A long miserable story-sorry!

carmella chihuahua · A long miserable story-sorry!

Hope this is not too long or miserable-think character has same name as one in last story too

Wrote these all about about three years ago when bored....THE LAST PARTY OF THE SUMMER.

5. 09.02
I’ve decided to start a diary. I need to try and make some sort of sense of the way I’m feeling right now.
I didn’t mean to become pregnant. But I am, only just, but the one thing I do know is that I can’t get rid of it. It’s a sign, an omen. Slight signs of dissatisfaction have been drifting like a fine mist around my life for a couple of months now; the cold nights, police moving us endlessly on, to some place always on the horizon but never actually existing. This is my reason for escape.
I used to be so happy travelling around setting up these raves, me and around ten others, in a decrepit convoy of four Bedford vans, give or take the occasional drifter who couldn’t hack it for long. Like me.
I seem, well I did, to have a second instinct for homing in on the perfect field, the remotest warehouse. Passing around the donations bucket and selling a few pills and beers once the rave was up and running gave us just enough money to live on. Watching hundreds of pairs of feet stamping to the bass, blurred beaming faces and knowing we’d done this, we’d transformed this derelict barn into a modern chemical nirvana. It made us feel like gods. Somewhat dishevelled gods but gods nonetheless.
But I haven’t felt that way for a while, and now this. A baby.
When I told Jez, yesterday that he was going to be a father, it was obvious he wasn’t quite ready to relinquish his lifestyle.
‘We can bring it along in the van,’ he said like I was suggesting getting a puppy. ‘I’ll make a little bed in the corner. Baz’s got some wood going spare.’
The wood in question was for the bookcase Jez had planned to make two years previously. I knew it wouldn’t happen.
‘We’re leaving.’ I told him. ‘I can’t live like this with a child. You can stay with the convoy or you can stay with me. It’s your choice.’
He lit up a spliff and inhaled deeply, pushed a matted dread out of his face with a trembling grubby hand. Then we talked.

‘We can still travel a bit in the summer can’t we?’ A plaintive last resort.
‘We’ll see.’
I already sound like a mother.
But I’ve won. I knew I would.

4.10.02
I’m exactly one month and two weeks pregnant today.
It’s a Saturday afternoon; I’m sat down on my own, aching back against tree, worrying. It’ s the first rave we’re putting since I found out I was pregnant and even though it’s a lovely location, a wooded glade, miles from anywhere, my stomach is churning and acid bile floods my mouth.
Will my baby be able to hear the sound system? Will it damage it’s unfurled ears? I feel sick, nervous, and edgy. It’s going to be my last rave as well. I’ve been on the council list for years and when I told them I was pregnant, a flat suddenly became available for immediate occupation. Already my baby is more important than me.
Jez is bounding around like a good-natured Labrador barking instructions to the others as to where to put the crates of beers to sell. I can’t help but wonder how he’s going to adjust to normality. Or if he ever will.
He just flopped panting down beside me.
‘What you moping for down there for, darling? It’s our last party tonight and we gotta make the most of it. Do you want a pill? They’re Mitsubishis and bloody wicked.’
I’m annoyed but resignedly so. It’s too hot to be angry and Jez never thinks sensibly.
‘I’m pregnant Jez.’ I told him. ‘I can’t take drugs anymore and once we move, then I rather you didn’t either. What if our baby swallowed something?’
‘Yeah. Spoze. Better make the most of it tonight then, shouldn’t I?’ He perked up at this thought, absently mindedly patted my stomach and has now sloped off towards the others who are clustered around one of the van’s bonnets from which smoke billows and drifts up to join the tendrils of clouds wafting across the blue sky.
It’s going to be a lovely night.

