Living with Neurodivergence

After school I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I had decided the social care industry was my best bet so I applied for Training for Care. I still had feelings for a boy in school but I knew I probably wasn’t going back. I had managed to get his address as he walked down the same road as me leaving school on the opposite side so I knew his street, I just had to get his door number so I hung around one day and seen where he went into. It was a flat so I didn’t know the exact door number but that was enough. I had to express the way I felt so I wrote him a letter telling him how I felt and all sorts of other things about myself. I took a while to post it because I knew it was embarrassing but if I didn’t do it I knew I would regret it so I posted it. I didn’t hear anything for ages as it was the summer holidays but I didn’t get any sort of reply so that was my answer. I got an interview for Training for Care which involved some college work and 2 placements in care settings, one with the elderly and one with children. I got a place and was looking forward to that. My family decided to go away for a week to Berwick Upon Tweed for a caravan holiday and they were taking my grandad who was living with my auntie since my granny had died. They said I could bring a friend so I took my friend from primary school as my other friend was hanging around some people still in school as she stayed on another year. We got the bus there ourselves and my family drove there. There was entertainment at night and we went out all the time. We met some guys and I started going out with a guy from Sunderland. My dad didn’t really like him because he wore pinstripe trousers but I did, he would sit with his arm around me and we snuck off sometimes for a kiss but it didn’t go much further. There was a group of kids around our age we hung around with a bit and we had a good time. The guy I was seeing went off with another girl at one point and when my friend tried getting us back together he said she had a depressive illness and that’s why he was with her..but we got back together before the end of the holiday and we swapped details. He wrote me several letters after I got back, saying how much he loved me and wanted to be with me. He was a year younger than me and the distance was a problem but I agreed to go and visit him in a couple of months time.

When the time came around for me to visit my boyfriend in Sunderland I had started my care training and was doing a placement in a nursing home. I hated it and i had problems with excessive hand washing which, it made worse and I had problems at home sharing a room with my sister, so I was looking forward to going away. I thought his letters were maybe a bit intense but it was better than not showing any emotion. I got the bus to Newcastle and then to Sunderland. He met me somewhere and we went back to his. It was a bit awkward at first as I hadn’t seen him in a while and it felt different to just being on holiday, I felt like I had changed as I was working now but his family seemed nice and I had to stay in a different bedroom to him, although we spent time in the same one watching films like the lion king. We had a bit of a kiss on the bed and we’re touching and things but we couldn’t go any further and his mum checked on us sometimes. There were times I didn’t really know what to say to him as he was different to on the holiday. He seemed moody and withdrawn and sometimes just sat on the other bed not speaking. He had his friends over sometimes, one of them seemed really young to me and not who I thought he would hang around with but we were all going to the cinema in Newcastle one night. I thought we would go and see maybe a comedy or something light-hearted but when he said men in black I think I knew he wasn’t for me but I just hoped there was a bit more to him. All he was bothered about was his friends and I felt I was just keeping up with them as they were all walking quite fast. When he left them and we were standing waiting for a taxi back to his house we had quite a nice moment where we hugged in the queue and I remembered I loved the smell of his aftershave. I thought he might be alright after all. We went back to his and it carried on being a bit awkward for the rest of the trip. There were some nice moments where we kissed, he liked standing with his arms around me from behind and we kissed while he was sitting on the wall and I was in front of him. I didn’t mind it but I wasn’t sure whether I wanted it to be like that all the time but I just accepted it for now. He walked me to the station on the way back and he was a bit more like I remembered him. We hugged and things and said he would visit me next time but I wasn’t sure it would happen.

When I got back to Edinburgh we stayed in contact, writing back and forward and making phone calls. I would sometimes get in trouble over the phone bill so I used payphones with what little money I had and he phoned me sometimes. I went out with my friends the same as usual, I sometimes had to find a payphone so I could call him. There was one night I was out with my friend and a girl from the year above us in school. It was the same girl that had bullied the Asian girl but my friend knew her well so she came with us sometimes. We were out having a drink and I found a phone box to call him. The other girl came in with me and I was speaking to him and she kept saying stupid things and saying id done stuff I hadn’t. I just reacted and gave her a shove, she hit her head against the phone box and then punched me in the face. I was quite upset and finished the phonecall to him. I was staying at my grans house that night so I just said goodbye to them and went over to hers early. We carried on phoning each other for a while, the letters had stopped and I could hear sometimes when I phoned him he wasnt that friendly. One time when I phoned him he had people in the background a guy and a girl. He wasn’t really responding that well and I knew he might have been drinking or smoking something. He just said he didn’t want to go out anymore and we lived too far away. I was quite upset for a while and didn’t understand it because of the letters he wrote but I eventually realised it was better to find someone closer.

