Dear 13 year old me...

Dear 13 year old me, 


I will start with some good news…you’re going to live to finally be a bit more grown up with nobody to answer to, just as you’ve always dreamed of.  The bad news is, being a grown up isn’t actually as exciting as you might imagine, you are going to have nights spent on useless activities; writing a hypothetical letter to your younger, 13 year-old self instead of doing the Physiological Disorders coursework that is in on Monday is just one that comes to mind.


Listen, young me, I don’t want to get too carried away here and preach at you too much, because I know you’ll just get defensive and post something on some social networking site about how the older, 17 year-old version of you is just another stupid adult who “doesn’t get it.”  But let me set one thing straight.  I’m no adult.  I still don’t know how to cook (but who needs to know how to cook, cold beans are where it’s at) my socks are just as odd as yours are every day (you never grow out of the habit of wearing socks that don’t match, just in case you were wondering), and you know you think that buying a million and one Harry Potter items is the best idea you’ve ever had? Well brace yourself, because down the road, you will expand on this hobby by spending a stupid amount of money (that you don’t have, by the way) on going to the studio tour, films, books etccccc. So believe me, even though you might classify a nearly 18 year-old as a grown up now, you’re going to find out that a great deal of your childish behaviours and poor decision-making skills, do not subside…at least not yet, anyway.    


Part of me wants to tell you in great detail about exactly what is going to happen within the next few years, but from what I have seen, knowing too much about what is going to happen can lead to complete and utter mayhem, and as funny as that would be for me, it wouldn’t be great for you. Plus, I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you, because you are about to learn some tough lessons, but you need to learn them your way, not mine. 


Instead of preaching at you, I’m going to advise you. However, I know that you will look at this and think ‘she’s got it wrong, I’m nothing like that’, well, young Sarah, you are. You won’t accept it, but it is so true. Every single word of what I’m about to tell you will help you more than you can understand, maybe not now, it might take a couple of years, but it will help, so listen up. 

·      RELAX ABOUT THE EYEBROWS. They look fine, honest. Oh, and stick with the tweezers, the razored half an eyebrow is not a good look, I promise. And whilst we are on the subject, keep with the blonde hair. You just don’t suit black (you will also get in a whole lot of crap when you decide to whack out the black hair dye in your mum’s newly painted white and light blue bathroom, it’s just not worth it). 

·      Be certain your alarm is set for AM, not PM before you go to sleep every night.  Those kinds of mistakes are how wearing two drastically different shoes to school happens, along with your sisters two-sizes-too-small school jumper. Not a good look.

·      Just in case you were wondering, Mum and Dad don’t kill you that night when you get bought home at 2:30am after getting very drunk. They get fairly close to it though (because let’s be honest, you give them lots of different reasons to) Ease up on them though, they are great, honest. I know at this you are going to laugh because there is no way you believe me, but they aren’t the dragons that you think they are, and actually, they are going to save your butt more than once within the next 5 years. Look at it like this; they are a bit like Professor Snape. You feel like they are against you right now, but they are actually the hero’s that have been protecting you this whole time. (ah crap…last Harry Potter book doesn’t come out for a while does it…sorry) (But as we are talking about it, Draco and Neville turn hot)

·      Hey, you know how you think piercings are stupid?  Remind yourself of that every possible second of every day.  That way when you’re feeling rather impulsive at 17, you don’t do something you regret. (tongue piercings hurt, and don’t even bother looking up how much a piercing gun would be on the internet) (This is probably the closest Mum and Dad will ever get to killing you, by the way)

·      I know things have been a bit crap recently, and I would love to tell you that things are going to be amazing from now. But things are going to get much, much worse before they get better. I’m gonna be honest, things aren’t great now either, you will cheer up a bit when you’re 15, but by 17 you’re at rock bottom again. But believe it or not, the world doesn’t actually end when you think it will. Stay strong and TALK to people, it will make things better, honest. 

·      Stay away from Vodka.  Seriously, repeat after me: I will stay away from Vodka. 

·      Stop worrying about what everyone else thinks.  I know that’s easier said than done when you’re 13, but when you’re in college (oh, that’s gonna hurt by the way, you don’t go to Exmouth, you go to Exeter), you will have finally realized how glad you are that you get to be you, and nobody else.  It’s great when you finally stop trying to be what you think you should be, and start being who you always have been.  

·      Don’t be friends with her (you know who I’m talking about), she isn’t worth it. You don’t need to be like her, you will get hurt so many times. Promise. In your second year of college (uh huh, you make it) you will meet some amazing people; the girls in your class are just incredible and will have you crying with laughter most lessons. Travelling to and from college with your closest friends is great, those rants with Bryony will quite literally save your life on a number of occasions…please don’t lose contact with her, or any of the girls in your class. 

