Autobiography:

I was born in Wellington, New Zealand. My family travelled around a lot.  I lived  in Australia for 2 years then moving to Europe when I was 3. They eventually settled in England while I was at school and I used to have very long holiday's in a small village called Local Camore in Brittany, France. I stayed with my mum's parents.  I much preferred France because people were nice to me.  I had a lot of great aunts and Marianne, my  great grandmother. Sadly she died.  She was 99 and 9 months old. I also had many cousin's to play with. It was a small village and half the people who lived there were related to me in some way. My grandmother's house had a big garden with a swing in it and a hazel nut tree. It was next to a big forest. I  was free to run wild in the forest.  It was such a contrast to my home in England where my parents were often arguing. Particularly over meals when my brother and I were round to witness it.  I can still remember my brother with 2 broken arms crying at the dinner table due to a particularly nasty argument. Unfortunately after my parents got divorced, when I was 11 although they stayed in touch as dad only lived a mile away from us and the arguments continued. At around that time my mum also fell out with her family and so the yearly visit's to Local Camore stopped.

2. my education as a disabled child

I was born with Thyroid deficiency and Brain damage due to premature birth. After failing to manage at a normal primary school I went to a special school for the disabled called Black friars.  Black friars took all sorts of disabled kids including hearing impaired, visually impaired, CP, ADD, spinal bifid a, down syndrome, heart problems and epilepsy. They thought I may be Autistic at the time although I was never diagnosed as such. (I've been later diagnosed with Asperger syndrome).  Apart from Mrs Right, who was forever punishing me for things I couldn’t help,  the teaching staff was generally nice but rather poor at teaching. My dad was so unimpressed by the teaching standards of one of the teachers that he had me moved to the next class on after one year instead of the usual two.  Unfortunately the next teacher I had was even worse.  He eventually  removed from Black Friars  and placed  for a couple of terms in a normal primary school again before moving on to Madley High, which was a normal high school.  

It was a hard time for me. It was at this time that my parents got divorced.  My hearing got worse and I had problems with epilepsy and mental heath problems. My dad thought I would manage well in Madeley High. It was in the countryside, fairly small and the educational standards were very good. Unfortunately I found country kids tend to be less tolerant towards those with a difference then anyone else. I was that 'mental deafo'.

The bullying wasn’t too bad during the first 2 years though. There was a lot of name calling and I kept getting into fights but I was used to name calling at  Black friars. When I first went to Black friar’s I was also bullied by these older kid’s I shared a taxi with who were always hitting me and taking my toys away. However it had got much better by the time I left. During that time I really missing the Black friar’s.

In my 3^rd year a boy I called  Seb took a particular dislike to me. I think he was jealous of the extra attention and special treatment I was getting because I was disabled. They did let me get away with rather a lot in that school.  Particularly after I started self harming by scratching my limbs so much that they were all bloody. I’m afraid I behaved in a way I knew I would never get away with at home. Particularly in my 2^nd year when I was often rude to the teachers I didn’t like.

Unfortunately  Seb was really popular with the other Pupil’s in the year and I wasn’t. I found him very attractive myself until he started bullying me.  First he kept taking money from me and claimed this boy called Edward, I had a major crush on, liked me so I should follow him and write him plenty of love letters.  (I was always following people I liked in those days.)  Then  Edward's  brother wrote me a fake love letter pretending to be Edward and inviting me to Edward's house while his parents were out.  I used to be so gullible at that stage. I would have gone but my parents wouldn't let me.  I am really glad they didn’t because from what they said after I think they were planning to do something really horrible to me. 

The bullying got even worse after that. Seb asked for £20 or he would distribute the love letters I had sent to Edward. I couldn’t pay so that’s what he did. He also got hold of my Diary and told everyone what I’d written in that only twisting my words horribly to make me seem like a right pervert.  When I did well at 3^rd year exams he accused me of cheating.   I kept missing my Bus home because Edward and Seb kept blocking my path.  His friends kept hitting me and taking my things.  

The bullying  I suffered from this boy and his gang  got so bad I had to leave and go to another school.

