Moving on...

My parents car was packed as full as the removal van as it pulled away from my beloved home... I was jammed in between the boxes. No seat for me in the car, as I felt there was no seat for me in life. At nine years old I knew without anyone telling me that the stable life that I knew had gone forever.

We'd had a cat you know... for my whole life. A ginger Tom, he never really had a name other than Puss. He was 15 the day that we left and the poor thing had had a troublesome couple of years that had seen him run over and nursed back to life in the last four years. Before he was sentenced.

I remember the day so well...

I (as always) was the first one out of bed. I must have been five - for I know that I hadn't started school. Our front door wasn't locked (it was 1977) but I heard him crying. I opened the large heavy door and there he was covered in blood, he was in such a state. To this day I have no idea how he made it back to our door. He spent weeks in hospital, he lost all his teeth from one side of his jaw, his pelvis was shattered and both of his legs too. But the vet was my dads friend and he promised to do his best to put him back together. And he did.

My mum and I nursed him, we fed him via pipette during the Terry Wogan radio show and Pebble Mill on BBC 1.

He made a full recovery too. They said that he would never be able to run or jump but by 1978 he was enjoying pride of place in the top bunk in the room that I shared with my sister.

Anyway, poor old puss, with his cute tongue lolloping out the side of his cute little slobbery chops was the lucky one. He never made it past my childhood home. His life cut tragically short by owners that didn't care for him any more than they care for me.

The Beginning??????

To be honest, it is very difficult to know where to begin, because I'm not really sure where the beginning is.

I think that I was a normal happy kid till we were wrenched away from our middle class suburban lifestyle shortly after my 9th birthday. Suddenly, one day my dad no longer went to work and our beautiful house - the one that I loved and adored with all my heart went up for sale. No one told me why. Suddenly there was no money. My beloved ballet classes had to stop, my parents friends stopped visiting and no one told me why.

I suppose with hind sight my parents did manage to shield me from all that was going on but at nine you are not a baby. As I look back now - I recall some people coming to view my beautiful house - the one that I loved. I knew that my parents were trying to sell it and deep down I knew that ultimately meant me leaving everything that I had ever known and I was clinging to my happy life with everything that I had.

It must have been in the winter, cause it was dark enough for my dad to need light to show the people my bedroom. The room was big - large enough to have two light switches. I hid behind the wardrobe, next to my Animal Crackers poster and pulled the light cord (just slightly). I knew that this would stop him from being able to put on the main light. I don't know how I knew this. He was frantically flicking the main switch and I could feel his anger.

"I am really sorry" he kept saying - "I have no idea why this light isn't working - maybe it's the bulb?"

My room was big (or at least in my memory it was big.) I shared it with my sister - we had shared since I was born. At sixteen, she is seven years older than me. She must have known what was going on - but no one told me.

Then one day the removal men came, I tried to hide so that they couldn't take me too. First all the furniture and then everything else - even the carpets. I sat in my bedroom, my beautiful bedroom with my dog and cried and cried and cried. I pulled at the floor boards because I could see lost toys and bits of lego not wanting to be left behind. I would gladly have changed places with them and stayed there lost forever.

An Introduction

When I was 21 years old I thought that there was no place for me on this earth. Though I had a family, a child, an estranged husband, a boyfriend and friends - no one chose to help me. Some would later say that they had known that I "wasn't right" yet I remained alone with the demons that would try to end my life.

The positive to this sad, sad story is that fifteen years and a whole life time later I am now living a happy life with a family that I love and who love me with all our hearts. Through my story I reach out to all those sad and vulnerable people who can't see an end to the pain. I hope that what I have to say offers some hope to a positive life.