My first memory was when I was about 3 years old, I remember laying on my Mum’s lap and spilling my orange juice everywhere, I am sure it was just an accident. I was a bit of a wild child and my Dad used to have to bring me home from nursery because I used to play up, I still haven’t found out a reason why I was like that. I know there were some unhappy times when I was at that age but was I young enough to take it in?

As I was growing up my family got a dog and I became very close to him, I used to take him out for walks, we used to go everywhere. One day I was out walking the dog and I tried to walk on a metal railing, I slipped and hit my head on the bar and came home with a lump on my head the size of an egg. I suffered some trauma when I was about 4 years old and I think this started to change the way I behaved. I was a bit of a live wire and would always end getting in trouble somehow.

My first memory of depression was when I was about 7 years old, I remember a feeling of being lost and in my own little world. I found a bubble that I could go into and that was a place where I would feel safe. I have since carried this bubble with me most of my life and it’s serves a purpose whenever I need it. It’s all about ways we find coping mechanisms as we grow up but some of these things can be unhealthy.

I also  made a friend when I was about 7 and we used to play out together and always end up in trouble. Not far from where we lived there was a building site, we were always playing on there. We would climb the scaffolding and jump out of the windows into skips full of sand. At that age we weren’t really worried about the risks we would just think it was fun rather the think of the consequences. One day we decided to build a trap over a man-hole they were building. We were using grass to camouflage it and it was so good that my friend fell down it. When I helped him out e had split his head open and he was running all the way home crying with blood pouring down his head, not good! I was slowly getting into more trouble and doing things out of the ordinary, I sometimes climbed out of the upstairs window and ran away. My mum didn’t know what was wrong with me and neither did I at the time, my family were pretty worried about me. My parents would say they were going to put me in a home but this was only a way to try to calm me down rather that really do it. I was quite angry inside but I didn’t know why and this was why I was behaving in the way I was as it was a way that I had learnt to manage.