Paulette Burke

‘I live all over the place. I would say I live in Oxford but ‘cos my mum lives in London, I go back there sometimes, but I don’t really class that as my home… I’m originally from Huddersfield, lived there until I was twenty-one then moved to London but I’ve lived in Leeds as well so really I don’t class myself as based in one place - wherever I am, that’s my home.

When I was younger and my mum and dad were still together… on a Sunday we’d go somewhere new like a park or a zoo, but we just used to do silly things like have races and take picnics there and I think those were like the best times we used to have, all just sitting down having fun together. Yeah… those were the best moments. I get on with my parents, my mum - that’s quite an intense relationship, quite fiery, but it’s got better over the years…

I’ve got one brother, he’s twenty-two. We’re close enough in the sense that we’ve got similar personalities and we get on well, we can talk about similar topics and things, but on the other hand we’re quite… I think it’s when you’re close to somebody, it's like a love-hate relationship. My dad used to be very strict and he liked people to do things his way. When I was sixteen and my dad lived in Luton I moved to live with him and went to study at Bedford College. It wasn’t a good experience and we fell out; I ended up moving out of there and we didn’t speak for about six months or something. When I was younger, well I didn’t know any better - I did do everything my dad said but I was sixteen when I went there so I challenged what he was saying. We fell out over that ‘cos I was answering him back and I said I’m moving!! (laughs) and packed my stuff up and yeah… I left him.

My mum… my mum’s been lots of things, like I said it’s a love-hate relationship, so there’s been moments where we’ve been really at each other's throats and we’re not so much like that now, but there’s other moments when we’re like best friends, kind of. With my mum it's been more like fits and starts, with my dad it's been like one big thing… but my brother, this is going to sound so terrible, like we’re some mad family… but, I think that’s why we’re all over the place. The best time was when my mum moved to London and me and my brother were there in Huddersfield. It was when we got to know each other a bit more - yeah, that was a nice time…

I think there’s only one kind of love, I don’t think there are different varieties… I think that there are different intensities of love and I’ve learnt that with unconditional love, things fluctuate - things don’t stay the same within a relationship. You can’t expect to be on an even level and really that’s what love is – it’s kind of standing that out. It’s not because I don’t believe in romantic love… I don’t believe in the kind of falling in love, more of the universal kind of love. I wouldn’t say I’ve been in love but I have loved somebody else in an intimate relationship. I class them very differently - loving somebody, and being in love with somebody because I think being in love is more fickle, whereas loving somebody is more about… like I said there’s love that stands unconditionally, you might not like everything about them but you still love them.

I can’t stand arrogant or obnoxious people, but I think sometimes you meet people and they can be the type of person you wouldn’t normally relate to, but there can be something about them that oversteps that… which goes back to the love thing I was on about. So, you can meet people and there’ll be some kind of chemistry, it’s not necessarily to do with their personality, but there being some kind of energy, like a spark. I’m discovering this more now than before. Guys can be quite insecure about a woman being independent of them and having their own power. I meet a lot of men that try to - I don’t know whether it’s ‘cos I look young as well - but try to put me down in some ways. I do like to be with somebody that can be secure enough in themselves not to put their insecurities on to me…

That’s a thing that’s changed. I used to be really shy when I was little, when I was walking with my mum, I’d be walking behind her and looking at the floor, I’d say that’s a fear I’m growing out of. I’d say uni’s dented my confidence a little bit, meeting new people. Colleges I’ve been to before have been specific; I went to a contemporary dance school, so it was just all dancers. Brookes is completely different and because I’ve noticed that, my confidence has gone down a bit, but it's something that I’m working on.

I am enjoying uni at the moment, got lots of assessments on, but it is really different from where I was before. Brookes is obviously a bigger university, bigger environment, and I think it’s a bit more impersonal. Apart from that, I’m really enjoying my course. Like I say all the work's piled on at the minute, but it's my kind of thing. I’m more of a creative person; I do a dressmaking course, I make clothing with second hand clothes, out of charity shops. I like writing, which is why I’m doing English, and drawing, and dancing and quite a lot of different things… I’ve been writing for the past three years but, with studying I’m writing less, it’s kind of taking a back step. I write poetry as well, there’s a writers group that I attend in Banbury that helps keep my creativity flowing when I’m getting stressed with exams and stuff…

I always think I’m wasting time, that’s why I get so frustrated. I don’t think I waste a big gap of time but, I’m quite pedantic actually, sometimes I think I waste like, half an hour. I’ll be daydreaming away, off with the fairies somewhere, or I know I’ve got something to do and I’ll not do it. I’ll end up switching some music on or reading the paper … I daydream a lot really, when I was younger, at school, that’s what I used to do. The teacher would be talking and I’d be looking out the window, I’d be somewhere else … I’m slowly getting out of that so I get frustrated with myself for doing that. I think Ohhh I could have been doing this. I suppose it’s not a big thing, but I do waste my time daydreaming.

