I was one of three sisters. Jane had been the brains of the family, she was the one who went to university. Music had been her passion and her forte. Even from an early age she had shown talent. She played at county level, was taken on tours overseas to represent her country. Even Dubai one year. How I envied her. Then there was the middle sister, Lisa. Not the sharpest pencil in the block, you might say. But looks – she was stunning. Add to her looks the sudden appearance of a rather huge pair of breasts at the age of 14 and she was in high demand. She didn’t mind the nickname that appeared at the same time as her bosom: Jugs. I felt like a thorn between two roses; Jane with her brains, and Lisa with her beauty. I felt as if God had given me a half measure of each quality, but that the sum of my attributes never compared favourably with the singular outpourings each other sister was blessed with. I don’t remember much of my childhood, marred as it was by bullying, illness, divorce and poverty. There were happy times, of course. I remember winning a school competition to write a song – we got to perform it at the Colston Hall, and I even spoke to the Lady Mayoress. That was a happy time. But mostly the negatives stick out. Strange how for a long time, I only chose to remember the good bits in my relationship, so I could keep it going. Yet, from my childhood, I choose to remember the bad times. Maybe this is so I can blame my behaviour later in life on all the crap I had to deal with as a child. Nan never seemed to have taken to me; I don’t know why. Maybe she did say positive things, but I think it is the negatives that a child will always remember. Legs like chicken thighs – that’s what she said I had. And the one that always comes to mind, even thirty years on – “of course, Lisa is the pretty one”. Did I imagine that, or was it really said? Sometimes I think I remember it wrongly; nobody would say such hurtful things to a child, would they? But I think she must have said something like that, for it to stick in my mind for so long, have such an effect on my self-esteem. It was no surprise that I wanted to be loved; I craved affection, in whatever form that came.
Reaching fifteen, I finally started to get the attention I deserved. A late bloomer, I hadn’t hit puberty till I was fourteen. I remember the mortification of my mother taking me to the doctors and telling him I hadn’t started my periods yet. God, the embarrassment at fourteen of some creepy male GP in his fifties discussing your lack of menstrual cycle. Well, not long after that, the joy of “the monthlies” finally arrived, and with it, a fast growing set of boobs. Even more impressive than those of my sister, Lisa, “The Jugs”. I had attention then. I hadn’t learnt that men flatter you in order to try and get you into bed. By the time I sussed that one out, I have to say I wasn’t bothered. I got a bit of a reputation when I left school. I didn’t bother with sixth form; I wanted to be free from the shackles of education. I got myself a YTS job in a shoe shop. Youth Training Scheme, that’s what it stood for. I think it should have stood for Young Terrified Slaves. I worked my guts out from nine till six, running up and down stairs to stock rooms, hauling round large boxes of shoe deliveries, cleaning and polishing displays. £26.50 was the princely sum I was paid for my efforts. I have to say though, all that work had a wonderful effect on my figure. Not that I was fat before, though I thought I was. Maybe I was a size 14, nothing major, just a bit of puppy fat. But hard labour soon whittled me down to a size eight; I might not have had the classic beauty face, but with my well-endowed bust and pinched in waist, I had a figure men loved. And I was loved a lot in the few years before I got married. I think that I used the men as much as they used me; I had male attention for the first time in my life. Sex equated to love in my book, and for once I was loved more than I had ever dreamed I could be.
Some people stay in controlling relationships, with men who don’t like them seeing their friends, check their phones, that sort of thing. They criticise your choice of outfit, go clothes shopping with you so they can enforce their view of what they think you should wear. Yet they swear they would never put up with a man hitting them. I used to think that was the easy bit myself. Sometimes I wished for the punch, or the push. Get it out the way. Get rid of all that anger you are showing me, all the bile that is spewing out in those hateful, hateful words. A fat lip stings, but being told you are fat stings harder. And don’t you realise, that’s how it starts. The vetting of your friends. The character assassination of everyone around you, including your family. But you love him so much, won’t hear a bad word about him. There’s a niggling doubt that those criticisms might be right, but you are so blind, so much “in love” that you can’t see it. The self-imposed isolation has made sure you have nowhere to turn by the time things are really bad. Your friends would be there, of course they would, but you can already hear the I told you so’s, and you just can’t face it.
I was at the refuge for six months, then I managed to get my own flat. It’s not much, a little one bed place near to uni, so it’s nice and handy for me. The best thing is its all mine. I don’t have to worry about someone coming home after work and kicking off about the state of the place, there is no fear of someone running a white glove over the dado rail to show where I have missed the dust. I learnt a lot from my time in the refuge. Whilst I was there, we had workshops on recognising abusive behaviour. Many people mind think it would be easy to spot, but it’s often the things that you probably find quite sweet at first that might alert you. You might think his wish to be with you all the time a sign of how much he loves you, rather than a way to isolate you from your friends. His constant texts are a measure of affection, not a way of checking on your whereabouts. It’s those little things that escalate, till one day, you realise how wrong it all is. That day is usually too late. At least I know now what to look out for.
