The mostly forgotten years, 97-03.

One thing I am absolutely certain of, is that when you are six years old or around that age, summers seem to last forever and it is always sunny. 

I can barely remember any storm clouds in the sky as a child, apart from the nights my dad would take my sister and I to watch the storms off the beach, and it never rained. Every day was endless sunshine, summer holidays did not last for 2 months, they lasted years! Those years were spent running up and down my street with my best friend Gabby, my first and only friend made in Kindergarten and still one of my best friends to this day. We all ran wild in our street, playing stupid games, buying lollies with our saved up $5 pocket money for the week (big deal back then!) and only returning home when it was absolutely pitch black and you knew it was dinner time. I hardly even remember watching any sort of television, apart from my earlier days with my mum, watching Playschool, Art Attack, reruns of The Monkees and rather unfortunately, The Bold and The Beautiful. 

When we weren't running around our street, we did attend the local Catholic primary school. My memories of that place are quite mixed. The school work was never challenging and the first week was always spent colouring in a title page or learning some ridiculous song. I kind of loved it there and will admit I also quite liked reading scripture and knowing things. I've always loved knowing things, but I was quite the little show off, which my sister hated, being two years above me at the same school. I did earn the nickname 'Teacher's Pet' for a reason, I always did sit up the straightest, which seemed to my peers to be a sign of a suck up. Probably true. 

Segregation in the playground was an unspoken, but very important social rule. Big kids (Years 3 and above) got to play in the upper playground and the rest of us had to stay behind the path which separated the two. Having a sister two years above me, whenever I got lonely I did seek her out, always anxious about being dobbed in by someone to a teacher. I shouldn't have bothered though, big kids did not want their little siblings to be hanging around with them and their friends. That put me off quite a bit. Sisters can be so cruel. It didn't matter much, I had Gabby to play ridiculous hand games with, some kid was always getting "married" behind the cricket nets and later we had hand ball, which we were all highly competitive about. Some people just could not accept that they had to go down to Duns!

Apart from all the fond memories I have of the place, I did get bullied and I certainly hated one particular aspect of the school and that was sport. I've hated sport my whole life, even now the thought of standing in a line and knowing you're going to be picked last fills me with dread, or having to go to an athletics carnival (shudder). I was always picked last. I hated sport, I was never good at it, I'm never going to be good at it and with the Olympics on at the moment, I'm not going to waste any time going on about the subject. Sport is dreadful.

Perhaps the oddest part of trying to write out my memories and experiences between the years 1997-2003, is that I can barely remember them as well as I can other, probably more important, years of my life. They're my very own forgotten years and I had to think about them seriously for a long time before some wispy memories came through. The only things I remember, apart from school and playing in my street, was the fact my mum doesn't really frequent these years too much in my head. I feel very guilty now for somehow forgetting her without knowing, because it wasn't like growing up with separated parents, it was as if her entire existence had been erased because I had forgotten her in some way. She was certainly never spoken about and none of my childhood friends ever asked about her. I do remember my sister was gone for some months because she wanted to be with her, only to return back to my dad and I, with my mum dropping her off and then leaving again. I don't even think I really missed her until I had her back again properly.

In the years 2000 until 2003 I gained a younger half-sister Gabrielle, who I barely know, a stepfather and an ex-stepfather and I lost a grandmother. I had quite a bad bicycle accident, having been flipped over my handle bars, which ended with me sliding across the concrete on my face (it hurt). Photos of me at the Sydney Olympic Games show the damage, since half my face was covered in bruises, scabs and cuts and I had quite a magnificent black eye. I made my Holy Communion and my Confirmation with the saint name Therese, so I was and still am, an adult in the eyes of the Catholic Church. I got to see my mother again, properly this time, although it would be quite a few years before we connected properly (it never starts well when they think you're 8 and you're actually 10) but when we did, I went from being my father's daughter into my mother's baby. A late conversion.

The years 1997-2003 are my forgotten years and have been the hardest to write about (having to leave out a few memories), but surely the easiest to read. After all, I did promise I would try not to depress people and I hope I have succeeded. It wasn't bad from what I can remember or from what I have written, but I'll admit that some things are better left kept in our heads, not for the world to read. 

We will start at the beginning and then stop. 91-97.

Blogging, or just writing in general I think, is supposed to be sort of therapeutic, or at least that's what I've been told. I thought I may as well give it a go, I can always scorn this blogs creation at a later date.

So to begin with, it should probably be said I am not your typical twenty year old female. Indeed, I don't think anything about my existence up until this point has ever been typical. I can only explain this covering short periods of time. This post can cover from my birth to age five I think, past that point it gets more complicated and I cannot be bothered sorting out my thoughts this evening to cover beyond that age. 

I was born to young parents, 24 and 21, my father already having fathered two children by this point and my mother only one other, my sister Jessie. My father was and still is, a mechanic, while my mother stayed at home or as it says on my birth certificate, her occupation was "home duties." I was apparently a planned child, conceived in a tree and from what I can gather, some sort of trap to keep my father (a serial adulterer) from straying even further from my mother. I'll give you a spoiler right now, that didn't work so well for my mum.

Much of my first few years is a blur, as you can imagine, but there were common occurrences in my household that I very much doubt are common or "typical." For one thing, my parents were young and loved to party. My sister and I often found ourselves with our Grandma in Bondi, while my parents danced the night away and took God knows what. It would often be a few days before they came back for us.

By the time my sister started school, we were very close, having gotten used to the fact we were pretty much on our own. For a long time I didn't even bother speaking to people, I just communicated through my sister and she was only too happen to tell my parents what I wanted. She was always the more charismatic and outgoing child. When she left for school I had no one. I didn't grow up surrounded by other children my age or go to preschool, I was always with my sister or my mum. The problem was that by this point, my mum was very depressed. She had two young children, she was young herself and often my father just left for days and didn't come back. She would lock herself in her room, with all the light blacked out and just slept. When my father was home it wasn't much better. They were terrifying when they fought, my father is a physical fighter and my mother has a cutting and brutal tongue. I have so many memories of hiding behind doors with my sister just waiting for them to stop their own little war, usually staged in our kitchen. Dad always ended it. Someone was always hurt. Screaming and crying was typical background noise for me.

From the time of my birth to the age of five, when everything seemed to fall apart, all I can really remember is being with my sister, then being separated and then being alone and having some sort of rudimentary feeling that this was probably what life was.  I started Kindergarten in 1997 and missed half the year. My maternal Grandfather, who was my mother's world, died of terminal cancer in 1997. My mother and my father finally separated in 1997. My mother's depression got even worse in 1997, when my father took my sister and I away from her in 1997. 1997 was not a good year for me.  

I think I'll end this in 1997 and pick it up again at a later date, but it should be noted I can count on one hand the number of times I saw my mother over the next four or five years.