Eastbourne
Kayleigh Slovenia
March – April 2004
It's not easy being heartbroken by the one you truly loved. You always have that terrible, empty feeling in your stomach and it makes you feel like you don't want anything to do with boys at all and you take an immediate dislike to them. Well, that's how I was feeling. My boyfriend, James Daniels, dumped me. From after going out for about three months, he thought that it was time we should go our separate ways. I accepted it straight away. I thought that it was a good idea as we had our GCSE exams coming up in a few months and we both needed some time and space to breathe … until I got home and realised what had happened. I'd lost him. I really did believe that he was my first love. My mother, Zoe, always told me that the 'popular' boys at my age were always the cheaters. She wasn't wrong. James was the populist boy at school.
When I got home, my family weren't much help at all. Mum was too busy sorting out our garden; dad was chatting away with his friend from work, and as for my siblings, they wouldn't care.
I have four siblings. When my parents got married, they were planning on having two children: a boy and a girl. However, they ended up having five children; two twin daughters and then three years later, they had triplets; all boys.
My twin sister, Tracie, and I never got on well. We were close friends when we were young but that never lasted long … especially after how I used to be. Tracie was what I liked to call a 'slut' with shoulder length, beach blonde hair. She always wore the tightest tops that did not fit her so her breasts were almost falling out, and she coated her face in a thick layer of orange foundation and mascara. There were four other girls at school just like her whom she called her 'girlfriends'.
My mother seemed so fed up with her life after trying to look after my three baby brothers when they were about eighteen months old, so I had to take over. None of my brothers were at all that thankful that I changed their nappies every day. Except Liam. He thanked me. Lovely Little Liam I called him. He was the only person in our household who listened to me and cheered me up in tough times. However sometimes his two brothers, Screaming Lord Thomas and Headband Dan tried to make him a bad person. I gave my three brothers different nick names because there was something unique about them. I named Thomas 'Screaming Lord Thomas' because he was constantly screaming and shouting all day long. Whenever they played football in the back garden, I could hear him screaming while running after the ball. And then 'Headband Dan' was named that because everyday he wore either a blue or white sweatband around his forehead. The sportiest person out of the family, he went jogging every evening after school and before dinner time. Even though my three brothers were only thirteen years old, Tracie and I got bullied by them. Except Liam. He always tried to stop them but it never made any difference. I told my parents about Dan and Thomas constantly hitting me but they did fuck all about it. However, Tracie seemed to be the one who got bullied the most.
The only two people who really understood me were my two best friends: Lisa Levett and Angie Gibson. Lisa was more of the bossy one out of the three of us and always seemed to know exactly what's right, what's wrong and what we should and should not do. She also overused sarcasm, but as I knew her since primary school, I didn't even notice it after a while. I met Angie when I first started secondary school in year seven. She was easier to talk to as she didn't tell me all the time that I did the wrong thing; unlike Lisa. Nevertheless, they were my two closet friends. However, their obsession with boy bands was something I disliked about them as I had a strong loathing towards boy bands.
Trying to get over heartbreak isn't at all that easy. Going back to school and seeing James again wasn't easy either. Not that it was going to be any different or that anyone at school would've notice me.
"Hey, who's that ginger girl with James?"
"Is she new? I've never seen her before."
"Oh isn't she James' girlfriend? What's her name? Karla or something?"
That's what I heard all the time at school. It wasn't easy not being no one as I didn't even know who I was myself. Nobody knew who I was; it was like being a carpet where people would rub the mud off their shoes on me without a care in the world. Sometimes I wished that I could be invisible and hide away from the world forever.