Or: The Things That Make My House My Home/Dealing With the Bitch Within

The house I currently live in has known me since the day I was born. It’s my Mum’s house, it’s where I moved back to after Korea and it’s where I’ll live until my fiancé and I move back to Leeds in a few month’s time. I love being in this house and I love everything about it; I love my full to bursting bookshelves, the subtly broken fireplace you have to light with a match, the fact that you need to have five year’s of experience before you can unlock the back door, the dog clawmarks on the side of my bed, and most of all the I love that my Mum’s house is a constant haven, a safe place I  know I can always come back to when things get shitty.

The area and it’s significance in my growing up, however, is something of a different story. I live a short walk away from my Primary and High Schools, and a shorter way from the pubs and bars many of my school-time peers still frequent. The last time I visited one of these, on Easter Sunday (sorry, God)  with my brother, I bumped into innumerable people I hadn’t seen for years, as well as my High School drama teacher. Does that sound fun? It kind of was at the time, but the moment each encounter ended I wasn’t quite so certain.

The problem is that it’s not quite so simple as bumping into someone you once knew, having a quick catch-up and continuing on your merry way. It’s a performance, one you assess the other on and one you feel crappy about if you fluff your lines or show your nerves. You ask the questions you think you should ask, and answer questions perhaps not quite as honestly as you should. It comes down to the fact that you want the other person to see how far you’ve come since your shared schooldays. Were you unpopular back then? Let them see how many friends you’ve got now! Did someone tease you for being a bit overweight? Show them how great you look these days, whilst inwardly gloating that they’ve packed on the pounds! Did everyone else have a boyfriend? Then show them your engagement ring! Oh…have you just turned into one of the mean girls you hated in school?

That said, nobody (or at least nobody I care to hang out with) had a perfect time in school and I hardly blame people for wanting the world to know how much they’ve changed for the better. In truth, it would be mighty hypocritical for me to judge anyone for this seeing as I’m exceptionally guilty of it myself. The thing I dislike most about the entire charade is how we have to feign such saccharine politeness over the successes of the people we weren’t entirely keen to see succeed. Obviously I’m ecstatic for my real, proper friends when they tell me about their promotions/babies/lottery wins, but hearing the dick who used to spit ink at me in Geography harping on about how great his plumbing business is doing? It doesn’t exactly promote the same response. “Wow, you’re doing really well! Honestly, I’m so hap-…oh no, wait. Excuse me for not being happy for you whatsoever and actually feeling vaguely jealous that despite your childhood lack of decency and a brain, you’ve managed to excel in business. I’ll console myself with the knowledge that you’re probably still a douchebag and I won’t have to talk to you ever again after this conversation ends.”

Similarly, a few years ago I was approached in a local pub by a gentleman declaring that he used to bully me in school, which was quite true. I responded in the only appropriate way I could think of (“yes, I remember. I still don’t like you.”) and spent much of the remaining evening wondering at which point he had OK-ed that as an acceptable opener. This proves, as far as I’m willing to speculate, that the upper echelons of High School society are (were, and always will be) a mysterious race dissimilar to my own.

I think a lot of people want to change into someone else entirely after they finish school and, myself partially included, I think a lot of them do. Actually I think it’s difficult not to change when you do something significantly different during the course of your life, whether it be moving out of your parents’ house, going to Uni, travelling or (I suspect) starting a proper career and having children of your own. I think back to the person I was and the things I put up with during my school/college years and wonder why on earth that chick who looked a bit like me was such a pushover, why she let such insignificant things get in the way of what she wanted and why, seriously dude WHY, she spent so much time and energy on wanting to fit into cliques now less appealing than a dinner date with Roy Chubby Brown.

I think perhaps it’s this knowledge that I’ve changed which makes bumping into old faces so complicated; I’m shallow enough to want them to know I don’t care about what they think of me anymore, but self-aware enough to realise that wanting someone to know that you no longer think about what they think of you is beyond stupid and paradoxical. I suppose, if I’m being honest, I want to know that I’ve featured on the social radar of someone who made my life miserable, whilst passing over them without the tiniest blip. You can call me a dick about this all you like, I suspect that a lot of people feel the same way whether it be about school peers, old workmates, ex-partners or whoever else they harbour a grudge about. It’s not pretty, but it’s human.

The oddest thing I’ve come across recently is when people I know fairly well don’t recognise me during an unexpected meeting. The first time this happened was with a regular from a pub I used to work at (the same pub, incidentally, that I am sitting in now whilst writing this), who, upon being told my name, spent the next few hours wildly yoyo-ing between hitting on and insulting me**. Secondly was my aforementioned High School drama teacher, who genuinely didn’t have a clue who I was until, again, I told her my name. After a nice chat (I hope, I’d had a fairly considerable amount of red wine by this point) I retreated, absolutely baffled as to how I’d apparently transformed so completely within a few years, and whether or not it was a good thing. As yet I’m no closer to an answer, but I am considering a career as Clouseau-esque master of disguise.

**Clearly unaware that the simple “you look nice, have you lost weight?” is still perfectly acceptable, he repeatedly (and I do mean repeatedly) went with “you used to be so…” before stumbling over an appropriate word, failing to find one, and settling for the decidedly inappropriate ‘cheeks puffed out, waddling fatty’ mime. For the record I was a UK size 14, which is hardly the Stay Pufft Marshmallow Man.

Drawing to a close this rambling, self-indulgent bundle of rubbish and neuroses is the fact that, in a year or so, I expect my Mum to leave this area behind. With no other family here and no friends who share a postcode, I imagine my visits will be few and far between if existent at all. No more trips to village pubs I’ve been drinking in since I was 18, no more ill-advised taxi rides to the town centre after the pub closes, and no more unexpected run-ins with the peers I once had. I thought perhaps I’d be sad to leave all of those memories behind but recently I’ve started to see it as liberating, like a weight off my shoulders. I no longer want to change who I am, change the way I look, how I act or who my friends are, and most importantly severing all ties with the place I grew up isn’t about turning over a new leaf. All I’d like is to start a new chapter with my safe haven close-by.