#12 THAT TIME I WAS LIKE GINNY WEASLEY POURING HER HEART OUT TO TOM RIDDLE’S DIARY
Someone put this teen girl out of her misery – the early days of email and the internet and the boys who listened on the other end, from across the world
In high school, I’d often been lonely living out in the country. On the one hand, I had the track my stepfather had mowed into some brush that I’d run around (loved that), I had my husky and my lab (dogs), my two cats, my trampoline, the stars, my library books or books I owned, and I had the internet/phone line.
These were the days of dial up and we weren’t fancy enough to have two phone lines (or call waiting) so when I was using the internet or the phone (i.e. MSN messenger obsessively with all the people I could keep up with – and I could type fast thanks to middle school typing class which I still benefit from today), the phone would be engaged which didn’t make Mother or my stepfather happy when they were waiting for phone calls.
And like any teen back then, when I wasn’t out with friends, I was online with them or I was making the thousand phone calls per day. I still keep up with at least half a dozen or more people per day so I haven’t changed all that much in some ways (and still manage to read fifty to sixty or more books per year).
My wonderful, amazing close-knit English family
Growing up, my Uncle Dave eventually moved close to us to live in Oldham, Lancashire (after living in Winchester, Richmond, and various places in the south of England and even Milan, Italy and somewhere in France). When my Mother and I moved to Florida to be closer to my Uncle Tim (who had moved from Chicago to Florida to live near his first wife’s family), my Uncle Steve also moved from Chicago with his second wife, and my Uncle Dave moved over too and met his wife. Sounds complicated!
Either way, all three of my uncles and their wives at the time (only one is still married to the same person) lived in central Florida and they were a huge part of my life. My family was everything to me.
They all would still visit when we lived in Georgia but it wasn’t the same as when we’d all lived close.
Then, after my first stepfather (but before my cool second stepfather came along – as Jenny and Sarah would say he wouldn't be out of place in a Quinten Tarantino movie – and he is the best thing that ever happened to my mother), my mother dated some questionable people but by then I’d moved out. Thankfully, by the time Hannah was five or so, she’d met said current (amazing) husband and her life has really taken off since – as she’s become the director of a nonprofit and done other wonderful things.
My Mother had a big network in England. She was an amazing working Mother and housekeeper. She had a good job with the council (still notoriously good jobs) and even though she was a single mother, she managed comfortably.
She had lots of breaks as I went to my Dad’s house on most weekends and I went to Jenny and Derek’s house every Thursday. That support network was important. In Florida, my uncles and aunts were hugely influential and I did lots with them, spending a lot of time at their houses.
When we moved to Georgia, we were isolated in that we had my stepfather’s family (all lovely as I’ve said) but my Mother didn’t have that time for herself. As someone who doesn’t have children even as I approach forty, that’s something that always puts me off – being a mother seems difficult and all-encompassing; mothers can lose themselves to their children’s world and identities, especially now when children have these crazy packed schedules full of dance, gymnastics, swimming, horse riding, basket weaving, Cubs, Scouts, sports, and whatever else.
And if you’re the kind of wife and mother who has to work and pull the second shift whilst your husband pops his feet up (poor dear), then you’re probably doubly fucked – or is that triply? That life is not for me!
Mum was there for me in many ways. I always knew I was loved (besides that one fallout time in early uni). She was huggy and affectionate. We’d curl up on the sofa together watching our shows in the evening (Law and Order SVU, Friends, Frasier, Northern Exposure, American Gothic, later Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, whatever was on the WB or NBC).
My stepfather was often not home because of work long-haul trucking and I’m sure that left her lonely, especially after she had Hannah who was unplanned but never unwanted – and my baby sister was everything to me. My mother was used to maternity leave in England but as we all know, the US doesn’t offer such luxuries (i.e. necessities), and she chose to stay home with Hannah for the first couple of years of her life which put a strain on her marriage, mentally and financially.
My mother was well-liked by my friends, distinctive for her English accent and friendly nature. Her generous spirit and her “embarrassing” (at the time) habit of talking to anyone and everyone are things that I hope I’ve inherited from her. I did not, sadly, inherit her ability to wash and fold laundry beautifully (how does she get her whites so white and how does she fold better than a department store?) and I also do not have dinner and a freshly made cake on the table each night (or even each week) – those are now tasks I gladly relegate to my amazing gem of a Yorkshire husband (thanks, hun), whilst I do the dishes (okay task) and clean the toilet (not so fun)! But these are also “lacking” traits that made my first husband bin me off (more later).
As much as my mother always says that her greatest role has been that of being a mother and that she loves “her girls” (my baby sister Hannah and me – Jae and I share a father and not a mother and Jae’s mother and stepfather are the best), I often wondered if that transition to the US where she had to have me full on without all the people to help was difficult for her.
Before, she’d had time away to be her own human, and, after that, she had a moody teenage daughter – one who was not at all expressive with her feelings (surprisingly). I poured my heart into scraps of paper and would completely shut down, locked inside of myself, if asked to speak to my mother about emotions. I kept a lot of myself to myself.
