25: A walk in the Garden of Eden

I have just come back from a trip to the village outside Dublin where I lived between the ages of seven and ten. Although I have visited the village several times in the last four years this is the first time a thought hit me.

As it said in an earlier entry it was soon after my family returned from Dublin to Ireland that I was diagnosed with Turners Syndrome. It was traumatic enough to be uprooted from a quiet Dublin village where you knew most people (and certainly most of th children of your age), could get to the seaside in a few minutes in the car and go walking down country lanes which were a couple of minutes away from your home to a London suburb, where you knew few of your neighbours, and a school with some decidedly tough girls! I recall writing a lot of short stories at school which were set in this village at the time as a way of remembering it.
There were a number of issues around my education when I came to London. Firstly the headmistress in the primary school I went into did not know what level I would be at educationally so she decided to classify me as remedial. I was bullied by the teacher in the class I went into, possibly because of this classification. When I went to secondary school it became very apparent that I was not remedial. This meant that I never fitted in with the class I was put in that first year and that when I was held back to do the first year of secondary school again the friends I had made in primary school were a year above me.
Being classified as remedial had a considerable impact on my self esteem and confidence as was the first of several experiences of being underestimated by others.

However another issue was that the girls in London were more somewhat more mature than the girls I was at school with in Dublin. My Mum believes I missed out a critical couple of years of social development. This may be why I never fully felt like I fitted in at school and why I still find it difficult to fit in with my peers.

Of course both these issues have nothing to do with TS, but they contributed developing issues of how I viewed myself and how I related to my peers. However being diagnosed with TS was the thing which caused the biggest breach for me from my peers.

As I was walking around the village a couple of days ago, it struck me that not one moment of my time there was affected by TS. As far as anyone knew I had the same possibilities in life as my peers. I was a girl, not a girl with TS. How others, particularly my parents viewed me was not yet altered.
Indeed it struck me that for me this village represented an age of innocence and grace. I had not yet suffered ‘the fall’. I had not yet gained some hard earned knowledge.

Perhaps this was part of the reason why it took me 21 years to return to the village and why I enjoy returning there now.

However I cannot help but be grateful that I was diagnosed soon after my return to London. However difficult the knowledge has been, it has meant that I got the medical treatment that I needed and that I was able to integrate my infertility into my plans for my future.

Returning to the village also reminded me how much my parents care about me and how much they have provided me with throughout my life.