The other girl we sometimes hung around with in the same year as us whose mother was more relaxed about when she came in at night was seeing a guy from the skateboarding square who was quite a few years older than her. He lived in a high rise flat out at wester hailes in Edinburgh. One day we just gave whatever we were doing a miss and went out there. The guy wasn’t there but we just sat about and we ended up smoking some hash through a bottle. I had never did anything like it before apart from the time with my cousin. We all just got a bit high in her boyfriends flat. We noticed there was only a mattress on the floor and the rest of the place didn’t look that good either. We stayed with her for a while but we’re glad to get away from it too. 

I still sometimes kept in contact with my friend that I went away with but she was in 5th year now and I knew who she would be hanging around with but there was a couple of them I liked and we had a night out with them and got into one of the clubs in Edinburgh that was really strict. They just let us through. I remember wearing a black dress and quite a bit more make up. We had a good night but I felt everyone was looking at us thinking we were really young. My friend liked it there and that’s where they went sometimes but it was a bit grungy for me. We just kept in touch a bit about things. I would ask her about school and I would tell her about what I was doing. We sometimes met up for lunch and things but it was a bit depressing hearing about school when I wasn’t in it and I knew there was something a bit wrong with the course I was doing. I did a placement in a nursery, which was nice and in a daycare centre for the elderly. It was okay aswell but my mum and dad still treated me like a child and would phone the places to see how I was getting on, as opposed to just trusting my answer. I would go in and have conversations with the people there but I didn’t feel as confident as the regular staff and I was still only 16. My mum went in to see the woman that ran the place and she said something about my communication skills. I knew they weren’t perfect but I was working on them and I was only just out of school. There was also a nursing home I worked in which I hated! The people there weren’t that nice and I would just get left to my own devices half the time.

Myself and some of my friends decided to have a bit of a house party because my mum and dad were going away for the night. My 18 year old cousin was to supervise us as they knew I was going to have a couple of people over. She was living with a woman from her work in a spare room as my mum couldn’t have her live there anymore when my dad returned.  At first I just invited over a few girls, there were a couple of my sisters friends showed up aswell from around the area and my friends I knew from school but then one of friends invited some boys from Winchburgh which is just outside Edinburgh. They were alright at first and some of them got together and things but I didn’t really like any of them like that. I just had a few drinks and tried to control the party. One of them knocked the TV over and they made a total mess of the flat and another one drank too much and passed out on the floor. We were going back and forth getting him water and things and my cousin had to help him a bit because she was supervising, although she disappeared next door at one point to the flat of students at the university and I had to go through and get her. The next day we cleaned the flat up and my mum and dad didn’t really see anything wrong. It was brand new, we even sorted out the TV because I knew that would cause problems.

