tissues and issues

Alright, alright, sorry for the Charlotte Church quote, but it did seem suitably juvenile for the topic. I try not to bleat on about my family too much, on the internet as in life, particularly as there is no longer comparatively much to bleat about - but every so often something sticks in my inner child's craw and I want to shout it from the rooftops. Maybe I'm being irrational, maybe everything really is worse when it happens to me(mo), or maybe I'm just taking things too seriously, but I'm still considerably irked following a conversation I had yesterday.

The topic of discussion was Elizabeth, a mutual friend, who has just leapt from one relationship into another with barely a fortnight's breathing space. The popular explanation for this (apparently repeated) behaviour is that her parents divorced when she was twelve. Now, allow me to issue a disclaimer before I continue; I don't doubt for one moment that even relatively straightforward divorce can be traumatic for any children concerned, and I don't think the existence of some people's horrific experiences negates the legitimate effects of other people's only rubbish ones. But, I do think we should all have a sense of proportion.

So, when Jan trotted out the "but her parents got divorced" line again last night, I said so. I said that I thought that 26 was a bit old to still be clinging so resolutely to the trauma of your parents' split, because at some point (I think personally by the age of 21 or at the latest 25) you have to take a long hard look at your life and decide whether you want to live it as a testament or defiance to your parents, or in the most constructive way possible for yourself. I said that it's never particularly fun or easy to do, but it is possible, and I think it's a process most of us have to undertake in some form or another.

Cue utter horror - But her parents divorced when she was twelve! Her dad ran off with her mum's best friend!

And yes, that's a horrible thing to happen - but one that happens to around a third of children in the UK. The fact is, a lot worse things happen too; including myself, I can think of one person who grew up with an addict and alcoholic, several more who grew up with "mere" drinkers and/or domestic violence, and another whose father left her aged 15 in charge of her two little brothers to go and live with another woman, after her mother had already died. Terrible things happen, and terrible things go on happening because of them - but in the end, you have to build some kind of modus vivendi with them in order to have any kind of life of your own.

Jan's response? But if something traumatises you when you're twelve, it can last for a long time.

And that, dear reader, is what really pissed me off. I don't think it's panhandling sympathy to say that if I and a considerable portion of my friends managed to get through situations far worse than a normal divorce (Christ, most of us would love to have had two functioning parents whose marriage fell apart and who went to court and were done with it in a year) then a very well-adjusted, pragmatic, mature, bright (because that is what Elizabeth is) woman of 26 must be able to come to terms with something that happens - not to put too expletive a point on it - all the fucking time. But no, of course (and this is what she was arguing - believe me, I checked) it's far worse to be "really traumatised" by your parents getting divorced when you're twelve than to have parents who are -somehow laughably untraumatically!- addicted, alcoholic, violent or dead.

And what further pisses me off, is that it's so rarely people who've been through comparable things who come out with this stuff, but people exactly like Jan from very solid, conventional, "boring" (but frankly, that's all you want from parents when yours are so "interesting" they're already passed out by the time you get home from primary school) families; it seems always to be the least experienced who assume themselves the greatest authority on these matters. I genuinely cannot fathom what leaden logic leads to such conclusions; is it because divorce is the only thing they can imagine - because other (worse) things are so totally beyond their ken that they don't seem real and thus can't inspire sympathy?

I don't know. I only do know how much I hate the catch-22 in which they leave me; not wanting to be one of those whiny people who choose to blame their entire lives on their childhood, yet also wanting so much to rub in people like Jan's faces how horrific mine was, to make the point how utterly moronic they're being. I doubt there ever has been, nor ever will be, anything so frustrating and divisive in human relationships as such gaps in experiential empathy. Or is that what the internet's for?

"Every morning, I wake up and it's the same. I get up, and I buy the paper, and I circle them all, and I phone them - only to discover they've been taken by a bunch of fucking psychic house hunters!"

Ah, Spaced. It's a bit like the Bible really; constantly quotable to its devotees, a bit of a mystery to the uninitiated. But if there's one scene we should all recognise, it's the one four minutes into the first episode where Daisy breaks down in tears over the horrors of househunting.

I have a motley back catalogue of housemates; Ivy who moved out to the country and spent our water bill money on a horse, Helena who copied (and then stole) my clothes while calling me her sister, Dan who sulked in his room for a month before moving out to a completely fictional house in Highbury... I sure can pick 'em. So it was with trepidation that I began the hunt once more last week to find a place by September.

