Littlest One

Growing up we were consistently told that problems, health or otherwise, were generally somebody else’s fault.

As an example, if we ever had an upset stomach – it was my grandfathers fault because he used to suffer from gastrointestinal upsets. The reason my mother drank? That was the ‘fault’ of both of her parents, who were both functioning alcoholics. Everything from weight gain to wrinkles, hoarding to hormones, acne to academia – there was someone in the family to blame for our wonky systems.

It has taken me a long time to understand that blame is an easy way out of problem solving. My mother even blamed my school for an illness that I didn’t know I had after suffering for too long. It resulted in me being bed bound for over a month when I actually, for the first time ever, wanted to be in school. I’ll try to explain – and to also touch on what inspired me to write this part of my story today.

I realised very early on, that I was not cut out for boarding school. Our first boarding school was so close to our actual home in the Cotswolds, that you could see the house from some of the dormitory windows. The school later went on to buy that house as at the small school expanded, and our old bedrooms were turned into dormitories and the reception rooms became classrooms. We had left long before this happened – I was never quite sure whether it was better that our home was that close to our school, or worse. I missed being at home – but I didn’t have a choice. I was sent to weekly board before the age of 6 and was termly boarding by the age of 10. When I asked later why I was sent so young, I was always told that I wanted to be closer to my sister (therefore it was on me, which never quite rang true with me despite how much I love my sister), but reality (as I came to understand as an adult) was that I was in the way. My older siblings were happily ensconced in their respective boarding houses and I was not and there were extra marital affairs to be had and divorces to be arranged. More on these another time…

By the age of 14, I really was not coping well with termly boarding – my learning was suffering as I spent more time in The San (our school Sanatorium) than in class, largely due to being underweight, homesick and susceptible to every bug going with endless UTIs caused by stress. I was regularly sent to a paediatrician at Worcester hospital to be weighed and measured because I was so small – I was the smallest in the school for probably a good 3 years in a row. I was not like my siblings, who thrived in their school environments and excelled in everything they did. My predicted GCSE grades were distinctly below average. Having extremely good looking twin brothers meant I got special treatment from the six formers of our all girls school at prep time, in the hope that I might put in a good word for them. Being tiny in stature meant I was babied and carried everywhere much to my sister’s frustration.

My gorgeous sister was everything from head of music, sport, deputy head girl, prefect and club captain. She looked stunning in anything and everything she wore, had the perfect smile and is to this day, one of the smiliest, most positive and kind humans you will ever meet. I was none of these – just small, spotty and too emotional with awful deportment (these things mattered and you were rewarded with a silver cup on Speech Day for having the best deportment, like my sister, or were marched around the hall with books on your head if you were me). Undoubtedly I lived in the shadow of my beautiful sister for many years, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t resent it. I was inferior and I knew it. My school reports even had notes from house mistresses saying they wished I were more like my sister – tidiness was not on my list of capabilities either!

As a result I left boarding school after breaking down on my piano teacher at the time, a marvellous woman to whom I am forever grateful for my escape. I was moved to a comprehensive school in Devon where my mother now lived. It was made very clear to me how inconvenient this was by both my parents. Within the first few weeks of being there I became ill. Having been a generally sickly child growing up I think my mother thought I was just being difficult and would get over it. I was back under her feet and she was now on husband number 4 and had places to be and things to do. She was also not used to having any of us living with her on a permanent basis so it was a steep learning curve for us both, and I do understand now it can’t have been an easy transition for her. Coupled with an acute dislike and distrust of my latest step father it wasn’t the happiest of environments to adjust to but it was ultimately a thousand times better than being in a boarding school hundreds of miles away.

My mother’s very first reaction to my illness was that it must be the fault of my new school. It couldn’t possibly be anything to do with anything related to her, the stress my body had been under for years or the torment of finding out (via a letter sent from the Caribbean) that she was marrying a man I couldn’t stand the very sight of or to be in the same room as. No – it was because I now went to a Comprehensive School – therefore I MUST be taking drugs, in particular I was obviously smoking Cannabis and that was clearly what was making me so tired. Instead of taking me to the doctors she gave me a leaflet on the dangers of smoking weed – I genuinely knew nothing about drugs at this age other than what might be on the news and I didn’t know a single person who took or smoked drugs. I became so lethargic I was eventually taken to the doctors, had bloods done and lo and behold – I had glandular fever. Aggressively. Which meant a good 6 weeks of bed rest. I never blamed my mother for not knowing – why would she, but I did struggle with her blaming my illness on drugs and her assumption that I was taking them.

I would like to think that through my experiences of growing older, through adapting to the many different homes we lived in, the different families we were a part of, the friends I have made, learned from and love, that I won’t take this blame game with me into my older age. I know I have certainly used it in the past and I am learning to correct myself at times even now. I blamed my mother alone for many of the twists and turns my life has taken, even including my marriage which, sadly, was not the happy ever after experience I dreamt of. I spent too many years in an unhappy marriage because I was so stubbornly determined not to go down the same route as my own parents.

Knowledge, hindsight, growth, education, experience and age – these are all factors that shape us depending on how we choose to use them. I heard the most wonderful phrase in a podcast this morning which is what inspired me to begin writing this today. The phrase was ‘DNA is not your destiny’. It was one of those lightbulb moments that struck a deep chord with me. I have no desire to play the blame game and I understand that I am responsible for my own actions and words. I take pride in ways I have changed my life for the better – and I am extremely conscious of the many challenges I still need to work at. I understand (because I don’t drink) that alcoholism is not my Grandfathers fault, that if I feel unwell there is a cause beyond my DNA (I have a type of cancer that no-one else in our family has – I can’t ‘blame’ anyone for leukaemia!), and that running, triathlon and general exercise are my therapies which provoke my family to call me weird.

I heard my mother say to my best friend, at my father’s memorial, ‘she is not like the rest of us’, in reaction to me not wanting a glass of wine whilst discussing an 8 km swim I had completed the day before in memory of my father. Whilst I love my family with a fierce strength, comments like this do not upset me as they used to, in fact I now feel proud to be seen as unique.