The next few months I spent either going out with my friends, either hanging around the street or people’s houses when we could or I would sometimes go out with my cousin who lived in dalkeith now and I would go out there sometimes and we would get in some of the little pubs round there as she was 19 now, I was still only 16 but I would tend to get in when I was with her. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work in the care industry anymore as there were a few issues that I couldn’t really be bothered with. I applied for something to do with retail and had to work in river island shop in Edinburgh for the day but I hated it as my feet were really sore at the end of the day, they were throbbing and I couldn’t bear it and I was always looking for something to do like tidying up the rails. It was boring, so I just decided to stick with what I knew. I applied for another training scheme and this time I got a placement at gyle nursery within the shopping centre. I knew it would be a good placement despite it being an hour’s bus ride each way and it was even less money at 40 pound a week but they paid me that cash in hand every Friday so that would be a bonus and it wouldn’t have to go into my dad’s account. I started working there and really enjoyed it. There was a babies room and an older kids room. I preferred working in the over 2s room as they could do more and felt I was better in there. I tried not to go out much during the week because of that and just met my friends at the weekend usually. There was a guy I was writing to. He was in the army and my friend had given me his details. I wrote to him a few times and I liked writing him letters but then they seemed to stop. I left it a while and just forgot about him, then for some reason I decided to write to him again. I got a letter back saying something like hello stranger, you’re still kicking about then. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. There was a phone number on the letter and I eventually decided to phone him. We talked for a while and he had said that he had heard I had died. I didn’t know what he was going on about or where he had heard it and he wasn’t sure either but I tried to laugh it off but I was definitely still here. I told my friend and I think she was quite surprised I had made contact with him. She just laughed with the other girl we were with and I knew she might have had something to do with it I just didn’t know what. She wasn’t quite the same person I had known through primary and high school. She was acting strange and telling some lies to people. One night we were hanging around the street, there were some older guys we had met a few weeks ago and I had got close with one of them. We were supposed to be going back to one of their houses but they were having a carry on. There was something to do with the shop. They knew the owner and they had went after a guy who they believed was shoplifting. Eventually they came with us and we went back to meadow bank with them. The flat was okay. It was furnished but looked a bit bleak. They had a few cans so we just drank a bit of beer. My friend was still acting strange and they weren’t always being that nice towards me. I felt like leaving but meadow bank was a bit of a distance away from my flat and the guy was showing interest towards me but I felt my friend was a bit jealous that I had got him and not her. He was okay but I felt the difference in age as he was 22 and the things he was talking about were getting to me a bit. He was a bit too serious and I felt a bit depressed by him. At one point I went to the toilet and I was in there for ages because I was crying and I couldn’t come out again till I looked alright. I don’t remember specifically what it was about but I knew there was something wrong with who I was hanging around with and what they expected me to do but I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave so I stayed and spent the night with him. We didn’t have sex but we were close to it. I enjoyed what we did but I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to see him again. I went home the next day and avoided them for a while. I just went into work as usual. The journeys to and from work were long and by the end of the day I was tired and hungry. Sometimes on a Friday I would go to burger king and eat it on the bus on the way home but my mum sometimes had a go at me as I was putting on a bit of weight and there was one occasion where she had made macaroni cheese and I was still hungry when I got in even though i had a burger king. She went mad about that being too much to eat but she just gave me some anyway, so I just had to think about whether I would get a burger king or wait till I got home for what she had made.  I usually would get an hour for my lunch but sometimes felt it was too long as I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I would go and get a sandwich and a drink from somewhere then I would  walk about quite aimlessly. I felt in a daze sometimes like I didn’t know what direction to go in. It was okay in the nursery because that was all routine and I had to focus. Some of the kids didn’t give you any choice. I would sometimes go into the music shop as they had big headphones and you could listen to some music. They usually had the lighthouse family so I would listen to High on repeat a few times before I went back to the nursery. There was a security guard that was sometimes looking at me funny, I think because I went in there a lot but I had a gyle nursery t shirt on so he would have known where I worked. He asked me if I was okay one day and I said I was. At home I had some problems with my sister and things because we shared a room. I had to do some repetitive stuff like keeping my finger on the light switch and hand washing and I had some thoughts in my head that kept popping up that I didn’t want but they weren’t things I would act on. Sometimes at the nursery they would occasionally send me out to get some foodstuff  like fruit and they let me take one of the kids along. I liked that they gave me that responsibility and it got me out the nursery because it sometimes got a bit chaotic. There were a couple of situations where I didn’t test the milk bottle completely. It had felt okay to me but it was a bit too hot for one of the babies and their mouth got a bit burnt. I had felt really guilty and expressed how sorry I was but I hadn’t had much training and sort of just got flung into it but there were some nice moments too where I was reading or doing a puzzle with a small group of them and there was an incident where a baby put their fingers in a door and they got caught but I remember being able to settle her down as she was screaming. I had to talk to the manager and we both decided I shouldn’t work there anymore, so I just took a bit of time off.

