I almost died from starvation when I was a baby, Social services stepped in and saved me, apparently I was a few days away from dying because my blood mother had put solid food in a bottle.

I’m fat because I have an eating issue, this never used to affect my size until I was around 12 which is when I got so depressed I ended up getting misdiagnosed with “chronic fatigue syndrome” which to my knowledge meant some days, I could not move even if I wanted too. That resulted in school kicking me out when I managed to work it out (a few months, this was early year 9 so it wasn’t a huge deal).

The only thing I can remember about my nursery is the journey there, my mum and me would go through this huge puddle really quickly and caused me to chuckle whole heartedly, there was a rendition of a song on the radio I always remember being played.

“I’ll never fall in love again” by Dionne Warwick and a man’s voice, 17 (ish) years later I’ve still not found that exact rendition.

Primary school was next on the agenda, the most prominent memories from back then are.

My parents got told I was a slow and stupid child, turns out, I was just deaf, I had managed to taught myself how to lip read (I grew out of being deaf).

Being told I couldn’t do something because I was different (I wasn’t allowed to swim because I threw up, water went down my ear and straight into my stomach, we went to the doctors got it sorted, went back to school informed them I could now swim and be fine, they didn’t allow me to swim. I remember having to read, the smell of chlorine and the noise of laughter made that rather impossible to do.

Every kid did this stall thing with their friends, it’d be like a mini fete, I always made people laugh by going from apple bobbing to the marshmallows in flours, I once did it so many times I was coughing up flour 3 days after that and the doctors found some flour on my lungs.