Читать книгу Against My Will - Douglas Wight - Страница 9

I knew immediately something was wrong. It didn’t look right and the second I took a sniff, Oh my God. It was disgusting. And they wanted me to drink this? No way.

I tried to explain to my teacher: this milk was not right. But she wasn’t interested. It was like she didn’t care. ‘Drink it,’ she said. And then louder still, ‘Drink it!’

It tasted even worse than it smelled. To this day I can taste it. I only have to look at a milk bottle and it brings the horrid memories of that day flooding back. It is one of my earliest memories, but it is so vivid it’s like it was yesterday. I was only three years old and in nursery.

Just being there terrified me. I hated being separated from my mum. I didn’t like the other children, the noise they made and the fact that they came up to me asking if I wanted to play. Every day the school provided milk for us to drink. Even on a good day it was warm and creamy and not very pleasant, but that day, even at such a young age, I could tell it was off. The other children gulped theirs down and went back to doing whatever it was they were doing. I sat there, trembling and crying, wishing it was over and I could be back in my mother’s loving arms.

‘I can’t drink this,’ I spluttered through sobs.

‘Just drink it, Sophie!’ the teacher said, getting more agitated. The louder she got, the more I cried. ‘You’re not leaving that seat until you drink it all.’

The only way to make this terrifying confrontation end was to drink the foul-smelling, rank-tasting liquid. Slowly, retching with every mouthful, I forced it down. Three hours later the teacher allowed me to move.

‘There,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

She had no idea. I haven’t been able to look at a glass of milk since, let alone drink one. I still bear the emotional scars.

By the time I was three it was already apparent that I was different. And to understand how I ended up in the clutches of such a monster when I was just a teenager, it is important to know the challenges of my childhood.

I was the second child of Stephen and Helen Crockett. They had met as teenagers in Mountain Ash, a former mining town in the Cynon Valley in south Wales. Helen was 17 when she got together with Stephen, who was two years older and worked as a labourer and was a reservist with the Territorial Army. She fell pregnant a year later and they married a short time after, and then Helen gave birth to Leanne, my older sister. Money was always hard to find and it was difficult to put food on the table, but theirs was a happy marriage and they’ve been together now for 36 years.

I came along in 1993 and immediately presented a host of new challenges for my parents. I cried a lot and was a very anxious baby. It couldn’t have been easy for my mother, who fell pregnant again while I was still little. The birth of my brother Jason completed our family. For any parent, having two children under three would be testing enough, but our closeness in age only highlighted how peculiar I was.

My condition first showed itself through my anxiety over the smallest things. Leaving the house in general was a big deal. I would burst into tears. But doing something like going to get my haircut would turn into a massive experience. I would erupt in a hysterical outburst. It was like the terror someone might feel at having to jump out of an aeroplane. It was that frightening for me.

My mum and dad were always very supportive and tried their best to alleviate my anxiety, but they often found themselves on their own. The understanding of childhood behaviour and its underlying causes was very limited back then.

Our two grandparents – my grandfather on my dad’s side and my grandmother on my mum’s – did not get me at all. They couldn’t begin to understand my problems. They just thought I was being silly.

‘Look at Jason,’ they used to say to me. ‘He’s younger than you and he’s not making a fuss.’

That became a theme. At an early playgroup I was so upset that Jason had to hold my hand the entire time. The assistants were forever saying, ‘Your brother’s younger but he’s looking after you. It should be the other way around.’

I would sit there crying, wanting to go home. I didn’t want to be separated from my mum and I didn’t want to interact with the other kids. I was aware of that from a very early age. I never played with other children. I just couldn’t get it. I didn’t like play, I didn’t like being around strangers, I didn’t like the smell of the building or the other kids being loud. It felt so enclosed: all the other kids screaming, the teaching assistants being near me. I just wanted to be left on my own. It was all too much.

The same went for the children in our street. My mother encouraged me to interact, but I just didn’t like the idea of playing with them.