Over the next couple of months I was just looking into what I could do. There would be arguments at home if I wasn’t working or doing something. My dad was bothered with courses and just thought that I should work but I knew I would get a bursary payment for studying and I didn’t want to just give up and have a minimum wage job. I found some weekend work cooking breakfast in a nursing home close to my house. It involved some cleaning too. My mum showed me how to poach an egg because I was told all the residents liked their eggs poached. So I had some money coming in there. Things came to a head with my friends, they were getting worse telling lies and saying things to guys we met about me, they also tried to fight with a couple of women in McDonald’s carpark. I can’t remember what it was about, they just went after them. I walked away from that. Smoking and drinking were one thing but I didn’t want to be involved in that kind of thing and had a wake up moment. There was one occasion when we went out one night where my friend had my denim jacket on for a while as we sometimes swapped things about but when I asked for it back she got all funny with me. A policewoman stopped and asked if everything was okay. She could see clearly it wasn’t. She said I should leave them and go home. I said I had to get my coat first. She said something to them and she came over and gave me it back but she wasn’t that nice about it. I went home and was upset. It was at some point after this that my dad contacted them and told them to stay away from me. I tried to stop him. I didn’t want him contacting them or being abusive towards them as I wanted to sort it out myself but they stopped speaking to me after that and I was just going about by myself for a while. I would walk up to the dvd shop returning dvds and taking more out. My brother said he had seen one of thems sister and told me dad she had made a threat towards me but I didn’t really see that much of them about. I went out and about with the girl down the street from me a couple of times. We went to an area in Edinburgh called Buckston. It was quite a nice part of the town and had some woodland paths and parks. There was another girl there, I had met her a few times, she was alright but I thought she was behaving strangely and she kept doing stuff that I felt was to get me in trouble. One occasion she threw something at one of the houses and ran off, but I didn’t really have anyone else to go about with. I only spoke to my other friend from school occasionally and I would just have been in the house otherwise. I went up to Buckston with them one day, she was being okay and wasn’t doing anything wrong but she was still acting strange and she said she was meeting someone. We walked through the woodland area and nearly out onto the main street and there was a car there. The woman in the car said something to her. Straight away I recognised the voice, it sounded almost exactly like my teacher from school. I told her that’s who she sounded like as she was about to get into the car with her. She was calling herself a shortened version of her name and I thought that was weird because she wasn’t that kind of person. I told my friend I didn’t think it was right her going about picking girls up. She was definitely an older woman so we both spoke to her and I told her I recognised her voice as my teacher from.primary school and that she wasn’t a normal teacher and it was strange her calling herself  by a nickname and my friend said it was weird and older woman trying to pick up young girls. We did our best to stop her but she went into the passenger seat anyway and the woman gave us a really bad look so we ran as fast as we could in the opposite direction. We hung about a bit more then just went home. The next time I seen my friend she mentioned the girl had been reported missing. I didn’t really think that much about it as it had been a while since that day and I didn’t know who else she went about with. I just put it to the back of my mind and the next time I seen my friend I asked her if the girl had been found she was like oh yeah I think her mum knows where she probably is. So I was relieved and told myself it was nothing. One day I got a call from one of the girls at school, I knew her a bit as we sometimes mixed in the same circles but she was the one that paid me for the boyzone ticket. I couldn’t really have a problem with it as she had came to the party I had and I would look a bit petty if I didn’t speak to her. I also didn’t really have anyone else to go about with except for my cousin who liked dingy underground pubs that went on all night. She was sometimes too much for me so I said I would go out with her. I think she hung around with a girl on the year below her who lived next door but they quite often fell out so we started going out to places together. I went round to her house and we would have drinks before we went out. I was coming up for 17 and she was just a few months younger than me. We didn’t get in everywhere but we found a little pub that let us in. It was a kind of Mexican or Latino bar and it had cheap drinks 2 for 1 and things like that and we both liked the music in there. We would usually go out Friday and Saturday. I had my job at the weekends and she was working in a hairdressers at the time. I was planning on doing a course and had applied to Stevenson college for a social care course in September so I was just waiting on news of that. We went to that place usually but then we found some other places that sometimes let us in aswell and we got to know some people that went there including the door staff. I would usually get really nervous before going out but once I had a few drinks I would relax and feel like a different person. She was going out with a guy who lived on Liverpool who she had met on holiday and would sometimes be away visiting him or he would be over here and I didn’t see her that much those times but otherwise we