I never liked school. As a small child I had never been separated from my mother before starting formal school. I’d never had a babysitter. My first nursery school requested I wasn’t returned the following week after five mornings of being so utterly distressed. I started at another preschool, but instead of working through my hideous separation anxiety, my mum stayed at sessions, becoming a helper, effectively postponing my issues until school.

I believe it was my mother’s depression and histrionics that caused the majority of my anxiety. I knew as a preschooler that when she was most hysterical and would scream out the door with her car keys and a full bottle of tablets, that she was considering ending her life. Or at least ‘disappearing’, which seemed to me at that age as equally catastrophic. I remember one Sunday evening her doing this. I was fresh out the bath, and my dad was drying my hair with the old pink Bakelite hairdryer. I remember wondering who would make my sandwich for tea, as making sandwiches was mum’s remit. She always came back, but there was still that doubt.

So the shock of starting school a little before my fifth birthday sent me mute for a time. I got as far as being taken to the GP, but I found my voice again shortly after. That’s another story. When I sobbed and pleaded my mum to let me stay home from school with her, she replied that it was the law that I had to go to school and if I didn’t go she would be sent away to prison. And who would look after me then? This unfortunately didn’t make things any easier for me. Throughout primary school I would regularly vomit, have crippling stomach cramps or nosebleeds before school.

At school I learned that other people’s mums weren’t neurotic and suicidal. They were generally much more calm and fun. And most people’s parents were younger than mine. I felt that age difference quite acutely.

Learning rarely felt fun at primary school. There were glimpses but mostly it just passed by uneventfully. By age nine I was developing breasts, and sizeable breasts at that. I was bullied endlessly and that began my descent into comfort eating. So then I was fat and bullied more. My salvation was weekly hymn practice and choir. It was my headmaster who discovered I had a decent voice and gave me every opportunity to utilise it.

Secondary school was an eye opener. When I arrived and discovered I’d been put in top sets for all subjects, I actually thought there’d been a mistake. But no, apparently I was brainy. It was never something I was massively comfortable with. It just didn’t feel right. And I think a lot of that was my mother playing down my intelligence during primary school.

Again I was bullied mercilessly. When they got bored of calling me fat, someone decided I was gay, so I was bullied for that throughout secondary school. I didn’t think I was gay, because I knew I fancied guys, but there was an element of doubt in my mind. People demanded I must choose, so I always chose men, but no one really explained it was ok to like both. And I despised the homophobic rhetoric because why should anyone be victimised for their sexuality?

To say I was depressed during secondary school is an understatement. I was desolate. One teacher provided me a safe space to go and vent my feelings and to this day I’m so grateful for that. He never judged my stupid ideas or actions. We would eat our lunch together in his office and often he’d make me laugh. He was almost like an unofficial counsellor.

After months of depression I experienced my first hypomanic episode. Not that I, or anyone else recognised it as that. I do with hindsight. I was around 14 or 15. I was surprisingly still getting good grades, so no one was really worried about my mental health. I did tend to throw myself into my studies as a distraction from my head. And the sexual abuse I was experiencing then. I was also writing erotica as an escape from reality.

I left school with reasonable grades, but few friends and no self esteem or confidence. Definitely not the best years of my life!