The parallels I faced in the first few years were mirrored almost exactly the same a few years later. I didn't learn my lesson. As soon as I began to feel comfortable, I let my guard down and became vulnerable to the grueling hierarchy that schools offer and often found myself alone or ostracized to some extent.
Throughout my entire life at school, primary and secondary, my family's health played a large part in how I behaved and the dynamics of my personality. My father has long term repercussion illness from engineering with asbestos buildings and consequently finds himself consuming over 10 tablets a day, two inhalers and stents in his heart just to keep him with us. When I was an infant, we left the South-East of Asia so he could be treated in his homeland of Sweden where we lived as a family together as my mother juggled lecturing English and two young infants, my brother and I.
In addition to this, when my father (seemingly) began to recover, my grandmother - and my only grandparent I ever had - was diagnosed with cancer. Growing up, I didn't realise just how much pressure my mother was under during this time, I spent a large chunk of my childhood in Sweden with my brother as my best friend and my father. I had, and still have, a very close relationship with my father and brother because of this. What I only just realised however, although I was very blessed to spend almost every holiday abroad with my family - I missed out on sleepovers with my friends, brownie camp, summer birthdays. Everyone else had a huge amount of time to bond and spend time with each other and I spent it in woods and lakes and the sea with my friends from Sweden.
When I underwent my third or fourth counselling session, the counselor asked if I had ever wondered whether it was due to my lack of "a secure base" that made me behave the way I do. My first reaction was anger, shamefully my manners flew out of the window and I reacted exactly how she probably wanted me to. I was angry. She didn't understand that my parents did the best they could under the circumstances, I was allowed to roam free, learn a new language, create a life for myself away from the confines of small town suburbia. She didn't understand that the reason why I didn't have a secure base was not because my parents liked the luxury of having two houses, the bleak and not so fancy reality of it all was - there was money for us in both houses should we need it.
The last time I remember being truly happy before I started secondary school was the summer of year six. I spent it with my best friend in Sweden endlessly acting out Grease, plaiting our hair and getting curly hair, baking kanelbullar and bronzing under the summer sun. I would wake up and run outside and not care about what the day had in store for me.
Although I have never confided in anybody the true extent of my unhappiness at some points during secondary school, I post them here as a possible warning to anybody reading this who may have encountered similar problems. When I was in year eight, a boy who I sat next to in French often poked fun at my weight, my hairstyle, my teeth, my appearance generally. I couldn't get the comments out of my head, they even haunt me to this day to some extent. This combined with misery at my friends all being placed in a different class from myself, I found it very hard to belong. I flitted from group to group, dragging my misery with me.
Most days after school I would walk in the front door and go straight to bed and to sleep. If I couldn't sleep I'd cry until I could. It was not uncommon for my mother to come home and knock on my bedroom door to find me beside myself with guilt and sadness because I just didn't feel enough. School never felt like a place I wanted to be. I wasn't attractive, I wasn't particularly clever, I wasn't like "normal" girls because I did things slightly differently. My identity was decided for me by people who didn't know me or what I'd come from, and to this day the majority of people I've known my whole life don't know how much my family and I struggled with.
Over the past three years, my Uncle and cousin both died. In less than a few years, a family of four went to a family of two. None of my friends knew, and those who did rarely asked. I don't blame them and I don't hate them for it, I just couldn't confide it in anybody and those who I did didn't see how much I was struggling.
A person can only deal with so much going on in their lives, and it's worth taking a moment to appreciate that you don't know people well enough to say that they don't know what it's like to struggle.
Apologies for the slightly confessional tone to this blog, but past memories sparked this post and it's worth noting that the message I want to send from this piece is - everyone is struggling, try not to make it worse.
Apologies for the slightly confessional tone to this blog, but past memories sparked this post and it's worth noting that the message I want to send from this piece is - everyone is struggling, try not to make it worse.
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