Later.
Danny and Mel have been on the mobile constantly, spreading the word and informing the party lines of ‘a wicked free party down Coney Glade. Kicks off midnight and going to be banging!’
Banners depicting green and yellow dragons glow neon under ultraviolet lights and the generator purrs in an oily corner. Staccato bursts of noise blurt intermitted from the sound system being tested and camouflage nets drape from branches. A few other vans have rumbled up, their sides covered in bright murals of mushrooms, cannabis leaves, faeries and stars.
Their inhabitants blend in seamlessly with my convoy. Bedraggled combat trousers and mud splattered para boots dance past, snippets of laughter and conversation float past my ears but I already feel distant from it all.
There’s no bump apparent under my dress but I feel as though a cartoon arrow hovers above it marking me out as different, sensible. Normal. I feel fat and look down at my feet when I walk to see if I’m waddling. I stare at other people’s babies and wondering what mine will look like. Is it evil not to want one with a squint like that one I saw in Safeway’s? After spurning conformity for so long, now my dreams are like one long advert full of chuckling plump babies frolicking on white carpet but I can’t see myself in those dreams. I can’t see my bleached dreaded pigtails or my nose ring.
I don’t want to cast off my identity but I also don’t want to be stared at with the same derision I used to give to the linen clad mothers with three wheeled pushchairs and immaculate hair. I’m scared they’ll think I’m a bad mother shooting up smack as my baby cries in a corner tended only by a succession of ‘uncles’.
I’ve got to get a grip.
It’s dark now and I’m hidden completely here, underneath the same tree. I’ve been here hours, watching yet not fully comprehending the stream of people and vehicles flowing past and around me. I don’t feel hungry and my back has been aching so long I accept it unthinkingly.
I can feel the bass throbbing underneath me as the higher notes crescendo around my ears and I realise my foot is tapping and I don’t know how long for. The techno has been getting progressively faster but subtly so and occasionally I recognise distorted samples of chart music, politicians speeches and news samples.
I see people I’ve known for years and people I know from somewhere. Lights flash over faces rendering them red, blue, yellow and the UV shows up false teeth, neon earrings and clothes and white shoes that never stop moving.
We’ve done a good one tonight but this time I’m not a part of it and this is the way it will be from now on.

I’m going to miss it but I’m already drifting away.
A gurning face offers me a can of cider. I take it and carefully spill half away to nourish the roots of my protective tree. Half a can won’t hurt. I want a spliff but no, I shouldn’t. I want a pill but know I can’t.
An argument is breaking out before me as a guy with a straggly mohican shouts incoherently at a bemused looking skinny black girl. ‘Yer all against me! I know yer all are.’ It’s all I can catch before he staggers off into the distance, his shaking fist outlined against the lights.
A couple are leaned against a tree; my tree, kissing passionately and I envy them and feel sorry for them. Jez and I never kissed so romantically. Or maybe I’m just bitter. Maybe we did and I don’t want to remember because we certainly don’t now. I don’t really want to.

A grinning gargoyle face reveals itself to be Jez again, off his tits, carrying a huge bag of pills, come to berate me ‘for not like dancing, because it’s just so right, you know, it’s like my feet are moving without me and the music is inside me and why are you still sitting there?’
Why am I still sitting here? Time to stop writing and mingle, for old times sake. Jez looks like he’s bathed in a blue light and an undulating whine hovers around my ears like a mosquito. People are running, something’s not right, is that…no it can’t be oh fuck

5?10.02

My head hurts. I don’t know where I am, what time it is or how long I’ve been here, in this small dark room. Or how long I slept. Or if I even did. I would love to wake up. Want my tree back. Stiff cramped body, pins and needles. I don’t want to think about what just happened, not sure if I can deal with it.
Footsteps. Better stop writing. I’m glad I’ve still got my diary and I don’t want it taken from me.
That was PC Colin Wakefield, number 2901.
It wasn’t a dream. This is reality and I’m in deep shit.
‘Call me Colin’, was grimly sympathetic, playing good cop no doubt. Didn’t believe me but who would? I can’t believe it myself.
‘But at the end of the day (god, I hate people who say that) you were found in possession of two hundred Ecstasy tablets. If what you say is true and your boyfriend planted them on you during the raid, then once we find him, that can be verified and you will be free to go. Now have you any idea where he might be found?’
No. Of course I don’t. One minute I’m ruminating and writing under a tree, the next, it’s all kicking off and people are running, engines revving, sirens, screams, and bedlam. And I’m a sitting frozen duck in a blue spotlight and Jez has vanished and in my lap, appear a big white bag of pills. And on stiff shaking wrists snap shiny cold chrome handcuffs. I think I might have been slapped but I’m not sure. It’s all a bit misty and I don’t want to think about it too much because that’s when the hurt, the horror and the betrayal will really kick in.
But Jez and I were meant to be moving into our council flat on Monday. The rest of the convoy wrapped their grievances up in platitudes and promised to stay in touch. I doubted they would, even then. Travellers are an insular community and weary of deserters, especially families. Once you’ve strayed from that well-worn path of conformity, there is a tendency to turn a studded nose up at those who prefer a more mundane existence.
A year or so ago, I felt like that myself. Jez, I and the rest of the convoy would sit around the campfire buoyed up with cider and self-riotousness, strumming guitars or listening to techno. We talked with pitying scorn of those sheep like masses somewhere over the horizon encased in their Barratt tombs. A television screeching propaganda in the corner and a gelatinous microwaved dinner in wobbling lap.
We were different. We were nomads. Warriors.
We were free.

