We all say things we don’t mean.  We say things that we think are funny but no one else does.  We might be that unfortunate soul who doesn’t realise that the person we’ve said something to isn’t laughing because they’re crying on the inside. 

It sounds like every time I write one of these I’m complaining about life.  I’m giving airtime to the troubles I should have put to bed a long time ago.  Maybe that’s true, perhaps I am dwelling on the past and I’m being a pessimist about the future and maybe I’m reading too much into the present.  Whatever your thoughts are, if you stick around then I appreciate your patience and I am thankful to you for giving up your time to read another one of my “whinges.”

I was in my last job for 11 years.  I walked into that office thinking this was my first full time permanent job, I was a commuter and back in 2009 the sardine can train was worth it because I was on my way to being the adult I never thought I would be.

It’s no secret and I’ve said it often enough in the last 5 years that back in 2002 a social worker told me my mental illness was too serious for me to finish my degree.  They said I would never work, not part time or full time and I would never have a romantic relationship because a girl with Bipolar was not good marriage material.  Well I don’t like being told what I can and can’t do and everyone should know by now that even though I took those words to heart and I initially abided by the suggestion of a solitary life, I didn’t do it for long.

I’d never been in an office environment where I wasn’t a temp or I wasn’t covering someone or the temporary hands on deck person that was tossed to the side when the Christmas period was over.  I wanted to make this work, I wanted to be the best version of myself and shine!

That’s what I wanted.  What I did was a very different story.  I walked into the office and I shrivelled up like a flippin prune.  I was a fish out of water.  I went all shy, I retreated into my own little world and I have no idea what people thought of me at that time but I knew it wasn’t the image I’d wanted to project. 

I was doing a 12 hour day, leaving the house at 7am and rolling in at 7pm.  I was tired, I was worn out and I wasn’t even getting any job satisfaction because when you think people don’t like you, what kind of satisfaction can you take home with you?

I know everyone who works gets tired, it’s just the nature of working life, it’s not designed to be easy.  But not everyone was trying to conceal a mental illness that takes up more energy than you can imagine.  Not everyone was on 20mg of Olanzapine and various other psychiatric drugs, heavily sedated and trying to prove a point that a normal life could be achieved if you just worked at it.

I went to bed at 9pm.  I rose at 6am.  I said no to virtually every Christmas meal, every spontaneous night out and if anyone left the team for pastures new I said good bye to them in the office because what was the point in sticking around in Manchester when all I would be thinking is

“What time will it be when I get home?”

As the years went by in that job, I like to think that people liked me.  I like to think they saw my quirky side, that I could be a bit silly but I was also sincere, even when I made up a lie in order to avoid another social gathering. 

In all honesty Bipolar disorder is not a walk in the park.  When it comes to medication it’s not like taking paracetamol.  It’s not a cure.  It makes the symptoms take a backseat, they are masked, they give your brain a rest and they make everyday living so much easier.  Every single one of my Bipolar friends will tell you that medication is just one aspect of living a positive life with a mental illness, another aspect of it is management.  What I didn’t realise for so many years was that just because you take your meds it doesn’t mean you can live like the rest of the world, just as someone with Diabetes will inject their insulin, it doesn’t mean they can go to the shop and eat 5 snickers bars and can of full sugar coke.

People don’t realise that mental illness is a massive ball ache to manage.  With Bipolar Disorder I have to have a regular and strict routine.  Sleep is 100% a key factor in staying well.  If you’re Bipolar and you don’t sleep, you can kiss goodbye to the normality of your thinking patterns.  I get creative, I think if I can’t sleep I obviously don’t need it.  I get racing thoughts, my eyes play tricks on me and my whole world that I’ve worked by backside off to achieve falls down around me like a sack of mouldy potatoes with no where else to go.   

When you’ve been in hospital 6 times, twice facing being sectioned if you don’t comply, when you’ve seen some of the things I’ve seen people do behind the locked door of a psychiatric ward then trust me, the second you realise the life of a normal person who can party like a rock star isn’t possible because you need to take the beast of Bipolar in hand; then you’ll realise the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to question if you really want to repeat the cycle of self-destruction just because the rest of the world thinks you’re boring and you should just enjoy yourself because life is just too short….Well yes, life is too short, it’s even shorter when you’re living part of it on a Bolton psychiatric ward losing weeks and months of time trying to discover what reality actually looks like because believe me, when you find your way back into the real world you will never get back the time you have lost.

Try having a physical condition on top of a mental one.  Try having a bowel that doesn’t work and the doctors just keep saying drink plenty, eat more fibre and increase your dose of senna.  Try needing an operation for an Ileostomy and having to wait 12 months for it and while you’re waiting you have to sit by the door in the office so you can get to the toilet in time.  Try having to use two hot water bottles at work because you’re in too much pain and intense heat is the only thing that helps.