spent quite a bit of time together and I would stay over at hers and we would sleep in late. She stayed at her grans and she would make us breakfast in the morning. It just carried on like that for a while. I had some problems at home and was always falling out with my dad. He accused me of being on drugs and of lying when I wasnt. I was drinking quite a bit sometimes but the girl I was going about with didn’t do things like that so it was something else that was bothering him. There was one day when things got particularly bad and my mum phoned CAAMHS, the service in the area for children’s mental health. She was speaking to someone saying she couldn’t handle me and things like that and saying things that I did. I shouted something at her then went over to my friends and slammed the door. I went out as usual that night. I told my friend something but didn’t go into all the details. When I got home the next day she said that the woman she spoke to said there was a bed available if I wanted it, so I had a think. I didn’t really want to go into hospital but if it meant a break from the situation at home as I felt everyone was hanging up on me. My sister was bothered at me for things I couldn’t control and they seemed to take her side and my dad was accusing me of things I hadn’t even done. I told them I would take it but the next day they were saying things like I didn’t have to go and couldn’t I just behave myself and everything would be fine. I didn’t really know what I was doing wrong but I said I would try. I turned 17 and I started the course in social care at Stevenson’s. I was over the moon that I had gotten in. I remember going to the induction and sitting there listening to them telling us about the course and a guy walked in a little bit flustered. He was just standing there for a minute before passing out. I later found out he had been drinking the night before. There was a mix of people on my course. I wasn’t the youngest as there was a 16 year old girl there too but there was a lot of mature students including a blind woman. There were some girls around my age, I think they were over 18 but I got to know everyone quite well. We would usually sit in the student union and have chips and cheese for lunch or sausage rolls. Chips and cheese was one of my favourites for a while and I indulged in it for a while. I definitely put on some weight while I was there but I just wanted to get through it. There was an older guy there who was quite funny and made us laugh. There was a gay guy but he was seeing a girl at that time and we would laugh about that, saying how did he not realise what he was and things. I began to notice the guy from the induction standing a bit close to me and things and laughing at what I said and people were telling me he liked me but I couldn’t ask him out or anything, I felt too shy to do anything that brave. We just continued flirting a little bit. There was a girl there that had converted to Muslim who we got to know a bit and I quite often hung around with her and the guy and she used to say some things so we both knew we liked each other. There were some exercises we had to do in classes where we had to stand quite close and I had to do one with him. I seen some of them sniggering and things and the tutors noticed something going on. I felt like I was starting things for myself and didn’t feel like such a child anymore like I felt at home. My family had booked a holiday to Turkey for a week but I had too much going on and I didn’t  really feel like going on a family holidays so they said it was okay to stay at my aunties in Newbridge just outside Edinburgh. I had to get the bus in every day and it took a bit of time. I did wonder at times what they were getting up to in Turkey but I had decided to stay and I knew the reasons why. One day at college me and the guy went out after college, we went to the shopping centre, we had to get the bus there and he said something about getting off here. I knew it wouldn’t be long before something happened. We went for lunch at the baked potato place and I remember him touching my hand over the table. I knew we were officially a thing then. We arranged to go and see a film. We both decided Something about Mary would probably be good and it was a good film and we both enjoyed it. He walked me to the bus station to get my bus back to my aunties and we had a kiss before I got on. I was buzzing on the way back as I hadn’t been sure it would happen. Back at my aunties I would usually just watch a bit of TV then go to bed. Her kids were really young at the time, about 3 and 2. I sometimes helped keeping them occupied in the garden and things. They sometimes asked me about the course and I said it was going well and the guy I was seeing but I didn’t say much about him apart from that we had been to the cinema and it was good. Over the next few months we kept seeing each other. I usually went to his and we just hung around in his room. He lived in Morningside which I knew was quite a posh area of Edinburgh but we got on well and he was interested in social care and things like that so I knew he was quite down to earth. His musical tastes weren’t quite the same as mine and when he admitted to being a Marilyn Manson fan I was a bit unsure about him. He said he liked stuff like Korn aswell which was milder and that I might like that. I didn’t really but we just kept going out. I liked older music like 70s and 80s and he knew what that stuff was. He also said he had ADHD and had several books about the place about his condition. I said I had heard of it and things but didn’t know that much about it. We just hung about and had a bit of a carry on sometimes to do with the course. I met some of his friends when he went over to their houses and things but it was like meeting the Inbetweeners as some of them were quite geeky and things. We sometimes went to some pubs and it was good to try some new places but some of the bouncers were a bit