Watched the film Precious this past weekend and I was all prepared with kleenex as I’d heard it was quite the tear-jerker … but what I hadn’t been prepared for was how it would tear my guts apart. I mean, no, I was never quite that obese as a child and my family life wasn’t quite as violent, and instead of being told I was stupid I was told I was selfish and BAD (knowing I was far from stupid was the only thing that kept me sane), but there were enough similarities there to drag me through a whole hellish trip down memory lane. And although most of those memories are emotional ones – I probably only have about 10% actual recall – they remain very strong memories indeed.

Some differences: I didn’t end up pregnant and I left home when I was 15, though I did end up going to an alternative highschool when it became clear that I wasn’t fitting into The System. That was my choice and I’m really glad I did that or I probably wouldn’t have finished school.

I’d rather not talk about the similarities, other than this one: in the film the girl called Precious is always drifting into fantasies when awful things happen to her and I swear I spent almost my entire childhood “somewhere else” that felt safer and where I could imagine I was somebody special and loved. And there is a scene in the film when Precious is asked to talk about her life in class (at the alternative school) and when she is finally able to do so and is asked how that made her feel she says “Here. It made me feel Here”. I could hear that capital H and, well, I crumpled up at that point because I knew exactly what she meant and also thought how lucky she was to have got there so much sooner in her life than I did. Because although the fantasies became less frequent – and less “out there” – I found other ways of not being here, which I know held me back and kept me from doing more with my life. In fact, it probably wasn’t until I got cancer that I started to really pay attention and stay in the moment, mostly because most everything else ceased to matter. What a way to grow up.

But I am Here now … well, most of the time anyway.
And I do think I’d like to stay awhile.