Before

I was a child before. During some of it I was a child, too. You were the line in the sand that separated adulthood for childhood. After your absence became what separated the present from the past.

I was smaller, from nothing at all in the winter of 1984 to 5ft 1” when we eventually met in the spring of 1998. You were 13 years old when I was born, and waiting for your life to start 100 miles up the M1. You were what was missing from those first days in Essex.

I was waiting for you: not you specifically, but the worldly, older boyfriend to come and rescue me from the humdrum. By the time I did eventually meet you, I was only 12 but I felt like I had been waiting for you since I was about four.

What there something wrong with me? I remember sitting in assembly and watching with doe eyes my headmaster who was as old as my dad. Was it because my dad himself was older, nearly forty when I was born? I asked myself these questions and never arrived at an answer. All I knew was that you were The One. How fortunate to meet The One at twelve years old. What could go wrong.