Growing up in Belfast, amid bombs and testosterone: Chapter 1

I came here from Canada. If Canada was bright daylight and distinct seasons, Belfast was all drizzle and dangerous foggy nights. Canada was clean and healthy childhood innocence, Belfast was dark with an electric current of breathless anticipation. Teens for me lasted between the ages of 12 and 16 years. At 16 I ran off to get married. At 16 I became a mother for the first time.
I was restless, I was skinny, I had no breasts to speak of despite all the rubbing I did to promote growth. Someone in school told me Barbara McGee had big ones because they were hand grown,(SHE had a boyfriend) so I tried to coax some growth into my little fried eggs by regular massage. It must not have worked unless someone else did the coaxing. I always felt like life was something that happened to other people. It was there all right I was just not part of it. I mitched school, I started smoking. I hated school. Glencairn Secondary School for Girls was the Belfast version of St. Trinnians but without the slapstick homour. I hated being called snob from snobhill because we lived in a 'bought' house so I determined to be best at being bad. I was the best mitcher, the best smoker, the best at throwing my life away as fast as I could.
In first year I was voted by the class to compete in Miss Glencairn, by second year I was so out of it I don't remember much of what little time I spent there. Ballygomartin Presbyterian Church disco held a youth club come disco, where I and my little band of awkward youth spent every Saturday night. I can't remember who first introduced me to solvents, but one of my cronies, approached me in the toilets with a balled up tissue and dared me to sniff the contents. Lady Esquire, leather cleaner to the bootclad, sensible population, nectar of intense intoxication to each of us huddled in the cubicle.It became our drug of choice. It was cheap, it was easily accessible from the local Woolworths, it smelled nice. At first inhalation Beetoven's Fifth boomed in my ears, my brain, my surroundings. I swayed out of the loo, into the disco. Spirit in the Sky, "when I die and they lay me to rest gonna go to the place that's the best....." I was no longer a malcontent skinny schoolgirl, I was air. I was water, I was a living embodiement of the faltering lyrics. I was hooked