Superglue

By Jodie Young

And what about your mum?

Oh, my mum?

She died when I was five

God that’s young

Yeah, I guess it is, but you know it’s made me strong and you can’t really miss what you never had.

I used to really believe that last line I would tell people. Sometimes I still do and have to remind myself I am wrong.

I have been unwilling for a long time to admit that my mum dying had any lasting effects on me. I have hidden it, deflected it, belittled it. All the while doing a pretty good job at keeping people at arm’s length.

Some people see it though, they know it’s there. That big old crack down the middle of me that I have tried to super glue shut for 28 years. I feel uncomfortable with people’s sympathy. I find it hard to ask for support or to be looked after. Being vulnerable is the bit I struggle with the most.

So obviously I find this terrifying, letting out this badly kept secret to the internet. Hi, my mums dead and it turns out it was, and always will be fucking horrific and I am really sad about it.

I have a few memories left of my mum. A couple of her comforting me when I was crying. One of her pacing around the front room in anger at having to wear a wig after losing her hair. A time when I got into trouble for poking a hole in her chicken fillet she had to wear after her mastectomy. And the last and strongest, when she died.

When I was younger, I would talk to her out loud. Set imaginary places for her at the dinner table. Even write her letters asking for help or advice.

All of that stopped as I got a bit older. I became a teenager and I remember suddenly realising she was dead. I know it sounds strange, but it’s true. I would say over and over in my head that my mum was dead. Not quite able to believe it. Getting older began to show me what I was never going to have. I think that’s when I started to shut everything down and started to really disassociate myself with what happened. Almost like it happened to another girl. How could something so sad happen to me? Look I am fine!

Even when I made friends with others whose mums had died; it still didn’t really help me feel comfortable enough to connect with it. We used to call ourselves the 50% Orphans, cackling when our dark humour would make other people feel awkward. We would talk about our mums and what happened, all the while I was secretly happy that it didn’t seem to have had as much of an effect on me as it had them. I put it down to me being the youngest when it happened. Or being there when she died must have helped me process it quicker.

I thought I had been sailing through life totally unscathed by it all. ‘Sure, it’s been hard. But I knew she was ill; I knew she was dying from a very young age. That all helped’. Mother’s Day’s would pass, her birthday would go by too. I don’t know the date my mum died; dad always says it’s around Easter. Sometimes I feel bad that I don’t know, and I should be marking it in some way. Sometimes I would feel bad about not being upset about it at all.

I got fed up with my life in London and got fed up with myself. I thought that if I went to the other side of the world all of a sudden, a switch would be activated, and I would be a brand-new person.

I set sail for my new/old life in Australia. This was where I was born and where we lived when my mum died. I ended up living around the corner from the house we lived in. Her ashes were scattered in the harbour I had to walk past every day on the way to work. I remembered things, pushed them back down again and carried on. Spoiler alert, going away didn’t make me new. It did make me wobble and crack a bit though. It made my mum real again and what happened a reality. I didn’t really want to ignore it anymore.

Back in Hastings the 50% Orphans and I all worked together. Day in day out we would sit in a small bright pink office and talk. We would talk all day. Unbeknown to me I was slowly being worked on and prised open, they had seen that super glued crack in me for years. The conversations swung from light-hearted stuff to darker thoughts that only we could tell each other. They got me used to talking about things I found uncomfortable. They made me feel safe enough to start being vulnerable. Because of them I started to go to therapy. I would then come back to our little pink room and hash it out with them and talk about it all some more.

Now I am starting to think about the things I did miss out on not having my mum. And I am trying to not be as scared to admit that it is sad, and it is awful and there is nothing wrong with wishing it was different. I wish we could go out for lunch, buy her something nice for Christmas, go to an art gallery together. Have her come and stay with me. Have a family WhatsApp. Have an absolute blazing row with her. Really make each other laugh. Have her remind me of stories from when I was a kid. Know her favourite song. For her to see something in a shop that I would like and pick it up for me. To be irritable with each other. I wish we could just know each other really.