I love my stoma, I really do and I never need to worry about where the nearest toilet is because it’s now attached to me. But 1 year later tell me how you feel when you sneeze and you feel something inside you drop.  Tell me how you feel when the stoma nurse tells you your stomach muscles have collapsed and that’s just what happens when you have keyhole surgery.  Tell me what your reaction is when your stoma changes shape and becomes the size of tennis ball.  What do you do about the pain?  What do you do when you have to push hard on your stoma because there’s a bulge around it and you know it’s a partial parastomal hernia but the stoma nurse says it’s nothing because your tummy always sticks out when you’ve had abdominal surgery.  When the GP says you need to lose weight what do you do?

What do you do?

Well if you’re me you just get on with it.  You suck it up because there’s no other alternative.

I tell myself I’ve been through worse.  Bipolar is way harder than anything Wilomena can throw at me.  So what if it hurts 90% of the time? Who cares if it feels like someone has their hand inside my gut and is twisting my intestines like they’re doing a tug of war? 

Sometimes the world fails us, the NHS has had so much praise over the last few months and hats off to them they’re making the best out of a bad situation, but sometimes the NHS fails us and all we’re left with is to make the best out of our own bad situation because the reality of it is, if I crumble, if I flounder and if I fall, there is no mortgage fairy and time does not stop ticking just because my mind takes a ride on the Ferris wheel of Bipolar chaos.  Life does stop to consider its options when Wilomena decides she’s having a bad day and there’s nothing you can do for the pain except lie flat and that really isn’t an option when you’re sat at a desk all day.

I’ve been through worse…

…what do I do?

I make adjustments.  I turn up the volume and I do my best at life.

When I lost my job in the summer I didn’t fight to keep it.  It was time to move on anyway so I pulled my finger out and I signed up to every job site there was going and I applied for anything I thought I could do. 

I applied for jobs that I were too far away, underpaid, overpaid, a pipe dream, too few hours, too many hours.  Caught up in a Covid world of uncertainty I never imagined I’d fall on my feet.  I got a job that I really do love.  It’s less hours, there’s no commute and I’m in love with the people.  But you know what?  Nothing has changed.  I still have Bipolar and a massively problematic stoma.  I’m still tired and I still get pain. 

So if I have to start getting ready for bed at 8pm I’m sorry.  I’m sorry this makes me boring, I’m sorry you think that because it’s the weekend you think I should

“Live a little”

But regardless of what day of the week it is, nothing has changed.

Try taking 3 mood stabilisers all of them at a high dose.  Try to manage your tiredness and all the other side effects that, believe it or not you can live with because hospital is a much worse place to be.   Try analysing your every thought every second of the day to ensure you’re on the right planet.  Try praying that every stoma twinge is not going to turn into an infection because you haven’t got the time for it and you don’t want to go into hospital when its rife with Covid. 

So if you think I’m boring, if I’m not the person you want me to be and my lifestyle doesn’t match up to what you think it should; then I’m sorry.  I have never used being Bipolar or having a stoma as a reason not to do something and yes they are the reason I live my life the way that I do, but going to bed early, not drinking, not having late nights and all the over thinking; you have to understand, it’s not holding me back from life, the routine isn’t a punishment or a sacrifice; it’s just…

…damage control…

…it’s just me looking after myself so that I can go to Josh Groban concerts.  I go easy so that should Covid ever take a break I can invite a friend over for a curry and a chocolate cake we probably shouldn’t eat.  

All of this is so that I can meet my friends for coffee after work.  I do this so that I can go to work every day.  If I work I can pay for a holiday where I can take stupid selfies, eat ice cream and do doggy paddle in the infinity pool like a pro because I was never any good at breast stroke.  I can have my moment of Hollywood fame where I act out the priceless moment of getting out of the pool like a supermodel but it turns into a scene from Jaws where I look like I’m being dragged back in by a frenzied shark. But my favourite part is lying on a sun lounger with my ostomy bag basking in the scorching sun and everyone else is staring like its an alien and I’m just like…

“Yeah, I crap in a bag, what of it?”

My daily routine is dull as dishwater so that I can stand up in front of a crowded room and say…

“…this is how I do it and as dramatic as it might sound, this is how I’m alive.”

I am who I am because I take control.  Sometimes I loosen reigns, sometimes I try to fit too much into the few hours that we get during the day and sometimes I don’t do enough. 

…but everything I do, every technicality of the routine I call damage control is so that I can be the best version of myself. 

How do I sum up something in the briefest of ways without taking up too much of your time but also having the space to give you a big enough impression of what my younger years were like?

I hate to dwell on my younger years.  I don’t like to give my childhood too much “air time” because it’s not something I can change.  What is it they say on Love Island?

