Thursday 17th June, 2010
At seventeen I was obsessively infatuated. I felt ugly. I was being bullied from a source far more insidious than anyone at school. My grades had gone from poor to pathetic and I was woefully unprepared for my exams, sneaking cigarettes and trips to the pub at lunch breaks. In short, I hated my life. I remember the blood hitting my A-level British History textbook in drops; the sound – pat, pat, pat. That’s all I remember, that and snapping out of my fugue, seeing my arm and freaking out. It looked gruesome for a few weeks but left no scars.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:35 am, Comments (0)
Wednesday 16th June, 2010
Sixteen was when I came out. Sixteen was sneaking drinks in local pubs. Sixteen was when I started smoking. Sixteen was when I had my first kiss and lost my virginity in the same night. Sixteen was staying up until morning with my best friend watching Eddie Izzard and eating dip. Sixteen was falling obsessively, destructively in love with the straight boy nextdoor. Sixteen was when I first smoked weed. Sixteen was defying my parents for the first time, choosing A levels against their wishes. Sixteen was about life outside my bedroom at night, growing up fast as a theme.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:36 am, Comments (1)
Tuesday 15th June, 2010
Double Maths and feeling ugly. This is all I remember of being fifteen. Everyone has a forgotten year and this was mine. The friendships that sustained me throughout my late teens didn’t exist yet; most of them I hadn’t even met. The silly crushes I’d formed on other boys at school lingered idiotically as my only interesting feature by the mere fact that they were secret. Aside from the amount of studying I needed to do, there was no difference between me at fifteen and eleven. Fifteen was a year spent in my bedroom on my own; revising, cramming, waiting.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:36 am, Comments (0)
Monday 14th June, 2010
By fourteen I was a “normal” teenager. I’d moved classes and was forming friendships, as well as a secret crush on another boy I’d write teenagerish angsty little poems about. I even started to harbour ambitions, wanting to be a doctor despite an immature perception of science as too cold and rigid. Most importantly, I had the privilege of travel, visiting my grandmother in the first of many trips to Egypt where she’d relocated after my grandfather died. He’d been a well-respected academic in Cairo. These annual visits allowed me to get to know the man I’d so recently lost.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:27 am, Comments (0)
Sunday 13th June, 2010
I started fainting as a result of not eating. Suddenly dizzy, I’d see see bright swirling colours, vaguely aware of my body twitching as I’d come around on the floor. On Christmas Day my dad was spending his first Christmas away in a separation from my mother and drove back to London when I was rushed to hospital after I fainted and my hand fell in an open fire. They referred me to a counselor to find out why I was malnourished. It was exactly like being sat in a room with someone who was paid to listen to me.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:28 pm, Comments (0)
Saturday 12th June, 2010
When I first realised I was gay it was pretty horrific. There was the usual name-calling at school. How did they know when I hardly did? I realised later that of course they didn’t; insults just happen to fit and I didn’t really have any friends. When I was twelve I swallowed a pack of paracetamol. It didn’t work; I just slept all day and damaged a kidney. That’d haunt me later. I soon stopped eating for days, punishing myself. My mother would yell at me when lunchboxes, lovingly prepared, came home untouched. So I started secretly throwing food away.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:36 am, Comments (0)
Friday 11th June, 2010
My grandfather died on the 11th June 1992, just days before my 12th birthday. I remember falling to pieces yet immersing myself in mundane tasks, and how strange it felt to do that so easily. This was the first time I learnt how. As soon as I heard, I made my mother a cup of tea, sobbing hysterically. Outside the traffic kept moving, the bees still humming. I was just getting to know him as a person, as a human being. His death cast a long shadow that lasts to this day. He remains a constant presence in my life.
• Ben's 100 words at 4:24 pm, Comments (0)
Thursday 10th June, 2010
I remember feeling sad leaving the Eighties, the only decade I’d then known. It was now the Nineties and writing the correct date suddenly looked impossibly futuristic and wrong. Weird. I then realised that the year 2000 was only ten years away. I was going to be twenty then. This sounded ancient; surely people who are twenty are all married, own their own house and drive everywhere. When I finally got to twenty I thought exactly the same thing of being thirty. The realisation of the naivety of my former expectations is a constant source of both disappointment and relief.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:08 am, Comments (0)
Wednesday 9th June, 2010
When I was nine I was told I was going to a new school. It would make a neat little story if I were to say how much I was against this and yet it all turned out for the best, but the truth is I’ve no recollection of feeling one way or the other about it. All I do remember is feeling incredibly happy and very quickly finding something of a second family, so much so that I’m still in touch with my ‘adopted’ brothers and sisters decades later. I know next to no one from my first school.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:07 am, Comments (0)
Tuesday 8th June, 2010
From the age of eight my dad wasn’t around so much. My uncle quickly became a surrogate father to my sister and I. As an artist he inspired us to draw, teaching us gently and subtly how to improve. He encouraged our juvenile interests, always taking us to films, exhibitions and once even to meet the then current Doctor Who. From him I gained my love of B-movie horror and sci-fi; late night films viewed from behind the safety of a snug cushion. Looking back it’s evident how much he loved us, and how much he loved having us around.
• Ben's 100 words at 3:01 am, Comments (0)
Monday 7th June, 2010
When I was seven all I wanted was to be a Cub Scout. Though I suppose I enjoyed the activities and friends I’d made, I somehow resented being just a Beaver. When the day finally came to pass under the riverblanket to Akela for my cap, woggle and neckerchief, it was one of the happiest of my childhood and my first sense of achievement, though in hindsight I hadn’t done much more than be patient. The novelty of being a Cub however barely lasted a year; I soon gave it up with little more than two badges on my sleeve.
• Ben's 100 words at 8:22 pm, Comments (1)
Sunday 6th June, 2010
We used to have a black retriever called Owen. My father later told me he’d never wanted a dog; he was a surprise from my grandparents. My toddler sister would ride the big friendly beast’s back and he’d oblige, covering us in drool and bouncing excitedly whenever we came home. He loved us. One day my father collected us from school. He told us Owen was dead. He’d died on the way to the vets and had crapped himself in the car. I remember thinking how serious it must’ve been for him to do that and not get shouted at.
• Ben's 100 words at 11:59 pm, Comments (0)
Saturday 5th June, 2010
The things we gain in life are too innumerable to fully appreciate, thus it’s only human nature to focus on those things we lose we can more easily recall. The things I remember from when I was five that have since disappeared include: my cat, Smudge; the Sixth Doctor Who costume my mother made me; white dog poo; my blue romper suit; the playground by my house we used to go to after school and the kind old lady who ran the sweetshop from a green shed in my grandparents’ village in the Gower. I can’t even remember her name.
• Ben's 100 words at 9:36 pm, Comments (0)
