Naomi

Because of some routine school administrative stuff, I had a four-day weekend. I could have enjoyed it, but my head just wasn’t in the right place. I spent the first half in a foul mood, without much idea why.

On Saturday, Dad said I was being what T.S Eliot called a Rum Tum Tugger in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats—a cat who’s always on the wrong side of the door. Dad said, “When you don’t have to go to school you feel out of sorts, but when you do have to go to school you like to find a way out.” I reluctantly agreed that, yes, I was a Rum Tum Tugger right then. But this annoyed a very deep part of me.

My mum was pregnant with me when my gran died. She’d met my older brother, but she didn’t get to meet me. She told my dad, her son, to bring up a strong-minded daughter. “How do you know it’s a girl?” my dad asked. She said she just knew. Well, I did turn out to me a girl and I know that most of the time I am strong-minded. I feel like I owe it to her to be that way, since she predicted it. It gives me determination. That’s why I hate feeling wishy-washy, being neither here nor there—it drives me mad. I usually know what’s up in my OWN mind.

I have had so much new human contact lately. New school, new situation. All of this interaction has been bending and shaping my mind, instead of my making up my own mind. This school experience has been a bit of a whirlwind so far. So much is new, and my brain spends so much time trying to process it all. I keep on fiddling with the concept of ME. If people at school like me, I struggle with that, because they’ve only known me a month. How can they like me if they don’t really know me, you know? I don’t know if their concept of Naomi matches up with MY concept of Naomi…and should it even have to? I’ve always known who I am when I am on my own. Now I am even questioning who that person is.

Sometimes I come home from lessons and feel a completely different person. I am finally completely and utterly alone with my thoughts, not having to juggle my feelings about other people, and it feels odd. The melding of these two people within me—the on-my-own me and the me with people—is a slightly painful experience. ♦