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Twisted Trajectory

A coming of age reflection.

By SOPOETICPublished 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 12 min read
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Twisted Trajectory
Photo by Jessica Johnston on Unsplash

First Cut Is The Deepest:

It's not everyday that I fall in love, I was seventeen and saw his spikey hair, chubby face and dark, naughty eyes. Today wasn't any different, his Essex accent made me salavate and I was strictly in lust. I was living in the back end of a council estate in the north-west of England. In my Nana's semi-detatched, end house situated in a quaint little avenue. There tucked away in a rough part of Manchester which, compared to London, was a semi-stunted city I was so much out of my comfort zone (with dating) let alone meeting someone from the south in a chatroom!

I think I loved the letters, the music, the phone calls and video chats on MSN and Yahoo and flowers when I was sick, although quite cheesy they confirmed my childish views of romance, more than the man himself. But just like cheese, my heart began to melt. I mean he was very hot! Naughty yet nice. He reminded me of someone I had seen in movies or a dream and I'd never thought about them before now. I loved music and art, quietly enjoyed reading, when I wasn't out getting stoned playing Snake on my first Nokia 3210 mobile phone that my even my cool dude, grandad would have told you was "All The Rage", even a bit of writing in my diary too.

I made a mixtape about this time in my life which I think may give you more of a feel as to what was going on for me internally and how I still feel about it now. I'd like you to listen while you continue reading please:

I still collected Trolls with pink and green hair, glass eyes; on keyrings, necklaces and one or two that would sit on the top on my pen. I'd twist its hair when nervous and stroke it under my nose when happy and/or in a daydream. Every girl was similar although to the outside world we were at the age of maturity where other people's opinions of us were more important than our own. So usually we all tried to hide our true selves and anything that wasn't deemed by others to be 'cool' we kept schtum about - even amongst our best friend(s).

It felt like he knew me, secrets, warts and all without me saying a word! He fed into all those private little functions called emotions that I was trying so hard to grow out of. I felt like we'd met some place long ago, yet we hadn't yet met. He came with a sort of nostalgia (..a melancholic longing to go back to a place where I'd never been before..) it was like I was watching from behind patio doors of my mind and couldn't quite see but feel behind closed doors of the soul, I was falling into it, or in love? with him.

Like some rediculous fairytale dream, I only allowed myself to jump into mentally - how embarrassing it would have been to show my true feelings and what I was loving getting sucked into! Where I come from you get called a 'dickhead' for that kind of thinking. Manchester United, Oasis, Happy Mondays all came from my part of town and us, and it was perfectly acceptable for all the kids listening to them to admit that they "fucking love 'em" BUT we would never admit to having soppy feelings or worse, actually falling in love!.

Career Girl

Legal Secretary at a huge law firm and earning good money. Addicted and absorbed in fitness. I 'lived' in the gym, my friends and family would say. I presumed life would be filled with feelings like this new one. I couldn't be sure if it was 'love' love because I'd never been in love before. I had never had the parental love either. Being raised by my grandparents I had a kind of love tinged with pity because I was an unwanted child. I left school when I was a first year in high school - age twelve- went down the wrong roads of course. Searching for connection in escapism. Vowing never to love anybody in the world, always stand on my own two feet, most of the time I got myself in to such states where I could barely even think, let alone stand; always, yet not knowing, that it was love I was looking for.

Foundation & Boundaries

I longed for that special connection which was the void in my life thus far. I had no place in the world. My life was built on the foundation of hugging two strangers called mum and dad at Christmases and Birthdays, saying goodbye and going into primary school trying to explain to inquisitive kids why it was my old Nana picking me up from the school gates. I didn't have any answers. All I knew was that I was on a mission to figure myself out. If I could just find myself - I'd have all the answers. Funny, as I thought all this at thirteen and now at thirty-nine I've come full circle. This time round with a vengiance to progress.

Invitation

Come live with me he said when I was twenty-three. We'd had a six year long-distance relationship speckled with hotel visits. I was in night college at the time and just received my Legal Secretarial Diploma with ILEX. My carreer was taking off. I had been promoted as I was now doing Paralegal studies too. Everything was where it should be. I was in the thick of my trajectory - one planned and thought through. So of course I agreed to up sticks and start again - as you do (not). Lets go!!

Land of Opportunities

In Essex I looked at gyms, colleges and went to job interviews. He sent me out to get clothes. We dined out. Got wasted and I was hooked - on love. Only the love stopped there. I had already seen red flags in my head about the way he had picked me up from my Nana's house with all my carriable belongings. Had he really told me "its ok, you don't have to come with me" I mean why would he have said that? Did I really drop down to my knees, gently undoing his fly in my childhood bedroom, silently pleading as I was seductively teasing? That then was the moment I realised I was caught.

Love for the Unloved

Caught up in my fantasy of 'being in love' of following in my mother's footsteps almost. For the first eleven years of my life my mum had disappeared to London. I always put my mum up on a pedastal, although I didn't know her, I loved her in her absense. That's how my tendancy to 'support the underdog' came to life. I'd overhear relatives talking about my mum "letting her down again" or "chossing men over her own daughter" and I'd wonder what was actually going on to make the person they were talking about do these bad things. I knew there was more to it than meets the eye, I refused to believe I was abandoned, after all didn't she visit sometimes on some birthdays and christmases. She did because I used to cry when it was time for her to leave again. Whenever I did something sassy or naughty my Nana would complain, "Oh, you're just like your mother" which made me very, very proud.

