Beginning

I've tried to explain to you how I've ended up where I am. I've tried to explain it to myself too. But I've started half way through the story and I need to go back. I need most of all to see the bond between us, and how strong it was, and how it meant something.

It really meant something.

When my second marriage was cracking under the strain, he was there to help me. We were good friends by that time, and his shoulders were strong, strong enough to bear the weight of weeping women. My second marriage was not a happy one, although it gave me the gift of my son, whom I love more than my life. Nothing so obvious as violence, nothing so sordid as infidelity, but unhappy even so. My friends would laugh so at the person I was then, unable to reconcile that image of me with the Tina they know now, the strong minded, the laughing, the confident. She didn't exist then, except in my dreams, and I didn't imagine I would ever find her. I was berated constantly, told I was stupid, told I was a bad mother, a phrase that haunts my nightmares to this day.

An image of my son and I at the dining table, working on his spellings over the weekend. Being told to get out of the way, into the other room, because I knew nothing, couldn't help, was doing it wrong.

I became convinced, utterly convinced, that he was right, that I wasn't fit to take care of my son. I tried to distance myself from my son, perhaps I was doing him more harm than good. He was better without me. Wasn't he? The arguments between me and his father grew worse, I started to find my voice. But I never found my confidence as a mother. I knew in my soul that I didn't want my son to grow up in a house where arguments were all he knew. I confided in him, my friend, the man who was always honest, even if it hurt.

I told him I planned to go, and leave no contact. To leave my son where he would grow up better without me, where he could grow to be a good boy, a good man, without his bad, bad, mother. And even when my heart broke, as it surely would, I would know that I had done my best for my son.

He looked at me, I wept while I spoke, laying bare my plans for leaving, and how I would do it. And he took my hand, and talked to me, soothed me, comforted me, and made me promise not to go. Made me promise to wait until I knew I was wrong, that I was a good mother.

And I waited, and he was right.

He has made me the woman that I am.

But no. That is not the beginning of the story. Back further, to my first marriage. Married at 21, the first proposal I received. I rushed headlong into that marriage, desperate to join the ranks of women who had someone that loved them.

No. Earlier than that.

My first serious boyfriend. I was a late developer, my first serious boyfriend did not arrive until I was 18. Is that where I need to begin?

No. Earlier still. A 6 year old in the primary school playground. A quiet, shy little girl with long, straight brown hair. Standing on the sidelines, watching the children play. Unused to the rough and tumble of others, an only child, a protective mother who wanted to keep her safe from harm. A mother a whole generation apart, old enough almost to be a grandmother, but given one final gift of a child, not through God's will but from another. A taunting voice from the playground, an older girl approaching.

'My mum knows your mum. She knows you're adopted. Your mum's got to give you back, and you'll end up in a home.'

And there it starts. A lifetime of never fitting in, of never being quite right. Of never being wanted, not even by my birth mother. Too young to understand why this might have been, but the salving years have never soothed the scars.

Bullied throughout senior school, again never fitting in. Always the child with the wrong clothes, the wrong hair, the wrong voice.

The wrong life.

He has made me the woman that I am.

The miserable years at school, finally unable to deal with that last year. The tragedy of leaving school early, unable to continue, exams failed. A future gone.

But a spark remained. The teenager now tried to pick up her life, enrolled at college, resat her exams. took 'A' levels. Met her first boyfriend. A popular boy, the girl not realising that this was all some joke, some desire to slum, to see what girls like her were like. The boy that told her finally that he had chosen her because she was plain, that plain girls were more grateful. Was this true? In a way, he was right. She had been so desperate to be liked that she'd ignored all the signs, just wanting someone to love her for the person she was.

My first marriage, some three years later. A mistake from the first day. I thought I knew what love was, thought I had found someone who loved me too. I was wrong on all counts, and made mistakes that pain me still. An affair, over almost as soon as it began. A girl looking for someone to love her? Perhaps, but no excuses. Not any more.

He has made me the woman that I am.

He helped me to see that I could become the person that I wanted to be. He let me lean on him when I was weak, and he stepped away when I was strong, letting me stand by myself, to prove that I could do it. He held me tight when I received the call telling me my father had died, listened when I talked.

I loved him because he helped me be the woman that I am today. But it felt like betrayal when he didn't want the woman he'd helped to create.

It felt like one more person rejecting me. It was the playground again.

But he did a better job than that. I've started to see past that, started to see what lies at the heart of our friendship. Started to see that it's not a reflection on the person that I am, but instead, well, just one of those things.

And I've started to think that I need my friend back.