'Is there anything you'll be worried people will find out about?'
15 July, Colchester
Ain't that the truth. Also in the people we like but yeah...
I had a meeting/soft audition for something yesterday and one of the questions they asked me was about if there was a social media outcry or if people did a deep dive into my past, would I be upset to have things uncovered? I had to think about that. I mean, I've lied, I've cheated (on people, on tests), I murdered. slug once. Thee things are all public record or known, so...there are things I am of course ashamed about, still. That make me uncomfortable, that well up in unexpected places, at unexpected times.
It got me thinking that I don't really have any more secrets. I mean...what is there to hide?
But there is one thing...one thing I consider one of the worst things I have ever done to another person.
I mean...surely they have better things to do, but hmmm...I genuinely don't think I have any secrets anymore. It comes down to a relationship (a friendship? An frenemyship?) I wrecked most thoroughly in 2004.
I had moved to London under the guise of going to be with my beau but really to train as an Archivist at UCL. If that sounds weird, please understand: there was a LOT of pressure for me to get married from my mama and grandmother, which is ridiculous, I know. But I was so conditioned, wanted to make everyone happy...I was only 26. I mean...the amygdala has only just fully formed.
Moving to London taught me many things. I didn't want to be in a relationship. I wasn't cut out for dorm life. I wasn't going to be going back to the US anytime soon.
My beau at the time was a really great guy but we were not suited for a long term relationship. He looked like a young Alfred Kahan and was solidly academic. He thought my being an archivist was a waste: 'you're too smart to spend your life in a reading room.' I know. How I resisted stabbing him with a pencil, etc. Such restraint. In one of life's quirky moments,
But I loved his family and also didn't feel like I could break up with him; the poor guy was just getting over testicular cancer, which I had found. It was awkward and hard to miss; his testicle became the size of a navel orange. wanted to break up with him but I was worried about the PR, of being that b*tch who dumped a guy. I would that I had had more sense of self to have learned in to being that bitch...it would have saved us both a lot in tears.
Ultimately, I think he wanted to break up with me too. I was a hot mess. It didn't help that whilst he was under going treatment, my father had a massive heart attack and had to have 2 double bypasses. I crumbled like a sheet of fax paper.
I had moved out of the dorms and was living in a flatshare in West Hampstead with a then struggling authour. She was a delight; gorgeous, funny and there was potential for a real friendship there right up until class politics became an issue, until I went away for 2 weeks and she . The divide became apparent when we had to have a 'flat meeting' about my having bought coloured toilet paper. I know.
Now ordinarily, I am not the kind of person who buys coloured toilet paper, let it be said. I mean, why court a yeast infection? But at this point in time I was living in West Hampstead and I was commuting three days a week down to Croydon to the archives and museum for the Royal Bethlem Hospital Archives and Museum (which, if you are not aware, the world's oldest mental hospital. It was initially founded in 12 in the 1250s by the Sisters of the stars of Bethel, the Star of Bethlehem, and was originally housed at Liverpool Street Station, it moved out to what is now the Imperial War Museum, which was then bombed during the Second World War and moved out to its current location postwar the commute in various ways would take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. I had to leave the house stupidly early to get to London Bridge, which ordinarily isn't an issue, but the trains out to back in at that time. were inconsistent to say the least. So I was coming home from work, and she had texted me that it was my turn to buy toilet paper and I was exhausted and I stopped at the shop nearest the Eden Park train station, which was a cost cutter and it was poorly. Like the inventory selection was not great and the only toilet paper they had was pink or blue. I was just like, I'm so freaking tired. And I didn't want to have to walk to the Sainsbury's at the OTU centre and I didn't want to have to walk down to Kilburn Hein Street when I got high street when I got home and literally just wanted to go home and go to bed. The guy who was seeing at the time had just had chemo the date no sorry radiotherapy the day before and I was behind on my schoolwork. And it was just a mess because I was a hot mess, in a full-blown cycle of clinical depression, so passively suicidal that I am sometimes amazed I didn't fall in front a train, from sheer exhaustion. Anything to make the tiredness feeling if being a chronic fairies stop.
about the pin toilet paper and we ended up having this flat meeting. That then led to her having some really inappropriate conversations with my then guy.
