8/4/14

It turns out when you pledge to run 100 miles for charity you kinda have a lot of work to do... Training. Planning. Researching races. Paying entry fees. And my least favourite of all, promotion.
Promotion would be relatively easy - by all means it's not 'difficult', just tedious - if talking was a normal occurrence in my life like it is for everyone else. You send press releases out knowing quite well there's even a slight chance the phone is gonna ring or you're gonna have to sit in front of someone sometime soon and talk to them like you actually  know what you're talking about.
I have a habit of feeling like everything I say makes no sense whatsoever. Like, it's all shit. I'm just talking a bunch of crap basically.
But promotion is over and done with. Flyers are pinned to every ad board I could find. And I missed the phone call but thankfully did an interview via email and my face is currently in the paper (...I know right).
I was unfortunate enough to have my face in the paper many times when I was a kid. She thought it would help me, but she was wrong. Mainly, she wanted exposure for the  condition I had and she wanted more people to be aware and understand better. But did I really need to be the poster child? It was my face and her words. And as a child, it didn't add up to me. I didn't  understand. I just went along with it.
She kept all the newspaper cuttings in a kitchen drawer and showed people  now and again. A few years passed, I hit about 11 and I no longer wanted to play nice. I hated her from then on, for putting my face out there for the entire country to see. It had been years of the same bullying, the same moving around, the same switching schools  and the same being misunderstood by everyone. And I just wanted to be better.
As far as I could gather, aged 11, nothing got better by my face being in the paper. In fact, in the long run it made things worse. I would walk into school to hear that they'd seen me in the paper. And my heart would sink to the ground because I didn't want the attention it  brought. The only thing I wanted was for it to be gone. For everything to be normal.
She probably still has the cuttings somewhere. Not much really changed with her. A few years later she agreed to taking part  in a documentary that I was filmed for but later would not air. Even up to last year, she still did it. She, once again, agreed to taking part in a different documentary before  talking to me about it first and before I know it I'm sat in front of a camera. The whole thing has no logic in it and never has.
So I grew up hating her for that. The papers, the media. If sitting in dozens of white, clinical, empty rooms as a very young child wasn't  enough. She then made me sit in front of people asking me questions I wouldn't be answering while they filmed me. You see what I mean about no logic being involved?
Above all, I spent a hell of a lot of years being bitter and frustrated at her for putting me in positions I never wanted to be in and making decisions for  me. If it was down to her she would still be making decisions about my life  and I'd still be not getting any better or moving forward in any way. I'm still bitter and frustrated. But at different things that aren't entirely her fault, I guess. I planned my suicide four times, which she's unaware about. There's been dozens of cuts on my arms, she's never noticed. I've cried myself to sleep every day for weeks and weeks, she's never known. A stranger on the internet has literally saved my life with a song  (The Way She Feels - Between The Trees) and yet, she doesn't even know there's  anything wrong.
Our whole relationship is just lost. It's as though it's just floating through the air. It's not connected to either of us and neither of us are trying to connect it and put it back together. It's just... open. xo