I’m Not Normal by Vicky Hughes
My husband Michael has been pushing me to write about my life for a long time, he believes that it would be an inspiration to others who have had a complex traumatic life. I on the other hand would always find an excuse why not to do it. I can tell the story to him because he has all the context, but to anyone else I feel ashamed and embarrassed. But now as I approach 60 and I have found that ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude that I see so many other women my age adopt, I think I’m ready. Also, the bugger came home from work, put his bag down and just said, let me interview you. He knows me well, he knew if he had given me notice, I would have found a way to deflect, ignore or use my favourite phrase “I can’t deal with that at the moment”. So, there I was in our kitchen, he’d set up his phone and was recording our conversation. Bastard. It’s a good job that I love him, although I will get him back one day.
He tells me that the phone will make a transcript of the interview and we can use that to help us put this together. When I say us, it's like the royal ‘we’, Michael will be doing the typing and I’ll be telling him what I want in this. For reasons that will become very clear, you will understand when I say, writing is very hard for me and leaves me feeling well…. Like the title says.
I’m not Normal.
This is also why I tend not to engage in our online community.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve never felt that I fit in anywhere and it all began before I was born.
My mum was very young when she became pregnant with me, to another young man who was fixing the refrigeration at the fruit and vegetable shop she worked in as a teenager. I can imagine mum falling for Brian Fletcher very easily, her home life was very dysfunctional and devoid of a deep love. My mum for most of her adult life was continually looking for that love that was missing at home. Hence falling for Brian very easily, but I also expect that it wasn’t an easy time for either of them. My mum had told me many years later that previous to meeting Brian she had been packed raped and so was traumatised by this which amplified how she dealt with the dysfunction at home. Her dad was a miner who had been injured and now spent his days mostly getting drunk, being abusive and violent.
Many generations of our family lived in the very sleepy little mining village in the hills behind Wollongong and so everyone knew your business. My great grandfather was a very well-respected man in the village, he was the blacksmith and pit pony hostel manager. Many years later, I spent a lot of time with ‘Grandpa’ . Yes I know that’s not ancestrally correct, but I was not much younger than the last sibling of my mother so I was stuck between generations. Like I said, I didn’t fit in. I always remember Grandpa being a gentleman, always wore a hat, a waist coat with a pocket watch, I idolised him and he me, but it wasn’t always like that.
It was the mid 1960’s, and although in other parts of the world society was getting ‘progressive’ a small village in the hills behind Wollongong couldn’t be further away from that if you tried. So a young 16 going on 17-year-old girl getting pregnant, in a place where everyone knows your business and your family is somewhat well known is a scandal.
Mum was sent off to a girls home to wait out her pregnancy and then when ready she was admitted to the Crown Street Women’s Hospital in Sydney. This place was notorious for dealing with single unwed pregnant women. In fact, in today's language, it was a state sponsored coercive environment to separate mothers from their babies to be given out for adoption to middle class couples struggling with infertility. The irony of this is not lost on me and as a childless woman who would have adopted a child if we were able to, it leaves me feeling very conflicted.
The practices in this hospital, again, in today’s language would be classed as barbaric. Those young mothers were drugged to keep them stupefied so they were kept more compliant. Their chests were bound in tight bandages to assist in convincing their bodies not to lactate along with being administered a drug that would combat the release of oxytocin to prevent them bonding with their babies. All in the name of making it easier to separate mother and baby. It is now known that this drug is a carcinogen, responsible for many types of cancer. Psychological torment was also used, making these mothers feel worthless, bad, immoral, this was reinforced by the attitudes of the church and media as well. A tactic to legitimise these practices was to also not put the fathers name on the birth certificate, even if it was known. My own birth certificate is an example of this, even though my mum knew who my father was. I’m led to believe that it was ‘Grandpa’ that instigated these actions on my mum and I have to say there are times when I ponder on this and it makes me angry because it adds albeit in a small way because of how things changed with Grandpa that I didn’t fit in.
As I have mentioned, my mum was always open to love and when I was born, I imagine I was love personified. She fought tooth and nail to keep me, so I was taken back to the dysfunctional family home.
Mum tells a story of ringing the place of work of my father when she got back home. I do have to say that it feels strange to say father, because he was never a father to me and using his name feels weird as well because it feels too falsely familiar. Details get a little murky here, that phone call didn’t go well, the receptionist whom we suspect he later married, was rude and abusive when mum wanted to talk to Brian and tell him he had a daughter. “Don’t call here again and if you do, he’ll get all his mates to say they all had a go with you and so you can’t be sure he is the dad” is what mum would tell me later in life. But there is also a conversation that was had where Brian was told, go away and don’t come back by ‘Grandpa’ I believe. So Brian did exactly that, never to be seen again. So, I didn’t fit into his life either.