By the time I went to the nursery where my ordeal with the milk took place, it was the same. I didn’t understand why I had to go to these places. Once there, I was able to calm down, and I grew a little more accepting of my surroundings as long as I was left alone. At playtime I used to sit and put different headbands on, looking in the mirror. The other children did try to involve me, but I preferred my own company. This probably doesn’t sound very nice, but I found from a very early age that other children weren’t the same as me. They didn’t get me and couldn’t understand why I simply didn’t want to talk to them.

I would do anything not to go to nursery. I would deliberately fall down the stairs. My parents would rush to my aid and comfort me, and wonder how such a thing could happen. I always told them it was an accident. My appeals for attention didn’t always have the desired effect, however. I used to stand on drawing pins and embed them into the heel of my foot. My mum would notice me hobbling around and ask what the matter was. When I showed her she scolded me for being so silly. Given that my older sister hadn’t behaved in such a manner, it must have been confusing and distressing for them.

When I started primary school it was a nightmare. I didn’t have any friends and nearly every aspect of it terrified me. It added vast amounts of pressure. I hated school so much because of the teachers’ lack of understanding. School was the worst possible environment for someone with my anxieties. I hated the noise, the smells, the idea of so many people in such a small space. When a teacher showed me the toilets I immediately thought, I can’t use that, something that’s used by all these other people – no way. I developed a phobia of germs and using public toilets that I still suffer from to this day.

When we had to sit on the carpet we always had to sit next to someone – even that made me uncomfortable. I hated eating with everyone at tightly packed tables. Even when I wasn’t hungry they made me eat it all. I didn’t understand why I had to eat if I wasn’t hungry. Why couldn’t I just have something later? Why was everything so regimented, so forced and tense? I spent a long time looking out of the window, planning my escape so meticulously, although I never had the guts to actually try it.

Sometimes, during playtime, the teachers put a movie on, and if it was something I didn’t want to watch, like the Mr Bean film, they made me sit and watch it anyway. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do something else. I wondered what the point of it all was.

The way my brain worked was not compatible with the way the teachers taught. They hated it when I corrected them on something, and would shout at me. If I didn’t understand something, they would keep repeating themselves but with raised voices.

It didn’t help when a girl flooded the toilet and blamed me. Even though I protested my innocence, nobody believed me, so they made me sit in the corner for hours. I was only six and I felt persecuted. My anxiety hit new heights. Every morning I erupted in violent rages, screaming, lashing out and holding on to doors. The thought of going to school made me so stressed that I was physically sick. My hysterics left me wheezing and out of breath. The doctor referred me to a chest consultant who diagnosed asthma and prescribed me multiple inhalers.

At school I wanted to be on my own. At home, at night time, it was the opposite. I didn’t like being left on my own in the dark and I had trouble sleeping, often lying awake for most of the night. If I did eventually get to sleep, I’d suffer frighteningly real night terrors and wake crying and screaming. Mum took to sleeping with me to help comfort me. Every night before I went to sleep my mum and I clutched hands and she’d say, ‘Hand to hand, together we stand.’ When I couldn’t sleep she’d sing to me until the early hours of the morning.

During the day I used to love carrying Mum’s nightdress around with me because it had her ‘Mammy smell’ on it. I would breathe it in and it would comfort me. If I was having a really stressful night, my dad would take me downstairs and put old drama series like Secret Army or I, Claudius on the television until it was morning. This was especially hard for him, as he would then have to leave to go to work.

Despite their best efforts to soothe me, night time continued to be a particularly challenging time. My mother would routinely have to sleep with me in my bed until I was 16. I sometimes tried to copy her loving gesture. When Jason was still young, about four, he would climb into bed with me when it was time for his afternoon nap. I read to him and smoothed his hair until he went to sleep, just like my mother did for me.