When Hannah came along…
Hannah was born before I turned sixteen and because our mum has had two children at completely different times, we’ve grown up differently. When I was in high school, especially once Hannah was born, my Mum found it difficult to drive me home from track practice or pick me up after school events – so I remember doing some things less often because I knew she’d not want to pick me up after being tired at the end of a long day of work – and sometimes Coach P would drive me home.
Mum has been a wonderful “band mom” to Hannah (who is very talented and plays five musical instruments) and when I visited her at her high school years ago, all of her friends seemed to love our mother as my high school friends had but maybe more so. Mum is way more involved in Hannah’s school and life than she was in mine. Maybe it’s years of wisdom, maybe it’s happiness, less stress, more money or proximity to the school as they live in a house in a town in Florida just on a side street of a lake, not far from where Hannah attended school. Who knows?
All that is to say, I think after losing the “family” feeling that I had with my network in England, my family unit in Florida, and after she divorced my stepfather, and we were no longer part of his family, I was always searching for that sense of family again, which is what attracted me to High School Sweetheart and the man who would become my first husband: they had big, warm, loving, and involved families.
Meeting Mr Kent on ICQ
As established, I didn’t talk about my feelings to my family or those around me. However, when I was in high school, I used to pour my heart out to a guy who I’ll call Mr Kent that my two English childhood best friends Joanne, Ruby, and I met (I think) via ICQ (i.e. I seek you). I think Joanne maybe met him first and connected us all to him.
ICQ came out around 1996 but I think we were using it around 2000, maybe a little later. Mr Kent lived in England at home. He’d finished university at Leeds and had a good job but I can’t recall what job or what he’d studied now. He was maybe five or six years older than us and he was saving up for a house deposit and spending all his spare cash on all his travels around the world – he’s been practically everywhere – and he’d take photos with his rubber duck in hand.
He’d regale me with tales of who he was dating at the time and I remember having the biggest crush on him. This was when it was difficult to send photos to people because we had to use actual digital cameras and then connect all the cables to download them at a snail’s pace, so I think we each sent him terrible, grainy photos, but the photo swaps were limited.
Once, knowing I absolutely had that big weird fixated crush on Orlando Bloom, he sent me a train magazine featuring OB on the cover and an interview to my house in the middle of nowhere in the woods. I only recently parted with it thanks to my declutter lady, Sarah – shoutout for letting go?
I’m sure I’ve forgotten more about our chats than I remember – and I’m sure that my admissions and problems were of the Ginny Weasley variety – but I had a friend at the end of the world.
He eventually married one of his dates, the most important one, of course – a petite nurse, one I remember him telling me he was really excited about – and they have a daughter, but this is long after they spent years simply travelling and having adventures together.
Once, when I was in London, I arranged to meet up with him but he was seeing someone then and it didn’t work out.
My heart is happy that this friend, this internet stranger, who at one time probably knew more about me than those closest to me, is in a good place.
Meeting Mr Oxford, my sister’s best friend
My older sister by five years, Jae, and I share a father but have different mothers, and, thus, she grew up in England living with our father and I grew up with my mother in the US (Parent Trap ish?). That’s also how it came to pass that my sister attended a prestigious all-girls private school (a public day school for the Brits) with a corresponding all-boys school. This private school boasts not only my uncle, sister, and her best friend as an alumnus but also Brian Cox, the world-renowned physicist.
When she was attending this school she met her male best friend who I’ll call Mr Oxford (because he later attended Oxford University). I don’t know their story exactly but they got up to all sorts of shenanigans and were always very close and I’m sure at some point he heard vaguely about her annoying little sister.
So whilst Mr Kent may have gotten the bulk of my high school ramblings, the person who got even more of it was Mr Oxford.
In my second year of university in the Fall semester of 2006, Mr Oxford started emailing me, asking me for tips on what to buy Jae for her birthday. I’m sure he spent more days with my sister than I did.
He, like Captain Cambridge, had an impressive CV which, obviously, included earning both his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Oxford, having a Kauffman Fellowship (less obvious), attending somewhere in the US like Yale or Stanford, and at one point inventing some sort of robotic prosthetics (or something) and having a company in Manchester. My memory is somewhat fuzzy on the details and I should really ask Jae for the proper ones.
At first, the emails started out like, oh can I get advice on going to uni in the UK, here’s what I got up to in the day, and devolved into a discussion about how I was bummed about my uncles moving away – “the end of an era” – and “oh hey I was listening to the music on your MySpace” but I can’t put anything cool on mine because I don’t know HTML coding (cringe):
This past weekend I went down to Florida (Orlando area) to visit my uncles, Dave and Steve, and their wives/girlfriends/kids, etc and have a sort of pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Steve is moving to Massachusetts the day before Thanksgiving. I really hate that he is moving. My family is so much fun and we always have such a laugh when we are all together and well, Saturday felt like the end of an era. My other uncle, Tim, moved to Colorado earlier this year and now Steve is going and there will only be my mother and Dave who live close. Anywhoo…just my little side note/sadness episode…sorry you had to be involved!
