When I was nine I tried to run away again. My brother and I packed some rice cakes and tools into the largest of my dad’s handkerchiefs we could find, and after tying it to a stick, Dick Whittington-style, we attempted to run away on a skateboard. We walked to the top of the hill by our house and with him at the front and me at the back, one arm holding him and the other our supplies, we attempted to abscond on his large white deck with its eighties neon wheels. We didn’t get very far. We veered off the pavement into a parked car and I hurt my arm so we went home.
Outside of my family life there was school. At this point I was at Brighton Steiner School. The class I was in was made up of ten boys and ten girls. We were all pretty weird and I liked that. It normalised things. It was like having a whole class of siblings. I got picked on but I didn’t mind it all that much; it felt like the kind of thing brothers and sisters say to each other so I let it go. I saw the name calling as affectionate. I figured that it was harmless fun. I liked school for a while. I really enjoyed learning in such a narrative way.
When my teacher picked on me it felt different, it didn’t feel like a nickname or like kids playing, it felt personal. One day I came into school with a piece of indigo dyed silk tied into my hair and bright turquoise dangly dolphin earrings on. I had just had dyed the silk with my mum and was so proud of what we had done. The earrings were new, my newly pierced ears had just healed, and I felt like a ‘lady.’ I almost skipped into class. I felt beautiful. I was happy to share who I was with the world. As I entered the room my teacher stopped me.
‘Ebonie Allard, this is not a fashion parade, take that ridiculous garb off now.’
I could hear everyone laughing.
I was so embarrassed.
I felt ashamed. After that I retreated, believing somewhere that it was shameful to be expressive and free and beautiful.
A new girl joined our class. She had a birthday party. She was allowed to invite 10 boys and 10 girls to her party. She invited everyone but me.
On Monday at school everyone else was laughing and joking together.
I remember feeling like I didn’t belong there anymore. I wasn’t part of anything.
I had felt OK at school but now I didn’t fit in anywhere. I started to spend a lot of time alone. I liked being alone, but I also hated it. I wanted to fit in and I wanted to belong. I felt more and more like a misfit and less and less like I belonged anywhere. And that was before my parents separated, and the hormones of adolescence kicked in.
1. You might think that no one ‘exclaims’ but my grandma did, she often exclaimed with all her might and vigorous gesticulation.
2. Steiner (Waldorf) education is a humanistic approach based on the educational philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Steiner distinguished three broad stages in child development. His early years education focuses on providing practical, hands-on activities and environments that encourage creative play. The emphasis in junior school is on developing pupils’ artistic expression and social capacities, fostering both creative and analytical modes of understanding. The secondary education focuses on developing both critical and empathetic understandings of the world through the study of mathematics, arts, sciences, humanities and world languages. Throughout, the approach stresses the role of the imagination in learning and places a strong value on integrating intellectual, practical, and artistic activities across the curriculum rather than learning each academic discipline as a separate concern. The educational philosophy’s overarching goal is to develop free, morally responsible, and integrated individuals equipped with a high degree of social competence. Teaching is intended to emphasize qualitative over quantitative assessment methods. Each school has a high degree of autonomy to decide how best to construct its curriculum and govern itself.
3. Neuro Linguistic Programming.
4. I love my sister to pieces and I am SO happy she was born. But in 1990 I was nine and a half and I was fucked off. I wanted a kitten. My brother had a rabbit, and it all felt very unfair.
5. http://www.monktonwyldcourt.co.uk/About_the_Court/index.html I think we went so that she could research EO (Education Otherwise). There was a brief period where they thought about educating us at home.
6. Tipi Valley is the daddy of all UK Eco communities. Founded in 1976, it’s a 200-acre expanse of rolling countryside bought piece by piece from local farmers by its 200 or so residents (100 during the winter). The community includes families, singletons, activists, hippies, many ‘originals’, festival junkies, environmentalists, astrologers, artists, musicians and the like. The majority live in low-impact dwellings – tipis, yurts, caravans, huts, round houses – scattered across the idyllic valley. Source: http://www.huckmagazine.com/. For more information about communal living and eco-communities see http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/.
7. http://www.millionaireminduk.com/ A 3-day seminar created by T. Harv Eker on money and mindset.
8. To identify your money memories and reframe them go to www.misfit2maven.com/bonuses
ALWAYS TOO MUCH, NEVER ENOUGH
I moved to a proper high school in the spring of 1992. Big school. Fucking HUGE school. I went from a class of 21 children and 8 classes in the whole school to a class of 35, 10 classes in a year and 5 years in one campus. Mind BLOWN.
It was scary, but it was also exciting; the ultimate chameleon test.
The lessons were boring, the teachers were boring and most of the people were boring, but this was normality and I had arrived. Some of these kids were cool and I wanted to be like them.
I wanted to engage, I wanted to make friends and be a part of their world, but I’d joined in the spring term and everyone already had a best friend and a group that they hung with. I didn’t know how to act in this environment, I hadn’t worked out the rules yet. So I just loitered in between the groups, flitting from one to another and trying to figure it all out. I desperately wanted to belong, but I didn’t fit anywhere. I saw this move into normality as an opportunity and I was determined to make the most of it.
Why won’t you like me? What are the rules? How do I play?
Outside of school I had festivals, not the big music festivals you might know of, but smaller camps organised by peace-loving, art-making eco warriors. Some I went to with my family,