Part 12 - I’m Off

"Gotta Get Away" - The Offspring

By this time, my relationship with my Father had completely deteriorated. I’d become hostile towards him: much more hostile than towards my Mom. I was so angry about everything that had happened to me, and somehow I’d reconciled this in my mind to take it out on him. He couldn’t do right for doing wrong with me at this time. Had I opened up, and talked to him, he might of understood why my behaviour was becoming more and more aggressive, but as I didn’t, he just started to discipline me to the point where I had no freedom.

The black moods were taking their toll on my family, and as far as they knew there was no reason for all this hatred that I suddenly displayed. I was drinking again, and soon started skipping classes to go down the pub. My teachers didn’t miss a beat, and after returning to the school premises one day, drunk, my parents were called into school. God, was I punished. I think my parents were so embarrassed that they didn’t know how to stop me behaving in this way, and how to cope with my illness, and how much it was destroying my life, and the daughter they knew. Although they had tried to give me every support, that tact obviously wasn’t working. So they employed a new routine. I was grounded, had every mode of teenage "must-have" technology removed from me, and was taken to and from school every day, just to make sure that I actually got there.

After, a while, once they believed I was settling down again, and finally getting past the rebellious attitude, the rules were relaxed. And to prove just how trust worthy I was, I immediately started missing school again. This time my teachers confronted me directly. And I cracked. I didn’t want to go home. They’d (my parents) would make my life hell again. By this point I was genuinely scared of my Father. I was never frightened he would hurt me physically, but he knew how to hurt me emotionally, and after everything I was putting them both through, and all the tears I had made my Mom cry, he would do what ever it took to keep me in line.

And I just sat and poured all this out to my form tutor. I talked about how they didn’t understand my pain, and of course they wouldn’t, if all I ever did was scream at them. But at the time, my small little young adult world couldn’t see that they were just trying their best to make sure my life was a good one. I didn’t go home that night, or the next, and didn’t return until a year and a half later.

My teachers helped all they could. After the awkward discussion with my Mother, about just why I was leaving, I grabbed my stuff, and moved in with a friend of mine, whose Mom was a teacher at my school, until I could find somewhere more permanent. I broke my Mother’s heart when I left; not so much because I did it, but because of how I did it. The action was full of spite, and hatefulness, and it’s probably one of the only times in my life, that I look back upon now, and am truly ashamed. A lot of the other stuff that happened through-out my youth led me to be the person I am today (someone who has a really good relationship with my parents, but I’ll get to that in due course), so I can see why, although it was horrible, I wouldn’t change it. But this, I would. For my Mom, it took along time to heal the hurt that I had caused that day.

I refused to see, or even speak to my Dad. I wanted to strike him out of my life, and in my naivety, I thought it would be that easy. I did finally start speaking to him again after about three months, but that was once I settled into my new surroundings, and started to realise what an awful mistake I had made.