The past is a Town that I don’t like to visit too often, but when I was offered a holiday cottage in a place I lived in 16 years ago, I didn’t even consider it to start with. We arrived today after a four hour drive with two kids and a dog that needed to run wild for a while, so we headed straight to the beach and let them all off the leash.
The beach runs parallel to the place that I lived at and we could hear the music booming. At first glance the only thing I recognise is the coastline and as this hasn’t changed for thousands of years, I guess that’s not so surprising! What worries me most is that being here takes me back to a horrible, dark place that was me sixteen years ago.
Sixteen years!?! Man, that’s a whole damn lifetime. My Dad had died three months previously. I’d been rejected by Disney who felt that I was too young to work for them. My whole family was in complete disarray and so I ran away to the other end of the Country to try and deal with life.
I didn’t eat or sleep properly for the whole summer. I lived in the most horrendous accommodation EVER! I tried to deal with my Dad (and Kurt Cobain!) being gone. I tried to ignore all the rumours from home about my Dad’s other half being involved with someone else. I tried to ignore the rumours about my boyfriend shagging around. I lived in the moment partying harder than I ever had in my life!!
It’s not a time I think about to be honest apart from to tell the funny stories about when I was young and lived at a holiday camp. I file it away in that time of my life that was utterly shit and doesn’t need to be talked about and it’s so long ago that it’s not relevant enough to be discussed.
I feel really off centre being here and I keep reminding myself that I’m thirty four and not eighteen and that my Dad died sixteen years ago, but it doesn’t seem to make it any easier and I don’t know what I can do to disassociate these thoughts and enjoy the holiday. It's made all the worse by the fact that I'm completely blind sided at being bothered by the associated history.
I really want to phone my Mum and my Brothers to discuss it but it wasn’t the best time in their lives either, so I’m battling on and trying to ooh and aah at the cottage and be excited with the kids and join in the fun and games but what I really want to do is sit on the beach and cry like I did sixteen years ago and mourn the loss of my Dad!
I guess I’ll see what tomorrow brings!
