The main theme of the memoir I'm writing surrounds a woman whose name I forgot. She worked at an adult literacy centre for the homeless and one hour of her time lead to my whole life changing beyond my wildest dreams. She helped me get to college ten years after I dropped out of school at 14, and yet at the time of meeting her I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I didn't even remember her name.
Underlying issues involve being born with a hearing impairment as a result of a junkie mom. Emigrating to London from Ireland at a time when the IRA were inflicting devastating bomb attacks all over the UK. Being sexually abused for 16 years, going into state care, being forced to silence by a family who didn't believe me, getting into trouble with the police, expelled from 4 schools, pregnant at 18, again at 19, raising both kids alone, trying to deal with severe alcoholism in a harridan mother and schizophrenic brother, battling depression as I refused to believe I was a waste of space because I couldn't get a job and had brought two children into such an awful world.
After a whole life of being told I would end up a violent drunk like my mother, and one hour in the company of the nameless woman in the literacy centre, I had an appointment to enrol in a local college. A year later, I was studying Journalism, working as a photographer for the biggest music magazine in the country and had summoned up the courage to stand up to the man who ruined my life, forcing him to tell my brother and sister the truth about the abuse that began when I was 8 years old. Life is not without its troubles now but five years later I have well and truly left behind a harrowing beginning to have finally claimed a life of my own, with friends, joy and love and unbelievably to me, prospects. It seems I am the only hard-of-hearing music blogger in the world and, amazingly, after working my way up out of nowhere, am now highly-respected on a nationwide level as an authority on new bands. None of this would have been possible without the help of that lone figure who just went into work one day and had no idea the enormous impact she would have on a total stranger's life.