens if I say this? What happens if I do this? Searching for a rush, connection and a boundary.
When we went back to school I kept at it, cutting apples into pieces and sucking on them in class. Careful to never eat them, just suck the juice out. One day it was announced by one of our teachers that a girl from our class would not be coming back this term as she had been admitted to a special clinic for her eating disorder. Instead of being sad for her and her family like those around me, I was jealous. I can’t even do this as well as the other girls! The belief I had about myself was that I was failing at everything I cared about.
Later that term a well-meaning friend caught me not eating and told my parents. I promised it was just a phase and that I would start eating again. With everyone watching and a new-found emphasis on eating as a family or at the table I made the strategic decision to move on to bulimic behaviour. I wasn’t about to stop – I needed to get a body that would make my life better, and I also wanted to smoke a lot of weed.
The two were not congruent and the obvious solution was to make myself sick. I ate normally, and then ran off to the bathroom and stuck my fingers down my throat. Over time the rules were relaxed again and I was allowed out to see my friend. At hers we smoked pot and got high, binged on pizza and then drank pints of salt water to make ourselves sick. Sometimes we did this together, sometimes I did it alone. It made me feel closer to her to share this secret ‘naughty’ behaviour. I felt like we had found a glitch in the system and that we were tricking life. It felt good to have someone to share secrets with. It felt good to have someone who got me. It felt good to have someone to talk about boys with, to plan parties and fun times with. It felt good to belong.
But juggling school, family, friends, smoking, boys, fashion, hair dye and secrets got very complicated – so much was out of my control.
As the everyday stresses of my adolescent life increased, all I wanted was to escape in a puff of smoke and control. More and more I needed to feel like I had some sort of control over my life. I felt like my entire existence was a charade of trying to fit into a life that I wasn’t meant for. I became convinced that I should have died when I was a baby. I wasn’t meant for this world. I got more and more stressed out. My body began manifesting severe stress symptoms; first I got ringworm and eczema and then I got a really nasty ear infection.
I was born with something called a preauricular sinus,5 which is a hereditary and reasonably common congenital malformation. It appears just as a little hole like a piercing up on the top part of the ear. Most preauricular sinuses are asymptomatic and can remain untreated unless they become infected too often. Most people have one on one side. My dad does, my brother does. I had two. One on each side. Mine both got infected a couple of times as a child and my parents were offered surgery but opted not to put me through it. Which was a good decision and they remained fine until I was fifteen. Just before my Year 10 mock exams and GCSE coursework deadline one got really badly infected and I was off school for ages. I missed school, but more importantly for me at the time I missed parties and a Prodigy gig. It felt very unfair. I was at my mum’s. The infection got so bad that she took me to casualty. They sent me home with painkillers and gave her instructions on how to drain my ear. I was in a lot of pain and it was not an easy task. She couldn’t do it, so she called my dad. Over the course of what felt like FOREVER but was in fact a matter of weeks we went to casualty again, often, and the ENT specialist. Eventually they took us to a room on the ward, gave me a local anaesthetic in my ear and lanced the cyst.
FUCK. I still remember exactly how much that hurt.
I squeezed my dad’s hand so hard he visibly sweated and tears rolled down his face. A week later my glands were still up, I had a huge scab in my ear and I was still off school, but it looked like it was healing. Then it flared up again, so we went back to the hospital, where I was told that they were going to try one more thing without using ‘knives’ but if that didn’t work then it would need lancing again. The ‘one more thing’ was a different course of antibiotics, with a warning that if it didn’t get better they would have to give me an internal dressing under general aesthetic. The recommended course of action was to wait until the infection was healed before attempting surgery. So I prayed to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in that it would heal. Because of their close proximity to the facial nerves, the removal of preauricular sinuses is performed by an otolaryngologist, requires a lengthy and scary consent form, and isn’t usually performed whilst there is an infection. The consent form basically said that I could end up with a paralysed face. The doctors and my parents let me read all the information and make my own decision about consent. It was a really big moment for me. A self-responsibility and acceptance moment. A surrender and uncertainty moment. A ‘how much do I value my life?’ moment. It was another ‘FUCK I must be a grown up now’ moment!
MY DIARY ENTRY READS:
SO FAR I’VE MISSED A HALF TERM OF FUN, TWO COOL PARTIES, FOUR WEEKS OF SCHOOL, AND I AM STILL IN SO MUCH PAIN. WHY DON’T I HAVE A BOYFRIEND? OH I KNOW BECAUSE I AM TEN AND HALF STONE. MUST DO BETTER. TARGET 9 STONE.