·      Those kids you look after will again, save your life. The kids you look after in Honiton when you go for work experience, your special boy and those New Wine kids…don’t forget them, they stopped you doing so many stupid things…don’t ever lose your passion for working with children with special needs because you will regret it SO much. Honest.

I’m starting to realize what a huge waste of time giving these pointers might be, since I’m sure you won’t get this letter because the technology for sending letters back in time has not yet been invented in 2013, and even if it was I would not be able to afford it anyway (Seriously, I can’t stress enough how skint you’re going to be when you’re in college).  But if there was a way that I could somehow go back in time and tell you something, it’d be this:


Be the stubborn, strong-willed, person you always have been, and make every mistake that you’re about to make in the future, because trust me; you’re going to make some HUGE ones.  No matter how absolutely awful things are going to be at times, and how hopeless you’ll feel, every bit of it is going to help get you to where I am today. 


The point that I’m trying to make is this, no matter what happens, just know that at the end, your eyebrows are fine, you will manage to laugh off the different shoe and Katy’s jumper incident and Mum and Dad don’t ever ACTUALLY kill you, even if confiscating your piercing gun kills you a little inside. There are some real lows coming, but also some real highs. But I’m telling you, keep working at it, things will get better and you will have the life that you’ve always wanted (apart from the bit where you marry Tom Felton, that hasn’t happened yet, sorry…but I promise you I’m working on it)


Now, I realize you may not exactly feel comforted about becoming someone who is bored and weird enough to spend time writing a letter to a younger version of her, and for that, I can’t blame you.  So I’ll keep you posted if I hear any more promising news from any future, older versions of us.  If I don’t, we can only assume it’s because we’re going to be too busy with our wildly successful career…or… we died alone in our apartment and our 27 cats are eating our corpse right …but I’m sure it’s probably the first one….


Anyway, from one, still pretty young and naive Sarah, to an even more young and naive Sarah, here’s to the future! 


Sincerely, 


The older, wiser, still borrowing money from Mum version of you,


Sarah (aged nearly 18)


P.S…McBusted are about to happen, be ready. They will be the greatest thing to hit this earth.

P.P.S…You will get an iPhone eventually, just prepare yourself for the stream of Crapberrys and rubbish phones from now until the 8^th of November 2013 (text Donna and say thank you now)

One for the siblings.

There are a lot of blogs about children, children with special needs and families. But there aren’t as many blogs about being within a family of a child with special needs. So I’m going to (probably very unsuccessfully) try and explain it. I have a brother with Autism, and don’t get me wrong, a lot of the time it’s great. But there are some days when I can walk in to my sister’s room and we are both thinking the same thing, ‘let’s run away, it can’t be that hard to start a new life can it?’

Living with Matty, it is crazy, amazing, but crazy. I didn’t notice how much of a routine we had until I recently went to a friend’s house and when it got to dinner time they said ‘oh just sit anywhere’. To be quite honest, at that point I was a bit stuck. In our house there is a seating plan, we have our own cups (take my tea mug or Matty’s hot chocolate mug and all hell will be let loose) and things are done in a particular order, change that order and…well, you can probably guess, it aint pretty AT ALL. 

A lot of people ask me to explain Autism, and that is really difficult, but it goes a bit like this...you want to watch a film and you need a DVD player to do it. You crawl round to the back of the DVD player (covering yourself with dust as you go, has this area ever been dusted?!) and you see one cable that splits off in to three parts, red, white and yellow, with three sockets, get it right and you can watch your film. If you don’t get the order right you may see the film but not hear it, or vice versa. You may not even see or hear anything, only get a humming sound (or a slightly worrying whirring sound if you are using our DVD player, followed by the a bit of smoke…) or it may be fine, just with a bit of interference because the plugs need to be tightened a bit. Either way, you have everything you need to watch the film, for success, there is nothing missing at all. People who have Autism have everything that they need to be successful, but their cables may not be coded correctly or in the right order. As a family of someone with autism, it is our job to help Matty find the picture so he can watch the film comfortably, no matter what it looks like to us. That make sense? Who knows.

