First draft of the beginning of my idea for a novel

[I haven't found an appropriate name yet. 

The idea is to write about my shopping addiction and how it (and my insecurities and other 'errors') were caused by my upbringing and childhood by combining flashbacks and stories in the 'present'.]

I didn’t know that it would all come down to this. That everything I ever knew to be the truth wasn’t really the truth.

A few years after I was born, 3 years to be exact, my little sister came along. It was all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns and all of that. She used to be a happy child with her brown curly hair, brown eyes and olive skin. How she came to look like that, nobody knew. My parents’ friends and all of our neighbours used to make jokes about my dad not being her real dad. They used to make up stories about how the milkman would’ve had an affair with my mum and my sister was the result of that. We were born near a zoo, which was an even more fertile ground for all of their jokes. “She wasn’t born here, she was born on the gorilla mountain a few blocks from here!”, my aunt always used to laugh. They even went as far as to buy her those little Monchichi monkeys for her birthday which were a trend way before even I was born, so my sister didn’t really seem to understand what they were. People always seemed to stop my mum in the street when she was with my little sister to ohh and ahh at her. This was all because of her appearance. They used to ask my mum whether she had a dark-skinned husband, or any non-Caucasian husband. To which my mum always laughed and told everyone proudly that my dad was a very normal, tall, clumsy white man. She was their little trophy. Well, she was especially my mum’s trophy. My dad has always had a thing for me. I guess it’s because of how much I resemble him.

When I was six years old, my sister was three years old and as any other three year old would do on a sunny day, she was running around the garden. My grandmother had paid us a visit, which was also a thing that would happen quite often. This time though, everything would end differently. My grandmother would notice something funny about my sister’s walk, my mum would be triggered to think the same thing, my dad would be convinced by the two of them that they were right and my sister would’ve eventually been taken to the doctor’s office. All to find out that my sister was ill. Spina bifida. I know, it sounds like some kind of pasta or other Italian dish. I didn’t know what the hell was going on at that time, but it meant that my sister had some kind of deformed spine. Her spine had a gap in the centre which affected her nervous system. If someone would’ve noticed her funny walk even a little bit later, my sister would now be in a wheelchair. Or worse. It’s weird to think about it like that. Naturally, everyone was quite freaked about upon hearing this news. Especially my parents. And following that visit to the doctor’s office were many consultations regarding my sister’s spine, many operations and many weeks ‘living’ in the hospital. Being there day in and day out, by my sister’s side while she was in a lot of pain. That little girl with brown curls and brown eyes and olive skin in a big white hospital bed, her hair all spread out around her head, a corset around her stomach, and many colourful balloons which were somehow supposed to make her feel better. Of course, everyone felt bad for her. That little helpless girl in an amount of pain that no-one at that age, or anyone actually, should know how it feels like.

At some point my parents had arranged for me to live at my aunt’s house for the duration of the time that my sister would be in the hospital. I don’t exactly know why, but I’d imagine it was so my sister could get some more rest, I wouldn’t have to be in hospital surroundings all of the time, and I could just continue living my normal life and going to school. I don’t think that their plan worked out that well. Being away from my parents and still knowing about the situation but not being able to be there that often, in my opinion, only made things worse. I vaguely remember one evening when my school had some kind of disco-night. It was a great big happening and everyone was excited to go. I, too, was excited to go, considering the consequences. The only thing was. This was my first proper dance night of my entire existence and I didn’t know how to handle things. And my parents weren’t there to help me. My mum wasn’t there to help me pick out my outfit or to help me figure out what the hell I was going to do with my hair. Instead, my nieces helped me figure it all out. And although it was nice to have them there, this memory is carved in my mind forever. This was one of the big moments in my life and I didn’t feel at home while preparing for it. I felt out of place. That was probably one of the first moments that I felt that incredibly out of place. You should know, my aunt, uncle and nieces are extremely hygienic and orderly people. Everything in their house is spotless and since my mum seemed to be the complete opposite, I didn’t know how to handle this and I certainly didn’t feel at home. I remember preparing for the dance and standing there in their spotless, white, shining bathroom and being so afraid I would drop any of the glitter pots or make a smudge on their white interior that I immediately hated standing there. I hated having to go to the dance, I hated that my parents weren’t around, I hated that I wasn’t with them and my sister at the hospital, I hated everything about my life at that point.

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Half a year ago I visited a psychologist for the first time because I, and everyone around me, thought I might have a shopping addiction. I spent around £300/£400 per month on new clothes when my wardrobe was already exploding. Little did I know that this trip to the psychologist would awaken so much more in me.

I always thought that I had a happy childhood. A normal childhood. My parents were good and I never experienced anything weird or bad for a child. Or so I thought. The last six months of therapy had made me realise otherwise. In some way I was emotionally abused as a child. Even though it may be in a very sneaky way which made me not recognise it at first. I had been experiencing a feeling of not-belonging in the past few years. Not feeling at home anywhere, feeling like I didn’t have a real home. Somewhere you can always go to. I had never known, though, that this had something to do with my childhood. My parents’ divorce, six years ago, had screwed me up a little. I knew that. But little did I know that it originated way further into my past. I wasn’t always that secure. I was quite insecure actually, and it had been far worse when I was younger. It had gotten better over time and I just thought that this was who I was. I couldn’t have been more wrong. During the fourth or fifth session with my psychologist we talked about my childhood. She knew about my feeling of not having a home and my insecurities and, of course, my shopping addiction so we dug a little deeper into my past. Suddenly, I started  remembering things I had tucked away before.

There was one thing my mum always used to call me. Neurotic. You should know that I was very organised as a child, and still am. Of course I have some days on which my apartment’s a mess or I haven’t done my dishes for a couple of days. But I like my things to be in order, for everything to have its own place. This is what my mum used to mistake for me being neurotic. I don’t why she liked calling me that. Maybe it started out as a joke, maybe she didn’t mean for me to hear it. But at some point she was calling me neurotic weekly, maybe even daily. That hurts, I can tell you. As I got a bit older there was a period in my life in which I seemed to have a strange little habit that I used to do. I only remember this because my mum used to remind me that I had it a dozen times after that. Apparently, it is a phase which a lot of small children go through, though it might not be in the same form. I used to smell my hands excessively or I’d make a strange throat-scraping noise and I used to do it too often. I still feel embarrassed about it even though it is something a lot of children do. This is all because my mum used to make sure that I knew how weird it was. She would actually use the words wrong and weird, and not only at that time. At the time of me doing it I get that parents need to correct the child and need to make it clear that this is not something normal to do so the child will stop doing it. No, I mean that after I’d done it, long after I’d done it, she would still remind me of it. We would have some friends or family over and when we were talking about some random subject, somehow she would trace it back to “that time when I used to smell my hands” or “that time when I used to make throat-scraping noises a bit too often”. I think she even still reminds me of it sometimes, and mostly when other people are around. And I am 24 years old right now. You’d think she’d be done with it by now.