I should have been a happy teenager...

W henever I walk past a particular house around the corner from where I now live ... I am thrown back in time, remembering my teenage years, when I lived in that house for protection from a boy who was stalking me and causing trouble.

Growing up in a dysfunctional and sometimes hostile environment, raised by emotionally stunted parents unable to show love except from the end of a plank of wood, my sister and I were unaware that we weren't a normal family

Did it teach me resilience? Although it was no preparation for the dramas of my teenage years and tragedies of my adult life, it may have helped me to get through the fight of my life at the age of fifty-three.