My parents would take my brother and me to my grandfather’s house in nearby Penrhiwceiber once a week for an hour or two, just so they could have some time on their own. My grandfather couldn’t cope with me, though. If I didn’t want to do anything, he made a big deal of it. And on the rare occasion when we spent the night there I would be walking up and down the landing because I couldn’t sleep. He would yell at me, which just made me more anxious.

In the summer we would sometimes go to Porthcawl on the south-Wales coast and rent a caravan. It wouldn’t be relaxing, though, as I had a massive sand phobia. My parents would worry about me the whole time. I would be anxious about going there. They tried to accommodate my brother because he liked doing all the fun stuff, like going to the arcades, while I would stay outside, terrified to go in because of the noise and lights.

Even family days out presented problems. Once, we visited a stately home, where guides showed you round and told you how things would have looked back in the day. The guides wanted to involve the children with costumes and activities, designed to bring the period to life. It was too much for me. I wanted to leave straight away.

If we visited somewhere, more often than not we would have to leave halfway through. My parents tried to calm me down at first, but when they could see I was getting increasingly anxious they realised it was better just to leave. Jason was always understanding of my situation, but Leanne found it harder to accept. Her attitude was similar to that of my grandparents: I was being indulged and my parents needed to be stricter with me. It led to a lot of tension between us.

Life wasn’t always stressful, however. In the summer Mum and Dad would take Jason and me for chips from the local fish shop and go up one of the many mountains not far from us, perhaps Maerdy Mountain or Brecon, to eat them. On other occasions we would make a trip to Craig-y-nos country park to feed the ducks and swans. Jason would play football with my father in the field while Mum and I sat talking or just looking at the scenery. I enjoyed going out for walks in nature. We had a Dalmatian dog, Ben, and I liked taking him for a walk in the fresh air, listening to birdsong and watching the seasons change.

I used to love being taken to our local library in Mountain Ash. It was something my parents did with Jason and me every week. There was something so special about going in and choosing another new book to read. I would spend ages finding one. I looked forward to that day every week.

For my birthdays Mum would hold a little tea party with cake, but I didn’t have parties like other children my age. There would just be a simple opening of the presents. I liked getting books, and I started collecting dolls. When I was very young I started collecting Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. I dressed them up in nightclothes and tucked them into a bed I made for them every night. As I got older I probably wasn’t into the same toys and games as other children. I was into fairies and fantastical figures, especially those drawn by Brian and Wendy Froud, who worked on the puppets for The Dark Crystal movie and helped create the character of Yoda for Star Wars. I enjoyed using my imagination and playing on my own, but I also started to become aware of the world around me. At the age of five I regularly came home from school for lunch. One day Mum served me a chicken leg and chips. I stared at it, thinking.

‘Mam,’ I said, ‘is this the leg of a chicken?’

‘Yes.’

‘An actual leg of an actual chicken?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I can’t eat this,’ I said. ‘What do you call people who don’t eat these things?’

‘A vegetarian,’ Mum said.

‘Well, I’m going to be one of them.’

Since then I’ve never touched meat. Once I’d made that connection between animal and plate, I just thought, Oh my God, no.

I have massive respect for my parents because they didn’t try to dissuade me or patronise me. They never lied to me, either, by serving something and telling me it wasn’t meat. They just accepted it and told me the truth, even if it meant making something special for me at mealtimes. My grandparents, on the other hand, just thought they were indulging me. They thought they should be stricter. They would serve me food and claim it wasn’t meat. I might have been young but I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was.

I was a challenge, and not just for my family. Once I’d calmed down and accepted – to a degree, at least – that I had to be at school, I found learning came easily to me. I was the first in my class to write my name and the first to read a book. I wanted to push on and learn more, but the teachers just wanted to hold me back so the other children could catch up. Instead, I read whatever I could lay my hands on at home. A particular favourite was the What Katy Did series by Susan Coolidge, about a girl who is always getting up to mischief until a horrible accident leaves her bedbound. I loved the idea of a very big, close family unit and Katy and Clover, her sister, being best friends. It contrasted with my own experience, with our small extended family and an older sister I annoyed with my outbursts. Leanne and I might have struggled to form a really close bond anyway because of our age gap, but at times I felt she didn’t seem to understand my anxiety. I think she thought I put it on to get attention. I also shut myself off with my reading. I enjoyed stories like Heidi and Black Beauty but quickly moved on to adult books, fiction and non-fiction.

