Life's for the Living

3. Dad? Tea:

When I was younger I thought that everyone was like me and that no one had a dad, but then I started primary school and I saw some of the kids were taken into the classroom by men. I wasn't used to this because although mum had been with a boyfriend before (when I was 3) he didn't last long and so there had never been any men that I really knew or was close to except my grampa. I was puzzled because I had never known my dad and I suppose I didn't know any different.

I was brave enough to ask a group of kids why they had men taking them to school and they laughed at me. They said those men were their dads. When I said I didn't have a dad they couldn't work it out and started to tease me - they told me that everyone had a dad and if I wasn't then I must be some kind of alien. I asked mum when I got home why I didn't have a dad and, well; she just gave me a photo and told me I did have one when I was little but he didn't live with us anymore. I stared at the photo - my real dad - and tried to imagine him in the room with me. I had always wondered where I got my chestnut brown hair from.

I had gone from not having a dad or needing one to suddenly being given a photo of a strange man and told that he was my dad. All of this just served to make my little 4 year old brain when more confused than it was before.

Parents shouldn't try to be elusive and make everything sound so nice and happy when we're kids, why can't they just get to the point? I didn't want a watered down version of my dad, I wanted the truth no matter how hard that might be.

I didn't like school after that because I was the odd one out, one of the only children with no dad.  It also didn't help that I had a habit of saying exactly what i was thinking in my head. That drove everyone away from me and I couldn't understand why. I met Jo when I was seven, she was my best friend throughout primary school and it wasn't so bad after that. She found it funny when I would tell someone I really didn't appreciate it when they spat on my face every time they opened their little mouths and she found it even funnier when I would start on the teachers.

At the start of year eight Jo moved to Australia and I was lonely once again. I ate lunch on my own, often in the toilets, to avoid the school's sheep - also known as the 'popular kids' - who targeted any loners they could find. I had a lot of time to think and that's when things started getting strange.

I was in our living room and I decided to ask mum a few more questions about my dad. I had tried asking her questions before but she always said she didn't have time to answer them or that she'd tell me when I was older. Well, now I was older and I wanted to know.

I asked why I was never allowed to see my dad and she said it would be dangerous for me to see him. Normally that would have done, i would have been annoyed because i know that isn't the truth but it would have stopped me. (to a certain extent) Instead, the words on the art poster behind her head changed from Keep Calm and Drink Tea to say, Your Connections are Too Strong. I thought this was very odd and it scared me slightly. Being the kind of person I am, I knew I had to work it out, I had to find out what was going on. I asked my mum more and more questions whilst keeping one eye on the poster print, but it had slowly changed back to the Keep Calm print and I still couldn't work out what it had been telling me, it didn't make sense at all. I don't like it when things don't make sense, I never have, I have always wanted answers. In the end mum shouted at me for asking so many questions all of a sudden and that put an end to it.

That night, some girl invaded my dreams. At first I thought it was Jo but she looked different to Jo, like someone I knew but I swear I had never seen her before. I recognised her eyes and her face, I just couldn't work out who she was, every time I tried to picture what she looked like during the day, my mind went blank and my head started to spin. After a while I couldn't remember anything about the girl, only that I had dreamt of her the night before. That's the thing with dreams, you never remember them for long. They are like faint whispers that you can barely hear no matter how hard you strain. The sense of frustration I felt just served to make me more tetchy and annoyed than I normally was.