I’ve just finished watching ‘This is England 90’, a raw and poignant portrayal of a community through the years. They face incest, drug addition, racism and violence in amongst the normality of friendship, family, love and courage.
I have found it painful to watch because so much has resonated for me. I may have been brought up in middle class luxury in comparison, but many of the events, the feelings & the pain are the same.
As I witnessed a character pull herself out of heroin addiction, as she came to terms with the history of incest and violence in her family, I wept. My heart surged at her heroism, her wish to come through it, to find a future for herself, and I had such understanding and compassion for why she was there in the first place; why heroin was so attractive to her; and why her choices kept bringing her deeper into shame.
You see I am normal now. A bit of a hippy and earthy weirdness might be some’s judgement but, by general overview, I am normal. 2 kids, suburban house, husband, play dates, school runs. Normal. But I am frequently plagued by memories of my childhood and youth, tormented by the shame of my behaviour that would not fit into ‘normal’. That if people knew the lines I have crossed, the dangers I have experienced, I wouldn’t be allowed in this ‘normal’ club, I’d have to be one of those that has suffered, or is unstable or is a cautionary tale. So I don’t talk about those things I have done.
And then tonight I watched this character be so like me and so like my cousin, who did not survive to make it to normal, and perhaps like my sister too who I never had a chance to compare notes with before her pain took her. I watched this woman and felt so much compassion for her history that she would always hold no matter how ‘normal’ she becomes and I realised that I needed to feel that for me too. To understand why I gave my spirit away over and over again, to understand ‘why wouldn’t I’.
Sometimes when I write on this subject the shame sneaks into my head and wonders if these words are self indulgent and dramatic. Then I think of all those others who are hiding behind ‘normal’, whose souls ache with the harming behaviours of their past and I know I must speak.
I am normal. I am wounded. Where I have been is how I have survived and that’s ok. When I stop judging myself for those days, for being broken, the world will stop judging me too. When I start loving that part of me, then I can be loved too.