Hook

This guy was my world and had gotten under my skin, but how? I mean he wasn't the one who I had dreamed about. He didn't do or say all the right things. He wasn't everything I had been looking for. To me, I hadn't even been looking, I'd be avoiding the inevitable - and the inevitable was this. This man was the one who I didn't see coming, who makes me feel unsteady and question everything I had ever believed or imagined about love. This man was starting to make me feel reckless and out of control. He's The One, my heart and soul just infuriatingly and inexplicably was drawn to him. I hadn't dreamt of anything so amazing. Now I was losing sleep, spending my awake time day-dreaming of a future (something I wasn't used to doing). I was only used to surviving, investigating life and dissassociating from the realities of my present - not quite knowing about my past - and not really caring. Emotions and feelings were something I hadn't taken much notice of before now. Noticing and playing with them now felt magical. I was souring up above the skies with my head in the clouds and I wasn't ready to come down - ever!

Line

The house we were living in was brand new to both of us. He listened to my ideas on colour schemes but I'd overhear him delighting over all the new furnishing and the new home as "I love this place, I have got the floor fitters coming tomorrow, I want to do this or that in the garden.." Not 'we' not 'us' - no mention of me at all. I couldn't work out who was on the other end of the phone either and the words 'I-I-I', 'Me' and 'Mine' in that beautiful voice I had fallen in love with, echoed around my mind and the emotions attached were all too familiar. Anxiousness, fear - I was afraid of being tricked, worry, concern for my well-being, and a need to investigate. So when I found out that he had been going through a seperation with his ex-wife who he had a young child with whilst we were 'dating' all those years, my world crumbled. Everything I had known and grown to believe about this - my first ever relationship - was all inaccurate. What was real?

Sinker

On the journey home he set his stereo to play Radio One - Essential Mix which happened to be a Coldplay takeover. So most of the way home we seemed to listen to Coldplay's whole X & Y album. He was crying, I was upset but numb. It wasn't just the deception why I had left of course not, we could have gotten through it with communication. It was that other person on the end of the reciever on his phone. I found out she was the real other woman. He'd been dating her whilst with his wife and his wife susspected he had been cheating, so he picked me up to use a collateral damage in the middle so I had, unbeknownst to me, become the 'home-wrecker' who his wife refused to let his daughter visit him whilst he was anywhere near me - and quite rightly so! The cute calls he was making was to the woman he had fell in love with. She was kept secret from all of us. He had tried to make me believe that our problem was that he was actually gay. When that didn't deter me and I suggested living together as friends until I found somewhere else to live - I still had my carreer plans, college and lifestyle dreams for London. He then allowed me to find out about his wife and child and slowly I 'discovered' that he already had a girlfriend too.

Insult to Injury

After that he continued to call and claim that everything I believe was a lie and that he had fallen in love with me, he wasn't gay, he hadn't left his wife and child, he certainly loved no other. All this after taking me home!? Bizarre. No wonder I couldn't tell the difference between reality and make-believe anymore. I took a trip to my GP and the doctor told me it sounds like I have early schizophrenia. Great. That's when I found out that my Dad was also diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and he had wrote a book about his experience. I read the book page to page over two days. I was mentioned a few times in an affectionate way. So much to take in. Eventually, I developed full blown chronicly acute paranoid schizophrenia.

Scarred

Twenty years later, I still carried the guilt of not knowing if it had actually been me who had caused that little girl to seperate from her Daddy? Not knowing if he had really been gay and didn't have feelings for me at all, was I a cover up? If so why wouldn't he agree to my suggestion of flatmates? I found out who the other, other woman was and she was beautiful. Stalking his social media years later, I see her with him having fun with his young daugher (obviously she was older now) but looked like a loving family in the photoframe on the fireplace of the same home where we live. All I had to show for my first 'relationship' was guilt, a mental illness, a broken heart and scuffed knuckles from scribbling love hearts with chalk on the concrete ground outside in the courtyard of pyschiatric unit.

Carry on Regardless

I was raised in North Manchester but I grew up in Essex - three months I was there roughly - and then back to South Manchester, this time, I lived in many places including mental hospitals and accute care wards, ICU on life support machines, then onto assisted housing, shared homes, thought I was grown when I closed the door to my forever home. I'm thirty-nine now, have a loving partner of twelve years, a beautiful dog and a lovely garden living back where I love in the middle of the City of Manchester in the Northern Quarter - very hipster (although the nearest to being a hipster I'll ever get now is if my back goes I'm still able to grab hold of my hips to aide in my walking faster towards the armchair!). I wished that I had been told about the pain of old age and of course heartache when I was growing up, it wouldn't have made much difference. My body, mind, soul and old heart still aches so I guess that means - I am just still growing up!

Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed please hit the heart button. If you have any tips you'd like to leave - hit the button too! Obviously, there's no obligation, however, of course I will be delighted to find them. Mostly, I hope you enjoyed my writing. x

Dating
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About the Creator

SOPOETIC

GOALS: For my work to be at least IMPERFECT, not SLOPPY. LEVEL"Please Sir, can I have some more?"

<3 SUBSCRIBERS <3

TIPS: are compliments that I am undeserving of but graciously appreciated.

www.sopoeticblogpoetryartmusic.co.uk

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