And here I am, two years down the line, standing on that same refuge doorstep. I am about to be interviewed for a voluntary post as a residents mentor. The requisite year since having moved out is long over (time for personal growth and to show we have not fallen back into the same patterns of abusive relationships) and I am now deemed fit to offer my services to women who are in the position I used to be. I can be a shining role model of what you can achieve if you learn from the past. Look, here she is; the girl who used to be a victim of domestic violence. Got her own flat. Got into university. Look how confident she is; how wise. The future looks great for her; maybe it can for us too. And like that time two years before, when I met the other residents in the refuge, I feel a fake. Because the girl inside still isn’t totally healed. Still has feelings for the man who beat her. Still loves him, in a way. Outwardly, I had moved on. I was getting on with my life, making new friendships, mending old ones that my relationship had broken. But inwardly, had that much changed? I like to think that I learnt something from all that mess and destruction. I certainly look for the signs now, signs that someone might turn into a violent person. This has lead me to analyse too much. Every comment, every look that seems in some way wrong, I store in my mind. Later I will process it, try and evaluate it, look for its context, maybe its secret meaning. Because each and every man is a possible abuser, aren’t they?
Is it a bad thing that I am more cautious? No, I don’t think so. I think perhaps I have finally grown up. I can’t say that I will never fall for an abusive man again. After all, if on your first date, you were punched in the face, you would probably have a clear indication it was a bit of a no-no. But it doesn’t work like that, does it. Most men, most people, start out in a relationship with the aim to impress. We all do it. More effort with the make-up for the ladies; more care to appearance and hygiene for the men. It’s only very slowly that we start to open up, show the real us. The one thing that I have learnt now though is that it was not my fault. I didn’t deserve what happened to me; no man has a right to hit a woman, to push her, or mentally abuse her. That’s why now in a relationship I take it slow. I’ve been with my new partner for a while now. But you won’t find me giving up my flat anytime soon. There will be no moving in together, no rush wedding in an attempt to secure love forever. But I’m happy with that. I don’t need a ring on my finger for security anymore. For the time being, I am happy just being me. I can control my relationships for the first time in my life, rather than my relationships controlling me.
Autobiography reflective commentary
The exercise of writing an ical piece has, for me, been challenging. Reflecting on my work, I can see that the life writing module has given me some useful techniques to include. I chose to complete an autobiographical rather than a travel writing piece as the works that we covered at the start of the module inspired me most. I was particularly inspired by Maya Angelou’s work, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I had read this before, along with the later autobiographies she had written, and found her fight against oppression very moving. I think the fact that she wrote about the difficult times in her life without much of a sense of hardship was uplifting. Her experiences all shaped her into the determined young woman we see by the end of the book. I see my piece as reflecting this in a way, as I start my piece narrating some of the struggles in my life, and end it with my current self feeling more positive and having shown a growth in character.
In week three of the module, we examined the concept of the ‘self’ and the ‘collective’ autobiography. We also examined the idea of marginalised communities. Whilst the text we explored, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, examined the issue of the collective or cultural African American autobiography, the module allowed us to expand on this point and reflect on what ‘communities’ we belonged to. This exercise in part helped me to decide on what episode of my life I would draw on. It was through this exercise that I identified myself with different communities; the community of mature students, the community of women, and most significantly in terms of my work, the community of women who had suffered domestic violence. Whilst I still understand the identity of the ‘self’, I felt compelled to write about my experience as someone who was/is part of a marginalised community. As Swindells (1995) stated,
“Autobiography now has the potential to be the text of the oppressed …. forging a right to speak both for and beyond the individual. People in a position of powerlessness - women, black people, working-class people - have more than begun to insert themselves into the culture via autobiography, via the assertion of a 'personal' voice, which speaks beyond itself.’
This piece gave me an opportunity to speak not just for myself, but for other people who have found themselves in abusive relationships. I cannot presume to speak for everyone who has found themselves in this position, as there are bound to be other viewpoints. However I believe my views reflect the views of others who have found themselves in the same position I was in; I say this not from presumption but from the stories that have been told to me by women I met whilst I was in the refuge and participating in recovery workshops.