Even in these circumstances, my focus was the FAT and the lack of boyfriend. The lens through which I viewed the world was completely blinkered. I wanted a boyfriend so I would feel less alone. I fantasised that he would be the person I talked to and made these sorts of decisions with, but the reality is that I wouldn’t have shared any of what I was actually going through with a boyfriend even if there had been one. In reality I didn’t trust anyone, not even myself. I had a limited set of resources at 15 and I used what was readily available to me. I was sure that the solution to my discomfort was outside of me. I projected all my hopes and fantasies onto an imaginary, idealised boyfriend. I numbed all my uncomfortable feelings with food, drugs and sex. Food became my friend; a silent, non-confronting, comforting friend. Smoking became a way of meditating; taking a moment to just be, notice and breathe. And sex? Well, sex was my path to significance and some very loose sort of connection. If the guys that everyone else fancied wanted me, then I must be worth something.
I signed the consent forms, got the surgery and luckily the doctor didn’t hit my facial nerves so I still have full use of my face!
During that time I was hugely sociable and rarely spent any time alone. I didn’t like what happened in my head when I was alone and the only place I shared my feelings or inner world was in my little book of poetry, usually when stoned.
DEATH, DENIAL, SELF HATE, DO THESE THINGS BRING US TO HELL’S GATE?
OR IS IT THINGS LIKE LUST, LOVE AND SEX?
THE THINGS WHICH ARE FUN AND I ENJOY BEST?
DOES EVERYBODY FEEL THE WAY I DO NOW?
OR AM I JUST A SAD AND MISERABLE COW?
DOES GOD LOVE ME, AND OTHER SINNERS TOO?
OR WILL I ROT IN HELL? IS THIS TRUE?
SHOULD I BE DADDY’S GOLDEN GIRL?
BEAUTIFUL AND SPLENDID, A SHINING PEARL?
WILL I BE A PAUPER LIVING OFF THE LAND,
OR WILL I BE RICH AND LEND OUT MY HAND?
SHOULD I WORRY DEEPLY AND LAY
AWAKE AT NIGHT?
SHOULD I WORK HARD AND HOLD UP THE FIGHT?
I KNOW THE THINGS THAT SOUND RIGHT
I KNOW WHAT HE WOULD DO....
BUT THAT DOESN’T HELP ME!
WON’T SOMEONE GIVE ME A CLUE!?!
Out in the world I was hard and edgy and fierce. I skived off school, smoked cannabis and tried to numb the feelings that snuck their way into everywhere. The anger and grief inside me was huge and inescapable. I remember feeling the opposite of happy. Smoking helped numb some of the overwhelming feelings I would get when in crowds, in school or at parties. I knew that it wasn’t good for me to keep pushing these feelings down but I didn’t know what else to do. My diary entry from Easter Sunday 1996 pretty much sums up what I believed about life at that point:
EASTER SUNDAY 1996
I WORRY THAT I HAVEN’T STUDIED ENOUGH AND THAT I’VE BEEN SMOKING TOO MUCH WEED, I THINK I SHOULD PROBABLY GIVE UP. PEOPLE KEEP TELLING ME I’M DEPRESSED, BUT LIFE’S JUST CRAP AND I’M FAT.
In April 1996 I went to see Leftfield at a club in Brighton. I really wanted one night where I was just me, without any of the stuff that was going on at home. I just wanted to dance. My friends and I did a gram of speed and just as I was coming up and feeling whizzy, I turned around and bumped into my dad and his girlfriend. It was one of those I’m-not-sure-how-to-process-this moments: I was 15 and had just swallowed a cigarette paper full of drugs, he was out with another woman that wasn’t my mum. I spent the evening hiding over one side of the club trying to pretend he wasn’t there. I remember feeling that everyone had someone or someplace they could go and that I had nowhere. My world was becoming more and more claustrophobic.
At some point in the mid nineties my dad retrained as a psychotherapist and began practising. He and his new partner, now wife, discovered, studied and brought home information and insights into many new and interesting modalities of alternative health, wellbeing, philosophy and spirituality. I took it all in, the work that he was doing, the way that he was changing, the man, the leader, the teacher he was becoming. He has always followed his own path in a way that inspired me and although he’d probably never think it of himself he is a trailblazer and a thought leader to me and to many. I ask many entrepreneurs about who their inspirations are, and many of them cite their families. Mine have been hugely inspirational to me.