I spent my last 2 years in a Partial hearing unit at Trent valley High. Socially I fitted in a lot better then at my last school. The deaf children there were aurally taught which meant they also had additional communication problems that signing deaf generally don't have so much. I was not the only deaf to have additional disabilities. Kerry also had a terminal heart condition so the teachers let her get away with a lot. She was even ruder to them then I was although unlike Madeley I wasn’t allowed to get away with that sort of behaviour.    I used to hang round with her, Tracy, Gavin and a few others. Which is unusual for me as I’ve always been a loner before.  We were the ones who kept breaking the rules and getting into trouble for it.  Sadly Kerry died in my 5^th year.

 Trent Valley high was an inner city school. It was very cosmopolitan with a large Asian population.  Unlike Madley  a lot of the kid’s were really poor and some, like Tracy,  were from really rough backgrounds as well. It had it’s advantages though. For once nobody cared that I was half French or that my mother  was on benefit’s. Which I got a lot of grief about  at Madely and Black friars.   The biology teacher was really good as a teacher although she was also a strict disciplinarian who frightened most of her pupils, including me.    Apart from her and the maths teacher,  the general teaching standards at that school was very poor.

 I went on to Doncaster deaf college.  At first I really loved the freedom I had. I went out  with a boy called David.  Things fell through with him because he kept dumping me then coming back a few day’s latter begging me to go out with him again.  Things started to go wrong when I saw him treating Nigel badly. Nigel wanted to sit at our table but David made him leave. I got very angry about this and tried to make David apologies although he never did.   Nigel was born deafblind from rubella damage although he had a successful eye operation at the age of 3 and regained a lot of useful vision.  Unlike most severely affected Rubella damage cases he did not have learning difficulties.  He did have brain damage though and I think he was autistic.  Needless to say he made a much better friend then David.  We used to go travelling together.  He was very useful to know when my sight started to go.  He taught me the deafblind manual. I  went to visit him where he lives in Dublin he came to visit me where I lived with my family.  Unfortunately his mother was very religious and extremely overprotective.  It was also necessary for her to come with him on his visit’s to England. While I would have tolerated it for the sake of keeping in touch with him, my mum wouldn’t.  After his last visit she got really angry if I suggest he come over again.

3. My years of hell.

The big problem with my sight loss is that it was what they used to term 'hysterical conversion'. That means the eye doctor could not find anything wrong with my sight. Because the doctors could not see anything wrong with me, nobody else believed there was anything wrong with me either.  I tried to escape the situation at home by staying at the various colleges I was at but the people from the various colleges didn’t believe me either.  At one of the colleges I was raped but the staff didn’t believe me about that either.  I found people's animosity on top of the fact that I was loosing my sight really hard to cope with. I was suffering from a lot of mental health problems around then.

My parents even put me in a special unit for deaf people with mental health problems. Some of them were failures of the aural system and could not communicate at all, which tends to give a new definition to the term 'communication problems'. I got on better with the other deaf inmates then I did with the nurses who I hated.  I left with more mental health problems then  I went in with. The shrink's verdict was that I was ‘just plain spoilt’ and my parents should be more strict with me.  My parents never ‘spoilt’ me in the first place but they seemed to be taking the doctor’s advice and my life at home became a living nightmare.  I blame the doctor for that. 

4. Running away from myself.

After running out of colleges I spent as much time as I could with my cousin Jameel.   He was born and lived much of his childhood years in Iraq before his mother had to flee the country.  Although he’d been in England for about 10 years when I knew him his grasp of English was very poor. He had learning difficulties and the same type of  Epilepsy that I have. His family did not treat him very well either.  When his mum had a boyfriend who objected to him she just threw him out and he was homeless.  He was supposed to be violent but he was never violent with me and I could be a right bitch at times.

