Please note: this piece contains descriptions of abuse that some readers may find upsetting.
May 5 1990
It's been 34 years since police turned up at my parents’ door with the news their child was missing, since they reacted by immediately changing the locks and asking if they had found my school blazer because it was incredibly expensive and quite new. 34 years of my parents telling people they have three children, not four.
I ran away from my well-off, educated, middle-class family. Private education, large house, parents still together, foreign holidays and nice cars.
After I left, my family went on with their abnormal normal. Photographs were burnt, all my possessions removed. For a while, I was the source of a great evil brought upon the family. Then I became the ghost that nobody spoke about.
We were part of a small Jewish community in Newcastle. Not ultra-orthodox but we kept Shabbat. Everyone knew everyone. And everybody knew my mother. Tall, large and quite beautiful, she was the community meshuganah. Her drama and compulsive lies were a source of great amusement. Friends’ mothers nudged gently at me for information. curious to see if we were like her.
‘And her poor husband. How does he put up with her?' And how did he? I suppose he came across to others as a bit pathetic, yet the man I knew as ‘Dad’ was prone to childish tantrums and outbursts of violence, one minute utterly disinterested, the next holding me up by the neck against the wall. One of my earliest memories is being beaten by my father for waking him up. Finally, after being beaten to silence, the offending noise continued. He realised I wasn't the source, mumbled an apology and was off to punish the other child. For years, I held onto the fact that he was a good man because he said sorry, that he was driven to it by her. It took me to my thirties to realise in his collusion and violence: he was an abuser in his own right.
At home, we lived within a strict, orchestrated regime to maximise her reflected glory and minimise anyone from the outside glimpsing the truth. She controlled every aspect of our lives, our possessions and our bodies. Anyone who questioned her would immediately be dispatched, discredited, disgraced. She craved prestige, woke or wilted on the admiration of others. If we made her look bad, we too would be dispatched, discredited, disgraced. When we inevitably failed to keep within her ever-changing rules we were cruelly, ritually, punished, humiliated, beaten or psychologically abused, made to stand and wait our turn to be reprimanded, made to watch our siblings beaten for not owning up to some imaginary crime. And then came, what I now know as, gaslighting: the persuasion that she had been merciful, because she loved us, or an outright denial of what we had all just witnessed to be true, or that we were mentally unstable.
From a very young age, I knew there was something desperately wrong within my family, something sinister about my own mother. I witnessed fear in everyone close to her. By the time I was 11, I didn't trust her. At 12, I knew that my weak father was never going to save me. I began to plan my escape. I knew with certainty that once I left there was no going back. In my mother's mind, you were either with her or against her. And so, I made my choice.
Aged 15, in school clothes and with no possessions, I ran, with a 17-year-old boy from Wishaw who I met through the NME personal ads (a story for another time). I never looked back though I still loved my mother in a confused kind of way. I felt terribly guilty; I had upset her. She seemed so fragile and easily hurt. Gradually, as the years passed, that faded. Despite, or perhaps to spite everything, I did incredibly well: finished my education and got myself into university, becoming a teacher. She told anyone who mentioned me I was a prostitute in Glasgow until I ceased to exist.
After I left, I couldn't make sense of it. My memory was hugely affected, and I couldn't remember the names of childhood friends or teachers. I suffered dreadful anxiety and panic. I disassociated from my past and just concentrated on what new challenge was directly in front of me. When people asked me about why I had run away, I struggled to explain it. I felt so completely othered.
It was in my late 30s when I saw an article about children of parents with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Suddenly, I had the words to describe my mother. The blurry picture came back into focus. I realised that I had been suffering PTSD, that I had been a victim of severe abuse. I needed to peek again, through the window, at the family I once had, that had continued without me. I needed to feel the loss of it. I can see them sitting at Shabbos with the candles lit. And, for a moment, it looks cozy in there.
From the moment I left, I was utterly determined to rebuild myself and one day make my own family, a family in which I am safe and loved. I spent a good portion of my life not becoming my mother. I became a teacher in high deprivation areas and learnt about psychology and trauma. I undertook years of therapy and did huge amounts of emotional work. I've learnt to be honest and kind.
I have always been determined to create a better version of the family I didn't have. And so, I have. I'm now married to the most wonderful man. I am a sculptor. We live in an old stone cottage out in the Scottish hills, with our four happy, healthy, amazing children, two cats, one dog and three chickens. An endless supply of love.
I am not like my mother in any way. I never was.
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