“It is what it is.”

I don’t want my childhood to define me, but the trouble with growing up is, whether we like it or not, it’s shapes us.  It moulds us into the adults that we become.  We go from impressionable children to grown up humans who have choices…do we become the worst version of ourselves?  Or do we become the best?

I grew up in a sociologically approved nuclear family; two children, and two parents.  We appeared to the outside world to be the perfect family.  My parents were hard working , my Mum was an Assistant Head Teacher at a secondary school in a unit for hearing impaired children. My Dad started out as a mechanic and I knew from a very young age how hard he worked because his hands and fingernails were always black with oil and grease that no amount of scrubbing could ever clear.

My Dad was rarely in the family home and my younger brother and I were always told that he was “driving”.  This meant that he was out doing long haul driving trips from one end of the country to the other in forklift trucks and he would be gone for days…but I never missed him.  Whenever he was off on one of his “driving” trips it was a relief because it was respite because he ran our house like a military camp. 

The first thing I ever did wrong was be born a girl.  In Greek families the first born is expected to be born a boy, I never got to understand the reasons why but whatever they were I had already disappointed him before I even had the chance to learn how to talk.

I grew up with so many rules and regulations that I didn’t realise until I was around 14 or 15 that my friends and my peers didn’t have the same rules in their families.  When my dad came home from work we had to be at the bottom of the stairs ready to greet him with our best Greek before he was able to put his key in the door…

“Kalispera Baba…”

We had one of three responses…

1. “Spera!”
2. “Disappear!”
3. “Bedroom inspection 10 minutes.”

Number 3 was the worst.  1 and 2 meant we could retreat back to our bedrooms, out of sight out of mind and out of trouble.  Three was problematic.  Bedroom inspection meant we had to blitz our quarters to his satisfaction and specifications and not one of those things was easily obtainable.

The bed had to be poker straight, no lumps in the sheet and the duvet had to be tucked in at all the corners. The bin had to be empty because if it wasn’t he would empty the contents on our beds.  He’d run his fingers along every surface looking for dust and if he found it he would wipe it on our clothes.  He would check our school bags for drugs and cigarettes and threaten us with strip searches. He would favour one bedroom over the other and whoever was deemed failure in that moment had look at the other person’s success and learn from them because they were better. But neither me or my brother were ever better in that moment, we were just lucky.

We were never physically abused but the verbal torment was difficult to live with.  I was a constant disappointment, I was ugly, I walked funny; my brother was naturally clever and bright.  He was popular at school and slotted into society like a well-oiled machine.  I may have been jealous of my brother growing up but I never resented him.  He was my ally.  He was the one who after the humiliation would knock on my bedroom door and say,

“Do you want to borrow my Roxette tape?”

Everything in the Spathis family household came down to three things, money, appearances and control.  To the outside world we had to look like the perfect family and we were lucky to be in it because we had food on the table, clothes on our back and a month long holiday every summer to Greece.  Did I want any of that? Not really.  I just wanted to be loved.  I wanted my Dad to love me.  Looking back I put too much effort in to trying to please and impress someone who couldn’t be pleased or impressed.

My dad made a constant point that money was an important part of life, it was the most important part of life.  When I got my first part time job at the age of 16 I had to offer my Dad my £17.50 as a gesture and a contribution to the household because I was earning now.  He didn’t take it but the lesson I had to learn was that I owed him.

Everything in life comes at a cost and I was quick to learn that enjoyment sometimes costs a little bit too much. My mum and I love the band James.  Their song “Sit Down” is an anthem of my younger years and every time it comes on the radio I can still hear my mum singing along in the car as she drove us to school. 

When James announced their tour in 1999 the band were at the top of their game and tickets were like gold dust but with the pay from my Saturday job I could afford to go so my Mum and I forked out for two tickets. 

Miraculously we had decent seats but it wouldn’t have mattered, just being in the same room as Tim Booth back then was an honour and a moment to remember forever.

The following morning my mum made a fry up.  Bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs and toast.  I’ve never been a big breakfast eater and meal times were always stressful at home but I’d been witness to one of the best concerts in my own little history so I had a big smile on my face as I cut into my bacon rasher.

My dad asked how much the tickets were, back then concerts were reasonably priced we’d paid around £30 for each ticket.  He asked how much the carpark had cost, I remember it was £5.  I’d bought a t-shirt, how much was that? I think it was £15.  I remember the mood changing at the breakfast table.  He picked at everything, he was angry we’d spent so much money on something so trivial.  He left the table in a temper and I stared down at my plate with a bit of bacon and cold scrambled egg remaining.  I lost my appetite because I felt guilty.  I’d wasted money and I had nothing to show for it that was of any use to anyone else, I had been selfish.

