Family (Friends)

I’ve no doubt I deserve my enemies but I can’t believe I deserve my friends.1

I heard that somewhere, I don’t even remember where now, but I think it’s a very apt phrase for my life.2

For one reason or another, the relationship between my parents and my sisters very quickly disappeared as I entered early teenage-hood.3

Part of it was my own making. I’m aware of that. Even from a very young age, I cut myself off from them. Far too aware of the difficulties and horrors they embodied and too scared to confront them. I watched from a distance as they tore each other apart, while at the same time feeling that I was the only one trying to hold them together.4

In the end, I gave up. 5

For my part, I had done enough damage and the wounds to myself and them, I could not heal. So, I let them go.6

Yet, I longed to fill the hole of their absence. 7

I turned to a boy, a year younger than myself, in the same school as myself. A boy who, like myself, was feeling lost in the world. We became strong friends. I spent whole weeks at his house. We played with computers which have now long gone. Ran through forests, made up stories and watched a lot of late night films.8

Together we drew more people to us, felt the first tastes of love and sex, friendship and betrayal. I created a family anew out of group of close friends. A bunch of misfits looking to fill a hot summer with alcohol, smoking, camping and canoeing.9

Yet, I was drawn back into the battered remains of my own family, and was made to watch as my parents bartered over who wouldn’t have to have me. 10

Eventually choices were made and I was forced to abandon my friends and leave the country I had spent most of my childhood.11

I once again found myself alone, living with a father who struggled to show love and appeared disinterested in my life. 12

Desperate to grasp some hope, I once again made friends with a man who himself was going through his own turmoil. He need an unjudgemental ear, I just needed a place to escape. But through his independence I grew inspired and made what was probably the most rash decision of my life. I moved out of my father’s house and set up life on my own.13

I immediately was faced with reality. I had very little money. I had no job. I had a college course which I had only taken to pass the time till something better came along. I had a tiny bedsit with very little possessions. I had neighbours who when they had finished stealing from me, beat me into a pulp and left me for dead.14

I quickly moved into a new flat in one day, using a taxi, with my face scarred and ruined.15

After the failed ending of my college course, I took another. Once again, I made friends. Another group of misfits. People desperate to find a place they could hide away from their parents. Taste independence without the financial misery that came with it. They did however, chip in. They brought food and drinks. I supplied the roof and music. We talked, worked on college courses, took long walks. Fell in and out of love. Argued and made up.16

Another family. Another place I could feel at home.17

As the course moved on, I fell in love. Deeply. A woman in the year under me led me to her home, treated me to sex, then pushed me into the spare room for the night.18

When the course ended I decided to hang around for a year whilst she finished her course. I worked for the employment service as a pay-off to the debt of being on income support whilst studying. My girlfriend’s parents were kind enough to let me move in with them whilst I did this. 19

I was faced with a family who worked together, who argued briefly and made up quicker. Who talked to each other, without hiding a world of secrets. There were no smashed plates or fists raised. No slaps with the belt.20

Naturally, I couldn’t trust them.21

Yet I was enthralled with my girlfriend, and proposed to her on top of a mountain.22

After her course, we went to university together, finding a campus which catered for both of our interests.23

Once again, I made new friends. Once again, a small tight knit group of misfits and crazies. People who wouldn’t look to out of place in a mental asylum, or Alcoholics Anonymous. With the openness of living on campus, we talked way into the nights, made music, watched films, played games, drank and smoked.24

My fiancé struggled to be separated so far from her family and friends. A situation I wanted to understand, but really couldn’t. She blamed me and I blamed myself, to the point of depression for us both.25

We split for a while and our friends struggled to support us. Family appeared to give their opinions. Friends cajoled. But it was in our own privacy that we got back together.26

Shortly after, possibly too shortly, my fiancé found out she was pregnant. After much discussion we decided to keep the baby.27

Helped by friends and her family, we moved into a house. Our daughter was born, to the joy of everybody. As these things do, I tried to patch up the relationship with my own family, for the sake of the child. But this proved difficult at best. My father was moving on. My mother was suffering fits of depression which were bordering on suicidal, fuelled by drink. And more than likely, not helped by my desperate need for answers and closure.28

A marriage later, and we found ourselves struggling again. We painfully juggled with courses, work and our daughter, whilst never really feeling like we succeed with any of them. My wife was starting to go behind my back, resolving financial issues through her parents without my knowledge.29

Yet we fought on, tried to make it work.30

As university courses ended, we found our friends drifted away to chase their own goals and we were left alone. My wife had the support of her family. I once again had nothing.31

The news of my mother’s death, a painful blow, had to be cut short as on the same evening my wife found out she was pregnant again. Our son was born.32

By now, mine and my wife’s goals had completely separated. She needed more from life than I could give. Wanted support I just didn’t have. I watched as her family backed her up consistently, and feeling like a surrounded animal I lashed out (verbally mind, I have never hit a woman in my life).33

I wasn’t surprised when she told me she was leaving. If nothing, it proved my mistrust. I was anguished that she had arranged it all behind my back. I was furious that she had arranged for the children to already be out of the house, taking away my chances of saying goodbye.34

In one night, I was left desperately alone.35

I rang around. Was not really surprised by my father’s lack of any real interest. Was nauseated by the half-hearted consolations.36

I didn’t eat for several days. I slept on the floor of the living room. She had taken the settee, but not the bed, but I couldn’t get myself to sleep there alone.37

Yet it was my old school friend who turned up at my door to offer support. Pushed me out of the door into the harsh sunlight and forced me to eat a meal. He sat patiently whilst I cried into a drink.38

Then, when I made plans to move closer to my ex-wife and children, it was he who helped to move all of my stuff. Watched sympathetically as I cried in the corner of my emptied house, then drove us through the night to my new flat.39

We bidded each other farewell and I tried again to start a new life alone.40

It didn’t work. The stress had left too heavy a price. I struggled with psoriasis. Juggled work and the few fleeting times I could see the children. The search for work and the flat and the move, along with other debts, had left me financially destitute. 41

I was a broken wreck. I looked out of the window of my third-storey flat on numerous occasions and considered jumping.42

This was worsened when the landlord informed me they needed to clear the building.43

I desperately turned to my father again, searching for a place to stay, and was horrified when he refused.44

In a last ditch attempt, I took an interview for a house share with a couple several years younger than myself and just starting out.45

I was more than overjoyed when they said yes. I had no way of explaining just how much their simple yes had turned my life around.46

I moved in.47

And I find myself faced with a new family of sorts. I like to believe that we have become friends. After all, the conversations, the music, the films, the meals and the drinks are all there. 48

I watch with envy as they discuss marriage and life with their families and have huge get together barbecues. I cannot make them understand how different my life has been from theirs or how lucky they are.49

And I cannot make them see how much I appreciate their respect and hospitality. Or understand how much they, as many friends before, have saved my life once again.50

So I start where I began.51

I cannot believe I deserve my friends.52