Once I became interested in a subject it quickly turned into an obsession. Space intrigued me from a very young age. I just loved the idea of being so small in a huge solar system that never seemed to end. It gave me a feeling that the problems I was facing were not really a big deal, because look how small I was in the universe. I could gain a little perspective sometimes, which helped calm me down.

Another obsession was Queen Elizabeth I. I can’t remember what sparked my interest, but I loved the fact that she was a strong woman who had opposition against her but always took on the challenge. She was the underdog who few people thought would rule, yet she became one of the most successful monarchs Britain has ever seen. I loved this particular quote: ‘I may not be a lion but I am a lion’s cub and I have a lion’s heart.’ She wasn’t to be underestimated. I also loved the way she turned fashion into a power statement – she just screamed power – and the symbolism in Elizabethan paintings, which told people she was all-seeing and all-knowing.

It was during this obsession that my dad took me to Waterstones. When we asked about a book on Elizabeth, the assistant said, ‘Do you want me to find you a children’s book?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I want the one by David Starkey.’ The historian had written a biography on the Tudor monarch to accompany a TV series.

I can still picture the look of surprise on her face. I was only seven. That year my dad also bought me my first copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and I would read it every Christmas.

As if my anxieties and eccentricities weren’t enough for my family to contend with, I began to sense that there was more to the world around me than what other people saw. I started to have what can only be described as psychic experiences. Clearly, thanks to my anxiety, I was more sensitive to my environment than your average child. But it was more than that. I could sense that people were trying to reach me – that spirits were communicating with me. At first it scared me. I was hearing voices, feeling presences around me that other people weren’t aware of. I told my parents, but they didn’t understand and thought it was just my imagination. I knew this wasn’t one of my obsessions. There was something to this. I was still a very young child when these experiences became more common and scary.

I sensed the spirit of an elderly lady who seemed to take delight in frightening me. One day I was sitting in my brother’s pushchair in the passageway in our house when she kicked it full force and I was thrown into the front door. My mother came running.

‘What have you done?’

‘It wasn’t me. It was the old lady,’ I said.

The look on her face told me she didn’t believe me. My parents weren’t that open to the idea of spirituality at that time.

The elderly woman wasn’t the only thing I experienced. I’d hear heavy boots walking up and down the stairs in the night, and the door would open on its own and shut again. Items in my bedroom would also rearrange themselves.

Trying to make sense of the spirit world was one thing. But for my parents, the real world was challenging enough and there were more pressing issues for them to contend with. My dad was starting to struggle. As well as working as a labourer on building sites, he had been doing shifts driving a taxi. There were times when I hardly ever saw him. But then he started to develop mental-health problems and had to give up work. Money had always been tight, despite his best efforts, and when he was no longer able to work we were under even more pressure. We became very poor. We couldn’t afford the things other children take for granted, like ice creams on sunny days. Our coal was donated by charities. The council house we lived in was falling down, literally. The roof leaked and it was waterlogged. The council deemed it uninhabitable, so we went to the top of the housing register as a priority case to move. They found a house for us in Aberdare, another former mining town ten minutes’ drive away. It meant moving schools.

We were assigned social workers to assess our general wellbeing. My parents discussed with them how hard it was getting me to go to school. Mum wanted me to stay at home, but they said I needed to be socialised and going to school would sort that.

There was only one school that would take both Jason and me, which was a bit of a trek from where we lived. There were schools closer to where we lived in Trecynon, but my parents were keen for us to be together. If I’d thought my time had been hard at my last school, it was nothing compared to this place. At first I thought it might not be too bad. My teacher was nice and showed me some compassion. But after I moved on to a new teacher, I was on my own. The rest of the teachers didn’t even try to understand me. All it would have taken was a few little concessions on their part to alleviate some of my anxiety, but they weren’t interested. In fact, it was the opposite.

