annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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Shame

Therapy this morning and I was set homework, to write about occasions which contributed to me having such a lack of confidence in my abilities. I know this may not seem apparent as I have at least learned to never make negative statements about myself - or I try not to.


I can remember quite clearly the day the results were posted for my BA degree. In those days, 1988, a notice was put on a board, listing all the students and what level of degree they'd achieved. There was a big crowd of excited young students around the notice board - most were 21, but I was 34. I was the single parent of three young children. When I'd started Uni Son was ten months old, Daughter was two and a half and Sam was seven. Sam would leave for school, meeting other children round the corner and walking together. I'd get the little'uns into the double buggy, sling my satchel of books over my shoulder and off we'd go to catch the train to Brighton, where we'd change trains and travel on to the university. I'd push the double buggy up and down the hills to the creche and nursery, right at the back of the campus. I then had from 9 till 1 to do studenty things - seminars, meetings, no lectures on my courses as they were considered a waste of time, library, reading and writing essays. At 1pm I collected the kids, and took them to the refectory for lunch, then on the train again, back just in time to collect Sammie from school and home to be mum for a few hours, playing, hearing reading, making dinner, bath, bed. When they were all in bed asleep, I'd get my books out and on I'd go. It wasn't all work - I made great friends, some of whom are still close and chatted on the phone for hours to them. And I loved the work. In the first year I did a two term course: "The Social and Biological Bases of Sex Differences" that was fucking brilliant - access via the library to all the best researched information in the world on one of the key questions I was intrigued by. It was bliss but it was fucking hard work.


So, on results day, I got to the front of the crowd by the notice board and there was my name against 2:1! Woo hoo! There are five levels: 1st, 2:1, 2:2, 3rd or pass. To get a 2:1 after more than a decade out of education, especially as a single parent, was pretty good so I was pretty pleased. I'll admit I did have a hankering for a 1st, but those who did get 1sts were the really committed, who'd lived their lives in the library, so not really going to happen. Everyone round the notice board, after squealing and giggling, or sloping off looking horrified, formed a queue by the phone on the wall, as the first thing to do was phone home, tell your parents. I just fell into the queue without thinking about it and crept forward, listening to one after another person's response to their thrilled, congratulatory parents. 


Mum (stepmum, but stepmum  since I was 2 - I have no memory before her, so call her and think of her as Mum) answered. "Hello! I got my results! I got a 2:1!"


"Huh. I bet we'll never hear the end of that." What? What the actual fuck. I didn't say that.


With a catch in my voice I said, "Is Dad in?" "Of course not, he's never home at this time of day. He's at the allotment."


"OK, bye then." 


So I got that kind of shit always - my dad wasn't as bad but he was never effusive. Therapist points out that by this point I can see that Mum is quite a nasty, cruel woman, although I am still crushed, more so for being surrounded by people whose parents responded more positively. She also pointed out that I didn't hear any of the parents' responses - I just saw the effect on the kids. 


So my homework is to see, via writing about it, if I can find any other instances that contribute to my almost lifelong belief that I'm quite crap at most things, when actually I'm quite clever and good at all sorts of things. Times when I didn't realise it was her not me.


At the moment the only specific instances I can think of concern my reports from secondary school. I passed the 11+ and went to a grammar school. We were streamed for Maths, French and Latin. I was in the top set for all of them, and in the exams, at the end of every autumn and summer term, I'd come 1st, 2nd or 3rd in virtually everything. Instead of saying 'Well done' which I don't remember ever hearing from either of my parents all I got was 'Well, what happened here? How come you didn't come top in History?' I honestly had no idea that I was clever - obviously not that clever if I didn't clock that I was top of the top set in the best school in the county, but it never occurred to me. 


So I'm hoping that having got all that off my chest, more will follow, will float to the surface of my cluttered mind.


In other news, the Glasto tickets arrived this morning and it's not even June! I had an email about doing writing workshops back at the great recovery centre. Daughter and I spent hours on 'our' bit of beach this afternoon, lovely. 


Tomorrow I'm doing nothing except take my pal SB for a belated birthday lunch. 


 

11:59 p.m. - 31.05.23

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