I scraped the last bit of my breakfast into the bin.  Just as the last bit of my half-eaten bacon rasher was falling into the dustbin abyss my Dad walked back into the room…now I was wasting food.

“GET THE FOOD OUT OF THE BIN!”

I fished out as much of the scrambled mush and the wet bacon rasher that I could salvage.  I don’t remember his exact words, but I had to eat the food that had been in the bin.  His words are not relevant because I know how he felt as he stared down at me crying into my dirty breakfast.  Disappointment, hatred, disgust.

All the way up until that point I had tolerated him because I had to.  But this, this was the final straw.  The feelings of disappointment, hatred and disgust were mutual.  I wanted out of the Spathis household. 

As a child I had begged my mum to send me to boarding school so I could escape.  I wanted to be like Pat and Isabel in The Twins at St Clares or like Darrell Rivers in Mallory Towers but the difference was I would never complain the way they did in the books.  Boarding school sounded perfect but my only option was to work my backside off and go to university.  Leave and just go.  Get the hell out and live life the way I never could if I stayed at home.

It’s funny really, reflecting on all of this; because as I said, he really wasn’t around that much.  My Dad was a Grade A adulterer.  God knows how but he had women falling at his feet left right and centre.  I’m guessing he probably made some of them feel like he could save them, I’m not sure what from but I’m certain in most cases he destroyed them.

I caught him once.  He had a guy working for him who went to prison, my Dad promised this unfortunate soul that we would watch over his family while he rotted in a cell wearing a prison issued tracksuit.  It was only when I saw my Dad with my 13-year-old eyes as he put his arms around the waist of his co-workers wife that something in me said “nah, that’s not right.”  I’d seen Saved by the Bell, I’d watched Zack and Kelly get it on and it looked a lot like what was going on in front of me and it was wrong! So wrong. 

I talked to my Mum about what I’d witnessed and it was downhill from there. When my dad knew what I’d seen he called me a liar. I was making up stories, I was poison, evil and it was another three years before he admitted that what I’d seen was the truth.

My parents split up twice, once when I was really young and the second time I was 16.  When they got back together the first time I remember my Grandma asking me if I was glad my Dad was coming home, I said yes, but I meant no.  She didn’t know what it was like at home but I wanted her to be happy.

The second split was only supposed to be a temporary thing.  He threw us out of the family home, me, my brother and my mum.  He went on holiday with the woman he’d lied about three years before and told us we had three weeks to find somewhere else to live and move out.  If we didn’t he said we’d just have to deal with it when he brought someone back after a night out. 

It was three months before we found a beaten-up cottage that had more problems than you can imagine.  What was intended to be temporary turned into 17 years.

Call it what you will, unfair, cruel, downright unbelievable, but even when the walls were literally falling down around us, at least the three of us were finally safe.  We were safe from his hatred and his immediate cruelty but he still controlled us, my Mum in particular, for a further 18-19 years until she was in a strong enough place to divorce him; and now he is nothing.

If I ever say anything to people about my life growing up, some ask…

“Why didn’t your Mum do anything?”

I used to ask myself the same thing.  In the moments where it counted, when we were waiting to be told we could eat, when he told me I was a waste of a person, when he picked at how I dressed, when I got B’ s instead of A’s, when I just existed and he didn’t like it, why didn’t she tell him to stop?

Because she couldn’t.  Because it wasn’t possible. Because she had it worse out of all of us and I didn’t know that until now.

My mum sometimes says she hopes I can forgive her.  But there’s nothing to forgive.  In the end she rescued us and she took us to a safer place where we could be who we wanted to be.  My brother could experiment with his hair and order a takeaway every Friday night with his friends.  I could invite my friends over and we’d sit and listen to music and talk about the boys we liked at 6^th from.  I could write stories and I could buy whatever I wanted with my £17.50 and not have to hide it.  We could live without the fear of being judged or ridiculed and what’s more is, she continues to rescue us every single day; financially, physically and emotionally. 

My Mum is my best friend, she’s my oracle; she knows me better than I know myself.  She’s the strongest woman I have ever known and I forget about the things she’s been through because she always looks ahead. Even when she doesn’t feel like it she works hard at life to make it better for everyone else. I would never have achieved any of the things I have if it wasn’t for Mum. 

She feeds us, pays for the broken toilet, takes in parcels and is a sponge for the trials and tribulations of adult and working life.  She is the first person to take a stand when the mental health system bails on me and everyone around us and I know when she reads this she’ll be thinking, “Kat, I really wish you hadn’t done this” and my answer to that is, “suck it up Glenny, because it’s the truth.”