I had developed a phobia of being in the water. Swimming wasn’t compulsory but they liked to take us to the pool. I really didn’t want to go. They made such a fuss about it. To people who love swimming, it might sound like I was just being difficult, but when you are that age and beset with crippling anxiety it is a big deal. They seemed to think I was just trying to get out of it. When they did eventually relent and say I didn’t have to get in the water, they made me take my school books and sit by the side of the pool and do some work. I felt like such a pariah and thought I was going to be sick in the stifling heat and the clawing smell of chlorine.

I would have lunch in the canteen, where children were expected to eat everything on their plates. On one occasion I wasn’t hungry so I left some food. One of the dinner ladies called me back.

‘Sophie Crockett, you haven’t finished!’ she shouted. I tried to say I wasn’t hungry but she wouldn’t listen.

I burst into tears, ran out of the room and locked myself in the toilet, refusing to come out for the rest of the day. I must have spent three hours in there. I was too scared to come out until I could go home.

I hated school so much I would cry and beg my parents not to make me go back. At night I would lie awake sobbing at the thought of it the next day.

‘Please don’t make me!’ I begged every morning. It led to terrible outbursts.

We now know that children with autism are prone to outbursts. Mine were nearly all related to school. I just hated it. I felt the school didn’t care. They didn’t have the patience. It was a horrible time.

I enjoyed schoolwork mostly, but mathematics scared me. I developed a big phobia around it, but the teachers didn’t help. If I didn’t understand something, instead of showing me a different way they’d show me the same way but louder. I thought, You just said that and I didn’t understand it.

Every day at 11 a.m. our maths lesson began. As the time approached I started to stress. My mind would go blank and I’d panic when the paper was put in front of me. I used to hide in the toilets or, if I couldn’t get out of the classroom, I would write down anything just to get it over with, and then my work would come back with a big cross on it.

There were two girls in the class who picked on me. At first they said if I helped them with English they would help me with maths. They used to copy my English work, but the teacher thought it was me copying them. The girls blamed me. It was always the same. No one would believe me. My maths didn’t improve, and it got to the stage where I wouldn’t come out of the toilets or I would get a headache and beg to go and sit in the library, where it was quiet.

The library became my sanctuary. It was there that I confined myself when my class was away on a trip, the thought of which scared me. I read all kinds of books, including the Ramayana, the ancient Indian epic fable of heroism and tragedy, and several by Charles Dickens too. My favourite was Little Dorrit, his commentary on society’s treatment of the poor. It might not be one of his most famous, but it’s a very understated novel and, to me, a truly wonderful book.

I enjoyed reading poetry too, particularly the works of William Wordsworth. By the time I was eight I could recite all the lines to his most famous work, ‘Daffodils’, which many people know only by its opening line, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’.

I spent so much time in the library that it became a running joke with the teachers. They’d walk past and make snide comments like, ‘In the library again, Sophie?’ They probably had no idea the effect their comments had on me, but it felt like they were mocking me and they wounded me deeply.

My whole school experience was exhausting. I never knew what might trigger my anxiety attacks. The uniform was polo shirts, cardigans and trousers, which I was happy with because I wasn’t in the least bit fashion conscious and I liked the fact that everyone wore the same thing. In summer, however, the girls wore gingham dresses. I hated mine, as it wasn’t the same as the other girls’. It was made of a looser fabric, and I was convinced it made me different when the last thing I needed was to give the other girls any excuse to single me out.

Despite all these issues, I was still one of the top students. The teachers might not have recognised it, but when the class sat a literacy test I scored the highest, with a reading age of 18. I was proud of my work and strived to do well, but my condition, or whatever it was that affected me so severely, was getting out of control. I was desperate to stay off school. Every day was a battle. Sometimes I would get to stay off or I would go every other day if I could be dragged in.

