3

When my family moved away from the village to a new town I was excited at first. When we started school the excitement quickly turned into sadness. I entered the classroom and sat down at a table with my palms face up, my back straight, and my mouth shut, (as I had been taught to do). Round about me the class was full of mayhem. Children were flicking rubbers and pencils around the room, climbing on chairs, laughing, shouting, and I was sat in the middle of it thinking how awfully naughty they all were. They noticed my weird behaviour, (which to me seemed quite normal), and from then on the bullying began. My mum wanted me to look smart and she dressed me in awful clothes and made me take a briefcase to school. All the other kids were dressed differently and they all had fashion branded backpacks, not briefcases. I didn't stand a chance of fitting in. Eventually I found a friend who was also bullied and we would play with toy cars in the mud. We were both tom boys at heart and had no interest in all the girly things the other girls played with. The bullying was severe and on occassion I would be set upon by thirty plus students. I had an awful teacher who was marking my work down deliberately, (there were at least 2 children she did this to). This teacher would pick on me in class and it made the children's bullying towards me even worse. My dad was always nasty to me about my marks. One time he got my aunt and grandparents and the family together in the lving room and read all of our reports out. My sister did well and my brother did excellently as ever. Then he read mine out and he was furious! He started shouting about what an idiot I was and how I wasn't as clever as my little brother. I had tried so hard in school but didn't seem to get anywhere and my dad made me feel like a dunce. I was humiliated and never fully forgave him for embarrassing me like that in front of all the family. When my mum found out that I was being marked down she hit the roof and complaints were issued to all and sundry. I never got an apology from my dad for unwarranted bad report that the nasty teacher gave me and some other pupils.

At home things had gone from bad to worse. My parents' relationship became more strained and my mum's behaviour became more irratic. My mum suffered with weight problems and she seemed to always be on one diet or another but then she'd mess up and send me around the shop for cream cakes. My dad would give my mum money every evening for her to go to the shops and buy food. Instead she would send her kids to the shop for sweet treats. She would save a little money for food for us. A typical meal would be one tin of processed hot dog sausages, one packet of smash mash, (dried potato you made up with hot water to become mashed potato), and one tin of baked beans betweem all of us. My mum supplemented the small meal she had with junk food, but we were fed very little when we were growing up. At times we were so hungry that my sister taught me how to eat toilet tissue to curb our appetite! She would split the toilet roll into thin layers about a thumb tipped size in diameter, then she would suck on it until she was able to swallow it. I struggled to swallow it because my throat is deformed, (probably because my mum smoked whilst she was pregnant with me). The rest of the money my mum got from my dad each evening was spent on cream cakes, chocolate, cigarettes and biscuits. My mum wouldn't share her sweet hoard with us. She would give me the walnut off the top of her walnut whip and when she ate revels the three of us would sit around waiting for the ones she didn't like from the pack. She would nibble off the chocolate around the outside of the sweets and if it had an orange centre then she would give us the nibbled sweet. We were so appreciative of it even though looking back I think it was horrible. The worst part about my mum's eating problem was when I had to go to the shop to get junk for her. Most of the kids from school would hang about by the shop in a big gang. They would bully me and slag me off for being fat and accused me of eating loads of sweets all the time. I didn't try and explain it to them as it was pointless.

I had always been shy and insecure but I put on a front of being the opposite. As time went on I became increasingly introvert and nervous. When I met new people I would compensate by being over-talkative and people thought that I was a bubbly super confident girl. It is true what they say, "never judge a book by it's cover!" Inside I was a nervous wreck and I would often cry when I got back home because I knew I was just embarrassing myself and I knew people would think I was weird! I tried too hard to please everyone and I was too needy, (which wasn't surprising really). I stopped going out to play and I started reading books instead. I would shut myself in my bedroom and try to block out my life by escaping to a fantasy world. I would dream about being rescued by Prince Charming though in my heart I knew that life wasn't like that. My parents relationship went from bad to worse and they began arguing daily. My dad was mean to my mum about her weight, so my mum would comfort eat to feel better and she vent her frustration on me. It was a vicious cycle that my mum had and she never broke, even to this day. At this point, (about the age of 9), my mum started suffering with her health and I was made to do most of the house work. My dad would get me up in the morning and my mum would wash my face, give me a packed lunch and send me to school. Then she would read Mills and Boons books all day to escape from reality into her own fantasy land. When we got in from school I had to make my dad's lunch and flask of tea for work. Then I would have to iron his work shirt and my mum would cook his dinner. When my mum's health deteriated further, housework and cooking and washing clothes and ironing clothes got thrown into the mix. My sister and brother got away with it more than me because they were hardly ever in the house, whereas I was always in the house hiding away from bullies. I heard all the arguments and I thought it was normal so I never told anybody what was going on. At the weekends we would be sent to my nan's house so my parents could sort things out between themselves. I later found out that they were often hiding their miserable relationship under parties. They'd have house parties and my dad would get drunk. But when my mum's health deteriated and the parties stopped, my dad became unhappy. All he did was work and come home to three kids he didn't know how to deal with and my mum who was constantly grumpy.