In June 1996, aged just fifteen, I got my first tattoo. My first tattoo was not about the artwork or the artist. It wasn’t about collaboration or beauty. It wasn’t because everyone else had them. (They didn’t. No one I knew had tattoos.) It was to mark a time in my life. It was to prove that no one but me had control over my body, it was my way of having a piece of life that was just for me – strange as that might sound. Mostly my tattoos are bookends marking chapters of my life, or they’re totems with a meaning known only to me. As I’ve got older they have also become a celebration of collaboration with an artist, and about beauty for the sake of beauty, but mostly they are about the relationship I have with myself.
That first one wasn’t designed or really thought out, it was just a random design from a flash sheet on the wall, and has since been covered up.6 It hurt. Less than I was expecting, but it still hurt and it bled a lot. I went to the tattoo shop by myself and picked the tattoo by myself then afterwards I went back to the bedsit of the guy I was sort-of dating and stared at the ceiling in pain while he slept after he’d hit me on it because I had my period and wouldn’t have sex with him.
Aged 15
I think it’s fair and accurate to say that I was not doing a great job of looking after myself. I can now see clearly how little I valued myself and how emotionally immature I still was. At the time, though, I genuinely thought I was doing a good job of being an independent and mature woman. I was proud of myself. I was living the dream. I felt that I was more in control of my life than not. I did what I wanted when I wanted, and no one and nothing scared me. I felt that I was doing a great job of projecting an image of someone who was fearless, fierce and unemotional. Nothing could faze me.
Until I got my GCSE results. The day I opened the envelope with my grades in it, I sat on the doorstep of my dad’s rented house and cried. I got an A, four Bs, three Cs and a D. I cried and cried and cried. My dad asked me what I expected if I was going to go out partying every night and not study? He had a point but I was so disappointed in myself. The way I saw it, it was more reinforcement that I couldn’t do anything well enough. It wasn’t about the grades. They’re not even that bad. They were more than I needed to get into sixth form. The point, the thing that triggered the emotion, was that I knew that I could have done better.
In the summer of 1996, after school finished and before I started at college, I worked as much as I could – in clothes shops, in cafés and babysitting – and I used my money to go to festivals. It was the first year I was allowed to go on my own. I loved the independence and freedom. That summer was THE BEST!
I partied hard, met great people, danced a lot and had all sorts of mischievous and marvellous adventures!
That September I started college and I was happy. It was completely different from school and whilst I wasn’t dealing with any of my feelings I loved the autonomy and freedom I was being given. Finally I could wear what I wanted, do the classes I wanted and, because it was in a new town and no one from my school had come to this college, I could be whomever I wanted. I could start again. Reinvent myself. I have always loved reinvention and prided myself on being a chameleon.
1997 – aged 17, just started college
At the very first college party I got off with7 eight guys and ended up on the bouncy castle straddling Kevin. Everyone else had gone inside by this point, and someone thought they’d save some power and turn the generator off. Neither Kevin nor I realised we were about to have a tonne of bouncy castle collapse on us until it was nearly too late. Luckily, someone heard my screams and turned the generator back on. Greeting my new peers topless kinda set the tone for the next two years at college. To be fair on me I was not the worst behaved person at that party by a long way. But, however outwardly proud I was of my behaviour, inside I was miserable. I hated that guy after guy would happily spend the night with me but no one would be my boyfriend. I fixated on what I had decided was the reason for all of my unhappiness: fat. But in my teens I was not fat. I wasn’t skinny, but I was not fat.
What I see now is that I have spent years disassociating from and disrespecting my body. Treating something with disdain doesn’t make you more connected to it. I craved connection, but I never let anyone get close, not intimate, not with the real me. Not even myself. It was safer to scapegoat the fat.
That first year of college I misbehaved and I tried to have as much fun as I could. I smoked a lot of weed and partied hard. I went to a lot of gigs and hung out with bands. I did my college work, but I wasn’t engaged in it. At the end of my first year a wonderful art teacher of mine took me aside and had a word with me.
‘Ebonie, you are so talented, so full of creative potential and so much more capable than the work you are submitting demonstrates. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing’s going on. I’m passing everything, aren’t I?’
‘You are, but this term there has been a big dip in the quality of your work. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, and I don’t want to be the teacher that gets your parents involved, but if you don’t stop smoking your life away you could end up failing your Art A-level and that would be a huge waste.’
I gave him a daggers look and opened my mouth.
‘Don’t even start,’ His tone was stern but fair, catching me as I was about to interject. ‘Listen kiddo, you and I hang out at all the same gigs, and I’m not saying stop going out and having fun! Just watch yourself.’
‘OK.’
‘You’re bright, I’m not going to patronise you. I’m going to give you a chance to sort yourself out. I’m not going to involve your parents or the college. Yet. OK?’
‘Thank you.’
‘What do you want to do with your life?’
‘I dunno.’