It got to the point where my mum and dad stopped forcing me to go anywhere. It seemed that the things other children enjoyed were denied to me because of my extreme anxiety. I was just locked in myself. I was nine years old and felt like an alien – that I didn’t fit in with this world around me. And on top of that was my belief that I could see spirits around me and hear what they were saying. People seemed to be contacting me, telling me they had passed on. They appeared before me. It was scary. Why were they communicating with me? It was a deeply disturbing and difficult time.

Against this backdrop of worsening behaviour, my parents, who had been trying to keep my issues secret, hoping it was a stage I’d eventually grow out of, decided to ask for help. They went to the doctor I had seen about my asthma. He referred me to a mental-health team, and for a while I was seen by a number of psychiatrists all over the region. One suggested I take Ritalin, the drug used to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, while another suggested I start the contraceptive pill to stop me from going through puberty. My parents flatly refused.

It felt like no one had an explanation. That was until we were referred to Dr Latif, an expert in autistic spectrum disorders at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. I felt incredibly anxious and worried before I saw him, as I did with anyone I didn’t know. My legs were actually knocking together and my hands were shaking.

I had a habit of walking on my toes, as I didn’t like the feel of my heels on the floor, and as soon as I walked in he pinpointed it straight away: ‘You have Asperger syndrome.’

He asked me a couple of questions, but I couldn’t answer him, as I had terrible difficulty in communicating with strangers at the time and I couldn’t make eye contact. This only seemed to confirm his diagnosis.

Asperger syndrome, or Asperger’s, he explained, is a form of autism. People who have it are often above average intelligence but can display learning difficulties. As with other forms of autism it is a spectrum condition, so while people with it might share certain challenges, it will affect them in differing ways.

‘With Asperger’s,’ he said, ‘you will see, hear and feel the world differently to other people.’

That immediately struck a chord. Here, finally, was someone who understood what I was going through. I could see the relief on my mum’s face. Throughout my childhood she had shown nothing but unconditional love, but there were many times when she’d questioned what exactly was the matter with me. We had all wondered, many times. Now there was an explanation.

Dr Latif explained that although Asperger syndrome was something I would have for life, and was not a condition that could be cured, it could be managed. It was a fundamental part of my identity that needed to be accepted and understood.

He gave my mum advice on how to manage the condition and advised her to buy books on Asperger’s. He said he would write to the school explaining the diagnosis and advising ways in which they could help alleviate my anxiety.

At last there was a name for what I had. The impact that had on me was massive. Maybe I wasn’t such an alien after all. Surely this would make a difference, I thought. My teachers would understand, the other children might begin to accept me more. It could be a new beginning for me. It was a massive relief for us all, because now my parents could get help. They had been in the dark until then, but now they thought, Okay, it’s a condition we can read about and get our heads around. The more they read about the condition, the more they felt reassured, as I had all the key traits of Asperger’s.

Any optimism we had was sadly short-lived. My mum and dad got in touch with an autism support group. I went along hoping it might be a chance to meet people in a similar position, but it wasn’t like that. Autism covers a broad spectrum and I didn’t feel the people there were like me at all. I still found it hard to relate to them. It was as if the imaginary barrier that stopped me from interacting with other people was still in place.

Autism understanding in society was still in its infancy. Progress was being made but the pace was slow for those of us going through it. A form of help was there, but if you couldn’t cope with that, there was no alternative. As for my school, we persevered, hoping they would implement some kind of strategy to make my time there bearable. But it was no use. I felt very depressed.

However, one of the benefits of getting an Asperger’s diagnosis was that my parents could look at other options – like home schooling. Eight months after our first meeting with Dr Latif, a plan was in place. I would never have to go back to school again. Instead I’d be tutored at home, potentially offering an end to the anxiety that had crippled my development so far.

I was thrilled. I was convinced that this would signal a new start, a chance to live a better life.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.