Living with Neurodivergence

The weeks leading up to moving back into the city consisted of arguments at home about me moving away and how I was going to fund it and how I was going to survive even though I had been accepted into the course, been for an interview and found accomodation. I had not found a job yet but I was getting a payment for doing the course.

The flat i found was in a nice part of town and it was with two men and a woman. They were all older than me and had professional jobs but they seemed nice enough.  I had also went from about 15 and a half stone to 13 and a half stone, losing two stones before I left, which I felt really good about as I had struggled with overeating all through my teens, which I blame on school and the problems I had learning. I was still trying to get more off so was eating Tesco light ready meals every night and had switched to brown bread. I started my classes and everything was going fairly well. I had some problems with some other classmates who were straight out of school and with group work and meeting up with people I didn’t really like that much, but I made some friends and started socializing. My weight continued to drop throughout the year. I was walking a lot and went swimming sometimes and was limiting my diet to about 1500 cals a day. By the end of first year I was down to just over 11 stone and I was passing my assignments. Although the flat was nice I only stayed there 6 months as I was a bit out of my depth with the people who lived there and felt a bit young next to them.  I went out quite a bit in the first year. I met up with my friend from high school occasionally as I was living somewhere now. I had fallen out with with the girl I met in English class because I felt she deliberately turned up late to upset me and leave me standing and she said some things that were freaking me out a little bit. She had wanted me to move in with her but I decided that was a bad idea and told her one night and we didn’t really see each other for a while but I still met up with the girl from my Spanish class as we were both quite central. She had let me sleep on her grans couch a couple of nights when I had been living away from town and in her own place when she was sharing. We would go to irish pubs together as we both liked that kind of music, though she was a little bit more alternative. I had a student loan coming in and I got a job working in a call centre which mostly funded everything but it got a bit stressful sometimes and I would only do a few evenings a week sometimes. I sometimes still asked my mum and dad for some money when I was behind with rent or I needed something. My mum was usually okay and gave me 30 or 40 pounds to help. Sometimes there were issues with my sister saying that they were helping me and not her but I knew that wasn’t true. It was just different things we were choosing. Sometimes when I would go out to see them there were problems with my dad and he would bring up the fact that I was consistently borrowing money and when was I going to start being an adult and paying my own way, which I felt I was too be fair, I just needed a little bit extra sometimes. It would piss me off and I would say I wasn’t asking for anything. I tried for a while and would get some extra shifts at the call centre but I would usually need a bit more than what was coming in. A family member suggested a guy she knew from work who was a charge nurse and had a spare room. She lived 10 minutes down the road, so we could meet up and things. He was quite a bit older than me at 37 he was 15 years older, which I was a bit concerned about but some of my family knew him and said he was quite a nice guy. I moved in there, it was the other side of town and next to a football stadium but I got the rent quite cheap. It was all fine at first, he was friendly and didn’t mind me bringing friends back for drinks but he started getting over familiar, standing too close and making comments as if we were together, he even asked me to pass him a beer from the fridge and i got the impression he was lying to people about us being together when we certainly weren’t. I sat my exams at the end of term and they went well. After one particular one I had been worrying about I went back but no one was there, then I got a phone call to come to a party with him, my cousin and some other people. I just wanted to chill out, get some food and go to bed but they persisted and said they would get me a taxi and that I had to celebrate so I agreed. My cousin had made us Mac and cheese because I had hardly eaten. We were just having drinks but there was a few people there I didn’t really know and a lot of people coming and going, I couldn’t really get out of it. At some point I went to the kitchen to get my drink that was supposed to be coming, I seen it pushed back against the counter

I thought something was off but I just took it and drank it. Half an hour later I was falling asleep over the chair. My cousin took me to her flatmates room and suggested I lie down. I did. Next thing I remember was waking and seeing spiders climbing the walls which at first I found quite amusing but then I got freaked out. I got up to get some water but my hands were like jelly and I dropped the cup and then I remember collapsing to the ground, although I was still semi conscious. They all came running through including my flatmate who I was feeling increasingly agitated with at this point, he was trying to get me up but I just wanted to lie with my head against the cold ground. Eventually I got sick of his nagging and forced myself up and ran to the bathroom and fell over the step and smacked my face against the bath. When I came to I had two of them standing over me telling me I had cut my eye. I started freaking out but realized it was under my eye but I had to go to hospital. My cousin was taking someone home so it had to be my flatmate. I spent the next 5 or 6 hours in a and e where I was all over the place and needed several staff near me. They tried finding someone to do toxicology tests but unfortunately they weren’t there that night. I am sure my drink was spiked but cant be sure which one of them did it. I got home about 6 in the morning after getting stitches, where i just went to bed and my flatmate called my mum and she came and got me  later on and I spent a few nights there. After 8 months in that house I decided I didn’t want to live with him, I got my cousin to help me tell him and get my things out as I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be but he was making comments and standing too close and although i dont normally snoop around I looked in one of his drawers and found some things that concerned me. I moved into my cousins spare room which she made up for me. I found out in may I had passed all my exams so that made it all worth it.