I die inside reading the musings of my teenage self.
The emails then began to evolve in Ginny-Weasley-style subtle cues that all was not well in paradise with HSS and it was holding me back in my first years at uni:
I don’t get out much for the social scene here…I guess mostly because [HSS is] younger than I am and can’t go and do it with me and he would never let me do it by myself…without thinking that I’ve cheated on him at every turn. I’m not much of a partier anyway…I care very much for [HSS] and he loves me very much…like every relationship, we have a share of problems.
Red flag central. On both ends. I “care” for him. I “can’t go” and “thinking that I’ve cheated on him at every turn” (spoiler: I did eventually cheat on him at every turn), which I’m not proud of but c’mon it was like not only having an elephant but also the whole zoo on my shoulders.
Then, I regaled Mr Oxford with a tale about how my Valentine’s was miserable because A) he didn’t write me a card, B) he spent a bunch of money on flowers and chocolates which I didn’t want, and C) it was the same as last year’s surprise – #firstworldproblems and what a spoiled biatch!
HSS then had the audacity, apparently, to ask me to exchange a watch I’d bought him, a Timex watch that he’d seen in the film Stranger than Fiction (2006, actually a really great film but not much remembered with Will Farrel, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Emma Thompson), but the “Indiglo” had broken and he wanted to exchange it on V-day apparently, which clearly pissed me off. And then he’d told me I treated him badly which I apparently didn’t think was the case and I told Mr Oxford:
He is just so uptight. He takes himself very seriously which I cannot stand plus he is a little arrogant yet despite all this I do love him (I guess that’s what comes of being blinded by your first love). We argue all the time. We do, however, have some times when we are just happy and not arguing, but those times are few and far between.
Young people, if you spend 90% of your relationship arguing (or even more than 5%), run. RUN!
It’s like this cycle of unhappiness and settling for something that doesn’t make you happy. He even accuses me of having a crush on you, but I would never cheat on someone.
Actually, not true. Bring on DJ and Married Professor.
Why am I telling this to you? I’m sorry; you don’t want to hear about my disastrous relationship. It isn’t always bad, but sometimes I feel as if I just want a break and want to be free of all this misery, but then when I think about being apart from him I feel as if I would be miserable too. And since we live so close he would never leave me alone.
A true prediction. He did not leave me alone. He, in fact, continued to try and fuck up everything I had with anyone I dated after.
One major problem we have is that we do not deal with our emotions in the same way at all. He is really in-your-face-angry and I like to shut down and not speak. When he is mad with me or when I’m upset I just refuse to talk and I want everyone and everything to go away so I can figure things out in my head and he won't let me do that. He will get in my face and scream at me until I talk. Again, sorry.
I really needed therapy or a clean break. I feel like I needed to get a grip and not burden someone across the world with this craziness. But it was reassuring to have someone – some tangentially related stranger – to listen to me.
Mr Oxford very levelheadedly said (in a roundabout way) your relationship doesn’t sound like it’s going well and I’m concerned but sometimes things in relationships can seem worse and maybe he’s worried about losing you – men are insecure when it comes to women even if he acts arrogant and cocky. Sound advice really.
Mr Oxford would also tell me about the girls he was interested in and the beginnings of the crush/relationship with the gorgeous woman who would become his wife, a very clever PhD (in some science-related thing) from South Africa – and they now live in New Zealand together with their first child.
Once, before he got the girl (he pursued his future wife hard), Mr Oxford sent me some of my favourite Guylian chocolates through the post. They melted but I still enjoyed them. Another time, he invited me to attend some Oxford ball with him (I mean how amazing would that experience have been?). I didn’t go. Then he invited me to visit him in California when he was studying there. I also didn’t go. All mostly because I had no money but also because HSS was just mega jealous and possessive.
But it was exactly that insecurity in my HSS that was the suffocating factor.
Mr Oxford endured a full year of this whinging before things faded out. HSS and I didn’t break up for the first time until 2008 and not fully until 2011 when we finally cut things off and stopped sleeping together.
I had had a crush on Mr Oxford and Mr Kent, but more than that they were there to listen. I felt less alone in the world because of them. I’d been too silly or too young or too afraid to see sense and to make a decision to end a relationship that had become more misery than merriment, a decision that would have been difficult but right.
Instead, I made HSS and I miserable by refusing to sever ties. But he kept coming back and often I wasn’t sure why, especially after I purposely cheated and left my computer open (subconsciously?) so he’d find out.
I’ve had many meaningful email correspondences over the years with various men. People I’d meet at Starbucks, on the train, or in a bar – or somewhere else. They were the right people at the wrong time – or maybe the wrong people at the wrong time – and their purpose in my life was already fulfilled. Thanks to those of you who have suffered through the tales of heartbreak and drama!
Up next, the story of how I lost my virginity to my high school sweetheart.
Don’t forget to check out the other eleven posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place.
