Part #8: Rejection and Abandonment

I said I would continue with the Oman story, and I will, but just for the moment, I am going to diversify into a different topic:

Rejection and Abandonment.

It would be interesting to see how many visitors to this blog have felt this in their lives, and how it has caused them to react. Of the 9 people who have voted on our new poll claiming to either have an ED or are in recovery, how many of them have felt some form of severe rejection or concern about abandonment?

They are both very, very real for me.

Rejection was established in me almost from my earliest memories. My father and my brother (eight years older than me) barely looked at me from one month to the next, let alone spoke to me. If I walked into a room, my brother would walk out immediately. If I dared to speak to my father after his evening meal he would initially ignore me until I badgered: Dad. Dad? Dad?? He would then turn to me (and I can picture him so vividly, right now, sitting on the rug in front of the fire, back against the armchair) with a look of such contempt and disdain.

What? Wassup wi' yer? Am watchin' the bloody telly. Shurrup.

I would 'shurrup'. I would say nothing. I would often want some help with my homework as he was very clever with maths and chemistry but sometimes it was easier to call a friend on the phone. And believe me, every time I did so, I had to pay my father £1.00. In the 80s, this was a fair bit of cash for a teenager to part with. It became easier to go back to a mate's house and walk 4-5 miles home after missing the school bus at 3.30pm, as I simply couldn't afford his exorbitant phone charges.

Even when I returned to the UK, aged 33, and sat with him one night, just the two of us in his living room, interrupting his viewing of a programme to talk about some words I had discovered in a dictionary I was flicking through caused him to say: Will you shut up and let me watch the bloody telly.

We never spoke. We never communicated. I was never taken out anywhere by him. One time he had to go to the farm for eggs for my Mother as she wasn't very well and couldn't go herself. He dragged me with him, despite my protestations. I didn't want to go with him - how many times had I asked him to do something with me and been told to 'Bugger off!'? That was the one and only time I ever remember him taking me anywhere with him. We only had two family holidays in the years I grew up - he didn't 'believe' in holidays and expostulated that my brother and I had everything we needed where we lived - fields, woods, streams, ponds...I wouldn't be seen during the school summer holidays. I'd be out of the house from 7am, reluctantly return for meals, and out the minute my plate was cleared. Anything to get out of that house and the common atmosphere of frostiness due to their frequent rows and ensuing silences.

Trying to stay out of the house as much as possible led me to the most inordinate amount of trouble and one occasion has never been forgotten by me.

There was an area in our village called Pex Hill - a local 'beauty spot' which was being looked after by a team of Rangers from the Forestry Commission. My friend, Janet, and I got 'friendly' with two of them. One particular night, 30 August 1985 (I remember the date clearly as it was the eve of Janet's 15th birthday) I was under strict orders to be home by 8.30m. I knew my parents would be out that night to their regular haunt and they left, religiously, at 8.15pm. So I decided to risk staying out. By 8.45pm, Janet and I knew we had chanced our arm, it was getting rather dark, and the Hill was quiet and becoming a little creepy.

So we set off on our walk home, which was only about ten minutes away, but took us down a steep, densely wooded path. As we walked, a tall, slim shadowy man, wearing black biking leathers, came slowly towards us, and in front of his body, he was snapping a heavy bicycle chain ominously. We couldn't see his face properly for the gloaming light, and I clutched at Janet, and she at me in fear. We were petrified. We thought it was a nutter going to rape or kill us.

It was my brother. He had been sent up to the Hill to find me. His first words to me?

You Are Dead.

I knew then that I was going to suffer immensely for the extra 30 minutes I had taken without permission. And, By Christ, I did. As I walked down the path of the house, my father was stood in the doorway. He grabbed me in by my hair, threw me in front of him and beat me with his hands, screaming constantly: You Dirty, Filthy Bitch! You Dirty, Bloody, Filthy Bitch! He pushed me to the stairs where I stumbled and fell, so he kicked me up every single stair. There were 13 stairs to our bedrooms and I received 13 hard kicks to my backside and thighs. He was wearing his 'going-out' shoes if you are wondering...I crawled into my bedroom, as I wasn't allowed to stand up, he kicked me some more and told me again what a Filthy Cow I was. I genuinely thought it was because he had found out that I had been kissing a boy.

The next day, the silence was deafening. I was only allowed out of my room to eat food and receive more vitriolic abuse at what a Dirty Bitch I was. I was grounded for a month. It seemed a somewhat harsh punishment for risking an extra 30 minutes out, particularly as I was 15 years of age, and it was still the school hols.

The first time I tried to kill myself, I injected myself with my mother's insulin. I genuinely wanted to die as I felt so low, rejected, sad and lonely, and it was the only way I could think it might happen. When I was released from hospital days later, my father informed me that I would be visiting relatives that day, although I felt so ill and nauseated due to the terrible 'hypos' I had gone through in the hospital, as I had 'spoilt [his] bloody weekend enough'...

My mother - how many bloody times was I rejected by her for not being a mini-me? I don't think I could even count them.

There is a very British expression for not talking to somebody - Being Sent to Coventry. I was sent to Coventry so many times that I could probably draft an Ordnance Survey map of the place. If I didn't eat her awful cooking; if I didn't have my bedroom spotless; if I didn't act upon her wishes immediately; if I liked somebody she didn't; if I didn't want to go out with her shopping. All these things would mean I was 'Sent to Coventry'. And we're not talking an hour or so here, we're talking weeks. As it stands, my Mother has now beaten her own record and not spoken to me for ten months because I married Ian. Prior to that, she didn't speak to me for six months when I fell pregnant with Rosemary.

I can't list all of these, you know - I can remember utter dread at her regular threats to leave the house and never come back; her threats that she was going to kill herself; her statements that if it hadn't have been for me being born she'd have left my father and taken my brother with her and been happy...It seemed to always be my fault.

One night when I had complained (as children do) about a meal, her reaction was startling. She started hurling the food around, screamed abuse at me, and ran upstairs to my bedroom. After quickly shovelling the disgusting mushy peas down my throat and gagging at each mouthful, I went up to apologise and grovel. She told me she wanted to kill herself. I ran downstairs and found my father sitting on the garden bench, smoking. I told him what she had said. His response was: I feel like killing myself, too.

There was nowhere to go. I sat in the front room, alone, crying and despairing that I was going to lose both my parents because I hadn't wanted to eat my mushy peas.

I see now, as an adult, that they must have had some dreadful row and my rejection of my mother's food had sent her over the edge.

I didn't see that when I was eight years of age...

Memories are strange things, aren't they? They can bring up so many feelings of sadness at times - as well as happiness, though. Some of my most beautiful memories involve the girls, Ian and I having days out. One of my happiest was 5 November 2007 when he proposed to me. Another was 5 November 2006, days before he left me, unable to cope with the ED and my inability to confide in him, when we visited a seaside town in Wales, out of season, and waltzed along the pier, embarrassing the girls profusely!

These bad memories need to be exorcised. Writing them out is helping me to detach and see things more objectively. Gradually, the pain will separate from them. I feel sure of that as I can sense it happening (albeit in a very small way) already...