| The marriage certificate. I'm leaving that dangling at the end of two sections. Do I think I'm an episode of Eastenders ending with the "Dum dum dums"? In itself it wasn't very earthshattering. My parent's names, the date of their wedding anniversary...and the year. Not 1973, as they'd always said, two years before me and my twin brother were born. A nice, respectable leeway suggesting a planned family with time to make a home and embark on their new life.
No, not that year, but 1978. Three years after we were born. Maybe if it had been a year out, I'd have thought it was a simple mistake. But a whole five years? I knew instantly that my parents hadn't even met when me and my twin brother were born. Which meant that "Dad" wasn't my Dad.
It's amazing how quickly brains can work. Flicking through mine at this point are some pictures and memories. Freeze frame, flashbulb, stop motion moments;
Me and my brother in pyjamas, tentatively making our way down the stairs in the terraced house, knowing we weren't allowed down, somehow having bypassed the baby-gate. Being surprised that Mum beckoned us down, Dad being sat at the table. Him being there, a surprise somehow.
(Click; First meeting)
A visit to a flat that smelled of Dad's aftershave and had an avocado bathroom suite like the one in the new house we were about to move into.
(Click; Moving in as a family)
Being sat in a room that was all wood panelled, facing a row of men in suits.
(Click; The adoption hearing)
And now, thirteen years later, stood here, in my parent's bedroom, realising that a big part of their epic rows over the years was about the power battle they were having over their sex lives, played out in the photos I'd just shut back in the suitcase, and that a big part of the air of unsaid things that permeated our lives was that so much that we'd been told was a lie.
Click.
Click.
Click.
That day, I'm still the Queen of the non-reaction.
Dad's not my Dad anymore? Good. I'm glad I'm not related to him.
Everything's a lie. Good, I don't feel as bad about the lies I'm telling by having a relationship with J.
Oops. Layer upon layer, the other illusions that I'm building up to separate me from painful reality, are being smeared across the mirror that might eventually tell me who I am.
Our parents are often our earliest mirror. I'd always known that what they reflected back to me was distorted. Now I was going to smash that glass altogether-
but an "ageing adventurer" who would eventually tell me that I was cold and reserved and "of the same soul" as him, wasn't going to be a very accurate replacement mirror. But he was the only one I had.
When we haven't got mirrors, we have to rely on how we feel inside.
Inside? If you asked me then what I was feeling, I'd have given you a thought not a feeling every time. Except hunger. I could usually identify that one...
However...the mirror smashing is another story. Time to jump cut now to 1992. I'm seventeen and living on my own in a one room bedsit in Yorkshire. I'm doing A-levels at the same school I've been at for five years, and surviving on income support. Neither J, nor my parents are in my life. I still don't know who my real Dad is. But I've found some things out, and I start trying to track him down.
Everyone needs a mirror.
Everyone needs to belong somewhere...
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Anyone reading, don't feel you're interrupting if you give some honest feedback-even if it's "lose the clowns and weirdoes, get on with it!" or "What are you on about?, Get to the point!". I suppose I'm very self-indulgently using Minimins as a Virtual writer's circle.
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Restarted at 13'13, on 27th August 2009. |