It wasn’t just one event that changed my life but a variety of small happenings that influenced and moulded me into the person I am today. I owe a lot to my mother; she has given me a strong intellect and a keen sense of humour, traits which I consider to be important to my personality. Perhaps a less positive aspect of her character which I also find within myself is stubbornness. I was welcomed into the world on the 3rd January 1990 by my father Andrew. My mother Carol seemed less enthusiastic about my arrival, something which at the time, was put down to exhaustion. However the relationship between my parents over the first two years of my life became progressively worse. They split up and eventually divorced, leaving me in the sole care of my mother who may as well have been a stranger to me at that point in time. My earliest memory reminds me of how my Mother seemed incapable or unwilling to give affection even in difficult circumstances, for example, I remember playing outdoors on a snowy winter’s day. In particular I remember sliding down our driveway on a tea tray and crashing face-first into a parked car, knocking my already wobbly front tooth out and banging my left elbow. With blood pouring down my poor little face my friends ran to get my mother as I sat crying in pain. Upon being informed of the incident she came outside, stood me up and sternly said “don’t be such a baby, it’s just a scratch”. The week after I continuously complained to my father about my elbow which after taking me to A and E for an X-Ray revealed it was in fact fractured and that it hadn’t been just a scratch after all. I went to school the following in my sling day feeling ‘cool’ in front of my friends! Another memory from my school days is seeing my friend’s parents picking her up from school and watching her skip off to the park laughing and smiling. From a distance I saw her fall from the monkey bars hurting her chin on the floor. I watched enviously
It wasn’t just one event that changed my life but a variety of small happenings that influenced and moulded me into the person I am today. I owe a lot to my mother; she has given me a strong intellect and a keen sense of humour, traits which I consider to be important to my personality. Perhaps a less positive aspect of her character which I also find within myself is stubbornness. I was welcomed into the world on the 3rd January 1990 by my father Andrew. My mother Carol seemed less enthusiastic about my arrival, something which at the time, was put down to exhaustion. However the relationship between my parents over the first two years of my life became progressively worse. They split up and eventually divorced, leaving me in the sole care of my mother who may as well have been a stranger to me at that point in time. My earliest memory reminds me of how my Mother seemed incapable or unwilling to give affection even in difficult circumstances, for example, I remember playing outdoors on a snowy winter’s day. In particular I remember sliding down our driveway on a tea tray and crashing face-first into a parked car, knocking my already wobbly front tooth out and banging my left elbow. With blood pouring down my poor little face my friends ran to get my mother as I sat crying in pain. Upon being informed of the incident she came outside, stood me up and sternly said “don’t be such a baby, it’s just a scratch”. The week after I continuously complained to my father about my elbow which after taking me to A and E for an X-Ray revealed it was in fact fractured and that it hadn’t been just a scratch after all. I went to school the following in my sling day feeling ‘cool’ in front of my friends! Another memory from my school days is seeing my friend’s parents picking her up from school and watching her skip off to the park laughing and smiling. From a distance I saw her fall from the monkey bars hurting her chin on the floor. I watched enviously