So I don't even really know where to begin with this new juncture in my life after joining this new group. I suppose we could only really be described as 'alternative'; we were into rock and metal music, and as the emo era emerged we dived in whole heartedly into the hairstyles, the music and the cynical way of looking at life. We befriended a group of similarly 'alternative' boys from Reading and would spend almost every weekend skulking around shopping centres with them clad in black, listening to My Chemical Romance and persuading unsuspecting passers-by to buy us cigarettes.
It was around this time in my life that I also seriously began to question my sexuality; whilst the other girls in my friendship group were taking it in turns to get off with the most attractive boy we knew, I was falling for a girl called Anna. She would hang around with our group quite a lot but had other friends in the year too and wasn't really as inclusive as we were. I should probably point out that I did give the whole heterosexuality thing a go first of all; my first ever boyfriend was Lee Burkwood, a cousin of Laura who was my best friend within our group. And I was very attracted to him - in fact my first kiss was with him, in the oh so romantic setting of Woking cinema watching She's The Man. However things didn't last, mainly because we were 14 and he lived miles away in North London.
After that brief relationship I had my very first sexual experience, which was with Anna in a hotel room on our Year 9 school trip to Barcelona. Anna and I had been very close friends up until this point; the day after it happened however she point blank ignored me and continued to do so for the next few months, which was incredibly upsetting. Luckily for me, when I told my friends they were all amazingly supportive and on my side of things, which I think made my slow and largely painful transition towards identifying as a lesbian a lot easier.
I think my subsequent relationship (or lack of it) with Anna probably deserves a separate post which I'm not sure I have the will power to write, so suffice to say that from that moment up until we left for university, we consistently went through these three general phases (with varying degrees of intensity).
1) Anna avoids all contact with me, Anna is nasty to me and those who associate with me, Anna spreads various rumours at school about me, mainly me being a lesbian.
2) Anna starts being friendly to me at school. Anna starts sending me suggestive texts, to which I largely respond. We largely text about creating scenarios where we have a chance of getting together again. We never talk about these things in person; we don't even really flirt in person. Texts become more and more provocative. We eventually reach a stage where we've decided a time and a place where we can get together.
3) Anna freaks out. Anna texts me calling the whole thing off, or saying that it was all a joke, that she isn't really gay, that I'm being too clingy, that we need to pretend none of this ever happened. Repeat from stage 1.
Stage 2 could (and did) crop up at any time, but it was generally when I was in another relationship or made it apparent that I had a crush on somebody else. After Barcelona I began a relationship with a Leigh Pooley who I met through Felicity; I think this is the only relationship that I'm quite ashamed of - not because of what Leigh was like, if anything he was wonderfully kind and caring towards me, but because of how I acted. I was confused about Anna and I only really went out with him so I could say I had a boyfriend, so I had someone to make out with at the back of Reading station like all my other friends. However the attraction just wasn't there for me, and despite giving it a go with him twice (I think in total we were together around 6 months) I ended it both times because I just didn't fancy him. I also had a very brief relationship with Sophia, who was one of the girls in our group. Now she I was desperately attracted to; I think you could say she was my first love. Again I don't really want to go into the details and there'll be more on her later, but we were together for around two months before she essentially shattered my heart.
We've now reached around halfway through Year 10 (age 15), so I should probably put relationships on hold for a moment to say that this was the beginning of my pretty mental rebellious teenage phase. I was doing very badly in school; I had been kicked out of both my German class and my ICT class, was put on report (essentially close surveillance in each class with reports back to your parents) and was generally rude and abrasive to all the teachers I didn't like - which was most of them.
By the time Year 11 came around I was on pretty low rapport with my parents too; I was getting consistently bad marks in everything except English, I got my nose pierced without telling them, I started bleaching and straightening my hair, I would disappear every weekend without so much as a goodbye, and most significantly, I held a huge house party while they were away in France culminating in a lot of broken/smashed objects and the police being called.
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