My parents split up for a while and my mum moved out, leaving my dad with three kids to care for whilst working nights 6 days a week. It sounds awful but in fact it was lovely! My dad was shattered though... He had to finish work, pick us up from my nan's house, drive half an hour to take us to school, get some sleep, pick us up from school, make us dinner, drive us half an hour to my nan's house and start work again. Still, there was finally some structure in our lives, we were eating well, we were being cared for properly and we were happier. It was short lived though because my mum lost her job and my dad took her back. Things slumped back into the old routine but this time it was worse. My mum started beating on me more often, using any excuse she could find to take her feelings out on me.

On one occasion my mum discovered that I had eaten half of one of my easter eggs before dinner and it was a good excuse to give me a beating. I was upstairs in my bedroom playing with Sara and Amanda, some friends who ahd come to stay the night. My mum charged into my bedroom, grabbed me by my hair and dragged me off my bed. She dragged me by my hair across the floor, out of my bedroom and on to the landing. There she punched, kicked, slapped me whilst I lay curled up in a ball on the floor. My friends stayed in the bedroom, not knowing what to do so they didn't see the beating. But knowing they had seen me get dragged out of the bedroom by my hair and knowing they would have heard everything that was going on, I felt greatly embarrassed. The blows did not seem to hurt me that time, I think it was adrenaline and I just took it without fighting back. After my mum had finished beating me up she stood still and stared at me. I got to my feet and said simply "I hate you," which resulted in a sharp slap to the right hand side of my face. Then my mum burst into tears and ran downstairs. She told my dad what I had said to her and my dad was really angry, saying "you do not talk like that to your mother" and I replied... "I'm not going to apologise because I do hate her and she keeps hitting me all the time!" My dad didn't know or understand how my mum treated me and he sent me upstairs, telling me I was not allowed downstairs until I had apologised to my mum. I wasn't upstairs for long when I decided that I could say sorry but not mean it and the whole thing would be finished with, so I said sorry and my mum insisted on a hug. Hugging me was not something she really did so I was a bit confused and wary of it. I think my mum was upset at what she had done to me as she had really laid into me, but I still never got an apology. I genuinely did hate my mum at that moment in time and the truth is, I don't think I have ever really loved her. Love is just a word where she's concerned. Sometimes my mum would pull tricks on me to get me to come near her so she would be able to hit me. One time I was in trouble for something and nothing, and my mum asked me to come to her for slipper beating but I refused to go near her. She had bought cabbage patch dolls, one for each of us. Much later on in the day she called us down to collect our dolls. My brother and sister got one and showed me it. They told me to go down and get mine and mum told them that I wasn't in trouble anymore. I edged closer and closer to my mum as she sat on the sofa with a doll in her hand. I couldn't reach and my mum said ever so sweetly to stop being silly and just come and take it. I took one step forward and took the doll. No sooner had my hand touched the toy then my mum grabbed my wrist, pulled the doll from my hand and hit me over and over with the slipper. She said that if I had of come to her in the first time then she wouldn't have had to beat me so hard or for so long. I felt conned and I lost all trust in her, it was no wonder I was wary of her when she tried to hug me after the landing incident.

My mum is full of excuses and I'm sure she blames her mum for how she was with me. Well my nan might have been the cause of why my mum behaved the way she did towards us, but my nan was also an incredible role model for us. She looked after her home, fed us properly, had a great sense of humour, told us stories, took us out walking, socialised us with other people, and chastised us (without beating us) when we were really naughty but not for little things. She rewarded our good bahaviour, taught us things, and played with us. I don't doubt that my nan was a horror of a human being when my mum was growing up, but I can not help but think that maybe a large part of why my nan was like that was due to mental health problems like her nervous breakdown, coupled with the death of three husbands and being left to cope on her own with ten children. I often wondered if my nan would be different if the situation was different but the truth is that I will never know for sure. The only thing I didn't like about my nan is that she preferred boys to girls. She treated us differently, though I don't know if it was how things were back then, with men being the more superior over the women. I think my nan had that kind of mentality. An example of how boys were treated differently would be giving the boys extra jam tarts when she made them, or sending my brother to the shops to get the newspaper and then buying him a kinder egg but not buying me one when I went, or asking me to bring one back sweets for my brother but none for me or my sister.