‘OK, what would make you more excited about your art?’
I thought about it.
‘There’s this artist called Yves Kline8 who I think is awesome.’
He nodded at me and so I continued.
‘Laura and I would love to recreate his work.’
I believe that the people we have interactions with in our lifetime can come in for a reason, a season or a lifetime. I was hugely lucky to have that teacher. He came and had that conversation with me at a really important time in my life and he worked hard to get us the permission we needed. He was the right person to talk to me. I respected him. I listened. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself and he showed me who I was again. I was doing a project about mermaids; I took black and white photos of fish and topless photos of my friend Laura and weaved them together in the dark room. That teacher then worked magic to get us permission to get naked and covered in paint in college! The plan was for Laura and I to paint ourselves with blue paint, artfully roll around on paper and create merwomen in the style of Yves Kline. The day before we were set to do so at lunchtime, in a roped off classroom, Laura got ill and we had to postpone. It turned out that Laura had meningitis. Her illness gave me the wake-up call I needed. I decided to live the hell out of my life but to get my act together and get through school. I was passionate about my art and gave it everything I had. Laura lost the use of her right hand,9 and so I helped her with her coursework too. I got all mine done and we got hers done too. We both got As for our art A levels. I also got a distinction for the 4 units at GNVQ art and design, and an A for the photography GCSE I was doing. We were featured in the local paper as an example of good grades and a touching story. It wasn’t about that, it was about values – my values were beginning to show themselves. Freedom. Loyalty. Friendship. Expression. Creativity. Passion.
The day we got our grades I went and got a tattoo. My tribal tramp-stamp may be incredibly nineties, but it reminds me of a good day. It was my second tattoo. I was 17 and loved how hanging out in a tattoo shop made me feel. I loved the smell. The buzzing of the machinery. The permanence of the work. I was aware that this subculture excited me, and at the same time I could see that there was a prejudice against people with tattoos and I was mindful that I didn’t yet know what I wanted to be when I grew up, so whilst I knew that I wanted more tattoos, I decided to wait a while.10
At the end of my first year of college my art studies were going well, but my Sociology A Level was not. This subject that had initially excited me because it was new and about people and ways of thinking was now really difficult and I was getting 3/25 for my essays. I went and saw the teacher and asked if he would sign a piece of paper that would allow me to quit. Again I was gifted with one of the best teachers ever. This incredible man also saw potential in me and told me to wait until one week into the next term. If at the end of that week I was still sure I wanted out, he would sign my piece of paper. I didn’t study that summer, but by the time we had our next papers returned to us I was scoring 23/25.
I am a huge advocate for stopping, for taking time out to digest. When we are learning a lot of new information it takes a while for it to embed. In my second year I became passionate about sociology, I loved how I was now able to think and argue with conviction for each of the opposing schools of thought. I believe that I have always been an empath but now with these new skills I had a way of understanding and articulating what other people, with a different mindset or view from my own, might think about something. I had started to be able to translate the feelings I was receiving with a system of articulation. When I did my exam at the end of that year I got an A and I also got a letter telling me that my work was outstanding. I have never forgotten the power of encouragement, how powerful someone else’s belief in us can be and how someone outside often has a clearer perspective than we do.
1. Juves = juveniles. A nickname we were given that I loved because it made me feel like part of something. I still love having and giving nicknames. I had a lot of nicknames growing up, that was something my family did really well and I am still really fond of my nicknames and all that they mean to me.
2. A role that Gillian Flynn captures the essence of so well in Gone Girl. http://gillian-flynn.com/gone-girl/
3. http://www.thesite.org/mental-health/depression-mental-health/being-sectioned-5844.html
4. Empaths have highly attuned mirror neurons. They are able to feel what others are feeling physically, emotionally and spiritually. Often called overly sensitive or cry-babies, empaths take on the feelings or emotions of those around them – it is a skill to distinguish which are your own and which are coming from your environment, a skill which most empaths develop over time through a process of discernment – for many often feeling like they are going insane. Wanting to or choosing to numb feelings is not uncommon, and can be part of the process. It is a gift, but can initially feel like a curse. By the time I was at college I had become aware that not all of what I felt was mine.
5. https://www.facebook.com/pages/People-with-Preauricular-Sinus-Their-Abilities, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preauricular_sinus_and_cyst
6. I actually had that first one redone in 2006, and then covered over with something much bigger in 2012.
7. That’s English for ‘made out with’
8. http://www.yveskleinarchives.org/works/works1_us.html
9. It was only temporary, she got it back eventually, but had to learn to write and draw and paint all over again.
10. I did end up having one more done that year, and then no more until I was 25.
