I’ve never done that before.
It all started with a radio news report about 80 refugee children coming over to the UK from Calais. It actually started way before this we’ve had the same argument since before the EU referendum, but todays event started off this way. My mother remarked that we should send them back. Because there is no room. I said we’re not doing nearly enough and that we do have the room, but are not building enough new housing in this country, and not making the most of the housing we do have.
If there was zero empty properties in the uk, she may have a point, if there was zero flat land to build on she may have a point. But none of those things are true.
We were on our way back from having a meal out together. There was me, my mother, a friend and two siblings. The friend also holds the same anti immigration attitudes and was the one driving. MY mother was the only one of us who had a key to our house and wanted to stop at the friends bungalow before heading back to the house. I wanted to go straight home because of the argument we had in the car about how to treat the immigrants, and she would not let me have her key so I could let myself into the house.
I refused to enter the bungalow anyway. Asked her to let me have the key please, and she twice refused.
So. I walked away, called her a bitch under my breath as I walked away towards the house, with no key, and carrying a bag of shopping that we did that day. Nothing much in the bag, but there happened to be a glass in there. I was very upset at this point. I took the glass out of the bag and smashed it against the wall. With one of the shards of the shattered glass I ran it over my wrist a couple of times. 5 times to be exact. Not enough to cut deeply, but I did break the skin. I felt better in the moment that I was cutting. I felt much worse though after I saw what I had done.
My sister came round after a while with the key, I think it was about 15 minutes after I cut. I didn’t want to go inside until I had permission to do so. My mother shut me out of the house, she has never deliberately done that to me before. So I tried to call her using my mobile phone, and she just hung up the call. I asked my sister to call using her phone instead and my mother spoke to me, then. She said I was just upset for losing an argument, that I was welcome in the bungalow, and should not have been so antisocial, the irony, of her wanting to shut out people who need help, and then calling me antisocial. I told her on the phone that it wasn’t because I lost an argument that I was upset, I said I was pissed off because she is a racist bitch.
She said she hopes that I get a flat as soon as possible because she is fed up of all this. She’s not the only one who is fed up. I cannot understand how, or when she became so full of spite that she would rather a refugee starves to death, than we build a house in this country to give them a home.
I will apologise for calling her a bitch. I’ll try to explain that I’m very passionate about this subject and that I believe all people deserve a home, and to live regardless of whether they were born in this country or not. And things got out of hand. I’ll try to live peacefully with her until I do get the flat I need so I can move out and be free from this poisonous atmosphere, after that I will probably never want to see her again.
Rhiannon Autumn Diary 