It seemed that everyone, even my nan, looked at me and my sister as the underdogs and my brother was the golden boy. I remember on a number of birthdays that I didn't get a birthday present from my parents and when I asked why they said that my birthday was too close to Christmas and they'd get me a better Christmas present... They never did though. My brother was bought a BMX, computers, games consoles, go-kart, racing bike, and two mountain bikes. I got a trike handed down to me from my sister when I was 4 years old and I didn't get my first bike until I was 13 years old. My sister had a big bike and even she could barely reach the pedals. She would take me about by sitting me on the seat and pedalling with her bum in the air. Nobody bothered trying to teach me to ride a bike and I felt so embarrassed when the rest of my class in school did cycling proficiency and I just had to watch. Finally, at the age of 10, my dad took me to a park to teach me. He had brought along my sister's bike which was way to big for me. I couldn't reach the floor to get on the bike. My dad held on to the bike and pushed me for a bit. Then he let go of me and I carried on pedalling. I was cycling but my dad hadn't told me how to stop. The grass sloped down suddenly. I hit a tree head on and hurt myself. My dad was really angry with me for crashing the bike and told me to forget learning to ride because I was a "bloody idiot." We took the bike back to the car and drove home with me sobbing quietly, wondering why I had only been given five minutes to learn before we had to go home again. There were some happy moments but these were confined to special occasions or family holidays. I could never understand why my parents were always so cross and sad but I figured it was my fault so I kept my head down and tried to do as I was told.

I had a strange fascination with my dad though I didn't really know him very well at the time. I would try and copy him. My dad didn't beat me and I suppose I respected him for it. One day he made a cheese, salad cream and lettuce sandwich and I copied him. I must have put half a bottle of salad cream on my sandwich and the cheese was an inch thick because I couldn't cut it properly. It made me so sick and I tried to hide the fact I'd been ill but somehow someone found out and grassed me up. My dad blamed the disinfectant used for cleaning the sink, saying the smell would make anyone sick and I wasn't ill I wasn't allowed to be ill because I was a "Smith" and "Smiths" don't get sick. I remember being sick only a handful of times as a child and I would try anything to stop myself from being sick. When I was five my dad fed me potato waffles after I'd been to a Christmas party at school. I hadn't eaten too much and I wasn't hungry at all, but my mum had gone out and it was very rare for me to spend time with my dad. He offered my potato waffles and I figured it would give me more time with him if I said yes but the next day my mum and dad argued when I was sick. My mum told my dad not to feed me anything and he disobeyed. Then I felt awful for getting my dad into trouble and causing an argument. I truly believed that every argument was my fault, but this one I was certain was my fault. Another time, again when I was about five, I left the classroom at school to go to the toilet and when I came back everyone was sat around pots of red liquid with a straw in it. All the children had the straws in their mouths and nobody told me any different so I thought it was a drink. One slurp and I projectile vomited. It was red paint and washing up liquid and the straw was for blowing the mixture up to the top so we could put a piece of paper on top to make "bubble pictures." I felt fine but the school sent me home to be on the safe side. My dad picked me up and when I got back my mum hit me and sent me to bed, saying I wasn't ill I was just stupid. My dad reinforced the "Smith" family don't get ill, we just get on with it and I was not allowed anything to eat until the next day. This weirdness about being sick made me grow up to believe it was a really bad thing to be ill and I wasn't allowed to get sick or I'd get a beating or tongue lashing. Even now when I am sick I get the same feeling in the pit of my stomach that I got whenever I told my parents I was ill. It is such a strong aversion that I even used to drink water to force vomit back down as it was coming back so my parents wouldn't know I was sick. It's madness really because being sick is your bodies quickest route to getting rid of toxins from the body and it means you're body is doing it's job properly. So severe was my dads "Smith" principles that he sent me and my brother and sister to school one day with severe diahhreoh. It was a three mile walk to school and the pain was awful. I had to stop at a public toilet to relieve myself on the way and I felt ill all day but I was too scared to go back home, so I just soldiered on as best as I could. I suppose all this ill treatment served me well for the workplace. I have only taken sick leave once (for two days) in any of the jobs I've had and I am a proper grafter. I am a stronger person than I believed I was because I coped so well with everything that was thrown at me, and yet it was really coping and that is all.