But sometimes at night, as my hipbones dug into a dirty thin mattress, like the one I’m sat on now, as Jez snored open-mouthed in an alcoholic slumber, I envied normality.
As the council members tutted over clipboards and ever so politely told us to get off their land, I wanted somewhere to go.
As we shivered in yet another lay-by as rain spat and dribbled down the ever-closer walls, I wished.
I wished for a dusky pink sofa and a cup of coffee that didn’t take half an hour to make. A white flushing toilet with a lock on the door and quilted toilet paper. Acres of cupboards with shiny useless nick knacks spilling out.
I wished for a home.
Not my childhood residence for that was unworthy of the term and I’d experienced more affection from Rizzo, Jez’s lurcher than from my reluctant bitter mother. The van was my home and these scruffy vagabonds my family. We bickered like one and occasionally there would be a more serious fight, generally when too many drugs or alcohol had been consumed. We mostly looked after one another though, united in our grievances when society or the system fucked us over once again. When we were spat at, moved on and skint.
We belonged together because we belonged nowhere else.
The travelling community accepted me when no-one else would, when I was going from squat to squat, fending off advances from junkies, and despite feeling a deep affinity with them and their lifestyle, I was determined my baby would have the stable normal upbringing I never did.
Somewhere deep within me, there had been an unthinkable shifting resentment at Jez for his involvement in my cosy domestic scene but he needed to be there to make it a proper family. I already had my suspicions over whether he’d be a proper father though. I cared deeply for him and we became a couple almost immediately after I joined the convoy but I didn’t love him. I needed him though. I despise being alone over everything.
And I can’t fucking believe he’s done this to me. That they all did. No one else arrested according to Colin, only dreamy dizzy old me. They’ll be holed up in a field in Ireland or somewhere by now, not really concerned about me because I was going to desert them anyway but Jez? This was his excuse, his Get Out Of Jail Free card. He’s evaded arrest and domestic drudgery in one lightning quick motion of the hand and I’m sure he feels a little guilty right now, might even try and contact me in a couple of months to stammer an excuse and an apology but I can feel his relief. Nothing bothers Jez for long anyway. I don’t know what’s going to happen to my baby and me though and I’m so bloody scared and lonely.
I’ve been offered a free phone call but I’ve no one to phone.
.
6.10.02
I’ve just had a taped interview. Colin was really sweet and gave me tissues when I started crying. I was going to mention the pregnancy but decided not to. Don’t want to be seen a bad mum before the poor bugger’s even born. The WPC was less sympathetic and kept asking all these questions about where the drugs came from even though I’ve told her again and again that I had nothing to do with them. She doesn’t believe me but I think Colin does.
Apparently I’ve been here less than 24 hours, feels years since I was submerged under that canopy of branches, bark etching and scratching into hunched back, the smell of firewood and dope seeping into my nostrils. Free.
Within a few hours I’m either going to be charged with possession with intent to supply or will be released. If I get charged, then it’s the end of everything. A big black cavern gapes wide to swallow me up. Every footstep makes me shake. Colin chatted to me when walking me back to this godforsaken cell. I always thought police were bastards but he’s quite a decent guy, even likes techno.
Someone’s coming, oh please god, help me.