We used to go to the Swollow sports club for the disabled which was run by a prison officer and the helper’s were all prisoners. I did swimming and Trampolining there. I even won some medals at swimming.  A prisoner called Charlie  made a good swimming coach and did a lot to help my swimming improve.  He was an ex Hell’s angel who had spent 8 years in jail for smuggling cannabis and an extra 3 for fighting with a prison officer.  I saw him after he left Prison too. He let me ride on the back of his motorcycle.  I also slept with him as well although he never concealed from me that I was one of many.  We used to smoke cannabis.    Unfortunately the punctuality of his visits and his behaviour deteriorated somewhat.  I think due to the fact that he started moving on to other drugs which were stronger then cannabis. Sadly this often happened with Prisoners when they left gaol. 

   Eventually  I was registered as blind  and most people started to believe I wasn’t pretending.  I had a voluntary job teaching Braille and moon.  I was working for a man called Cliff Denton who also helped me a great deal. He was one of the first to believe I wasn’t faking it.  He also introduced me to a blind woman called  Marika.  Marika  is still a really good friend of mine.  I also had my first Guide dog called Bruce and I won the deaf achiever of the year award.  Cliff Denton nominated me but I was really amazed to win.

I still wasn’t getting on very well at home so I moved to a flat in Stafford.  When that failed I moved again to Peterbough.  On the surface my life had improved a lot from the time when nobody believed me and I was living with my mum.   I was achieving a lot for a totally deaf blind person (which I was at the time).  I had a voluntary Job, working as a masseur for people with severe learning difficulties where I got particularly attached to this asian girl called Minnie who had very severe learning difficulties and brain damage.   I also made and sold my potter, and did activities with Guide dog holiday's such as adventure holidays, water ski ing and holidays abroad. I had a friend called Stephen Coates in Bradford then a friend called Wendy in London who I often went to visit.  I also had an off and on friendship with Marianne who looked after my cat while I was away.   I even did a couple of charity treks with Guide dog’s for the blind  to Sinai desert and Morocco where I met and had a major crush with a girl called Fi. She soon lost what ever little interest she had with me in the beginning and what with that, the publicity which I felt was turning me into a Helen Keller act-a-like and the stress of constant fundraising I went well over the deep end. 

Beneath the surface I was not doing quite so well. When I first moved to Peterbough I developed Anorexia Nervosa. I slimmed down to 6 and a half stone’s. I often got depressed and self harmed. Then I went into self induced poverty  so I could buy  Braille computer equipment and fund all my expensive holidays. I only ate very cheap reduced and economy food which made me ill, did not use my heating in winter, and became very mean with my friends.  I wasn’t a very nice person.  I either took people in my life for granted or I was clingy,  totally obsessed with them and trying to copy them which they didn’t like either.  Apart from Kosh and Marika friendship’s did not tend to survive for very long with me.I think the problem was that I just didn't understand myself very well and assumed if only I could change my life everything would become hunky dory only it didn't work that way and things just spiralled downwards.    

5. Living with others.

My experience with Suzanne, Michelle and too much cannabis started badly and got steadily worse. I met Michelle at spiral women's camp. We snogged before she even learnt how to communicate with me. Then after Snogging all evening she suddenly got up and said 'oh by the way I've got a girlfriend' . If I had had any sense at all I would have got the hell out. Unfortunately I was stoned out of my tree and Naive enough to assume that because Michelle was so casual about Snogging me while she had a girlfriend, her girlfriend Suzanne would be too. This is probably the biggest and Stupidest mistake I think I ever made. For one thing Suzanne was NOT ok about it.  Later on she seemed to forgive me and even invited me to snog with her. I was Naive enough  to assume that would solve the problem with Suzanne and Michelle. So was quite stunned when Michelle physically attacked Suzanne. This as I learnt later was quite a regular thing.

When they left camp I went with them. I ended up moving in with them later on. Things could be really good when they were being nice but they were mostly hell. Michelle regularly hit Suzanne and sometimes me, Suzanne sometimes hit Michelle and me, and I once hit Michelle. I guess the only thing that stopped me hitting Suzanne was guilt about Sleeping with Michelle.

Suzanne had a really abusive childhood and later turned to heroin abuse.  When I met her she was on Methadone (a heroin substitute) although she did not tell me that at first. She told me they were drug’s she was taking because she had hepatitis C.  She also smoked a lot of hash, and sometimes Heroin too.  She also kept far too many animals then she could really afford. When we fell out her way of making things up was to buy me a pet.  This is how I came to start having rodents.   There were also a lot of fights over the valium which Michelle kept stealing from her although she refused to get her own supply.   

