Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

I'm lying on the French sofa in my studio, curled up on its pale green satin cushions. The window behind me is open and the green leaves of the wisteria are tumbling down and there is a damp, summery atmosphere flowing through the room. Something very comforting; it reminds me of when I was a child, Sunday afternoons after Black Beauty, the decision of whether to go out and play or not.

I feel very foetal and melancholy curled up in my ball on a Thursday afternoon. I feel somehow shell-shocked and strangely unloved. I actually really need a cuddle. I need some arms around me and I need to be told that everything is going to be all right.

I remember when I was a little girl desperately needing a hug and wrapping my arms around myself as much as I could and crying into my chest. As I lie here, the colours that I see are pink and an even stronger strawberry pink. I see myself as a nine-year-old, crouching down in the derelict gardens of the hotel looking for strawberries amongst the overgrown weeds.

Every way in which I think of myself at the moment, I have a clear vision of myself in a lonely pursuit, and most heavily as a child. To be honest, I actually feel a bit sorry for myself and that's because I feel weak, physically weak and mentally weak. Without being too heavy, or sounding too dramatic, today one question keeps going through my mind: I wonder if my dad has ever really loved me?

I find it very difficult to understand how people can walk away from their children. I don't think my dad has ever really taken proper responsibility for us. He left my mum broke and broken as though everything was her fault. And still my dad, at the age of 87, continually reacts as if everything is everybody else's fault. I've never been able to run to my mum or dad for help, and there have been times in my life when I've envied those who could. Sometimes in my life, when I've been having to face a battle, I've felt incredibly alone. At the times when I have felt I've needed support the most, the reality that it is me alone has, instead of making me feel stronger, brought on a lack of confidence and weakness which I hate within myself.

Even as a child there were so many occasions where, when I fell down, I knew there was going to be nobody around to pick me up, no one to comfort me or nurse my bruises. Just me. And even when you get older and are big enough to look after yourself and take care of yourself, there are times when you really need a cuddle.

Quite often when things are going really bad for me, seriously bad, I tend not to tell my parents. I will breeze through things and be extremely economical with the truth, at least allowing myself the comfort of space to be able to deal with the problem, something I have been doing since I was a little girl. I'm not tarring my mum and dad with the same brush here, as my mum's reasons for not being around were very different from my dad's. She was out to work every hour God could send.

Anyway, today it's my dad that I'm angry with. I screamed at him down the telephone, but I'm sure he didn't understand a word I said. I tried to explain to a friend that if you can't trust the people who are supposed to be closest to you, everything starts to slip away. A worldly paranoia takes over from love – a nasty machine which splices and cuts up any ideals that still remain.

I feel like I want it to rain. I want a really fresh kind of rain, tropical, torrential. I'd like the clouds to clear and an evening sun to rest upon the jasmine as its sweetness fills the air. I'm longing for a simple beauty, a clarity, a world that isn't messy and hurtful, a world that feels pleasant to be in. I've had another killer of a week, hectic, frantic and emotionally draining. I need to be able to step lightly. I want to feel that I can go forward, not constantly weighted down by my singular past. I don't want to be a victim to myself.

In two days' time, I go to Edinburgh to start to install my show. I'm already getting nervous and my face has become a ball of toxic pus. My glands are swollen and I'm suffering from bouts of nausea. It's a terrible pressure that just suddenly happens and it's all to do with time, my lack of good time and the immense amount of weight that I carry around. I should be going out tonight and enjoying myself, but I'm not going to. I feel too heavy. I feel that every smile that I give will be fake. I need to just sit on this sofa with this damp summer air and cast my eyes through the open window on to the dappled green of the wisteria and tell myself that the world is not against me and that I am my world.

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