Every story has a hero.  My mum is mine…

School days, they’re just the best days of your life aren’t they? I mean who doesn’t love getting up at stupid o clock, donning on a uniform that even though it makes you look the same as everyone else in the entire school you still get judged because your tie is too long or too short or you’ve got the fat end showing instead of the thin end because that’s more fashionable and that’s what the cool kids do. 

Who doesn’t love walking through those gates knowing you’re facing a day full of lessons you either hate or just don’t understand?  Your teachers terrify you, have you done your homework?  Is it good enough?  Have you got the right books with you?  Have you remembered your PE kit?  You better hope so because if you haven’t you know you’re gonna be wearing that mismatched kit from the lost and found that 100% guaranteed has not seen a washing machine in its lifetime!

Who doesn’t love walking into your form room where 50% of your classmates hate you and the other 50% just don’t get you? 

Who doesn’t love waking up with dread knowing the next 5-6 hours are going to be spent dodging paper objects being thrown at your head? Paper objects that soon turn into pens, protractors and rulers because you’re not providing a good enough reaction? 

Who doesn’t love being called…
“Big nose”
“Pinocchio”
“Swot”
“Geek”
“Specky four eyes”
“Pizza face”
“Hippy”
“Thicko”
“Minger”
“Frigid”
“F***ing weirdo”
“Slow coach”

…Those are to name just a few of the endearing and heartfelt (I’m sure) comments my ears were privy to hearing on a relentless daily basis.

Who doesn’t love all of that?

Yeah, your school days are the best aren’t they?  I mean, I look back on mine all the time and think “I’d love to go back and go through it all again?”

School was awful! From 1993 to 1998 I was all of the things I’ve just listed.  I was all of those things because the bullies made me believe that they were true. 

I couldn’t help some of it, I mean realistically there’s not much I could have done about the size of my nose, I tried to cover it with my hand so people weren’t exposed to the obvious horror that it caused but it made breathing difficult and in woodwork it wasn’t exactly practical when I was trying to saw through a plank of wood.  There wasn’t a great deal I could do about my skin either, I was a teenager, I had acne and no matter what the doctor prescribed I still had acne, so I apologise that it made my face look like a pepperoni pizza! 

I’m sorry I was such a slow coach but I was not a sporty kid and PE was most definitely not my bag so if I came last in the 100 metre hurdle race at sports day, take it up with my legs because clearly my legs and my brain were not on the same team. 

From age 12 I needed glasses, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise me needing to see the blackboard was so offensive to so many people; I’m sorry they made me look like a geek.  I’m sorry for being in the bottom class in Maths and I’m sorry I was in the top set for English but I missed the memo on how this would mould me in to being a thicko and a swot all at the same time!

I’m sorry that because I didn’t want to wear Kappa jackets and Spray Way coats and my trainers were Puma and not Nike this made me a hippy and as for being a minger, well, it is not my fault that no one fancied me; lads of class 93 – 98 that’s on you, I am not taking the fall for that one. You may have called me frigid but maybe it was a blessing in disguise that no one wanted to jump my 11-16 year old bones because when I look back at the photos none of you were exactly Crispian Mills material.

But there is one thing I will not apologise for… I will not apologise for being a “F***ing weirdo” because why should I? I didn’t think I was a weirdo, I thought I was just me. 

I know I asked too many questions about how the world started and did people really exist?  How did we know if we were really alive and how could we prove it because pinching yourself was just a matter of opinion.  I wanted to know how different religions formed and why didn’t everyone just believe in the same thing because at the end of the day we all live in the same world (that’s if the world really existed). 

I know I may have had an inability to see the things that were contributing to the allocation of this label, but from the age of 11 my subconscious must have made a decision that no matter how “weird” I appeared to be to the outside world or how difficult my school days were, my determination to be who I was would not waiver.  

I had a friend who refused to shave her legs when every other girl in school was shaving their’s, because of this she gained the title of “Gorilla Girl.”  She was bullied constantly and every person on the corridor would shout this obscenity at her but she never reacted.  I once asked her if it bothered her and she said…

“They’re just jealous”

But once she said…

“It’s getting boring now.”

So I asked her why didn’t she just shave her legs and then it would all stop?  My friend turned to me and she said…

“Why don’t you get a Kappa jacket and wear better trainers”

She had a point because I was not prepared to change anything about myself for the benefit of anyone else, so why should she?

When it comes to bullies there’s always one thing that I’ve never been able to understand and that’s…

“Why?”

Why do they do it? What could they possibly gain from making somebody else’s life miserable?  Why is it funny to make someone cry?  How is it okay to hurt them? Who makes the decision to throw a wooden ruler or a plastic protractor at someone’s face and as for hitting someone over the head with a 300 page science book, how is that sidesplittingly hilarious?  I didn’t find it funny when it was done to me and I certainly didn’t think it was okay when I saw it happen to someone else.

