On the 7th of May 1996 I was born in my parent’s
bedroom in our family house. I don't know if I screamed or cried as I entered
the world or how much I weighed or what the time was. I
do know that my shoulders were so broad the midwife thought I was going to die
as I came out and I nearly broke a collar bone. Sometimes, just before I fall
asleep I feel as though I can remember this experience. That I can see my
parent's ceiling and my mother’s face as she held me for the first time. I focus so
hard on this thought that it slips away as easily as it first appeared. It’s
like water, it doesn’t matter how tightly you hold onto it, it will
indefinitely slip away from you. I obviously don’t remember these formative years,
although I’ve heard they were not easy. My elder sister Isabelle was 3 years
and 7 months old when I was born, my mother had severe post-natal depression,
my father was working full-time and my grandparents were in the South of France.
I was just sort of shipped around and loved in my car seat – the only thing I would sleep
in at that age and I would allow anyone to look after and feed me. Which isn't so different to me right now. There aren’t many baby
pictures, there’s just me, right now, acting as proof for all those years and
that nothing fatal happened to me.
My first actual memory was of my sister at a swimming gala.
I don’t know if she won but I remember her with a blue swimming hat on. Our
mother always used to make us wear it because she didn’t want to have to wash our
hair in the swimming pool showers. My next memory was a day or so later (this I
don’t know if it is a real or a dream) but it was of me in a hospital bed and my father in a bed sleeping next to me. My mother and I had been sitting in
the balcony watching my sister and I had been playing and looking over to watch
her. Whatever was supposed to stop someone, especially a child, from toppling
over and crashing into the pool clearly wouldn’t have passed any health and
safety tests as, well, that’s exactly what happened to me. I didn’t crash into
the pool, however, just next to the pool. Apparently I bruised like a peach when
I was younger because as my mother screamed and fled down stairs (not the one
step route as I had taken) my face had become black and blue and my hair spread
out around me like an eagle’s wings. My mother said that when she was in the
ambulance with me she could feel a presence, a huge angelic presence, and she
prayed like fuck that it would help me and not take me away from her.
Luckily for all, it didn’t take me away. It helped. I left
the hospital with a broken wrist and a cream-coloured plaster cast. The second time
anyhow. It wasn’t until we were leaving the hospital and dad tried to hold my
hand but I told him it hurt too much and he carted me back in, that the doctor
realised I had a broken wrist.
And this, was my beginning.
