'Every scar you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived...' - M

This morning I was googling Dance Classes for Serena. Slightly premature I know, but call me proactive. I’d like her to go to Dance Classes like I did (but I will follow the rule my Mum laid out for me ‘if the day comes when you want to stop, that will be the day you stop’), but I don’t want her to want to peruse it as a career like I did. But that will be her choice and we’ll cross that bridge if ever, or whenever we come to it. Whilst scrolling down the page I had a pang of pain when I came across the website for the first Dance School I went to from the ages of 3 to 15. I loved it there and had some incredible experiences. But things happen to you that wipe away all the good memories of a time in your life and leave you with only sadness. That’s how I feel thinking about that Dance School now.... When I was younger I had a best friend and the Dance School was where we met. We were inseparable. I loved her with all my heart and would have done anything for her. When I was 15, my entire world was crushed when I found out that for a long time she had been harbouring some very negative feelings towards me. I remember sobbing down the phone (a land line phone haha!) as she told me she thought that I was ‘always in competition with her’ ‘thought that I was better than her’ ‘never gave her any time anymore because I had new friends’ and will never, ever forget her Mum saying the words ‘who needs enemies when they have a friend like you...’ Even writing this I feel the stab of pain in my heart like I did back then. It fills me with a genuine sorrow I could burst into tears. Over a decade down the line. Sufficed to say, I had no idea she felt those things towards me. I would have walked across the earth and back for her and never for a second did I know she felt like that, nor that I had done anything to her to make her feel that way towards me. I was completely and utterly destroyed. I left the Dance School where I grew up and spent some of the happiest years of my childhood (I attended 2 at the time and then only went to the other one) and never saw her again. She was my whole world and just like that, she was gone from my life. And you know, it still hurts. I bumped in to her once when I was 17 and we chatted, but I haven’t seen her since. And I doubt she ever thinks about me. I’m sure she would have no idea that to this day, it still confuses me, hurts me and I still wrack my brain wondering what I did to make her feel like that? And why didn’t she say anything sooner? What was it that I did? That phone conversation will always be my ‘Sliding Doors’ moment. I’m sure so much of my life would have gone differently if it had never happened. I probably wouldn’t have suffered such a blow to my self-esteem that I’m still often paralysed by it to this day. With her influence, would I have trodden some of the questionable paths I did? I’m sure I wouldn’t have then found it almost impossible to befriend other females for fear of what they would think of me. I still worry about how they will perceive me, and still once I’ve left their company dissect everything I said worrying about how I came across. I still find making new friends hard. And I still apologise after almost every conversation even with the wonderful women who have stuck by me through thick and thin for talking too much or saying the wrong thing or being too self-involved. All because I’m terrified of losing them. Because if someone I loved so much, and thought loved me, could do that, why wouldn’t anyone else? Self deprecation has been my armour since I was 15, because if you think all the worst things about yourself that someone else could possibly think, you’ve already beaten them to it and they can never use it to hurt you. No one could think more poorly of yourself than you already do, so you don’t have to worry about them hurting you with their thoughts and feelings and opinions of you. I’m not trying to write this to get pity, it’s still just how I feel. I suppose this post is mostly about how those experiences you have in your formative years, most especially the negative ones, leave scars on you that never fully heal. Something happens and just when you think you’re healed, the wound is reopened, gaping and vulnerable and you have to start the healing process all over again. I’ve often thought about reaching out so I could maybe have some closure to my lingering questions. But I’ve spent so long trying to be happy with ‘me’ that 1. I might not like the answers to my questions (was I really that bad a friend? Was I really that self-involved? Was I really so conceited I didn’t see what was right in front of me?) and 2. Really at this point in my life, what’s the point? I was an inherently confident child which I know probably could have been misconstrued as arrogance. I know back then I thought I was talented and was probably not afraid to show it. I also know that if she had asked, there was nothing I wouldn’t have done for her. My Mum did everything in her power to console me and rebuild my confidence and assure me ‘it wasn’t me, it was her’ but for the most part, and to my Mum’s heartache, it fell on my very deaf ears. It does still make me wonder though, why do I still think it was all me? If I’m still so confused by why it happened and what I did to make it happen, can it really have all been me? I suppose I will never know. And sometimes I’m not sure I want to... On a more positive note, regardless of what happened in my life after that moment, it all led me to where I am today. It led me to Max and it led me to Serena. And in so many ways, I couldn’t be more thankful. I certainly don’t think about that experience everyday. It flits in if I’m having a ‘feel shitty about yourself’ day, but on the most part, I’m whole and filled with love and happiness and joy and contentment and wonder at where life has brought me. But looking down at my beautiful baby girl and experiencing that ferocious love you have for your creation that you never knew could be so strong and all consuming, I do get pangs of worry, even at her tenderly young age. Will she go through a similar experience? How can I do everything in my power to prevent it? How can I teach her to be confident but humble? Ballsy but show humility? Intelligent but not condescending? Or do I have to? Can I not just teach her to be unapologetically herself and we’ll say ‘screw you!’ to what anyone else thinks? Only time will tell. There is one thing though I’ll make sure she always knows; ‘Life is tough my darling, but so are you.’