1993 - 2018: 25 Years

In 1993…

• Jurassic Park was released
• I’d Do Anything For Love topped the charts
• Super Mario All Stars was released on Nintendo 
• Stephen Lawrence was murdered
• Princess Diana separated from Prince Charles
• British Airways ran a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign against Virgin Atlantic
• Jamie Bulger was murdered
• The IRA bombed Warrington & the City of London
• Buckingham Palace announced it was opening to the public
• UKIP was formed
• The World Wide Web was developed in Switzerland*
• The World Trade Centre was bombed
• QVC launched in the UK
• Yasser Arafat visited the UK
• The ATF raided the Branch Davidians compound in Waco Texas 
• Microsoft started manufacturing Windows NT operating systems
• None of the girls I currently work with have been born yet…

*The World Wide Web was developed in Switzerland. The actual internet was invented!

**THE INTERNET WAS INVENTED**

Yep, young folks, we haven’t always had Google and her pals. We used to have Encyclopaedia Brittanica and a man in a suit would walk around housing estates selling ‘a book/letter a week’. EB was Pippa Dee for boffins and wannabe boffins. I think we got up to ’N’.

In 1993 I was an 18-year-old young carer.  I could change a catheter with my eyes shut, could lift my 200lb Dad from one commode to another and could administer morphine. I was also sitting my Highers, avoiding my rapist and planning for my future. In 1993 my world tipped on its arse when my Dad died. It was my 19th birthday. Shittest present ever.

1993 was 25 years ago - how the hell has that happened? Where did 25 years go? I remember it like it was yesterday, but sometimes it feels millions of years away. That’s the thing with grief and loss and death. They creep up on you when you least expect it. 

I was talking to a lady on the phone yesterday who at 80+ had just lost her husband and we were talking about his funeral. She said ‘well he was in the Royal Navy for 12 years and wanted Eternal Father as part of the service even though it’s to be a humanist affair with no hymns’. I filled up and started blubbing in the car in the middle of Govan. Govan for fuck sake!

It’s been 25 years since I saw my Dad’s face, I shouldn’t still get emotional surely? Fuck that. I cry at the drop of a hat these days. If you have a feeling LET IT OUT. I kept my rape secret for so long that I was stunted in what I let out, for years, for fear of ‘people finding out’. But hey, people know now. I cry at films, I cry at Facebook videos, I cry at posters, I cry during phone conversations, I cry when I stub my toe (whilst swearing like a cunt), I scream ‘fuck you’ when my printer stops working and I punch a cushion when people annoy me. I need to buy a new cushion cos this one is goosed. 

It’s healthy to let this shit out. I am a badass woman who has been through the equivalent of 15 ‘swamps of sadness’ and I am still here. Mainly cos I punch cushions and swear like a fuck.

My family and my best pals have helped me continue to be the ‘still breathing’ mental case I am today and I love them to Govan and back (6.1 miles).

Papa Raw - I’m your Tuppence, always and forever xxx

1993 - 2018