offended by him, although he was 18 he got knocked back once or twice, with one doorman telling him not to argue. I don’t know if it was the t shirts he wore or something else. Sometimes we went about with the Muslim girl and went into the arcade for some food one day. My cousin had moved into a small flat in the Gorgie area of town with a guy who was the nephew of one of my mum’s friends. She wasn’t going out with him but there was a spare room and she took it. I went round there sometimes and took him round. We just had some drinks and listened to some music and we stayed over. We did some stuff together but something about him just didn’t feel right. We got on together and could talk to each other about things I just didn’t feel like going any further with him in that way. I thought maybe I would change how I felt over time and didn’t want to end it but he did a few months in. I met up with him to go back to his house and he was really quiet and not his usual self. He hadn’t really been coming in a lot to the course and I had wondered if something was wrong. He told me it wasn’t working. I didn’t understand. I thought it was okay. I was upset for a while and I was supposed to be going out with my cousin that night for drinks. I didn’t really feel like it but she was expecting me there. I had to tell her I had been dumped and felt stupid but we went out anyway to a club called The Arc. I tried saying I would find someone else about but I didn’t really feel like anything when it came down to it. I was a bit annoyed at my cousin because I felt she didn’t really understand why I was upset but I had went out and that was all I could do. The next few months were up and down. I was upset about being dumped and he wasn’t really coming into the course anymore which didn’t help as I thought it was what he wanted to do and I couldn’t help feeling disappointed in him but I carried on a bit with it anyway. It started getting more challenging and we had placements, but I was going all the time with my friend and I couldn’t really focus and put everything into the course so I ended up dropping out aswell. I could feel it on the cards. After that I was on job seekers allowance for a while and then I did some retail work including working at What Everyone Wants ( a clothing and homeware store ). That was alright for a while and I worked in different departments and had Christmas lunch with the staff. Some of them were okay, others thought because they were older and they had been there for years that they could tell you to do all the jobs that they didn’t want to do and which were pointless. It was money though and it meant we could go out which I needed to do by that point. We had gotten to know a few people and we seen the same people going out, some of them were my exes friends and I got it together with one of them one night. I knew he would hear about it but nothing became of it anyway. We had fake IDs which my friend got printed off somewhere where one of her cousins worked but I was excited when I turned 18 and I could officially get in as an adult but it didn’t quite work out like that as we got refused on the night of my 18th birthday and I said it was because we were Too Old, people in the queue were laughing but we just avoided going out for a few weeks. We sometimes just met up to go shopping or I would go around to hers for cups of tea. When we started going out again we tried different places. We got into some of them and we found a club that sometimes let us in. We started getting back into the usual place and my friend from school, who I did the trips with came in one night with her friend but they didn’t stay, they just came to say hello as I had told her I would be there. A couple of the girls on the social care course with me did a similar kind of thing, just coming by to say hello. I liked that they had because it felt like it was just me and my friend a lot of the time, although we both spoke to other people she was bit more outgoing than me and was more confident in speaking to guys. She was sometimes seeing another guy in Edinburgh who she would meet on nights out, despite having a boyfriend in England. She said she was just playing the field and didn’t see anything wrong with it. I didn’t really know what to say to her. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her talking to other guys but I thought if she wanted to go out with one of them then maybe she should end it with the guy in England. There was a particular guy she was going out with for a while. He was really tall, lanky and ginger. He had a bit of facial hair too. I was a bit surprised she liked him. We all went out sometimes. He brought his friend who I knew a bit from school. It was sometimes good going out in a group where it wasn’t just me and her. The other guy started going out with an Irish girl so he wasn’t always out with us. We had expanded our range of pubs now as we were both over 18 and could get into them legally now. There was a really good pub called the 3 sisters in grass market and we went there a lot, it had about 5 different pubs within it and different levels. Upstairs was where the club was. I liked to wander when I was out as she was sometimes with her boyfriend or talking to other guys. I would say I was going to the toilet or up to the bar but I would wander about a bit to see if I could see anything interesting. She was sometimes bothered by this even though she was clearly busy chatting to guys. Sometimes we would run into some people from school in the years below us. It happened quite a few times, we would talk to them a bit and then just go out separate ways. People described Edinburgh as a village so I just put it down to Edinburgh being small. We seen my friend from school with the other girl one night who I had some problems with but it had passed by then so just chatted to them a bit. I could tell she had changed but I was glad they weren’t just hanging round the streets anymore.