Things are going to get a bit heavy from here on in, so please proceed with caution.
Mum met Raymond Jenkins when I was about 18months I believe and they got married so after. He was a monster and whilst he and mum had a daughter and a son, he was also sexually assaulting me until I was about 5yrs old. If he didn’t get his way he would beat my mum. Mum believes he resented me and so I didn’t fit into his life either, not that I wanted to. Now we understand that there can be rape in a marriage and back then I witnessed this many times. I remember that I would try to stop Ray hurting my mother only to be tossed against a wall and one of these times my arm was broken. It was at this time whilst in a cast he deliberately set up a jug of boiling water very close to me, we believe so that I would burn myself as I knocked it. It worked and I spent a lengthy time in hospital naked in a cot, and I still have the scars today. I would have been 3 or 4 and this is burned into my memory.
So far authoritative males had not been a positive experience for me.
Eventually, I was able to tell mum what Ray was doing to me, even though he had told me he'd kill mum and my brother and sister if I said anything. To her credit this is what she needed to finally get the courage to report him to the police.
I can still remember the police coming to the house and violently restraining Ray, I watched as they kicked and punched him and to this day I swear they did it in front of me so I could see this. I am not a violent person but, on that day, I imagined it was me kicking and punching him.
He went to prison.
And so began our itinerant life.
My nan never really believed that Ray did what he did, perhaps it was too inconceivable for her to get her mind around it. What happened clearly didn’t fit into the way she saw the world and so yet again I didn’t fit. Not being believed by someone who is supposed to love you creates complex emotions. She would care for me, but there was always this lingering unspeakable thing that sat between us. I lived with my nan and pop for a while and this is when I also got to spend time with ‘Grandpa’ as he didn’t live far and there was a short cut through the bush we used to use.
I have fond memories of walking with him when it was time for the pit ponies to come to rest at the property where he lived. I remember he would take me to the pub and get me a lemonade and sit me on the bar whilst he had a chat with his friends. I remember sitting in the front of his ute when he went down to the local town to do a few chores for people in the village. I look back on those times with such love, because they were a vast contrast to other parts of my life.
‘Pop’s’ drink of choice was cheap port and being an alcoholic he would never go and buy it himself, so it became my role at 7 or 8 to get on the bus from the only bus stop in our village and take the trip down to the local town. Pass over a note to the person behind the counter in the ‘grog shop’ as we knew it. Then with a 2l flagon of Port that was quite heavy for the tiny me, I would carry this to the bus stop and take it back up the mountain. As a mature person, I sit here thinking to myself “What sort of people do that to a child?”
Especially when you consider that the result of him drinking this, made him violent and abusive. So much so that in the dead of night, Nan and I would grab blankets and sleep in the awning of the local hall across the road to get away from him. Or take that bush track to Grandpa again in the middle of the night. This is not normal.
Mum met Brian C.
Together they chased work up and down the entire east coast of Australia, Brian was a mechanic who also drove heavy machinery and so could get work anywhere. We lived out of a pretty big caravan and I’ve lost count of the number of places we lived. But in this time I suspect I went to about 22 different primary schools. This was awful, I was perpetually the new kid, the target of bullies and when I did make friends, we would most likely be on the move shortly after. Those feelings of not fitting in really amplified in this time of my life. I recognise now, it didn’t allow me to build confidence, to develop good social skills and because my education suffered, I couldn't do or understand the work and so was labelled ‘dumb’. This has plagued my self-worth my entire life and hence, why Michael is typing and putting this together whilst I tell him what I want in this.
Mum and Brian C broke up.
Mum was searching for love again and in my opinion in all the wrong places. An example being;
Rod Staples, he told mum that although still legally married, it was over and they lived in the same house for convenience. But strangely, if mum wanted to contact him, it was me that had to go in the dead of night to the phone booth and call him and pretend I was one of the kids from his scout troop. Then he suddenly stopped coming over, we found out a few days later, he had killed his wife and son. We were shocked of course, because that could have been us we thought. I loved my mum, but like I said before, what sort of person makes a child go out in the dead of night to ring their married boyfriend, this is not normal.
