Those Awkward Teenage Years

Non-Blondie, whose blog I always enjoy, just wrote a rather sad entry about her family. At least, it made me feel a bit sad. So while we’re on the subject, I’m moved to have a little whinge about my own family. Because as we know, blogging is free therapy. The best kind!

I grew up in an ordinary nuclear family. Well, ordinary in terms of headcount I suppose. My parents can most kindly be described as eccentric. They’ve mellowed out quite a lot in their old age. They were awful when I was a teenager. Maybe they found parenting teenagers traumatic; it certainly was for me. My teenage years were hell. As I remember it my mother at the worst times was depressed, sullen, and quick tempered. My father was extremely controlling, and seemed powered by unhappiness and spite. I don’t think our unhappy house was my fault; I think it was their relationship and situation. I felt sort of sorry for my unhappy mother, but it was difficult to be too sorry when she seemed to take it all out on me.

By the time I got to my teens, they had come to some sort of unspoken agreement that I wasn’t allowed out of the house after school, including on weekends, unless to organised activities such as music practice or swimming. My father enforced this pretty easily. We lived in a small community so if I went out he could find me with no difficulty and make a scene so acutely embarrassing to anyone let alone a gawky teenager that I didn’t bother to try. Picture it: me walking down the street with a friend one Saturday afternoon. My father turns up, red with fury. My father, in extremely posh English accent: “SPRITE!!!! THERE you are. We have been looking EVERYWHERE for you. Mummy is VERY ANGRY! WHY aren’t you at home doing your PRACTICES?” (Note to reader: ‘practices’ = music practice.) “GET. HOME. NOW.”

Likewise, there was no point having friends over. I have a memory from when I was about twelve that still makes my toes curl today. A friend from school was staying the night because her parents were away. We’d gone to bed, and were trying to get to sleep, when my dad decided it was time to have one of his dreaded room cleaning sessions in my brothers’ bedrooms. From the other side of the closed bedroom door we could hear his angry shouting, crashes as he threw their toys around and their furious sobbing. Things were never the same between me and that girl after that night, or maybe I was just too embarrassed to meet her eye again. We weren’t that good friends in the first place, anyway.

So it was a lot easier to be that weird girl with no friends than to try and break free from the house, or bring people home to see how awfully my parents treated me and my brothers. So I’d stay home, miserable, pretending to be doing homework productively when really I was reading books and dreaming of my life in the future once I’d escaped. I honestly didn’t have any friends until I went away to school at age 14 or 15. Boarding school was one of the best things that ever happened to me. My parents loved to preach about how easy I had it, not having to worry about bills and going to work, how I wouldn’t cope with being an adult, but I can honestly say, adulthood has been a picnic compared to my teen years and I would NEVER go back.

I think my teen years explain a lot about me and my current state of woeful underachievement. My parents were so concerned with keeping me under lock and key so that I could perfect my middle class accomplishments – you should have heard them lamenting the fact Latin isn’t standard in schools any more – where if they’d allowed me to develop some social confidence with my peers I might have had a hell of a lot more going for me by the time I grew up. Things certainly got better on the social side in my late teens, but I rather suspect I have regressed lately. A lot of the time I just can’t be bothered with other people. Unless it’s someone who I totally click with, it seems easier to keep to myself. Sometimes it’s a real effort to be sociable, and honestly, I’m forcing myself.

Non-Blondie talked about the need not to blame your parents for stuff. I agree, yet where do you draw the line between blaming and explaining? I think most of my personality faults (and the good stuff too) is traceable to my childhood. How can I know things were caused by them, yet not blame them? In order to do that, whenever I get down thinking about it, I a) balance it out by thinking about the good stuff they did for me too; b) think about ways I can improve myself for the future; and c) change the subject in my head. I really don’t think about it that much.

I also like console myself with the fact that if I’m a disappointment and an underachiever, maybe they’ll torture themselves with the thought that it’s their fault! No hope – my mother thinks she was a paragon of self-sacrifice throughout my youth (she never let me forget it) and I’m sure she can’t figure out why I’m not an investment banker or internationally renowned classical musician. Things are ok between now and my parents, quite cordial in fact, as I don’t see them very often. But they still like to remind me of my inferiority every now and then. Here’s a snippet of a recent conversation we had over Christmas:

Father: “So. What exactly is it that you do?”

Me: “Well, my official job title is ‘Team Assistant’. How can I explain…to give you an idea of what I do on a daily basis, -

Father: Team Assistant? What team?

Me: It’s a sales team. The team which I support sells to businesses. Their customers are businesses, not individuals. And I don’t sell, I just do stuff like administration for the team. For instance, I set up meetings for my boss.

Father: So they have to do what you tell them to?

Me: God, no. More like the other way round!

Mother: So you don’t actually manage anyone? (Smirks at my father. I’m meant to notice).

Me: No. That’s why I’m called a team assistant. So what other stuff do I do…boring admin, like keeping my boss’s diary, arranging his travel, ordering IT equipment from the IT department. It’s a bit dull, though when I’m busy I don’t mind because at least there’s variety. A lot of it is wading through the company’s dire online procedures, to free up the team to do their jobs.

Father: So basically you’re a...a secretary. (To mother) She uses all this jargon! It’s just secretarial stuff!

Me: Pretty much. It doesn’t blow me away, but they pay well for what it is. I’m happy enough, I suppose. And it’s nice because the company pays for me to do software courses. I’ve learned a lot about Excel, for example.

Father: Well so have I. I just taught myself. I didn't need courses.

Anyway, time to go home, so I’ll bring this whinge to an end. Oh the trauma!