7.10.02

I’m free. Safe. Released without charge but suspicious glares followed me out of the station. I will never ever set foot in one again.
I keep shaking my head and looking around at these little white walls, but they aren’t those of the stinking cell but my council flat, the one, Jez and I were meant to move into today. Together. I don’t miss him exactly but I miss him being around. Bastard.
The flat is empty. I have nothing except my diary; the few articles of clothing and books I possessed are presumably still travelling around in a belching rusting truck.
Colin’s been amazing and has given me some cups and plates and things and even gave me a lift to the Job Centre before his shift. Why the hell is he being so nice? I can’t imagine him helping every prisoner out like this but I’m sure he doesn’t fancy me; he’s far too straight and normal for someone like me. He’s asked me out for a drink later. Better make it just the one, I haven’t told him I’m pregnant yet. If for some reason, he does fancy me, I don’t want him to be put off. Shouldn’t think like that, I know. He’s the only person in my life at the moment though and I’m so lonely, want someone to talk to, want to laugh. It’s been ages since I’ve laughed.

8.10.02

I laughed.

15.10.02

How can someone like me be going out with a policeman? I really do like him, but he’s so different from anyone and anything I’ve ever known before. I’m not sure if I like him because or in spite of that. He took me to a restaurant and held open the door, he’s smoked dope but hasn’t done anything else, and he drinks but doesn’t get drunk. He has no tattoo’s, thin blonde hair and has a slight Bristol accent as he’s lived here all his life. All his life! Imagine…
I’ve told him everything, well nearly everything. And he listened. When I told him about mum throwing me out, I think I saw a tear glisten on the rim of his lower eyelash. I hope I did. The thought of someone caring that much makes me feel giddy, powerful, wanted. We had sex. I didn’t see fireworks, I didn’t wake the neighbours with screams of abandonment but he was clean, gentle and held me afterwards. He told me I was bewitching, beautiful, amazing. It was…nice.
And I haven’t told him that I’m pregnant. And an evil voice whispers in my head and I try to drown it out with simpers and giggles and kisses rained on pale naked shoulders but I can still hear it.
But I’m so scared of losing him. It’s too late to tell him now and he might be upset, angry, might leave me to my four blank walls, bitterness and loneliness. I need him. He said he loved me last night and I said it back. It’s not true but it might be later. I really do care for him; I don’t want to upset him so I’m not going to tell him that I’m pregnant. There. It’s out.

19.12.02

Colin was delighted to hear I was pregnant and asked me to marry him. He wants a ‘proper’ family too and who am I to deny him that? He went down on one knee and everything and a diamond shivers coldly on my fingers except they don’t look like my fingers anymore. I feel grown up, mature and my bump sticks defiantly out, strangers put their hands on it which really pisses me off. I feel sick, and I want it to be all over and done with but I’m scared of the baby coming out of me because I keep thinking that will spoil everything and somehow I’ll be found out. I hope it looks like Colin but I want it to look like me.
I’m now ensconced in Colin’s immaculate Barratt home. There is quilted toilet paper and through the net curtains, a view of the neighbours caravan.
I sit around all day watching other people live on television and it’s enjoyable and comfortable but the novelty is wearing a bit thin. The baby will give me something to do though. Imagine the old crowd seeing me like this, in my dressing gown that makes me look like one of those knitted dolls with a (quilted) toilet roll stuffed up the skirt. Colin bought it for me. He thinks it’s ‘sexy’. I don’t. He’s still being so sweet and affectionate towards me but I would like to walk down the street without his arm around me and not be woken up my his feeble asthmatic snoring. I’m so ungrateful; he’s such a dear.