It started badly, as it always does on gumtree. I realised years ago that most advertisers are incapable of writing anything remotely meaningful about themselves ("I like cooking and music" - well what bloody kind?) but this was the first time I found adverts that didn't even include helpful details like room size and rent rates. It was also the first time I received messages from people wanting to live with me bereft of such basics. Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought that if you replied to someone's advert, you were meant to, y'know, tell them stuff. More stuff than, say, "I have a flat/apartment to share with you and I would be very happy to give you the details if you could reply back". How do these people conduct the rest of their lives, I wonder? How do they pay bills - write back and ask them to write to again instead of paying?

Then came the unhinged, "Hi Flatmate" emails, signed with "Your Flatmate" for good measure - though I suppose at least that person hadn't created an email address of both our names. Another man was apparently more in need of a psychic than a tenant, uncomfortable with actually asking me things he needed to know when he could say, "There are some questions that I need answers to, but didn't get in your email".

And then, because I'm female and thus obviously rentable by the hour, I got this message from an "easymoneyhunny" email address:

Hi, I know you are looking for a room but i thought you maybe interested in some cash in hand work,
it pays £80 an hour and its not for sex, it helps pay the rent, well thats what i use it for.

Lord knows what kind of "hand" work she meant that was "not for sex".

I could go on. Except now I've finally found somewhere I do want to live, with people I want to like with, I'm just breathing a huge sigh of relief that it's over... for another year, at least.

who

Blogging, like buying Coldplay albums and voting on Big Brother, is something best kept private, preferably secret; the internet precluding both, I'll settle for anonymity. But why, my as-yet-imaginary audience clamour, jaws slackening keyboardwards, eyes wide with wonder? I have my reasons.

Computers held for me a deep and disenfranchised fascination growing up. For what seemed like forever, we couldn't afford a VCR, let alone a PC; for what seemed like the next forever, we had both badly. The first came from a local electrician's, missing various buttons and proportionately temperamental; it rarely recorded anything and memorably played Wayne's World 2 (and only Wayne's World 2) at double-speed. The last came courtesy of my mother's office, and lacked a CD-rom, the internet unconscienable. The one floppy-disk game I had (definitely about dogs, less definitely free in a cereal packet) wouldn't install, so friends and I amused ourselves by creating complex Paint and Word documents to look like the internet instead. Even at richer friends' houses, I remember little beyond the strange hissing of a dial-up connection and aimless perusal of (looking back, decidedly paedophilic) chatrooms. Like piano lessons, the internet was something I didn't think I'd like but bloody well wanted to have like everybody else did.

When I was 14, on the autumnal eve of a new school year in a new school, my wish was granted. I set up about a dozen different email addresses and read the complete archive of the Offspring website (perhaps you are beginning to see the need for anonymity - although it did get me into AFI, NoFX and most importantly The Lunachicks and L7, who got me through the rest of my teens). Then I got everybody else's email addresses and favourite sites, and thus began my interminable initiation into chain letters, chain questionnaires and "funpages", which generally consisted of row upon Orwellian row of dancing, rotating, singing, winking yellow smileys and a trite assurance of friendship 4 eva.

The chain questionnaires were the worst, though. I dread to think how many hours I wasted filling in my favourite colour, soft drink, season, chocolate bar, TV show and animal - although, given so many demanded a start and end time (always understated, always a jaunty 18:28 instead of half-past) I could probably check. But it was the insidious beginning of the public facebook profile that gets you fired for statusing a sickie; it was too much information. Over the years I have, like many of my generation, created variously revealing tripod websites, myspace profiles, and livejournal accounts. They're great to show off and reinvent yourself and rant and flatter, but even better to reveal unnecessary details that no-one really needs to know, and that you certainly don't need them to. I never did emo on about relationships or post webcam self-portraits pouting out from under a fringe (well, I've never had a webcam) but I got bored.

There is only so much pith and anecdote one person can wittily produce, and only so much self-restraint this particular person can exercise when faced with the temptation to write. But I know I need to, not least because it feels sometimes like I have so few secrets left to lose and I already have a diary for my real life, the one inside my head that keeps me up at night. I like writing, I need writing, but what's the point if I can't be honest? Well maybe "I" can't; but you don't know who "I" am. And that is why I am starting a secret blog in the middle of the night that nobody may read, much less feel bound to validate with reciprocal pith and anecdote. And suddenly, I feel much better.