Finding Out Who I Really Am: Part 1

First of all, let me apologise for being so quiet on my blog last year and the first part of this year… I haven’t really had a chance to write about anything because I haven’t done anything new and I don’t want to go over the same things when I write blog posts… I also forget what I have previously written about in past posts, so that’s annoying!

Right then, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty… I truly became aware of my physical differences when I was around the age of 11 or 12, but it didn’t seem to bother me very much at all because I was always treated the same as any other child by the majority of the people who knew me. I was just an ordinary person, the only difference between me and my classmates was the fact that I had Cerebral Palsy and I used a wheelchair. I made friends easily and had three close friends at primary school, all similar ages to me. When I went to senior school, most of my primary school friends and I grew apart. I had two or three best friends at senior school. One of my friends left the school at the start of year 8 or 9; I found this very difficult to deal with, so she promised me that we would stay friends, but we didn’t because there was a misunderstanding between us. I also went through a similar thing with my other friend when we left school. The break-ups were both over a silly misinterpretation, so I was incredibly angry with myself about it for years and I found it difficult to let it go because I didn't understand why it happened. Now, it doesn't bother me.

I went all the way through school (from pre-school to year 11 at senior school) being happy with who I was. I found the transition from school to sixth-form college incredibly daunting and stressful because I couldn’t cope with the changes that were happening and I was holding on to the girl I was at school.

I have always been a literal person. If someone says something that isn’t immediately obvious what was meant, I tend to get agitated because I don’t know what they mean. I was like this right from the word go. I remember being told that when I was little, my mum and dad had to tell everyone who worked with me not to pretend to be upset and pretend to cry because I would get upset as I thought that they were upset or hurt. I have got better at working out people’s emotions, but I definitely still struggle to know what people are feeling. I cannot read people’s facial expressions or body language very well at all! I also struggle with "small talk". I don't like loud noises or lots of bright lights either, and I get sensory overload.

I used to think that I knew who I am, but I feel there is something missing or something “not right”… I really struggled to fit in when I started college. I spent 12 years in mainstream school, and I got on incredibly well there, and I thought it would be the same for college too, but unfortunately, I didn’t fit in for the first two years because the college only looked at my GCSE grades (they were ok, but not overly good) and they didn’t look at me as a person. I was old enough to truly understand who I was a few years into college, and I really struggled to accept myself and who I had become.

That’s it for this blog post, but this is a two-parter… So, look out for the second part tomorrow!