Creative Wriiting

14

creative writing Nature vs Nurture: The Problems of Perception

By Louise Collins

Past – I know my past. Really, who else can truly know my past like I do? Although I can’t remember as many details about my early childhood as my parents might, it is I who knows my past self more than them. How, after all, would they truly be able to understand my past experiences? Everything I didn’t tell them. Everything that has affected me more than they could know. Because, really, what child tells their parents everything they’ve been through? Whether out of embarrassment or not wanting your parents to worry. We keep things hidden, it’s what we do. My past was generally good. I knew who I was and what I wanted to be. I was confident in myself, for a while, at least. Of course, secondary school wouldn’t be secondary school without some issues. I was bullied, and I was gaslit. It wasn’t until recently that I understood I’d experienced the latter. It wasn’t until recently that I realised how much this all messed me up. My family, through no fault of their own, thought I’d thrived in secondary school. They knew I faced some issues, but I still got good grades, so of course they didn’t see the struggles I went through. But that’s fine. That’s how it is.

Present – Now, who knows who I am? I sure as hell don’t. I know I’m a bit of a people pleaser. That I don’t want to let people down, so I stretch myself in a million directions. They don’t ask me to, but I need to be there for them. I want to be there for them. Because I can be. Because, if I can help them in any way at all, I will. Because they deserve help. Of course, that doesn’t apply to me. No, I’m too busy. I like being busy. It’s productive, it can be fun. It stops the self-doubt from slipping in. I make jokes here and there, but not obvious enough for them to notice. It’s fine. I’m managing. My mind either goes 100mph or refuses to work, like a broken-down car. Now, it’s racing. But moments ago, it was spluttering and stalling. My family see what I want them to see. They see the good grades, or the positive feedback. They see the cute messages from friends, or the excitement on my face when I’ve led a successful social. They see the happiness and freedom I feel, but they don’t see the strain when the workload gets too big, or the struggle when my brain refuses to co-operate.

Photo: Unsplash

Future – What on earth does my future hold? In my family’s minds, I will have settled down. Made a family of my own. I’ve told them that I don’t want that. But, of course, they know better. By the time I’m forty, I’ll be married and have kids. That’s what they expect, I think. For years, they’ve joked that I’ll be a published author. That I’ll have written an amazing book series and will be touring all over the world. I think it’s a joke, but I also think there’s some hope behind those words. They expect me to be a literary success. It’s a dream of mine, no doubt. But that’s hard to achieve, and who knows what the future holds? All I know, is that I want to be content with who I am. I want to be happy. I kind of want to have figured out what I want to do with my life, to know who I am again. Yeah, that would be nice. Most of all though, I want to make my family proud.

Different upbringings - and how they have affected your life

By Molly Phillips

When she was born she looked like a rat. Never liked rodents. Beastly. Upsetting, it was. Only for a tic. But that’s not all true. Dear, oh dear, what must I sound like? Again.

When she was born I did not know how to hold her because I have never held a thing of such wonderful potential fragility, not even with my eyes, and I knew at that moment that I would make a mess. Oh dear. She’s wonderful. I thought. She’s wonderful, what can I do for her? Where is her father? He was there in her eyes, in the dimple of her fluid cheek, in the knowingness of her unknowing glance but he was not there.

She was born tinged yellow. Something about jaundice, about her liver, and I thought I had already messed it up. Even before she’d seen the warm blue light of day, my body had made her wrong. But then the blue painted the yellow pink and she was okay.

Mum comes to see her. She tells me I looked like a rat when I was new. I blink. “So, it’s okay.” She clarifies, “that your baby is not perfect.” I know what she means by that but she is wrong. She is perfect. I wonder if I was maybe not, but Mum says I was. Which is a nice and rare thing to hear.

As she grew she became more like him, more dimpled, deep blue eyes, more knowing without the unknowingness of infancy, and I worried then that I had birthed another him. Not that he was all bad, an all-bad space in our lives. Just absent: absent-minded, absent-bodied. Absent. And she, as my daughter, would be better. As a girl, as my girl. I held her - this girl, my girl - in the palm of my hand and squeezed her tight. I kissed her forehead goodnight, and let her dream, woke her on the dot each sunrise for school where she was not mine, just for a moment. We did not have money, so in that classroom-parent time, I made it for us. Homework first, I insisted, your friends will still be there after homework. And in the summer months, they were, but in the winter months… dear oh dear. I think perhaps I was wrong there.

I remember strange loneliness from my childhood. Not Mum’s fault. Not really. Made things from nothing, made the best from the worst we had but I wish she’d let me kick careless footballs through the quiet carless streets with the others, if not in sunlight then before prompt 5pm December dinners.

She won’t have to do that. My girl. Maybe she won’t want to go and play with her friends. She’ll text them on her phone instead but no. Dan and I agreed. Not until she’s a teenager. She’ll hate us, then she’ll love us. Do I sound like her? Like Mum? All parents have their terms and conditions, don’t they?

She is still a thing of such splendour. I watch her now with baby in crib, grandchild. My grandchild. I scarcely believe myself old enough to be called Nanna, but that is what I’ll be. “Nanna.” Daughter-Mother here will be different from me. Learned from Nanna, of course, learned from the one who learned it first. But she won’t be me. Dan will be there in his 21st century un-absent male way, pints of cold-streaked dim-lit bitter exchanged for bed and bath-time. She’ll make mistakes I never even had the chance to make but she’ll be softer. More open, with those knowing little eyes. And grand-bubba will be different from my baby girl but like us all in her own way.

For now, though, grateful. Nothing of the rodent in her demeanour.

16 Ladybirds

By Aishani

Once upon an English summer The ladybirds inhabited my cupboard, A single wooden locker Scantily speckled with 10p tins, Musty grains and 70 proof liquor. “Accommodate them”, The platitudes of the past spoke to me “You’re now in their territory.”

Once upon an English summer, In my pursuit of diligence I set out a few strawberries For those that colonised The rest of my sustenance. “It is better to bend Than to break and end”

Once upon an English summer My skin prickled and crawled. The ladybirds lay claim on me Each of their own accord “Sacrifice is nature, What we just learn to nurture”

Once upon an English summer I vomited green speckled with red The metamorphosis was done. They were the space in which I existed. “Be like the potter’s water Not the fuller’s earth”

Once upon an English summer I’d wear submission’s crimson habit At other’s behest. But I’m naked in the garden now Burying the past with its pests.