Gaynor

I often feel like the life I'm living now isn't really mine, that I should have been someone else. It's almost like being a twin and losing the other one, except that I never knew her, but always trying to find her.

I suffer from hemiplagia on my right side and concentration/follow through problems. I have always had self esteem problems, and as hard as I try I can't be "normal". I have a terrible time making decisions. My mum tells me I could have worked harder to eliminate these problems, including the mental/emotional ones, and I'm still having the same arguments with her about it even now. I tell her that you couldn't expect an 18 month old to understand enough to co operate with treatment to the same degree as an older child. But she won't accept that.

I grew up in the late fifties early sixties when not as much was known about meningitis then as now. My mother didn't recognize the effects of the disease that were not the physical signs she could see so a lot of my inner problems went unsolved or were diagnosed as "behavioural problems" and treated wrongly.

We moved to Canada in 1966 and I suffered terribly from being teased at school. Everything about me was different, and the physical disability didn't help. I went to what was then Manpower Services when I was sixteen. No one helped me to figure out what I cold do and would like to make my career. The only thing the counsellor could think of after my persistent replies that I didn't know what to do was to send me to Cosmopolitan Industries for the Disabled.

My mother put me on welfare because, as she let it slip later, she didn't want to have to pay for me any more. I was not able to find a job without help--mainly secretarial which did not last long. No one told me how to act in an organizational setting, figuring I should know at 19 even though it was my first job. That is the problem with having intelligence that masks other ADD-like symptoms. People can't understand how I can be so intelligent and not be able to follow through on anything.

All in all my experience has not been a good one with the agencies set up to help the disabled; for the most part I fall through the cracks.

Sincerely,

Gaynor W. Baker