11.6.03

I’ve had a little girl. I’m going to call her Poppy. Colin said she was incredibly ‘bouncing’ for a baby six weeks premature but he was so enraptured over her ‘darling little tootsies’, he didn’t see the red blush seeping over my cheeks. I think I’m going to get away with it. I hate having to lie to him when he’s been so good to me but it’s for all of our sakes.
I’m not sure if I like Poppy. I hate seeing that in print staring accusingly up at me like Poppy’s dark eyes, Jez’s dark eyes. I wish she were Colin’s. I wish this marriage wasn’t such a sham. He doesn’t deserve it. Poppy is the only thing that connects me with the past, the past I don’t want to think about, the past I wish didn’t exist. She was conceived on a stained dirty marriage, not on an Ikea futon, her father’s a drug addled crustie not a softly spoken policeman and I think she knows. She’s already stopping me from being normal and I resent that and I resent her. I’ve had a child for seven hours and already I’m a bad mother. This is everything I’ve wanted but it still doesn’t feel right. Why can’t I ever be happy?
I took my nose ring out before I went into the hospital. I didn’t want to look like an old hippy earth mother. Colin was upset and said he fell in love with me because I was so ‘different and unconventional’ blah blah blah and not to feel like I had to conform. It’s too late for that though. From the moment I discovered I was pregnant, I started conforming. Here I am, whinging again when I should be blowing raspberries on Poppy’s taut pink stomach like they do on the adverts. I will try harder (repeat fifty times)

11.7.03

Colin was hurt because I forgot Poppy was a month old today. I told him it was the lack of fucking sleep that made me forgetful and he winced when I said ‘fuck’ like it was going to be Poppy’s first fucking word. So I chanted ‘fuck’, over her cot to the tune of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, when he was doing the washing up. I’m evil but I’m starting to revel in it instead of burying myself under dutiful chirpy wife ness. And it’s kind of fun.
Colin thinks I might have post-natal depression and he’s right. It’s not a hormonal imbalance though. I just don’t like my baby. I’ve tried but she seems determined to snatch my hair and shriek at me and spew foul sour sick on my shoulders. I feel frumpy, frowsy, fat. I have stretchmarks. I’m old and boring and it’s all her fault. Colin says I look beautiful. Colin would. I want a cigarette and I don’t even smoke. Wouldn’t that horrify him? Just imagine blowing smoke into Poppy’s face in front of him, seeing her little nose wrinkle in distain. He’d have a cardiac arrest. God, I’m a witch. Good to get it all out though. Think I’d explode if it weren’t for this diary. God forbid, anyone actually reading it.

16.9.03

BORED BORED BORED BORED BORED.

20.10.03

Haven’t bothered writing anything for a while because there’s nothing to write. I got the last tub of half price Haagen Daaz Cookies And Cream in Sainsburys the other day but that’s been the high point of my existence.
Poppy’s getting bigger, think I was getting a bit hysterical after the birth. I don’t really hate her, just ambivalent now really. Colin is obsessed with her, it’s ironic because he thinks she’s more his baby than mine. He gives me puzzled glances when I don’t leap up every time she starts squealing and squawking but he hasn’t said anything to me. Except that I’m beautiful and he loves me. Yawn. Does he ever say anything else? He was offered a promotion, can’t remember to what but didn’t take it because he ‘wanted to spend more time at home.’ How sweet.
I played loud techno this morning and danced like a teenager around my bedroom. It was wonderful. Adrenalin surged through my lumpen blue veins and I felt young, free, and alive. My heart pounded like it had just been revived and I lost myself in the bass and imagined myself dancing in a field at dawn with two hundred other people. Then Poppy started crying. I did too. What am I doing here? I’m stultified, decaying. Suffocating in sea of pink, of useless knickknacks, smoothie makers, nappy bins, electric tin openers, sensible cardigans. What have I become?
21.10.03

I’ve become everything I hate. I’m bored with normal. I’m bored with home, happy fucking families. I want my life back. I want me back.
Outside of my enclosing aertexed walls, the sound of suburbia hums gently and relentlessly on.
A siren’s plaintive wail drifts around my ears. It’s not an exciting sounding siren. It’s not a portent of rioting and murder. No, its thin insistent wail is because Maude Jenkins’s hip has come out of its socket again or my husband is determined to catch whoever stole that Rimmel lipstick from Boots.
‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ or an infinity of songs that sound the same blurt in a static fuzz from a paint splattered radio at the bottom of the scaffolding from number twenty two, ‘Lark’s Rest’.
A stumbling stuttering rendition of ‘Chopsticks’ is being dully wrought out of next doors piano. It stops, starts, begins again and again and again in monotonous tranquil discordance.
My baby is still crying somewhere. Does she ever fucking stop?
And somewhere, over the horizon, traffic purrs with no respite, as continuous as a heartbeat.