On New Year’s Eve 2000 we managed to get tickets for the street party. I think her uncle had some because of the businesses he ran in the area so me, my friend and her boyfriend from England went out. We had a really good time and people were wishing us a happy new year and everyone was jumping about and having a good time. The only time I had been into it was when me and my friends from school snuck in a few years earlier but we had just managed to walk through when a security guard caught up with us and we didn’t really enjoy it but this was different. We were adults and we had tickets. I don’t remember how we got home. It’s almost impossible to get a taxi on New year’s eve but we must’ve somehow.

I decided in the year 2000 I was going to go away somewhere. I couldn’t ask my friend as she only really went away with her boyfriend, although she did talk about Ibiza, saying it wasn’t what it seemed and I would probably like it but nothing really materialised. I went into an STA travel agent to ask about group excursions and they told me about Contiki bus tours. I had a look at the brochure when I got home and decided that I was going to save up for it. I felt I needed something after all the carry on after school with my friends and the situation at the nursery upset me and the problems I had with some family members. 10 days away was just what I needed. I was just working at a restaurant at the time but I was able to put away some money each week and avoided going out as much because I think there were some things my friend was up to too. I saved enough to pay for the trip. I booked a 10 day bus tour around Europe. I was so excited and I just did quite a bit of work to pay for spending money. I had to travel through to London on the night before, but the hotel we were booked into was quite central so I found that easy enough. There were a few of us in the room and some of us went out to dinner that night. I think I was the youngest in the group but I kind of liked that. The next day we had to get up early for the bus. I remember one of the other girls waking me up. The first place we went to was Amsterdam where we stayed in hostel accomodation then we went to Germany, Venice and some other places in Europe. There were about 5 or 6 different places. Amsterdam was nice and we just visited some sites and went to see a show at night. Our guide told us about pickpockets and how they can swipe the back of your bag with a knife, so I remember being really careful. Germany we visited the beer festival and drank some beer. There was an Australian girl I had made friends with that I usually went about with. She worked as a nanny. She was a few years older than me and there was a guy who worked in a hotel in London as a chef who I made friends with and we got a photo taken together on a keyring which I had for ages. I think my favourite place was Venice though, because of the boats and the water. It was just a really nice place and some nice buildings and we would go out for pasta and things like that. There was somewhere where we went white water rafting aswell and a brought a picture home of me looking terrified and hanging on for my life! I remember the tour guide saying something about a blank canvass and that we could make of it what we wanted so we just had a good time, although there were a couple of bitchy girls there, I met other people who were nice including a south African woman who was a bit older than us so was like the mother of the group. There was a guy there who asked me if I was going to do more travelling. I said I would like to but I would probably have to save up quite a bit of money first as I knew what that had cost me. Time went quickly and before I knew it time had come to go home. I didn’t have much money left by the end but my friend bought me a drink in the bar the final night and we started making our way back to London. I had booked myself into a hostel in London, thinking it would be okay but someone had been telling me bad stories about it so I was really scared and I tried to get an early train but that didn’t work so I just had to find the place and put my head down for the night. I remember reacting to every sound but I knew I had a good time on the trip I just had to get through the night and get the train back to Edinburgh. There was another problem at the station where I was told my train had departed already. I sat on my bag in the middle of the station and cried. One of the train staff came over and escorted me over to a train that he said was going to Edinburgh. I got on it and was so relieved. London wasn’t for me. It was okay passing through but I just wanted to get home to my bed for a while. I got into to Edinburgh Waverley and called my mum, I thought she could come and pick me up as I didn’t really have any money left. She said to get a taxi and she would pay, so I did. I had to run upstairs and get the money but everything was fine and I remember getting into my pyjamas and sleeping well that night.