When you eventually pluck up the courage to talk to someone about the bullies you get the standard response.  They are…

• Unhappy in their own lives
• Bored
• They’re being bullied by the bullies themselves
• If its boys then they must fancy you
• If its girls then they’re jealous

To me not one of those explanations are ever true.  Using these excuses gives reason for completely unacceptable behaviour.  If any of the bullies who made my school days a living hell were unhappy that is not my fault and does not excuse the misery they inflicted on me or anyone else.

Making excuses for bullies puts blame on the victim. 

“Don’t rise to it.”
“Just ignore them.”
“When you leave school none of this will matter.”

But it does matter because it stays with you.  I left school 22 years ago and I have never forgotten the names I was called; I’ve never forgotten the feeling of a wooden ruler being thrown at my head. 

When I was 14 I reluctantly went to a school disco because my group of friends convinced me that it was a good opportunity to tell a boy that I liked him.  He laughed hysterically and must have been so utterly horrified at the prospect of someone like me thinking he was worth looking at that the next day he threw a stone at my face and grazed my jaw.

Bullies come in all shapes and sizes, they’re clever as well as stupid, they’re hard done by and they’re privileged.  Bullies can be our best friend, they can be our bosses and they can be our family.  There is no cap on the age range of a bully, there’s no valid reason for their behaviour and there’s no excuse for their actions. 

As a victim I blamed myself for the treatment I received.  People tell me I could have changed and then my teenage years might not have been so hard but changing isn’t as easy as people think it is. 

If I changed my appearance for someone else then I would never have been able to accept myself.  I would never have been comfortable with who I was because every time I looked at myself I would have wondered who was staring back at me.

Yes I asked far too many questions for anyone to be able to answer and while I wondered if I really existed in the world, I knew when I looked in the mirror that I was just a girl who liked reading books and listening to Indie music and that wasn’t really a bad thing to be.

Twenty-two years later Facebook is a field of social envy.  People make friend requests all over the show because they want to show others what they’ve got, their money, their houses, their kids.  They want to show others how much they’ve achieved and how they’re probably still the same person they always were back in the old days.  Maybe I’m no different.  As I write this piece I would be lying if I said I didn’t wonder how far it will go, who will see it and think…

“…damn, we gave her a rough ride…”

I have nothing flashy to show in the years that have passed and I make a point of refusing friend requests from the people who made my life miserable.  I didn’t want to be friends with them in the 90’s so why would I want to be friends with the now? 

The last twenty-two years have given me mountain after mountain to climb, I have loved, I have lost and at times I have been a complete stranger to myself.  There were times when I wondered if I would make it, if I even wanted to make it at all but in a way I guess I’m one of the lucky ones.  Facebook is a minefield of gossip and rumours and its only through the friend requests that I have accepted that I’ve heard about the people who didn’t make it.  Some of the people who made my life miserable are either dead or in prison and I wonder if the ones who are still around are sorry.  I’ve always tried to be a better person and I can’t help but think it’s a shame that those individuals couldn’t do the same for themselves.

The saying goes…

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

In all honesty whoever made that up has never been bullied.  It’s easy to say but it doesn’t take away the pain of someone’s hatred.

I don’t have the answers to tackling bullies and if anyone asked me how to deal with one I’m not sure I would be able to give them the right kind of advice because I’m not sure I even dealt with mine in the right way.

So to all the bullies out there, past and present, get a grip! Look at who you are and ask yourself if it’s worth it? How will torturing someone enrich your life? Is making the girl/boy with the braces cry something to be proud of? Are you truly happy when you throw something at someone’s face? And if that person doesn’t make it, if you’re responsible for that person feeling unable to carry on because they don’t meet your ridiculous expectations, can you live with yourself?

I am not denying that for the majority of my life I have struggled with the concept of who I am and who I will become.  I have always found it difficult to be happy with myself when the rest of the world looks so different to my own.  I wonder on a daily basis if I am good enough.  Have I done enough for my job?  For my friends?  Am I good enough for my family? Am I good enough for me?

I was bullied at school and at home I never met the expectations that my Dad laid out like a contract…

“If you look pretty and achieve the highest grades I will love you, but even then it will never be enough.”

In just the last few days I’ve learnt that you will always meet people who don’t like you and in return you might not like them but we’re all human and sometimes we just don’t gel.  Even adults say mean things, they might not throw rulers or stones at your face but those sniping comments will still hurt, but always remember…

…Sticks and stones have the potential to break our bones but when it comes to names it’s what you do with them that makes the difference…

In 1998 I was at 6^th form college trying my best at my A Levels and wondering if I was in over my head with the subjects I’d picked…

1. English Literature and Language, I thought it was the best of both worlds, but I hated the books we had to read.
2. Communication Studies, to this day I have no understanding of what that subject was about.  I remember watching clips of The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and having to tell my tutor how many different camera angles there were in one shot. I also remember words being thrown around like syntax (first time I heard that I thought my tutor was asking for Tampax) and societal dynamics.
3. Sociology…. I was an idiot for picking this and an idiot for sticking with it.  I should have dropped that subject like a hot potato in the first 3 seconds of entering the classroom.  What was I thinking?

