Friday 9th December

This wasn’t when we left Cyprus; I had known for days at least but had just been too scared to ask, not for information but rather for confirmation, about my biggest fear; that we would be leaving my father behind.  Or even after a few months when he never came back for me; the trouble was I kept seeing him, or rather glimpses of him, reflected in shop windows, or just hopping on a bus that was too far ahead to run after, or the shadow against the front door window, and then realizing it was just the tree outside blowing in the wind.  It wasn’t even when Grandma told me he had written to me for a few years, I had always suspected as much, and had even gone to the effort of telling my school-friends what he had written, recreating long imaginary letters he had sent me, full of news about his exciting life in Cyprus, and how he was going to have me go out and stay with him in the summer.  So it was no real surprise when Grandma informed me that he had actually written, only, sensible to a fault, she had destroyed them long ago.  I could see her point, it was really much better for me to forget him, than to hanker after a man like that, a man who was capable of the most unspeakable of crimes, which of course in true Grandma fashion, were never actually spoken about, just alluded to.  No, actually colluded not alluded, it was just assumed that I knew all along what he was nominally guilty of, and it was never actually talked about.  I just knew that he had made my mother very unhappy, though that wouldn’t have take that much in my opinion, and that he had been the cause of Mummy and he getting a divorce – another dirty word.

It wasn’t even after Grandma died and I made that fateful discovery – I won’t tell you because it would spoil the book ‘Catherines Story’ for you.  Or the day we buried her.  No I didn’t realize I was my own even then.

Or after any other event you might choose to mention.

I realized I was on my own every single day of my life.  I have always been on my own really.  I had Grandma, who tyrannized as much she purported to love me, and my shadow of a mother who always seemed to be hovering just outside of my grasp, and the memory of my father, or rather the memory of the memory of my father; but these were all unable to help me through my aloneness.  Even in my scant few relationships I have been alone, alone and yet close to someone, who may or may not have loved me, but could never make me feel any less alone than I already was. I always felt I was forgotten about somehow; perhaps every one else had attended some vitally important lesson at school where they taught you how to live your life, how to mix with other people, how not to be alone.  “And on the way out, don’t forget to pick up your manual – you are going to need it, so don’t lose it.”

Well nobody ever gave me the manual, so I didn’t even get the chance to look at it, let alone lose it.

So, every day I realize that I am on my own, and always have been, and always will be too. I sometimes wonder if it is only me though, or if we all feel the same.  Are we all alone, but maybe that day of realization hasn’t come for all us yet.  But it will.