There is a piece written by someone called Emily Perl Kingsley called welcome to Holland. It sums up what it is like for families of children with special needs, it’s not easy, it’s crazy, but it is beautiful. A good friend of mine wrote her own version, have a look on the link below, I think these pieces of writing sum it up perfectly, I will put it at the bottom for you to read.  http://www.revelationsofaslummymummy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/welcome-to-planet-zorg.html

Being a sibling isn’t easy at the best of times, Katy and I used to fight SO much when we were younger (weird as now we are very close, she is more of a friend than a sister!), and I am constantly reminded of when Katy was learning to walk, she was holding on to the sofa to cling on to, when I put my foot out to knock her over, Katy then proceeded to sink her very small, but very sharp teeth in to my toes, I wouldn’t be surprised if I still have the scars…but having a sibling with special needs is so much more than that, its twice as crazy, twice as difficult, but the rewards are amazing. Seeing my little brother stand up in front of a big group of people at his year 6 leaver’s assembly and tell them that he was going to join the Lego robot club at secondary school would make some siblings cringe, but I was SO proud. 

Some of the most amazing people I know have siblings with special needs, at the conference I go to every year we have a session for siblings, and some of the things that are said there are brilliant, these siblings are generally about 5-15 and have no trouble holding back what they think! We have so much fun in these sessions, shaving foam fights, ice cream gutters, water play, you name it…we do it! 

So yes, some days I could honestly throttle him, but having a sibling with autism has shown me just how much our family can work together as a team, we would never of been this close had Matty not had autism. So I LOVE it.

Here’s to the siblings, I love you all. 

“When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.”
 

Here is to an adventure

I am about to start the biggest adventure of my life. For the last 17 years I have stuck to the same routine, lived with the same family and done basically the same thing every day. I mean, sitting in a different seat at dinner time is a bit of a crazy move (and dangerous, Matty’s reaction every time the seating plan changes is lethal). Every single decision I have made in the last 17 years has either been run past someone else or made for me. But recently I have had to make some huge decisions on my own. 

My first decision, America. In approximately 6 months time I am going to being flying out to America for 3 months of working with children with special needs in American summer camp. And let me tell you, I am bricking it. I have never been so terrified of anything in my life. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I went to London alone, only for a few hours, and even then I was shaking for most of it (there are some scary people in London, including one guy outside Victoria who tried to convince me that actually, I was mistaken, he wasn’t a creepy 50 year old guy who hadn’t showered in a while, he was really a 5 year old girl who was lost, could I help her find her Mummy?). But in 6 months I am going to a new place, with new people in a completely different culture. But, despite me being terrified, I have never looked forward to anything more in my life. I will be working with some incredible people (kids with special needs are the best, I’m telling you), I will learn more from 3 months in America than 2 years of college. It is going to be crazy, but it is going to be amazing. 

Next decision? The whole ‘what I am going to do with the rest of my life’ decision, no biggie. For 14 years I was certain that I was going to be a doctor (when I was younger I had to write why I wanted to do it as part of a school project, I wrote 2 pages on how much money doctors earn and how you get to live in a house that has a fridge that looks like a cupboard). But when I turned 15 I realised that I probably shouldn’t be basing my life decisions on wanting a cupboard that turns in to a fridge. For the last 2 years I’ve gone from teacher, to speech and language therapist, to unicorn, back to speech and language therapist, and then back again to unicorn…the amount of times I’ve had a genuine conversation on the bus with Bryony where we both feel a suitable career option is prostitution is actually a little bit worrying. I salute anyone who has had me on the phone (mainly Donna…sorry!) whilst I’m having a ‘let’s sort out my career’ evening who has tried to convince me that actually, maybe there are better career options for me than ‘professional Candy Crush player’ and possibly sitting in a corner crying for the rest of eternity is actually probably not that beneficial for me (I wasn’t having any of it, in case you were wondering). I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do with my life. Hopefully, providing one of the 5 universities that I’ve picked wants me, I will be going on an adventure next September to study mental health nursing. I can’t even change my mind now, and as much as that scares me, it excites me. (Any advice welcome, I’m bricking it!) 

So here is to adventures...BRING. IT. ON. 

So...let's do this.

Ive done lots of new things recently, some little things (had tea in a mug that wasn't my tea mug, crazy i know...spoken to new people...bought new clothes...) and some bigger things (I went to London on my own, opened up to people and decided what im going to do for the rest of my life) you get the gist of it. 

But tonight I'm going to do something REALLY new. I'm going to start a blog. A lot of my friends have done this, looking down my Facebook homepage I come across blogs talking about things close to the heart, whats been happening in the bloggers life and how things have been going that day. And i love it, it gives me a chance to glimpse in to the crazy lives of the people i see every day, and those who i don't get to see very often. And that's what i want to do. I don't mind whether you completely disregard it and don't even look at it, read it and hate it or read it and love it. It makes no odds to me. But its there in case you want it. 

So here we go, let's do this.