My Substack Secret

It makes me feel like being back at school - not in a good way.

I have been pondering whether to write this post after I ended up in tears two mornings ago. I was trying to explain to my husband, who I wanted my readers to be - who it was that I wanted to write for. This whole episode made me realise that I needed to write this.

I love Substack and I love the potential it has to enable us to support each other, to create community and to share words that are important to us - to make us feel like we belong.

But I do not feel this. I do not feel that I belong.

More and more, I read posts about someone who has ‘given it all up’ to travel around the world for a year and focus on their writing. Or someone who has left their ‘corporate job’ to buy a small, exquisite place in the south of France (or a smallholding in the Shetlands or a cottage in 7 acres, etc etc etc) They write about the hardships they are facing - (a nomad lifestyle means you cannot always buy your favourite bottle of extra virgin olive oil and carry it around with you) and I read their posts and fume and feel so much anger but also I feel envy and hurt. These are the three emotions I felt most at school.

The photo is of me when I was about 14/15, the discomfort in my face is evident, it was not just present during photographs.

That discomfort came from knowing my sister and I needed to share one P.E kit between us as we had no money to buy two. When we both had sports on the same day I would wear the sweaty gym skirt and top she had already used.

That discomfort came from knowing that we had to sometimes use rolled up toilet paper as we had no sanitary towels.

From knowing that when we did have those old, padded sanitary towels, we would sometimes have to cut them up as we had no toilet paper.

From knowing that a new dress (like the one I am wearing) had to be paid off every week at the local store before you could have it.

From knowing that tinned tomatoes on one piece of toast was not really a proper dinner but being grateful for it.

From knowing that we were poor.

Even when I was in Junior School I can remember the envy I felt at the long, white socks of the other girls. Mine were grey from too much washing and only ever came up to my calves, that was if they still had elastic. Patricia, Andrea, Jackie, they all had beautiful white socks, I so wanted to be in their group. Their movements were graceful, oiled with money whilst my poverty creaked in my joints and made my movements stiff. That group of girls were always the first to fill up the squares of their paper crosses when we collected money from our families for Father Hudsons Homes, (for poor children.) You had to get 2p to colour in a square and there were about 20 squares in the cross. I never, in all my time at school, filled a complete cross.

I joined up with the othergirls like me, the ones with the grey socks, the ones with weird names that were not proper English or Irish, the ones that were too fat or too thin or had crooked teeth or glasses. Carmela, Breda, Jacinda, Shirley, they were my group and with them I felt a sense of belonging and grace.

Yet still, still, I wanted to be part of that ‘other group,’ the beautiful ones who seemed so at ease within their bodies and lives and I was so angry with them for being so beautiful and so hurt by my own plainness.

I feel echoes of this here on Substack. I see very successful writers supporting very successful writers; travel and lovely homes in abundance and many of us witnessing it from a type of outside …

Is this sounding like a pity-party? I don’t care - for me it is a reminding of what matters to me and why I am here.

I know I too have privilege - even having the headspace to write this is something my mom never had. The fact that I have an actual room to write in is incredible to me. The fact that I now live in Sweden - amazing! Though the fact that I will never have enough money to move back to Britain if I wanted to, saddens me and the fact that I can only afford to travel back to see my family if I have a piece of paid work there, saddens me even more. So yes, I have privilege and yet the raw root of me still pains when I read those posts.

I realise becoming hurt and angry and envious of the success and privilege of those writers does not serve me in any way. They have no idea that I exist and truthfully I am so bloody happy for them - that they have a good life and they can enjoy. In so many ways I want that too, of course. And I am of no importance to them, I am of importance to myself and to my lived experience.

I came to Substack to write and to create/find a community. I did not come here to ‘transform’ myself, I came here to write about finding the ‘me-ness’ of me in order to help others do the same. I did not come here to have a vast following or even to make money (though I really need to,) I came to connect and write, those two things.

So that is what I will do. I will write and I will connect

Connect with the girl with the old, grey socks
Connect with the mom who is searching the pockets of all her clothes to see if she can find some money
Connect with the woman with the toilet paper between her legs
Connect with the family who have wet clothes drying on every radiator inside their damp home
Connect with the man at the food bank
Connect with the parent stealing nappies from the store
Connect with those who feel they do not belong here
Connect with those who belong here
Connect with you.

Thanks for reading this.

kx