By this time we had established ourselves in a small Housing Commission town house. We had a permanent roof over our heads so we had physical stability, but still sporadic psychological stability. Mum's almost addictive search for love, her own trust issues and dysfunction would almost always sabotage the relationships that she had and this would see her spiral.
Often she would tell me that she had taken pills and I would have to call an ambulance.
I can now see she was vulnerable and was taken advantage of by many, we would often be put to bed whilst mum and different men would be down stairs. When I figured out what was going on, I’d walk around stamping my feet hoping that it would stop what was going on. I even remember a policeman, a well known radio announcer and priest!
I vowed I would never be like my mum.
I can now say that the accumulation of my experiences really affected how I viewed men, not only the abusive ones, but when you have men in positions of authority doing wrong it has left me with a deep suspicion of most men. I can see this is part of the basis for my trust issues and it takes a lot for me to trust someone. Contrast this to how Michael will give it freely and I just feel confused, it does cause friction with us both at times on how we socialise which makes me feel that I’m not normal.
Mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and so needed a hysterectomy as part of her treatment. My half sister and brother and I went to a Children’s home run by a charity, I only lasted a couple of days, I wanted my mum, I was a mess. So I went to stay with my Uncle Kenny and his family. I didn’t fit in there either.
My lack of education and being made to feel dumb, made it really easy to bunk off school when mum would ‘need me’. It was much easier being home for mum than being subjected to bullying and teasing. She relied on me a lot, I’d cook and clean and be there for support, it was like I was the parent. All of this was before starting high school.
When I was about 15 years old I got a job at McDonalds and my life changed, as soon as I put that uniform on it was like I was someone else, I felt part of something, I could fulfill all the tasks given to me, I excelled, I felt important, I had purpose and I was good at it. That uniform was my armour and that job made me feel worthy. The version of me in a uniform was so different to me at home, this is true for every job I’ve had.
Michael found it very strange when we got together that whilst I was this confident person behind the counter at work (he started there sometime after me). Out in the big wide world I’d not even go into a shop on my own due to anxiety.
Although, this was not an easy time for him, because with only witnessing my mum's experiences with men, I began to act like her, possessive and untrusting, which caused no end of friction between us. He will tell you he was left perplexed as to why he was always the target of my anger, when he felt he had done nothing wrong. Like I said, I’m not normal.
Meeting Michael and becoming part of the Hughes family, challenged everything I knew. I went from a world where authority figures were entirely untrustworthy to a partnership built on stability. But healing isn’t a straight line. For years, the contrast between his safe ‘normal’ upbringing and my chaotic past caused quite a bit of conflict inside me. When our friends and family started to have children and we began the exhausting and joy stripping process of IVF, that old feeling of ‘not fitting in’ returned with a vengeance. The shame and embarrassment I constantly feel was also amplified when we discovered we were going to be childless. It felt like more items on the list of things that made me feel like ‘I’m Not Normal’.
Whilst logically, I can make sense of that I’m not abnormal, I was just surviving an abnormal world, my heart will still tell me a different story and even at being close to 60 years old, those feelings of being an outsider haven’t abated.
An example being when at 52 we finally found Brian Fletcher, through a long process of using Ancesty.com and the DNA tests. Unfortunately, Brian has passed away 6 months previously, but I had found out that I had 2 half brothers and a half sister as well as two aunts. But yet again, one of those aunts didn’t believe her brother could have done something like this and my two brothers do not want to know me, this rejection hit my already fragile self worth hard. But I can say that I have a lovely relationship with my new sister and now both of those aunties.
It was only this past Sunday when we went to a 80th birthday for one of those aunts that all those feelings of not being normal and not fitting in emerged again. There I was, surrounded by family that I have no history with and the complex emotions of both feeling loved by those there, but angry that my father never came looking for me. So, I didn’t feel I fitted in there and it didn't feel normal.
I do struggle to value myself, Michael always encourages me when I’m out and about doing errands, to go and have a nice lunch somewhere. I never do, but maybe next time after writing this, I will. I just need to keep telling myself that the little girl carrying flagons of port up a mountain or walking to the phone booth in the dead of night is safe now, and she deserves a nice lunch.
But I do have a life filled with travel, a husband I genuinely love, and a home that is my sanctuary where I can just be.
I’ve asked Michael how we can finish on a positive note because I don’t want to finish in a dark place and I’m going to try live by this.
If childhood trauma or a childless life has left you feeling like an permanent outsider, remember this: Your past dictated the armor you had to wear, but it doesn't get the final say on who you are inside.