Over the next few months I didn’t really see my friend. I hadn’t seen that much of her as I was saving to go away. She couldn’t say much as she went away sometimes but I could tell she was annoyed by me doing it. I sometimes seen my cousin who was living in one of the high rise flats near the hospital and I would just go about by myself again for a while. I was 5 minutes walk away from the Royal Commonwealth pool so I sometimes would go for a swim there. I had been with my friend before as she went in for a swim sometimes but I would usually just do that by myself as I was trying to get some weight off aswell as I was a 16 at that point and realised from the trip. When I seen her again it was to go to the 3 sisters pub. She asked me a little bit about the trip but it was like she just wanted to forget about it after that. There was one occasion where we met up to do a bit of shopping around Cameron toll shopping centre. She sometimes scraped her hair back quite a bit and the jeans she wore were very tight but she was thin though so she got away with it. There was a little girl walking with her mother and I remember her saying mum that girl looks like an alien. She heard it and sorted of repeated what she had said (laughing) saying she didn’t get something yet. I found it a little bit funny to be honest as I had thought it myself sometimes but I wasn’t about to tell her what to wear or how to do her hair. A few months later we organised to go away camping. It was something she had planned with her boyfriend and his friends near Birkenhead. We got there by train, it was after his visit and the three of us got the train to Liverpool then Birkenhead. His parents drove us out to the campsite and we pitched our tents. We switched about where we slept sometimes. I was supposed to be in there with them and another guy but that’s not always how it worked out. There was always a drama of some sort and she was always falling out with him or other people were falling out. There was one night we were all having a drink and a good time in the tent. I think it was peach schnapps we were drinking. I agreed to go to his friends tent. I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not but I had to socialise with some of them because my friend was either all over him or shouting and swearing at him. I lay in the tent with him and we were kidding a bit but he got on top of me and it felt like I couldn’t move like he was pushing down a bit too much. I panicked and told him to get off, which he did. I decided I wouldn’t go there again as he was too much for me. Soon after I got together with his other friend. We were lying in the tent together and then I felt him touching me and then I touched him too and then we were kidding and he was on top of me at one point but it didn’t feel the same as the last time. He wasn’t as full on. We did that until one of them peeped through the top of the tent and we’re like what are you too up too. We then went for a walk through the woods and I remember him taking my hand to help me get over a gate or something as I had slipped. When we got back my friend was kicking off a bit. She was normally alright when it was just the two of us but in a group of guys there was drama after drama after drama. I was getting quite annoyed by her at this stage. I knew she had expressed liking that guy but she already had a boyfriend and she couldn’t have them both. Anyway, I think we were there about 2 nights and then back to her boyfriends parents house which was more comfortable but I was just glad when I was going home again. I think we avoided each other for a while. When we seen each other again she had ran into someone from school and had been out with her so it ended up us all started going out together as a 3.

I moved in with my cousin for a while aswell. She only had 1 room and a couch so I just slept on the couch. We would go out together sometimes and sometimes we would meet up with my friends in town and things but it started getting a bit out of control as she would invite male friends round and she sometimes had problems getting them to leave. I didn’t always feel that safe there. I had declined an offer from the council for a high-rise for that reason. She was also pressurising me to find work, although I would have had a payment coming through she wouldn’t take any money off me for that. In the end she said her sister was coming through from Peterhead to start work in Edinburgh and that I would have to go back home. I was annoyed at her for a while and just went out with the other girls.

Sometimes the other girl came out with us, but not always. It was sometimes better in a 3 and I didn’t feel quite  as suffocated by it being just me and her sometimes. We had fun but we could sometimes fall out aswell. There was one night where we ran into some of my exes friends. There was a girl who had gone out with him briefly but she was now coming into the pubs that we were going to. I didn’t speak to her at first but then she started going out with my friends ex, so I knew she was over the guy. We got talking one night and she was with one of his male friends who I got along with. I wasn’t sure if I fancied him but my friend became increasingly agitated at me talking to them. I sometimes just backed down to her because of what she got like but I was annoyed this time. I should be able to talk to other people because she certainly did. Anyway, I don’t think I was meant to be staying at hers that night so I decided to go back to the girls house as she invited me. I told my friend and I think it just became hostile so I just walked away from her. We all spent the night in her converted garage and in the morning I got a taxi home. I didn’t feel too good. I was still in the same floral dress that I had on the night before and I knew my friend had been saying things to people about me as I could feel it. I think we spoke later and sorted it out but I knew she still had a problem.

We probably didn’t see each other for a while and just got on with things away from each other. I had decided by this point I was going to retake my GCSEs at college so I applied and got a place at Stevenson’s college. I got a bursary payment for it so that would be enough to get me through it and I would probably have to get a job too. I was looking for somewhere to stay during it too and when my friend mentioned one of her uncles flats in causeway side, it was a bedsit with a kitchen area and a guy already living in it and it was 50 pound a week. I had to think about it but I didn’t see what I had to lose. My family had moved out to West Linton in the Scottish borders, which was a nice area but I was going to have problems getting in and out the town for my course so I decided to give it a go. She had one room with her boyfriend. I had another and then there was a guy who was a bit older than us and just kept himself to himself.