I dream about being in different places, like Italy – I want to go there next year for my 25th. There’s a lot of history there, in front of you, I love the culture and Italian food, it’s somewhere I have a sense that I’d really enjoy, and I haven’t been on holiday since I was 13… I dream about family situations that I would like, like having children and how would that be, sometimes I’ll dream of things in detail, like, how it would be…

I don’t like the word career ‘cos I think it sounds a bit cold. I dream of being in a place where I haven’t got the pressures of working for someone else, my life being manufactured for me, rather than somebody else. I want to be a writer, I want to write novels… poetry in books and things, but working for myself… freelance…

Sometimes, when I daydream, I think of the number of children I’d like to have and sometimes I can actually see myself with a daughter. It almost feels like I’ve woken up and something’s missing, ‘cos the dream’s been so intense, with this profound love for this little child. I know in this day and age it's probably only an ideal, not reality, to be with a partner but I don’t want to be a single mother. Nothing against single mothers, my mum was a single parent. I look up to her ‘cos I don’t know whether I could do that, bring a child up that you’ve had with someone you really loved, and not be with them anymore. I find that… Ideally, I’d be in an open and honest relationship with somebody, that’s my ideal, and to have children – three children I sometimes think or loads – I'm not sure about boys or girls. I used to want to have had children by twenty-six but I’m twenty-four now (laughs), so I think before I’m thirty. If it doesn’t happen then that’s fine, but I used to say before I’m thirty. More people are having kids in their thirties, when they’ve had their career and settled down…

A couple of my friends have got kids now, my brother's got a child as well, I just think that, if that happens, well it comes with all that responsibility. I think to myself I couldn’t, if I was in that situation, I don’t know what I’d do ‘cos I’d feel like my life would be completely over… all those desires and ambitions and goals that I have for myself… I would deal with it if it happened but… I always think where I am is where I’m meant to be, even if I’m not enjoying that time. I always think it’s a process of learning something, so if I say I need something to complete me, or my life, that means I believe I lack something, and I don’t really believe that. There are things I will sometimes think Hmmm I wish I’d… and it’ll only be momentarily but, it’ll kind of put things into perspective and, I think Gosh look where I was before, look what I’ve accumulated. Not even material things, but in my own sense of self, and what I’m learning, things at uni, people I’ve met, my friends… ’cos that’s a really big thing to me. I’m so grateful for the friends I’ve got and the relationships I have with them.

My core friends are the ones in Huddersfield – one friend - since I was thirteen we’ve been friends – well, we are still friends, its just, the friendships has been tumultuous, like falling out sometimes and I think, that has made it stronger, we class ourselves as family, as sisters, ‘cos I can be myself . I always know that I’m comfortable with somebody when I don’t have to talk, d’ya know what I mean? You don’t feel the need to. I know when I’ve found that, and I can be my moody self as well. That’s why I’m so grateful – not to be moody with them – but there’s that space to be who we are with each other. My friends, all my friends have different things - it’s not like me and my group of friends, we’re individual, d’ya understand what I mean? There are different things that I get from each person and different things I give. One friend I know, I will let her tell me things and I will listen and I’ll respect what she’s saying, well I’ll respect what anybody’s saying, but I will take it on board and I’ll think Gosh, yeah she’s right, d’ya know what I mean? There’s not many people I’ll do that with and then there’s other friends where I can be silly, it’s just daft. Each friend opens a different part of me, does that make sense? Sometimes I’ll be on the train or the coach and just have this big profound conversation with somebody I don’t even know and I like that – even though this person's going to come out of your life they’ve still made an impact on you.

I think about the future a lot. Everything that I’m doing now is in relation to the future, but I’m always onto the next thing. I’m always doing this for that and then that’s going to happen, this is going to happen… I should pay more attention to where I am in the present. Everything’s about control, I like to be in control of my situations and when I feel I’m not in control, that’s when uncertainties start to creep in. Obviously I can’t control every event, but when little things do happen it kind of niggles away at me and I realise Paulette, you’re not in control of everything, you don’t have the say-so of everything. I think I need to allow for uncertainty and realise that… that’s part of life. You don’t have to know everything, you don’t have to be certain about everything that’s going to happen in the next five years (laughing). I find that hard to do.