Anyway, regardless of the subjects any of us chose that was not the most important part of being a 6^th former.  Nor was the fact that we had all chosen to go on to the next stage of our educational lives.  Sixth form was seen as either a steppingstone to going to university or it was buying time.  It gave everyone two years to gain a better idea of what they wanted in life and more importantly what they didn’t want.

It was also a massive fashion parade! Bear in mind we’d all spent five years in a school uniform having had only the odd “own clothes day” sprinkled here and there.  Own clothes days always put the fear of god into me because those were the days when the bullies had free reign of humiliating the less fortunate in the fashion world. 

I remember in year 8 my Mum bought me a red and blue woollen jumper with a heart on it and I loved it.  Not only had she taken the time to buy me a present but she’d picked something that I liked and wore with pride. 

Did the mean kids like it?  Hell no! 

Was I glad to put my uniform on the next day? Yes. 

Was I sad because people made me ashamed of my jumper? Too right I was sad.

In year 10 I was completely and madly in love with Crispian Mills, the lead singer and guitarist from the indie band Kula Shaker.  I was going to marry him, he was going to rescue me from all of my familial torture and he was my ticket to self and social acceptance. 

Crispian was famous for wearing the most outlandish and extravagant trousers and the fact that he didn’t care what people thought was incomprehensible to me and I idolised his confidence.  When I watched him performing he always wore these crazy wide flares and they were never a plain colour, they were always bright, embroidered or striped!  I wanted to have his confidence.  I wanted to not give a flying banana what anyone thought about me and my clothes because I was something, I was something good and I was someone special.

When own ‘clothes day’ came around in 1997 I bought a pair of pink and purple striped trousers from C&A and I had Crispian Mills’s face printed on to a white t-shirt and I walked through those school doors like a flaming hot Rockstar.  I was cool, I was confident and I was showing everyone that I didn’t care because Crispian Mills was an inspiration and I had gained my brave girl pants from watching his carefree persona. 

Did my confidence last?  No. 

Did I wear those pants again? Never. 

Did I wear the t-shirt again? Of course I did.  I gave up on the will to be adventurous, I didn’t give up my on my heart.

In 1998, the summer before I started 6^th form I remember half dreading half celebrating the notion of being able to wear what I wanted.  I was now the one who was in control of what I wore and how I carried myself.  I had my first ever Saturday job so I had the money to buy the clothes I wanted and feel good doing it because surely, by now we’d sifted through the dregs of educational morons and the chavs and bullies were no longer in the vicinity?

That may have been the case but it became pretty obvious that you don’t have to be a bully to disapprove of what someone is wearing and you don’t have to say it to someone’s face in order to hurt them.  Chinese whispers can spread like wildfire in a very short space of time and I learnt pretty quickly that I was most definitely not buying the right clothes from the right places.  Marks and Spencer’s was not the place for a sixteen year old girl to buy fashionable tops from and BHS is an instant no no for all things trouser.  It was hopeless.  My excitement over 6^th form being the place for a new start and a new beginning for my personal fashion was the opposite of what I’d hoped for.  

On one particular day and I was sat in the refectory with my friends talking about boys (we were always talking about boys) and the door opened; three girls walked in.  It was like a scene from the film Mean Girls only Mean Girls hadn’t even been born at this point. 

It was “the plastics” walking in fully made up, wearing the clothes that were a combination of the Spice Girls, All Saints and B*Witched.  They just floated into the room with their perfect hair and perfect nails and flawless skin and every single head in the room turned and I just thought…

“If this is what I’m up against, I give up.”

I gave up because the girl in the middle of the Charlie’s Angels-esque trio had snogged a boy I had the biggest crush on and I couldn’t compete with perfection.  I looked down at my BHS jeans and the jumper I’d kept from year 8 because it miraculously still fit and I thought to myself ‘Crispian Mills will come for you, any second now he’ll walk into the refectory in front of all of these people and he’ll barge past the perfect plastics and he’ll take your hand and he’ll say…’

“You look beautiful and you’re perfect as you are.  Now let’s get out of here because we’ve got a tour to do and the bus is waiting outside.”

A girl can dream.

