To Be Expected…
To Be Expected…
"Expectation does not stop the painful stuff care leavers go through. It just blames us because other people don’t want to deal with us as we are."
I find the burden of expectation heavy.
Expectations are the lists of things we build up: they tell us how things should be, they keep us ‘safe’, but they also hold us back, they stop us from being present in our lives. In Latin, expectation means an awaiting. The anticipation of something. The suspense of the unknown. Uncertainty. I melt with anxiety from not knowing.
I know it comes from the care system. From not knowing if I’d be stabbed with another bout of rejection with the announcement of yet another change of social worker, who was always keen to write a new care plan. From not knowing exactly who would be staying in my [children’s] home each night and the sense of shakiness from my hand each time I walked through the front door to be introduced to a new set of adults or housemates. From not knowing if my room, my phone, or my journals, all my private spaces had been rifled through while I was out, and the sense of violation all in the name of ‘keeping me safe’. The only certainty was the uncertainty of what next.All these expectations were rooted in shame and punishment with no hope. I still have these emotions in my body, and they’ll probably never leave me.
Care leavers spend more of their lives dressed in other people's expectations rather than their own. We are the expected of rather than the expecting. I feel shackled by other people’s expectations. Expectations placed on us hold us in an infinite loop of false possibilities. Impossibility. They don’t guarantee anyone a thing. It starts off with suggestions, which turn into small favours, which turn into requests, which turn into requirements, which turn into obligations, which turn into demands, which all turn into pressure, and unrelenting pressure eventually combusts. Expectations always hurt. And they are exhausting.
Last month, I returned to the University of Oxford after taking a study break from their Creative Writing Master’s programme. Sometimes, my life gets complicated. Sometimes, my emotions get complicated. Sometimes it all gets too complicated. When this happens, I have learnt to hit the pause button and unmuddle myself. And pausing meant precisely that. As my year group continued to march through their study, I remained where I was, waiting to join the next group when they filed by. When I could hear the cavalcade of Converse-type shoes trek up behind me, I could smell my stench of panic.
Hitting play scared me. I knew I was expected to pick up as if nothing ever happened. Intrusive bubbles of “ifs, buts, and maybes” circled my head. I was intruding on a well-defined group with its dynamics, conflicts, and memories. But I chose this. I may have earned my place at Oxford, but I would have to earn my place in this group.
Expectation stands on the shoulders of trust, as they both require a strong belief in something or someone. Trust, like many children from the care system, is a language I was never taught how to speak. Along the way, I have picked up a few basic phrases to get myself by, but I am basically illiterate. Despite my ignorance, at the very least, I trusted my tutors would introduce me to my new year group. I quickly learnt this was something else expected of me.
I was in a conflict of familiarity. I’ve done this thing before, I’ve completed the first year, too. I know what they’ve been through. But my memories of the first year are not their memories. I knew the classrooms, the common room, the dining room, the staff, the tutors, and the reading lists. This false sense of comfort veiled enough of the uncertainty for me to miss it.
The residencies on the programme have a substantial social element: tea breaks, lunches, dinners, drinks, and readings. Walking into a room like that is hard when you are the only stranger in the group. Every introduction in that situation has a power structure. It didn’t feel like this when I began the first year. We were all new, starting from the same point, at the same time, trying to protect delicate beginnings. In doing so, any power dynamic was removed from the introductions. When it is there, I’m triggered back to the children’s homes, introducing myself to the adults I knew who were judging me and analysing me. I was emotionally exhausted.
I get it. It’s a way of getting us to practice to ‘put yourself out there’ and ‘make connections’. But to assume that everyone who comes on to the course comes from the kind of background that gives them the confidence to just walk into a room full of strangers who already know each other and just ‘put themselves out there’ reveals a huge privilege blind spot. I’m sure those of you who have read some of my Substack by now know I don’t have this background. Again, this was expected of me.
The endless not-knowing and misreading and second-guessing perpetuated through the remaining 4 days. My new year group are complicated. It's way more complex than my original one. In that one, we viewed each other as colleagues. In this one, it felt like we were all competitors. There were sides to be taken. There were more expectations to be placed on me. What had I got myself into? Had I made a mistake in taking a break? Should I have been stronger and found a way through? More bubbles circled my head.
I found that despite taking a break, my background, the kind of person I am, the course leaders expect people to be able to deal with this. I’m aware I’m talking about the most elite university in the world, and the kind of people who usually walk through their doors aren’t people like me. So I probably shouldn’t be surprised that they didn’t consider accommodating this, which makes it a “me problem”. I get that. Maybe it’s because I’m a careleaver. I read everywhere that one of our key strengths is resilience. Maybe that’s true. Maybe I am. If I am, if we are so resilient, we didn’t choose to be, and it doesn’t give anyone the right to expect us to be.
Trust is a doing a word.
Towards the end of the second day, I debated whether it was worth skipping the final workshops of the afternoon. The weight of expectation to speak and give feedback on work was crippling. At the same time as meeting new people, I had to provide honest, constructive feedback on creative work to a group that had radiated complex shit. Some were not ready for a bright spotlight to land on their work. I couldn’t do it anymore. Those emotions of shame, humiliation, and violation started to resurface. Some came up to me and said I needed to be more confident, or people would start thinking differently of me. I couldn’t do it anymore.
One of the benefits of my conflict of familiarity was a tutor I felt I could trust. Mainly because she was a careleaver. I wished she would get it. I told her of my struggles of having to be constantly ‘on’ every time I entered a room and how it triggered the memories of returning to the children’s home each day. I told her that being summoned to give feedback in class was crippling me and that I need some time to get to know the personalities before I constructively critique their work. I told her how I was so exhausted with the burden of expectation placed on me and how I almost ducked out of the workshops that day.
We discussed things. I didn’t know what I expected her to do with this information. One of the phrases of trust I have learnt is that you just allow someone to help and let them do what is needed. All I asked was for the level of expectation to be lifted. If people don’t expect things from me, I’ll engage better. I don’t know what she did, but the next day, I felt better.
Everyone is so caught up in not having expectations of themselves that they become blind to the fact they are placing on other people. Expectation does not stop the painful stuff care leavers go through. It just blames us because other people don’t want to deal with us as we are.
Thanks for getting to the end of this piece, and I hope you enjoyed it. I’m developing this Substack channel as part of New Writing North’s A Writing Chance Programme for working-class writers.
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