Category Family

Superfat Seven

freyathewriter 2 Comments

Yesterday I was having a chat with one of my writer friends about putting your face online. He has just launched the second novel in his series about Ardamin, a clone inhabiting a dystopian future (check the series out here on Amazon) and he has been promoting the latest novel on Instagram, including showing himself with his book.

So far, so normal. Unless you’re me, or someone like me. I’ve been running this blog since April 2013 (with some gaps for life events) and I’ve never put my face, let alone my body, on view. Over on my Instagram account there are maybe three instances where I’ve revealed myself as an adult. That’s out of 581 posts I’ve put up over there. And… to be honest I fight every day not to take them down. I may yet do that.

Why?

Superfat Seven.

When I was nine, we moved house, from a big city to a village. I was The New Girl. And some boys in the class below me immediately started calling me Superfat Seven. Until this point, I don’t think I’d ever thought about how I compared to other kids in my class. I was just me. That name would follow me everywhere I went, and I dreaded walking home from school if they were on the same street (which they often were) because the name calling would follow me home. I’ve seen photos of myself at that age and I can’t see why they chose that name, looking at it objectively. I had pudgy cheeks, but I wasn’t the huge lump that I very quickly saw myself as due to this name. Looking back, I guess the sole reason I was bullied was because I was The New Girl. That was it. But, the name had life-changing consequences.

I’ve never been diagnosed (I’ve never sought it out), but I’m almost certain I have Body Dysmorphia. I will do almost anything to avoid having my photograph taken. Even with family photos as I was growing up, I desperately wanted to grab the camera and throw it to the floor. But I was a well-behaved kid and knew that cameras were expensive so… I didn’t. I can’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. The only thing I focus on when doing my hair in the morning is the hair itself. When going somewhere where I have to be presentable, I focus on the neatness and cleanliness of the clothes themselves and whether what I have chosen is objectively ‘good enough’, not how I look in what I am wearing, because I will never accept how I look.

I have learned to mask the depression and anxiety that this has caused, but it has become entangled in other issues over the years. Unravelling it all seems like another lifetime’s work. Masking is what we do to get by in life, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t for one minute think that anyone else is bothered by how I look, nor do I think I am the focus of their attention. This is all about my inability to accept myself.

Superfat Seven.

What has this got to do with writing, with being an author? A hell of a lot, actually. Marketing your novel when the perceived wisdom is that you will be more approachable, more memorable, more relatable (I hate that word so much!) if you show your face, is a huge problem for someone like me. I know so many other authors who have their Instagram account filled with themselves. Their posts are bright and engaging and… relatable.

The upside is that I used this crushing mental health issue (because it is a mental health issue, let’s be honest) to my advantage when writing Callie, the main character in Anti-Virus. The cause of her situation is very different and entirely more violent than childhood bullying, but I was able to build on my personal experiences to create her story. So, there is that.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It may be true. Sometimes though, it would be such a relief to be strong without having to go via Superfat Seven Highway to get there.

Now, I know – dVerse Meet the Bar

freyathewriter 11 Comments

How many times do you turn tangled memories

over and over in your mind?

How many half-heard conversations

do you decide were just concoctions of a wishful-thinking

wondering?

Images advance and recede, side-step and sway

out of your vision – and the faces, oh the faces,

they are wreathed in wraith-like wisps of mist,

tantalisingly out of reach.

You fear that you are merely fanciful, creating a castle of cards –

oh, no, not a house! – of four feuding families

that will collapse under the weight of your expectation.

‘Where did I come from?’

‘What blood runs like rivulets in my veins?’

Now, I know. Now, I know.

 

The lovely Björn was this week’s host over at dVerse, the poet’s pub, where he asked us to use alliteration and consonance in our poems. I used this opportunity to reflect on some news I received this week about a certain part of my family’s history. It answered a great deal of questions that have been floating around in my head for a long time.

If you feel like putting pen to paper, so to speak, head on over to dVerse and join in!

Aleksander_Gierymski,_Żydówka_z_pomarańczami

This is “Jewess with Oranges” painted by Aleksander Gierymski.

The Mirror Crack’d

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Dad gave me a wink, like we were pals or something. Little did he know,that I hated him, had hated him for years. Little did he know that the very reason that I hated him was because he reminded me far, far too much of me, or rather the parts of me that I disliked the most. Little did he know that I envied him, because he had given into those parts, had lived his life just the way he wanted to, had left chaos and destruction in his path like the tornadoes that plagued our part of the world, and yet I, I had not. And he seemed not to care. Here he was, sitting opposite me in the bar, sipping meditatively on his scotch on the rocks like the past twenty years just hadn’t happened.

“So, Shelley, how’re you findin’ motherhood? It’s a tough call, am I right?”

Huh. ‘Am I right’ – that phrase that took me back to my shitty teens, when he went to work one day and never came back, when he tossed us all out of his life like so much trash, when he shacked up with that two bit floozy in her mouldy old trailer and was happy, dammit.He hadn’t had to pick up the pieces, watch Mom take away the pain by losing all our meagre savings at the casino, lose herself in a rainbow of meds, and then finally walk away from me and my brother once I turned seventeen.

“There you go, making up lies again.”

“What?” I double-taked, cartoon style. “What did you say – err, Dad?” The word still felt uncomfortable in my mouth. Like eating chalk.

“You didn’t answer, so I know that means  you’re thinking. Thinking about all the bad stuff – and Shell, I know it was bad. I know you thought it was all my fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” I demanded, heart thumping. Our relationship, such as it had been, hadn’t been built on blunt questions, let alone honest answers.

“Shell, your mom, God love her soul, well, she was sick. Sick for a long, long time. I couldn’t handle it any more. Granted, I wasn’t always on it, wasn’t always there for you kids when I shoulda been, but she wanted it all, Shell. The 6 bed 3 bath house, the cars, the housekeeper, the chef, the gardener, the pool. And it was just me earning. I couldn’t be there to look after you and work all the hours to provide that for her. She wasn’t a happy woman, Shell.”

I looked at him. I mean, really, really looked at him. Searched the expression on his face, the look in his eyes, noted the silver hair, the crows feet, the nails bitten down to the quick as he nervously turned his scotch glass round and round in his hands.

“There was only me, Shell, only me. And I wasn’t enough for her. She told me to leave, told me not to contact you or her ever again, told me I was a piece of trash, so I should go and live with the trash, out at Riverside Park. What could I do?”

“And Lucille? Who the fuck was Lucille?”

“Is. She and I are still together. I worked with her, kinda. You know, she was a cleaner at the office, nobody gave her a second of their time exceptin’ me. But I was there all the hours, saw how she did her work, polished every inch of every desk, every bin properly emptied. She was good to me, brought me a Subway every night, and God, she didn’t ask me for anything in return. I just moved in to the spare room to begin with. It grew from there.”

“A cleaner, Dad? Really?”I shook my head. Why sink so low?

He looked at me, sadly. “You may think you’re too much like me, Shell. You may hate the parts of me that remind me of you. But really, it’s your mom you don’t like the reflection of. I loved her, but she never really loved me, for me. Only what I could buy for her. That ain’t love, Shell. Better wake up before it’s too late.”