My Crazy Life

Chapter One: Childhood

I was born on Thursday September 3rd 1992 at Ipswich Hospital. I had some health complications at birth. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I know I was very ill. They put me in an incubator that was way too small. The lack of space caused trauma with my brain.

I came out of hospital at two weeks and went to live with my mum and biological dad. I can't remember much about this particular time. My mum and dad split when I was two and my mum married my step dad when I was three. I was their flower girl. I don't remember much about the wedding, other than that my mum had to cancel the balloons she'd ordered as decorations because I was scared of them (more on that later.)

I got diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy (CP) as a baby, and it didn't really affect me much during my childhood. I just struggled with things like using a knife and fork and stuff like that, although I have been told I used to stand in a frame every night to help my legs. After a lot of hurdles, I was diagnosed as autistic at the age of four. I was a complex case because I mostly presented as someone who was 'high functioning' (even though I now know that functioning labels are pretty useless), but also had some symptoms common with 'low functioning' kids such as spinning.

I had a happy childhood. Given the chance I would definitely go back. As a kid one of my biggest passions was music. I always wanted to be a singer as a kid and even wrote one or two of my own songs, which are pretty embarrassing looking back. My love of music goes back to before I can even remember, when I used to sing along to my mum's tapes in the car. Then when I was about four or five I started to develop my own taste in music. My fave band was the Spice Girls. I had loads of Spice merchandise including CDs, videos, dolls and even a toy mobile phone (I don't know why this sticks out among everything else). I even went to see them live when I was about five or six, but like a lot of things around that time, I can't remember much about it. I do remember going to playgroup one day and singing loads of Spice Girls songs in the talent show when all the other kids sang nursery rhymes. This again is a little embarrassing looking back.

There was also a really obscure band I had a bit of a special interest in. It was an all female duo called Daphne & Celeste. I got in trouble because I took the lyrics to their song School's Out! a little too literally!

Another thing I loved as a kid was Barbie dolls. I had two or three boxes full (not including accessories!) and I played with them almost daily. It was fun creating stories for my dolls to take part in, although I did get a little pissed off when I lost one of their tiny shoes, which was often!

I had some weird phobias as a kid. One was, as mentioned before, balloons. I don't know why i was afraid of balloons, but I suspect it had something to do with the loud noise they made when they popped. Another phobia I had was The Muppets, and again, I've no idea where this came from. In the 90s there was a batch of Disney VHS tapes with a random Muppet short at the end, and I seemed to have all of them! It really freaked me out. I remember begging my mum to turn the tape off before the short came on. It's bizarre.

Another fear I had, one that affected me quite a bit, was saying people''s names, including my own. I also couldn't say the word 'balloon' for obvious reasons. I've no idea where this fear came from. It wasn't until I was about fifteen that I was able to overcome this fear. And much like the fear itself, I have no idea how I was able to overcome it.

I found out I was autistic at the age of nine. Apparently I took it really well. I've always thought of my autism as a good thing, well, apart from when I have meltdowns.

Speaking of meltdowns, they happened pretty often during my childhood. They could be triggered by anything from a playdate with one of my cousins ending to not being able to come up with an idea in English class (again, more on that later.) These meltdowns are not something I'm proud of, and although they still happen now, they are much less frequent.

When I was ten I was invited to a group for 'high functioning' autistic kids at a local special school. While I was there I struck up a friendship with the only other girl in the group, and it was then that I realised that autistic people really are all different. We were like chalk and cheese. I was into pop music and stuff; she'd never heard of any of the bands I'd listened to. But the biggest difference was that she could write stories and at the time I couldn't. I don't know why this was, but I suspect it was because I didn't have the confidence to write.

Through this friend I met another best friend called Katie, who became one of my bestest friends ever. She had Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and her joints would regularly snap out of place. I remember she stayed over at my house once and I think she dislocated her shoulder or something. Nevertheless she got on with it and after it snapped back into place she was her happy bubbly self.

My passion for music continued into my tween years. I got really into S Club 7. I used to watch their TV show and I had all their CDs, I even got to see them in concert a couple of times.

I had other special interests during this time. I used to love Cartoon Network, particularly The Powerpuff Girls. Again I had lots of merchandise and I even dressed up as one of them once.

But my biggest special interest during this time was a show on the CBBC channel. It was called The Basil Brush Show. I watched it one day on a whim and totally fell in love with the main character. Quite literally. I told my parents I had my first crush. Needless to say they weren't exactly pleased and tried to blame my then best friend for 'putting silly ideas in my head'. But the truth is, this obsession has never gone away, in fact it's only gotten stronger. More on this later on. (I'm gonna be saying that a lot, I can tell).

I found school really tough, like a lot of autistic kids. It wasn't so much the subjects (well, apart from English), but the other kids. I tried to make friends with a group of girls in my class, and when we were moving up to high school we actually requested to all be put in the same form group, which we were. But cracks started to show when one of the girls started saying her mum knew Lee Ryan from the boyband Blue. To this day I'm not sure if she was telling the truth or not, but one of the other girls seemed pretty convinced, and this drove a wedge between them and the other girls in the group. Another thing that happened was... well, boys. It seemed the boys in our class hated me, and were forever tormenting me in ways such as kicking my backpack on my back, etc. My 'friends' seemed to want to impress these boys so they stopped hanging out with me. One day it all got too much, and I had a massive meltdown. But guess what happened? I got kicked out of school, not my bullies. Typical.

With nowhere else to go, I ended up back at the special school full time. I really didn't enjoy my time there; I was the only girl in the group and I felt really out of place there.