My life began in London, England on February the 10th 1994, born to my mother Florence Blackwell and my father Gilbert Blackwell. As you can see my parents have very old fashioned names so it'll come as no surprise to you that my name is also old – Ophelia Florence Blackwell.
I live with my parents with no siblings in a large house in London for the first few years of my life. When I was younger (and still sometimes now) I used to wish that I did have siblings especially a younger sister or an older brother, a younger sister to have a laugh with and an older brother to protect me. I know it sounds childish, but I wished it when I was very young – about 3 or 4 – though wanting an older brother lasted up until I was around 6.
The house I live at was large, in my opinion too big, for just the 3 of us to live in. My mother only used the kitchen, study, living room, dining room, bathroom and the bedroom and so did my father (with the exception of the kitchen and bathroom). For me, the house was a massive playground waiting to be explored, much to the distaste of my mother who very much wanted me to be the 'little lady' and not play messy games in the mud outside with my expensive dolls and rambunctious games with the little boys from the other side of town at my preschool group.
As I got older, I became more apt at hiding from my parents, letting me play my own imaginary games for hours at a town and trekking games with my dolls across the long corridors.
The grounds were a very dark, foreboding place. I was never fond of them with the spacious lawn with no trees or weeds (thanks to the gardeners) and a wood going round the edges. I avoided the woods (to my mother's happiness) and the grounds (much to my father's dismay).
I had very different relationships with my parents. My father desperately wanted a little boy to carry on the family name and encouraged me to play outside and play sports like cricket with me. He always loved it when he came across me playing with my dolls (pretending that we were fighting off monsters – though he quickly snapped me out of that once I told him we were fighting against vampires and werewolves) and he always wanted me to play the rough and tumble games with some of the boys across town. One of my friends (even though I was roughly around 3) was a little girl called Philippa – who often went by the name of Phil or Philly – who was one of my best friends. My father always encouraged me to play with her as she was boisterous little girl due to her being born in to a family with nothing but brothers. Her family were poor, which surprisingly didn't bother my father very much, but annoyed my mother no end.
My mother however wanted a pretty little girl who was into kittens and flowers and was very dainty and delicate. I think I was a disappointment to her from an early age really. She bought me dolls in delicate little dresses (whose dresses I ripped from playing too roughly with) and little tea sets (which I chipped from playing with too enthusiastically). I suppose all those very beautiful and fancy but very fragile toys she bought me were all well and good, but I was always a very clumsy girl who didn't have much patience when she was younger.
Both my parents did, I suppose, love me but only because I was such a novelty to them. They treated me like a china dolls, despite my father wanting me to be a boy so badly, if I even got slightly pushed he always flew off the handle, acting like I would shatter into a million pieces. They loved me, but not in the way I wanted them too.
I desperately wanted them to be proud of me for whom I was and not for the reasons that I was well-behaved and had good manners and was quite pretty looking as a child.
People would coo and call me 'angel' and 'darling child' – all thanks to my blonde hair which was in ringlets which spiralled to my shoulders and my chubby physique but with the exception of blue eyes – making me look like some sort of cherub. And my mother would simper and smooth my hair and father would always look proud, and I've always thought that that was the very limits of their love for me.
It would be very cruel to say I got no love from my mother actually. She didn't give me a great deal and she still treated me like a little doll but deep down she did care.
Every night I'd ask her to sing to me in her beautiful voice and she would.
'Mama, sing to me please,' I'd say.
'Which song would you like, my darling?' She'd always ask.
'The Lullaby,' would always be my reply.
And she'd sing it to me whilst playing the small music box above my bed which always sent me to sleep.
It's the one thing I still miss, her singing to me in her sweet voice. It was always the last thing I heard at night and when I woke up the song was always still ringing in my head so it was always the first thing I heard in the morning.
All in all, you could say my very early years were protected and perhaps I come across as spoilt. I suppose I do, but I was never very grateful for the things I got, something which still mystifies me to this day. I supposed that everyone was rich like my parents were.
But as I said at the beginning, what if things were never normal to start with?
I had friends, but they weren't the friends that I chose. My father picked out boisterous friends for me but always became angry if I was played with too roughly and my mother picked out dainty friends for me but always became irritated when I became too softly spoken and not feisty enough. It was a case of never winning.
None of my parents could look at me either, not directly in the face. It was as if they were ashamed of me. Even when I was sitting eating with them, they never spoke directly to me or looked at me. They spoke quickly and quietly to themselves in soft tones which were too quiet and quick for me to understand properly. They sometimes gave me looks too; as if they were worried I might jump up and snap at them for some reason. Sometimes the looks they gave me were frightened as if they were honestly terrified of what they had created. I wasn't old enough to understand why, but I was old enough to understand that I was something that they were slightly afraid of and were desperate to hide away from people.
I was only ever exposed to their very closest friends and their children. Philippa and the boys from across town were my parent's friend's children – people who they'd known for maybe 20/30 years or me – and the preschool I went to was one set up by my parents and their friends.
Things quickly changed once I turned 5 years old.