Second year of my course, I put on some of the weight I had lost but not all of it. I still tried to keep up with walking and sometimes went swimming. There was usually a pool somewhere near me and I went when I could afford it. The friends I met on my course I went out with sometimes and there was another girl I met through one of them who had also been to James Gillespie’s high school but she had hated it as she had some mental health problems and an eating disorder and had been in the young people’s unit for a while. She liked swimming aswell and I didn’t know many people who liked swimming. I would often have to go on my own but I sometimes met up with her and we went swimming at the pool together. It was good to do something healthy that didn’t involve alcohol. We went to the cinema occasionally and we all went out for dinner at a mexican place one night with her and the new guy she was seeing. It was good meeting new people but my friend from school would message me every so often asking me to meet up. There was one night we went out to a club in Edinburgh. She was going out with a guy who was studying sports science at Napier. He was different to her last one and I liked him because he was usually friendly and brought some of his friends too so it was just like a night out with a few friends. One night I met them in a nightclub. I think I was out with my sister and some of her friends so we all just kind of got together. It was a strange night and some of them were being weird and going off by themselves. I just drank more to deal with it but I was getting a bit all over the place and there were a couple of guys laughing. I didn’t realise until my friend told me my skirt was tucked up the back. Fortunately I had black tights on but I just sat down for a while after that but because I was drunk I was telling her things. She was asking me about school and things before we met. It was strange because she didn’t really acknowledge anything before we met but I know I said some things about  my teacher and the way she was with me. I had never disclosed anything like that to anyone except the girl from Spanish class who I had told id had some problems in school because she had too so we spoke about it a bit. On the way home I had planned to get to my place but I wasn’t walking right so they said I could stay on the couch. We got food on the way home and I remember sitting on the couch eating it . She was speaking to me like I was a child and she got me some water and things. I knew I had said too much. They went to bed and I woke the next day and got myself together. I think my friend slept in a bit so I just said goodbye through the door and bye to her boyfriend who was up doing some dishes or something. I went home and tried not to think about it all for a while. I didn’t see her for a while which I wasn’t really that bothered about as I had said a bit too much. Ever now and then she would contact me but we wouldn’t necessarily meet up. She just liked to keep in touch with friends especially the ones from school.

The next time I remember meeting up with her was strange. She had her little sister with her who was now a bit older but I remembered her as a child. She was being strange with me and wanted to get something from her car as she now drove and had parked it somewhere close to where we were going. She wanted me to go with her which I did but she was behaving strangely. I didn’t know if there was something she wanted to say to me in private but whatever it was she didn’t say it. We. Went out but it was strange and they kept disappearing somewhere. They came back at first but then they disappeared for ages. I stood at quite a central part for a while in case they came back and I looked around me a bit  but it was getting busier and I couldn’t see them. I just thought fuck this and left. The next day she phoned me and made a big scene over the phone about how I had disappeared and she didn’t know where I was, which wasn’t quite the way it happened, so we argued a while and then she said something like she couldn’t be bothered and was going to watch Emmerdale. I knew what she was saying and I couldn’t be bothered with the way she was acting anyway. I didn’t attempt to phone her again but she would still get in touch every now and then and make out that everything was okay. She would just pretend we hadn’t really said what we had said.

Anyway, I just got on with my course. I did things with the other 2 girls and there was an Irish girl I sometimes met up with it went to her flat and had pizza and things. I told her that I might like a girl that was on my course but I wasn’t sure if it was in a friendly way or more than that. I took a while to tell her but I eventually got it out. I had been embarrassed going back into class as I knew she had told some people but I managed to go back in and act like nothing had happened.  I still had some problems with some of the girls on the course but I still had those girls at least to go about with. The girl I liked went about with a group of 3 other girls. They were okay and there was one of them I got on with okay and sometimes spoke to but I wasn’t sure about the others, it wasn’t that I disliked them but I felt they were different in some way to me and didn’t get that much of a friendly vibe off them so it was a bit difficult. I don’t remember seeing my schoolfriend again  until the 4th year of my course. I had moved into a flat which was really central, although it was only temporary, I had 2 of the girls I was friends with round and we made some pizza. She had got in touch and said she would pop round. She did and was clearly a bit taken aback at who I had there. She didn’t stay long and made me feel like I was doing something wrong a bit but she hadn’t been there all the time and I had to meet other people and do other things.

Sometimes I would go and meet one of them at one of the local gay pubs as her uncle was gay and she liked to go and meet him there. We had a really good time and the music was really good as it was mostly 70s and 80s stuff they played and everyone was really friendly and I remember speaking to quite a few people. It was the first time I had been to one as my friends from school wouldn’t have gone anywhere like that. My friend didn’t continue with her 4th year but we still lived close to each other for a while so we would also sometimes meet for a cup of tea somewhere and we’re planning a trip to Prague with the other girl too but that never really happened.