30.11.03

Jez. Here. Today. The pen is wet, ungraspable in my sweating shaking hand. Fuck. Thank Christ Colin was at work.
Somehow, don’t want to know how, Jez found out where I, we lived and when I saw a knackered old bus turn into the cul-de sac, saw the neighbours curtains move, I just knew. And the worst thing was that I was glad. No, that’s not the worst thing. Shit, how could I do that?
He came in, looked around, polite compliments not quite masking the sneer. He asked to see his baby. They look so much alike. Same dark curly hair, glittering gypsy eyes. He ‘accidentally ’ dropped the pills, apparently. I don't believe him but pretended I did.
I showed him around the house. We went upstairs.

I think the neighbours heard.
Ooops.
Jez wants to keep seeing Poppy.
I should be hysterical but now numbness has set in. Better change the sheets.

1.12.03

Colin’s worried about me being so quiet. I feel sick. Hate myself. Hate Jez, hate Colin and Poppy. What if the neighbours say something? I can’t take this anymore. Got to get away from all this.
Got to think. The rest of the convoy are in France, according to Jez. I’ve never been to France. The parties they’ve been putting on have been wicked apparently and they have a proper campsite with running water. He wants to go back there but wants to see Poppy more. Doesn’t know that Colin doesn’t know. He’s asking to have her every weekend. Being polite about it but he’s determined. I’ve never seen Jez determined before. What do I do? What the hell do I do? I want to be bored again but even though I’m terrified, I feel alive again. I put my nose ring back I but thought that seemed too symbolic of something, although I don’t know what of so I took it back out.
What the hell do I do? Jez is coming over again on Thursday. I have two days to decide.

2.12.03

I’m going to do it.

5.12.03
Well, I’ve done it.
I’ve escaped. Well, I thought I had.
I’m curled up in a dank corner of an old library bus in a muddy flat field somewhere in Northern France. I’m covered in a holey scratchy blanket that smells wetly of Dog.
There is no campfire and the only running water is down the side of the bus. Inside and outside. There is no quilted toilet paper but there are also no toilets. I’m cold and should be hungry but where my stomach should be, squats a churning heavy hole.
When I arrived, several hours ago, I thought no one had recognised me. But they had and just didn’t make the fuss I somehow thought they would. Jez isn’t here. Colin isn’t here. Poppy isn’t here. And somehow I don’t feel as if I am.
This wasn’t how I imagined it would be.
It’s all wrong. I can’t stop thinking about what’s going on at home, if Jez has confronted Colin, poor Colin, and whether Poppy knows her mother has abandoned her. Poppy. I keep thinking about her smile. I hope she’s smiling now although if she’s crying, that means she misses me. I’m crying. I have been since I arrived here.
I don’t want to be here anymore, but there is no-where else I can go. Poor Colin, poor Poppy. Stupid evil selfish me. I’ve fucked everyone and everything up and I don’t know what the hell to do. Colin won’t have me back now he knows what a monster I am and I will never ever see my daughter again. What the hell have I done? What the fuck am I going to do?

1.1.04

.
.I danced at dawn and thought of Jez, danced in the sun, thought of Colin, I cry every night and think of you.
My darling Poppy, I love you when you’re not around. I love everyone when they’re not around.
I’ve never been good with this whole reality thing.
I want you to be happy but if you have anything of me in you, then you never will be.
My poisonous legacy.
Give my love to Colin. Give my love to Jez.
Give some love to me, even though I know I don’t deserve it.
You have two fathers. I have no one.
I don’t deserve anyone but you didn’t deserve to be left. Colin didn’t deserve to meet Jez at the door and hear the truth in the way he did.
And I don’t deserve my life.
Hopefully this diary I’m sending to you will make you understand just a bit of my life and why I have to do this.
I love you now. Please remember that.
And don’t put flowers on my grave.

Plant a tree.

wraeth

'unfurled ears'

That story felt very real.

Ninjadmin

that's really good

fuggin hippies

sparky lightbourne

the title should be changed, long miserable story is not that appealing as a name

i'll read it the sarvo when i've got time to do it justice