Inequality: the way you made me feel

We all make mistakes. We all have bad days. We all have bad things that happen but it is how you view them, react to them and move on from them. My life has been one disaster after another. The trouble is I blamed myself for everything and I mean EVERYTHING! I was with my childhood sweetheart sixteen years and I thought we were in love. As it turned out, he was a very good liar and tried his luck with a number of my ‘close’ friends. He was a master manipulator. I never understood why he would put me down and do things to deliberately hurt me like refusing to make me a coffee when he’d made guests one and I’d just given birth or causing argument so he did not have to come to hospital with me when I had a breast cancer scare. The trouble was we met at school and very quickly he learned that I was pretty much treated like a second class citizen. You see my family have a toxic, morbid obsession with the first born in a generation and it's not the first born's fault. They can do no wrong even when they blatantly do wrong. It’s hard to cope as a child when you are constantly compared to someone else and even harder as a new parent when two days after your child is born you are told to take precautions because you could also end up with a second unwanted child – enough to give anyone post natal depression! I could literally write a novel series with the things that happened and I may do one day but for now I will just say it has affected me more than I ever imagined.
I was always told I had middle child syndrome (the fact it has a name sets alarm bells ringing!) but I have spent years trying to please everyone, trying to make the grade, so to speak and trying to achieve the impossible so that I would be elevated to the dizzy heights of superiority. When I brought it up I was told I was jealous or paranoid. I couldn’t win. I know that now!
The thing is I told myself it did me good. It set me in good stead because I became a fighter. I always worked extra hard and proved to myself that I was way better than peoples’ expectations. It really was a driving force for me to get a first class honours degree and become a writer. True I did these for myself, my own personal development and satisfaction but without doubt it was a contributing factor that drove me.
It has reared its ugly head once more, now in the next generation. Only I won’t let it happen to the boys. They are EQUAL and no matter who tries to drive a wedge between them, it won’t work and believe me, people have tried. It is a sad state of affairs when you have to fight inequality and prejudice from within the family but I guess it probably happens a lot more than we know about. However, the saddest part of all is seeing it happening again and it was only when it started happening to the second generation, that I realised how much it had affected me and my adulthood. If you can’t trust your family, who can you trust? Then there’s the manipulators who cottoned on to the inequalities and exploited them. The mixers, the ones that could see the injustice and lit the fuse to deliberately cause trouble. You know who you are! The worst thing of all is I blamed the wrong people and I include myself in that. No longer am I going to allow manipulators and liars to abuse my silence. I have a voice and my boys will also always have a voice. More importantly they have an ear listening to them.
I am my own worst enemy because I let it happen time and time again, ultimately always getting hurt in the process. I’ve spoken to the boys at length about it and they’ve told me of incidents that had happened when I haven’t been there. It is easier now because Wes is a fabulous babysitter and Lucas asks me constantly if I have arranged some more nights out – two a year is more than enough for me, I’m a lightweight. I have explained to the boys what I need to do to move forward including the self-preservation mechanism I need to implement and they are just brilliant beyond words. At fifteen, someone suggested to me that I needed to get away and spread my wings. I thought he was mad but now I really wish I had taken his advice. The only time it’s too late to start again is when you are dead!
Seeing members of the new generation suffer like I did, makes me even more determined to stand my ground. I have given too much respect out at the expense of my own self-respect and that is a huge lesson to learn. This was the last piece of my past that needed laying to rest and now it is done. I have spent the whole of my life justifying my existence, my every decision and my every move. I’ve allowed too many people give their opinions and allowed them to sway my decisions out of respect for them and my own low self-esteem. I have had a few weeks of extremes – extreme anger, extreme sadness and extreme honesty with myself.  I didn’t feel I had the courage to challenge it and face up to it. It was much easier to ignore it and hope it went away. I challenge it now because I can see other’s affected by it and now I understand why Wes went through a stage of  being miserable when I was at work and why bullying spilled into school. So now my illness was probably a blessing in disguise! It helped me to re-focus my priorities. I take huge credit for how the boys are developing and quite frankly, actions speak louder than words. No more justification, no more explanations. The only regret I have is being silent for too long.



My past is laid to rest and from now on MY LIFE, MY FAMILY, MY RULES – I am the master of my fate!


Book Launch
TUESDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2014 7PM – 9PM
YOU ARE ALL INVITED! Regular readers will know, I rave about my little piece of Italy in Wetherby, Sant Angelos. The restaurant features in my sequel Beyond the Lies and is the perfect location for my first EVER book signing. If you can make it, we would love to see you.


Book Marketing
You know I told you the easiest part of a book is the writing and the hardest is getting it published. I was wrong. The hardest part is the MARKETING. It’s a time consuming minefield and for novice writers it can make or break your book. At times over the last few months, I have been close to throwing in the towel just out of sheer frustration. I find cleaning a great reliever of frustration, or swimming.
After reading hours of literature and surfing the net, I find myself going round in circles reading contradiction after contradiction. My advice: MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN. Your greatest asset is YOU and people don’t know of YOU unless you tell them about YOU. It’s not bragging!!! YOU! YOU! YOU! Raise your profile. No one will do it for you. So no matter how hard it is to put on a smile, you need to do it for YOU. And do you know what?  YOU CAN DO IT!
Whatever your background, wherever you have been – dust yourself down, pick yourself up and GO FOR IT!

This week is usual madness – two trips to Sheffield, active marketing for Beyond the Past (could be renamed making a nuisance of myself), writing the sequel, Mummy duties and all the other mundane yet wonderful things that are thrown my way. Persistence and hard work are everything.
Goodreads Giveaway  Don’t forget my book giveaway on Goodreads – its open until the 2nd October. Two signed copies just waiting here for lovely new homes.
Have an amazing week everyone. MAKE IT COUNT

You can purchase my debut novel, Beyond the Past from 
Pegasus Publishers  
Amazon UK  
Amazon US
Kindle

OR ORDER FROM YOUR LOCAL BOOKSHOP.

 




Twitter
Facebook
www.pamcharles.com
LinkedIn