I also had to think in my piece about moving from the specific to the general. We discussed in seminars the ability of a piece to not just relate to a specific group, but reach a wider audience through a more general theme. If a writer only writes to express the interest of a marginalised group, this does not mean the piece is not worthwhile, but it may limit the audience that the piece will interest. To have a work that includes the general means more readers will find it of interest. We found an example of this in James Baldwin’s Stranger In The Village. Whilst the work commented in particular on the alienation he felt as the only black person in a Swiss village, the piece can relate to a wider audience as most people will at some point have experienced what it is like to feel like an ‘outsider’, maybe not because of the colour of their skin, but perhaps because they are different because they are of a different nationality, sexuality or gender to the majority of those in a place they visit.
In my piece, my experiences relate to a marginalised community. Women in abusive relationships generally do not share the fact they are being abused, so statistics in this field are rather a grey area. Of the incidents that are reported, it can be estimated that one in four women will experience domestic abuse at some point in their lifetime. However, information provided by Women’s Aid states that criminologists estimate domestic violence statistics are 140% higher than those stated in the British Crime Survey, due to the fact that incidents are not always reported. Therefore my piece could have quite a large target audience in terms of the ‘community’ I represent. To make my piece relate to an even wider audience I have taken the specific of domestic abuse and widened it to a larger theme, that of relationships in general. An example of this can be seen on page one of my piece between lines sixteen and twenty. I take the specific of an abusive relationship and widen it to include romantic relationships in general, as this includes the majority of the population.
Lejeune (1975) stated that autobiography is “the retrospective prose narrative that someone writes concerning his own existence, where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his personality”. My piece reflects this, in that my writing looks back at an episode in my life which has affected my personality. My piece does not run to a chronological order, but this is something which I will discuss later. Whilst I mention other characters, such as my former partner and family members, they are merely there to give the reader a sense of how my personality has been developed and affected by the interactions and input of those in my family and immediate circle of friends and relationships.
Lejeune also stated that “The autobiographical pact is a form of contract between author and reader in which the autobiographer explicitly commits himself or herself not to some impossible historical exactitude but rather to the sincere effort to come to terms with and to understand his or her own life.” I have not tried to place too much emphasis on historical accuracy in my work, as I feel the sincerity of the piece comes through without this. There are bound to be inaccuracies as memory cannot always recall the exact, and often the further back in time an event occurred, the more likely the recollection is to be hazy. However I have mentioned a date at the start of my work, and the weather conditions (the freezing wind) as I think this gives the piece a certain authenticity. I even went as far as to check the Met Office website to confirm my recollections of the weather, because I wanted the piece to bear the marks of authenticity, should a reader choose to check these details.
Earlier, I mentioned that my piece is not in its correct chronological order. We saw through Blake Morrison’s autobiographical work, And When Did You Last See Your Father? that a story does not have to run to a chronological timeline to make sense. The use of prolepsis and analepsis can actually give the reader a greater sense of understanding as to why the writer behaves in a certain way. On the module we discussed the concept of the proleptic author. The use of prolepsis allows the author to look at their life in retrospect and draw conclusions as to what effect the past has had on them. This is why I included a segment about my childhood and adolescence. I think the comments that I remembered from my childhood had a bearing on my behaviour as a teenager, and indeed, had a bearing on my relationship formations in my later years. This segment was used not only to bring some understanding to the reader of my later actions, but also it was used as a justification of those actions.
Lejeune distinguishes between the utterance (the raw material) and the enunciation (the order of telling) showing you can move beyond linear chronology to develop a theme and pattern. I have used this in my work to develop the theme of need. I jump from the period I was in an abusive relationship back to my teenage years when I allude to the fact I had a series of short sexual relationships. These two episodes link the theme of the need for male attention. The jump from my time at the refuge to living on my own shows the self-development I have undergone and the change from dependence to independence.
I learnt a lot from the life writing module, and found the exercise of writing about my past was in many ways cathartic. Rather than making me dwell on the past, it made me reflect more on the present and the future. Hunt (2000) tells us that “In the process of struggling to find a voice for the story of my past I discovered that I had learned a few things about the person I was in the present, and these insights helped me to understand myself better”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Angelou, M. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (2001), London, Virago.
Hunt, C. Therapeutic Dimensions Of Autobiography (2000) London, Kingsley Publishers Limited.
Lejeune, P. L’Autobiographie en France, 3rd Edition (2010) Paris, Armand Colin.
Morrison, B. And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1998) London, Granta Publications.
Swindells, J. The Uses Of Autobiography (1995) London , Taylor & Francis Limited.
INTERNET RESOURCES
Viewed Online 22.1.2012.
Baldwin, J. Stranger In The Village (1955) accessed at:
Viewed Online 22.1.2012.
Total word count excluding bibliography: 4,322 words.
by
misswoo (student)
