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.