⚠️Content Warning: This post contains references to miscarriage, substance use, grief, and emotional distress. Please take care while reading.
**This post shares a deeply personal memory from my time in care, exploring teen pregnancy, and emotional survival following loss at age of just 15**
I arrived at the new children’s home. A big place — two standard houses on each side, joined in the middle by a narrow hallway and entrance area. Each side was identical upstairs: two bedsits at the front with small kitchen areas, and two bedrooms at the back that shared a downstairs kitchen.
I was younger than the rest of the kids. I wasn’t meant to be there until I turned 15, but they let me stay — it was nearly Christmas, and I’d be 15 soon after. They showed me to a back bedroom, and once again, I sat down and tried to take it all in.
Once again, the only girl there.
The boys seemed a little disappointed — I was younger, and not their type. Which was fine. They weren’t mine either. So I settled into the rhythm of having my own kitchen, my own space. Down at the end of the building and away from staff, I could almost convince myself that it was my own home. Just mine. For a while, that illusion was enough.
But as the months passed and more kids moved in, things shifted. I made a few loose connections and managed to get myself kicked out of mainstream school — for the one act of aggression I didn’t actually do.
Now, looking back at 43, I know my choices weren’t the best. But at 14, I felt like I was already 20 and ready to headbutt the world if it dared look at me sideways. I’d found I had a sense of humour — and I ran with it.
My arch-nemesis at school? The Home Economics teacher. This woman was the bane of my life. She hated me, and the feeling was mutual. She didn’t like me because I always had something to say — just enough to wind her up, just enough to kick the seat of authority without quite getting expelled.
She wanted me to make cakes and prepare meals. So I went vegan. Suddenly, she couldn’t make me touch half her weird recipe list — which, I admit, brought me a degree of smug satisfaction.
I don’t even remember what started our war. Maybe it was me taking the piss out of her wardrobe — she reminded me of the old Pizza Hut tablecloths. Like she’d robbed one and built a wardrobe around it out of spite. Not my best idea, but I was impulsive at 14. Still am, sometimes.
Eventually, the school “supported” me by putting me on internal exclusion. I’d show up, ace the tests like I’d been there all year, and then disappear again. But the day I was expelled? That one broke something in me.
Because this time — I hadn’t done it.
I went to fetch my pencil case from the library. When I returned, the TA I was supposed to be working with was gone. I waited. Then came a knock on the door. The Headmaster.
What followed was surreal: accusations of violence, deceit, shouting. Apparently, I’d attacked her. I was expelled. No one asked for my side. No staff, no social worker — just judgment.
Lifetime ban. No appeal.
******
Back at the home, word spread. I wasn’t proud. I wasn’t like the other kids — not yet. But something shifted. They moved me into one of the front bedsits. I think they thought isolation would help.
Honestly? I loved it. A flat of my own. I could cook, shop, breathe. Tesco didn’t cater for vegans, so I got £25 a week to shop in town. All I had to do was bring back the receipt. The others had to pile into the pool car and deal with the J order shame.
So I stayed quiet. Alone.
Until they asked if they could smoke in my room. Weed. I said yes. I wanted to belong. Finally, I wasn’t on the outside looking in.
One new boy arrived — long hair, scruffy stubble, looked older than 16. We didn’t get along at first. He didn’t like me and I didn’t care.
Until I did.
He started coming by more often. We were signed up to the same “naughty kids” college course. Shared taxis. We became friends. Then something more.
He taught me how to roll. How to use. Told me smoking first thing in the morning hit hardest. I found out the hard way.
I had gone wake him up. He pulled me in his room and showed me his homemade contraption, and offered me my first early morning hit.
It hit like a freight train. I made it to my own end of the house, collapsed in the bathroom, sick everywhere. I passed out. Woke up seven hours later.
He thought it was hilarious, Told me he’d gone to college without me. I’d just laid there the entire day, out cold.
Then came the run-of-shame from the bathroom to my room, half-naked, clothes clutched to me for cover.
There were alarms on the doors — especially the back rooms. He found a way to sneak in through the windows, he would squeeze out of the bathroom window at his end and I’d sneak him into my room. We spent nights curled up together, pretending the place was ours. Just us.
He was different when he was around just me, he was softer, gentle, we would speak for hours on ends and leave love letters for each other when apart.
We took our time. We were honest — no real experience, no expectations. When things progressed, it felt right. We spent the night together and it was nothing like id experienced before, it was special.
Until we got caught.
A staff member had been stood outside the door. Listening. Creepy in hindsight, but at the time it just meant punishment. I lost the bedsit. Moved back into a shared room. Staff gossiped. We were a scandal now.
But it wasn’t seedy or weird. It was. Connection.
We still found ways to be together. The downstairs kitchen near my new room had a lock. As I was the only one using the kitchen we would often lock ourselves in and just do whatever we wanted, occasionally, that meant actually eating too.
Then a staff member pulled me aside. Told me they couldn’t stop us seeing each other, but I needed to be careful. I agreed to visit the family planning clinic.
They wouldn’t prescribe anything until I took a pregnancy test.
Two faint lines.
I was fifteen. This was not what I needed. not again.
I didn’t tell him at first. I remembered the rejection the last time. The disbelief. The hurt. I told the manager. No one else. I just needed time to let it sink in.
But fate has its own plans.
It was late. The TV was on low — something about Princess Diana. A crash. Then… confirmation. She was dead.
I was uncomfortable. Couldn’t sleep. Eventually I drifted off.
Woke to a smell I couldn’t ignore.
Pulled back the sheets.
Blood. So much blood.
I panicked and shouted for help, a member of staff came, followed by him, I broke down and told him everything, but the first thing he said was ‘are you sure it was mine?’
That cut deep.
But in time, I think he understood.
I’d only been around eight weeks. But I dreamed of her every night for a good week or more.
A baby girl. I called her India.
It was the only thing I could give her.
No scan. No photos. No keepsake. Just a name.
And still — the world kept turning as if nothing was different.
After that I didn’t care anymore.
I drank. Smoked. Took speed. Got in stolen cars. Hung around the wrong people. Anything to avoid facing up to my feelings. Anything to stop my heart from remembering what it had lost.
I didn’t want to be alive. Not in this world. Not in that pain.
And the thing that terrified me the most?
Some nights… I welcomed the idea of not waking up.
Because the pain of existing with a memory that no one else cared about?
Was sometimes more than I could bear…
Missed a bit?
←Part Eight – Toasted Lizards and Brand New Kitchens
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Unwearing the Mercury 