Michelle got it into her head that I was only pretending to be deafblind. A lot of pressure was put on me to start hearing and seeing again. So I took Hypnotherapy. That, the fact I loved Michelle at the time and the hash I was taking did have some affect. I regained some of my sight and became partially sighted. Hash in big doses also seems to help with my hearing so I could stand using my hearing aids. Although I also started self harming too. When Suzanne and Michelle noticed they gave me hell so it just went underground. I ended up getting really depressed again. 

The problem was I just wasn't capable of being who they wanted me to be. Jane, one of the only people who was aware of what was happening, tried to tell me this. Of course I didn't listen because I thought that living with them was better then living alone and being very depressed the way I was before I met them.  She let me stay at her place as a refuge though whenever things got too bad.  I'd given up my flat so If I did leave them I would have had to become homeless.

I was working in a sheltered workshop making pot’s with Sense at the time.  I also massaged some of their rubella damaged users.  They also provided guide helps who took me Rock climbing and to Pubs in the gay quarters.    Although Dad and Michelle originally organised this and Suzanne seemed happy about it at first she later kept wanting me to skip days off.  Particularly after Sense and my social worker kept trying to interfere with my home life. Trying to persuade me to move out. Which was all quite understandable considering I told them about one of their friend’s attempt to suffocate me when she and Michelle was really drunk.  Because of the problem’s this was causing with Suzanne and Michelle I eventually lied and told sense and my social worker that the woman hadn’t really tried to suffocate me. That we just had an argument and now I’d made it up.

However, things really started to change after I got my 2nd guide dog Jilli. I think the 3 weeks at the guide dog training centre did me a lot of good. When I went back to Suzanne and Michelle It was hell. I kept going home to see my ex guide dog Bruce.  I couldn't wait until the New year because Suzanne and Michelle were going away and leaving me in the house on my own. Only they didn't leave me on my own. One of their violent friends (of which they had many) stayed. So I had to leave and spend the New year with Jane and her kids. 

Things were also getting quite hard with sense. At Christmas that year one of my guide help’s stole £20 from me and my plastic also went missing with all the things I kept with it. She may have stolen that too but unlike the £20 there was not enough evidence to accuse her with.  Unfortunately  they stopped providing me with a guide help around that time. They were less helpful as well.  Maybe they just didn’t believe me. I don’t know. The woman left before there could be a disciplinary hearing about her.

I left Suzanne and Michelle in February the next year when I was really sick and Suzanne hit me. I was also really depressed at the time and was about to take an overdose when I saw Jilli looking at me and I felt I was being really irresponsible to take that way out so as soon as I was a little better I cleaned all the rodent cages and sneaked out. It was a horrible journey. I was really afraid of Suzanne coming to follow me.  When I got to my dad’s I had a relapse and was sick for 3 weeks.

I really hated being homeless.  Even though I wasn’t homeless on the street. Jane let me sleep in her living room, and I spent weekend’s at Dad’s place. The people at Sense were very unsympathetic and unhelpful, especially when I turned down this sheltered flat I was offered because it was miles away and it didn’t take pets. Dad wanted me to pretend I didn’t have any but I don’t think that would have worked.  I left sense around then.

Also Suzanne wanted me back. She tried various methods of persuasion.  She refused to feed or clean out the mice which she bought me in the first place. Sadly 2 of them died.  I am also to blame for this. I should have taken them when I went back for the rats.  Suzanne  tried to stop me from taking the rats with me.  She told dad that Jane wouldn’t want rat’s and she was happy to look after them.   I’m really lucky Jane accepted my rat’s. She ended up having the 2 remaining mice and chinchilla’s as well.   Suzanne bought me a baby chinchilla in the hope that I would come back to look after it only Jane took that in as well.  Her neighbour gave one of her baby chinchilla’s to keep it company. I called them Salem and Sabrina.  Sadly they both died.