It wasn't that they were about porn. It was the fact that she would touch him and like flirt with him while they were having long conversations. And on the one hand, I didn't really care. I mean, actually, they would have made a cute couple. On the other hand, it was just the fact that she was doing it right in front of me. Like if you want to sleep with my boyfriend, just just go ahead and do it. If he's game I genuinely at this point, give no sh*ts.
But the fact that she was just being so blatant and rude Anyway, I watched her do the same kind of thing with her cousin occasionally with her sister. I suppose now in retrospect she was, she's probably neurodivergent (aren't we all)and I was not in a position or a place to recognise that because I had my own shit going on. And it just got to the point where I didn't have the energy to look for a new place to live. But I really began to dislike her and it came to a head one evening when a friend of hers was visiting from Manchester, and he said, oh, so how were you able to take time off out from you know, a regular gig to write your novel? And she said, Well, you know, Rachel, here is my Patronus. That moment I just I just knew that I was gonna figure out a way to burn her. Because I wasn't her patroness. She actually had a trust fund. Right? Like, she'd been able to buy the flat that she was in because her grandparents had left her money and there was money in a trust and her dad went on to become the first Supreme Court at the time, he was the master of the rolls, or something and then he went on to become like the first head of the UK Supreme Court when that was founded. So girlfriend was fine. She didn't need me as a patroness. And the fact that I was making eight pounds 50 schlepping down to Croydon every day to cover my rent in addition to my tuition, and was just overwhelmed. And that she was still flirting with my boyfriend super made me angry. And so I did something not very kind. I had been having issues with my cycles. Because I have endometriosis. And I'd had a laparoscopy in 20. Sorry, in 2000 that had removed three patches of endometriosis and a large ovarian cyst. I was having issues with my cycle that anyway, I was prescribed a different form of birth control, and it just totally wreaked havoc on my hormones, and she was researching. I forget what it was. Anyway, she'd been commissioned to write an article and my mom had taken Premarin whilst she after she had her hysterectomy because she had endometriosis, but it was like wildfire. I mean, it almost killed her. So she had had a complete hysterectomy at 29. So I knew something about the drugs that this person was researching and I when she asked if she could interview me, I said yes. And then I exaggerated my symptoms and lied to her about the medication that I was taking, and then wrote to her after she'd interviewed me. I wasn't living with her at that point anymore. I had moved down to Sussex for the summer. Which was actually great because it was closer to where I was working. And then I could go into Croydon station and it just made life that little bit easier. Anyway, she had had this new flatmate who was also a writer and who worked at dawn books and she got Maria job at dawn books and they were buddy buddy, buddy. And Maria had me come up and stay overnight. And she put me on the sofa. And that was really what made me go ahead with this this. I don't even know what it is.
It wasn't Machiavellian because it wasn't really clever plan to sabotage her work. to sabotage your work up, because whilst I had been away with my parents who my dad was recovering from his heart surgery, so my mom decided that my entire family and when I say my entire family I mean my grandmother, my great aunt, and a family friend, and she and my dad would come over for two weeks basically had to put my life on hold for those two weeks and go around and whilst I was away, she had had another friend come and stay in my room without my consent, like without my permission, and yet, she wasn't going to let me stay in my old room. Because she hadn't, she didn't have permission from her flatmate. And I was like, Okay, I get that. But it's not like three months ago, you didn't have some random as person staying in my room. Who went through my stuff? Like, like, in that way that you're staying in somebody's house and you like open drawers just to see what they have. I mean, I totally go through people's medicine cabinets. I am that person. You don't tell people you've done it and you don't take anything because you're not a thief. But you're nosy and probably shouldn't be anyway. I don't do that as often as I used to.
More and more mainly because I don't know that I like people going through my cupboards and I always figure it's a quid pro quo kind of situation. If I'm going through somebody else's stuff, they're probably going through mine. Not that I have anything to hide. It's just my cupboards aren't very organised, and they should be because I'm an archivist. So I spend my life putting things in order and you think that my house would not be in the state that it's in. That's my, my shame to deal with, to work through doesn't really bother me some days. It really does.
Anyway, that is probably the worst thing I've ever done to someone. I cost her a writing gig. Instead of being honest about what I was feeling and how she had hurt me, I let it fester and fester and fester. And yeah, I really do regret that and it is probably it is probably the worst thing I've intentionally ever done to another person. It is certainly not the most embarrassing thing that I've ever done.
The jury's still out and life is long, so I'm sure there will be many embarrassing things that I have done. But are they secrets?
Secrets aside,
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