In 2000 I bagged my place at university.  From the day I got the confirmation I started shopping.  This was definitely a new beginning.  I was going somewhere where no one knew who I was or where I came from and I was determined to make the most of the opportunity to wear whatever I wanted.  I didn’t care where I shopped or what people would think because this was my time to shine, I was at university and were no chavs and no bullies and no perfect plastics.  I would be surrounded by funky people wearing flares and fun jumpers…

…so how it ended up being worse than school and worse than 6^th from combined I have no idea! 

My housemates tried to change my views on my clothes…. 

1. Less jeans, more skirts.
2. Fewer t-shirts, more blouses with low cut buttons. 
3. No trainers, kitten heels instead. 

Was this me? No. 

Did I do what they said? Hell no! 

Did it depress me that my friends wanted to change me because I didn’t look the way they wanted me to?  Of course it did.

It hurts when people don’t like the way you look.  It’s the first thing we’re judged on but when it comes to clothes it’s the one thing we can easily change. 

I could have changed everything about me, I could have made life so much easier for myself but I didn’t.  Even when I came back to uni after a weekend at home and I found every single item in my entire wardrobe had been taken and replaced by an array of clothes belonging to my housemates, I still did nothing to change my appearance.  Some might say they did this as an act of love in an effort to make me look more aesthetically pleasing; but the truth is, they broke my heart.  This was the one thing that cemented the fact that I was just not good enough, simply because of how I dressed.

In 2009 I got a job at full time job in an office. 

Did I feel like I fitted in there, clothes-wise? Nah. 

I wore jeans every day, I wore jumpers and stupid t-shirts and trainers and I bought boots from Boundary Mill and if anyone made a suggestion or a comment, positive or negative I let it go over my head because at this point I just didn’t care.  Maybe it was the fact that there was nothing I could be bothered doing in order to change myself and if I didn’t feel right in what I was wearing then that was on me.

In the office I was everyone’s friend, there wasn’t one single person I didn’t speak to but when it came to nights out, I steered well clear.  In the 11 years that I was there I can count on one hand how many out of office celebrations I went on, this wasn’t actually a clothes related thing, this was a personality thing, my personality.

It was the same story every time, leave the office and I turn to an invisible pumpkin.  I wasn’t fun, I wasn’t interesting, I was the last person people wanted to talk to and don’t get me wrong this wasn’t just with work people, this was life in general; hen do’s, birthdays, leaving parties, just being in a group of people where there’s a celebratory atmosphere something in me just gets lost.  It’s never a conscious thing and it’s never anyone else’s fault but I’m always aware of it.  When I’m sitting in a bar surrounded by people who can drink and dance and party like real rock stars because they are they are wearing the right clothes, their confidence is a reminder of everything that I am not. 

It’s 2020 now and it’s been a really rubbish year!  My god, can it get any worse? Probably.  The best part of 2020 was being made redundant.  I’m sorry it really was, I wanted to leave my job for about three years and I just never made the move to see it through. I was lazy and it was convenient but I made some really good friends there and I have a lot of great memories from being at that desk but even before the redundancies were made official I knew there was no way I wanted to save my job.  Instead I pulled my finger out and I got down to it and I found myself new job in a place that after just 10 minutes of being there it had already captured my heart.

When I asked my manager what the dress code was I prayed for an old lady type blouse and a below the knee skirt with “practical” shoes.  I don’t know why, I’m a ward clerk in a hospital and that’s all I’d ever seen so when she said there was no uniform I was genuinely disappointed. 

Did I know what the hell to wear?  No I did not! 

Not a flippin clue.  So I bought smart pants, dresses, tops and jumpers with pretend shirt collars poking out; but on my first day I got an inkling that something here was different.  I wore smart pants and a jumper.  On my second day I tested out a dress with my Dr Marten boots and you know what?  People commented, people said nice things.  So I tried a different dress, a different top, different boots, I dressed things up, I dressed them down and now, every day when I walk through the door with a different scarf or a different dress with a different cardigan someone says that they like my outfit.

I don’t know what the deal is here, maybe at this stage I really don’t care or maybe this was the clean slate I’ve always wanted.  Maybe at this point in my life, having been through the things I have, having done the things I’ve done; perhaps I really have found my brave girl pants…

…or maybe it’s just that I’m finally comfortable being in my own skin and I have nothing to prove to anyone through the way I dress.  Maybe that’s why I’ve never changed the contents of my wardrobe to satisfy others.

As we go through life we change, our likes and dislikes evolve, we move from one place to another, school, college, university; we change jobs and we wear the clothes that we think are appropriate.  We dress up and we dress down for every occasion, whether it’s an interview or a Christmas party we wear what feels right… 

…but one thing remains constant and that’s the fact that we are all just human beings, we’re all different and you can’t dress that up or down because you shouldn’t have to.  The only thing we can do with who we are is be comfortable with it, maybe even happy…

…and that’s half the battle.