6. Being myself

5 month’s later I got this flat where I am living now. It is a really nice 1^st floor flat. I only wish it was a bit bigger as the kitchen is so tiny I can’t fit a washing machine and I could do with an extra room to turn into a potters workshop.  Also the chinchilla’s who don’t travel well tend to bind me to the flat in a way I’d rather it didn’t. 

However, I never regret moving back on my own. If it didn’t do anything else the experience of living with Suzanne and Michelle taught me that constant changes are not the way to solve problems and neither are drugs.  That improvements have to come from within.

 Another improvement came with  reading  a book called ‘pretending to be normal’ which is about a woman with Asperger Syndrome. I found myself Identifying with her. My dad thought I was Asperger before but I was unwilling to believe him. I am already deafblind. Who needs another label.  My deafblindness tended to act as a cover for my other disability.  Although my mobility is very good for a deafblind person my communication skills are more typical.  Many deafblind have even more communication difficulties then I do. Particularly those born deaf.  Also it’s not unusual for a blind person to rock or other movements I sometimes have. Although I’m only partially sighted and I do have useful hearing but also sound phobia which makes it hard for me to wear hearing aids as they  amplify everything.  So my dual sensory impairment tended to hid my other disability quite successfully.  Asperger is a difficult symptom to recognise anyway.  However, when I saw a specialist called Digbe Tantan he diagnosed me as Asperger.

Although I don’t generally tell people I’m Asperger. (I don’t think anyone would believe me). It has helped me to understand myself more and not to keep trying to copy other people I liked in the way I did before.  I no longer take cannabis.  Although some may consider this a deterioration  I have stopped wearing hearing aids as well and avoid dark noisy pubs. Where as before I went to these places because they were the type of places the NT people I liked went too and enjoyed. 

I am about to complete a course at Hereford college for the blind in Ceramic’s which for me is an achievement because before when I used to go to colleges I used to drop out. Also this year has been very difficult with several of my pets dying and mum recently having cancer. 

 I am hoping to go on to do a degree in ceramics. This is also stressful for me as I don’t know for sure whether I would be accepted or not. I think I will be because they were impressed with my work but they haven’t told me that I am definitely accepted yet or how I’m going to manage when I am.

7. Coping with Death.

The first loss I ever remember suffering was the death of my cousin Pascal. She got run over by a car. I can’t remember knowing her too well but I was sad about her death all the same. I think I was about 6 or 7. Then My Great grandmother Marianne died. I was about 10. I was really upset about her. She was a really nice person.  Even if we didn’t communicate well. Like most of my relatives in France she didn’t speak English and my French is very poor. 

I’ve known several other people who have died. One of the worst is Nikki.  She was a really good friend. I started writing to her after I left Queen Alexandra college. I found we had a lot in common as she is also deafblind with severe arthritis and we had a lot of shared interests and background in common. We used to write each other really long letters and she was my roommate on one of Deafblind Uk’s activity holidays.  What made it really hard was the last time we wrote we had a really big row. I really wish we could have made it up as I never heard from her again. The next I heard she had died. I still miss her.

Last November all my rat’s started to die of a chest infection. Then my guide dog Bruce developed Heart and lung problems.  He was sick for 6 months before he died. Now I’ve learnt my mum has cancer. She was supposed to have an operation to remove it but it had grown too big so she is now having radioactive therapy.  It is making her really ill. What makes it harder is that we have never really got on that well although she has mellowed since I lived with her.

 I don’t know what is going to happen but I am worried that she may die. After all I was told that Bruce would be ok but he died. Ok he was an old dog but Mum is also getting on in years. I am also worried about my dad because he is nearly 68 and his dad died when he was 70.   I’ve been worrying about him dying ever since Bruce died. It seems his death and the death of my rodents so close together has made me realise how probable death is.  Then mum developed cancer.  The same type of cancer as my rat Stonehenge died from earlier this year.  Although Stonehenge was never given radioactive treatment for it.  Whether that does any good I’m yet to find out.

As this is so much a current thing I can’t quite finish part 7 of this autobiography. I’ll continue it when I know whether she lives or she is definitely going to die.  This might take Months. Even years…  

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