infoWe Did It Together - So Why Do I Feel So Alone? (2003)
32 min, digital video
Documentary
Available to educational institutions only on VHS
This video is an honest and gritty account of the lives of four teenage parents living in East Durham. Four stories portray the difficulties and the realities of being a teenager with a baby. The young women were originally recruited for a peer education project called Teen Talk, which offered pupils in comprehensive schools insight into the wide and varying issues facing teenage parents.
Building on the success of the Teen Talk project the young women decided to create a video in order to reflect the reality of their lives, financial difficulties, isolation, precarious relationships, motherhood and the love they have for their children. Their stories, simply told, but with a candour coming from their confidence and trust, are deeply moving.
One of the young women, Emma, became centrally involved both developing and performing in Amber’s subsequent feature film Shooting Magpies (2005).
Lynn: I met Jade's dad one night. It was a one-night stand. I was really drunk and I fell pregnant. I did the test in Gateshead market in the toilets. I was laughing with disbelief and then I was crying because I thought, ‘Oh shit what am I going to do!’ I went in the house and told my cousin, then I went to the toilet, and when I came back down he was sitting with two watermelons and a pillow up his top and I just started crying.
Esme: After she was born I did try to work but he did not want to look after them. It was hard then because even though I wanted to work I didn't have the option to. So, I got very depressed and used to cry all the time. I used to get very lonely because all my friends didn't bother phoning anymore. It doesn't just happen. It fades off. They come and see me a couple of times and ask me to go out, then because I'd have to say no they stopped bothering. So I lost touch with all of my friends.
Emma: I was 11 when I met my ex-partner and I was, like, hanging around with older people. They were all drinking and having sex and all that, and I was curious of what sex was like. So I was seeing him, like, a couple of years. We were using precautions, condoms, but the condom split when I was 14 and I got pregnant. At 14 it was really hard anyway. I told my mam in the end. She ran round the table screaming and shouting at me, and then she just came and sat down. She said, ‘Emma, I'm disgusted in you.’ And the first thing I said was. ‘Don't tell my grandad.’
Amy: I was 10 years old when Mam died. She found out she had cancer when I was 9. It was in her neck. She had it cut out, then it came back about 2-3 months later… I still went to school though because going to school helped me, where some people just stay off school. I think I only stayed off once and that was to go to my Mam's funeral. I had been with my boyfriend for a while when I got pregnant. I had just finished my exams at school and I had my name down to go to college, so I really spoilt that. I went home and my dad didn't really say anything because his girlfriend had just found out she was pregnant, and they were more cut up about their problems than they were mine.
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