Story 16: I am not at all sure about this, but here is my story.....

I was born in the corridor of the hospital in Ireland - because the nurse did not like my mother as she is English. When doctor came and told the nurse to bring my mother to the delivery room - she leaned over and said "now who is better the Irish or the English". Consequently I was born in the corridor on the way to the delivery room
 I have problems with spelling. I have a type of grammatical dyslexia too (discovered when I was studying a psychology degree) which means that I do not understand grammar. Could study it all day for the next 20 years but the "rules" just don't make sense or sink in. Was thrown out of linguistics grammar class at university. The professor just said it was a waste of both our time and that I would never "get it".

I generally feel unwell - slightly sick in my stomach a lot of the time. If I get stressed I dry wretch a lot. But only when I am alone. If I am working, it stops and starts again when I get home. I overheat frequently.

After a traumatic birth for my mother - I went home. I learnt to walk and talk at a very early stage in life - which I think she found quite annoying. I was a very active child and always on the move. She sent me to junior school when I was two. Her reason for this was that I didn't want to be separated from my older brother. So when he went to school at 4 I went with him into the same class. Naturally this caused problems for him and me later on. We started school at the same time and we were two years apart. I loved my junior school which was a sort of hippie Montesorri school in the Irish countryside.

My mother tried to farm me out to neighbours and friends as much as she could. I think that she found me too much. I was always asking questions and always wanting to be doing things. At the age of 11 I was sent to boarding school in Dublin - it was an all girls school, where we were ruled by bells and had to wear a school uninform. I used to go to junior school in bare feet or wellies - so the transition was a complete shock.

She continued to "farm me out" to neighbours and insisted that I went to England to go to university in England. I wanted to stay in Dublin. I moved into a flat in the centre of the city when I was in 5th year and used to stay in town at the weekends, so I knew a lot of people. Since I was the only kid of my age that had a "free house," at the weekends there were always lots of people at my flat.

She refused to pay for an education in Ireland - so I went to university in England. Here the culture shock was huge. My class mates had spent most of their childhood watching television and would have conversations about television characters as though they were real. Ireland when I was growing up was a very politically aware place. The troubles in the north and issues such as abortion and gay rights loomed. We used to sit around putting the world to rights in that arrogant and self assured way that teenagers do. After university I stayed on in London doing a variety of jobs from project managing building sites to managing fine art gallery.

My mother used to call me up before I came home and cry down the phone saying that she was lonely and had no friends. So, I came home to save her - which of course she immediately resented  - even though she told me it was what she wanted me to do. She moved in on my life and started to live though me. Talking about my friends as if she knew them (even if she never met them) and barging in on my marriage. My marriage lasted nine years and I finally left my husband (who was a musician) when he refused to drive me to hospital with a threatened ectopic pregnancy, he thought it would be more important to him to play at a concert at a large party of celebrities in a large house near by. I didn't tell my mother but my brother did. She too however, refused to drive me as she said that she didn't have enough petrol in her car. They both knew that I could hemorrhage to death in an hour if it
burst - we lived an hour away from the nearest hospital.

When I am alone I feel very empty inside. I am happiest when I am working long hours and frequently feel empty and guilty when I am alone - that I am not doing enough. I find relaxing
quite hard and holidays stressful. Reading back over this I think that I probably just come from a dysfunctional family - but some of the questions in your questionnaire resonate strongly with me.

I am not sure about this, my mother is a very closed person and an excellent revisionist - so I am not really sure where the truth lies.

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Seventy true stories to help you to decide the truth for yourself.