When I said that I was very aware as a kid what I meant was that I knew she had passed away. The day my mother came to my school was to apologise and say bye to me. She went home to her flat and took a drugs overdose, the amount of drugs she took meant the heart stopped and she died. The time she came to the school I was 5 years old, she died when I was 5, which is about 15 to 16 years ago now.

When I was 13 I found a letter which she had written (before she ended her life), I was taken out of care by a woman who gave me a much better life. Before ending her life my mother wrote the letter to the woman who had custody of me (although I was never meant to find the letter), but I did find it. My mother wrote the letter and sent it to this woman asking her to take good care of me. She detailed the sexual abuse she had suffered and explained that she wished she could have been a better person. I found the letter at age 13 and it messed with me. I was a conscientious kid who worked hard in school and was in top classes, finding that letter changed me a lot because I snapped. In some ways it changed me for the better, I got bullied a lot before reading that letter, after that letter I changed and no one ever bullied me again. I quit school because I wanted out of everything and to just have silence (resulting in no qualifications, but I learned more about life than people twice my age). Life was and still is difficult because I'm carrying around a lot of memories. I think (or hope) that they are serving me well and I've learned from them.

I don't hate my mother (not because she died), even if she was still here I wouldn't hate her. I am glad she died because she is at peace now and as I said she was a prisoner in her own mind.