My father, I never really got to know properly, passed away weeks before my fourth birthday in 1964 but I can remember him a little bit.

Life became difficult for my mother who has been a widow ever since, and I was the only child. Unfortunately I have had health problems (temporal lobe epilepsy) and wasn't the easiest of children for a mother to bring up.

Years of poverty followed and it has taken many years for me to get cured of this illness and rebuild my life to be something of worth, but with forty years at least in the making it hasn't been easy for my mother.

I feel I have been a burden on my mother as she doesn't really have much to show for what she has done for me. That is not down to me but all the problems with discrimination, unfairness, bullying and more I have encountered being disabled, gifted, and an only child.

I hope you are proud of me for sticking by my mother and trying my hardest resulting in eventual success, but all the suffering my mother has been through is too much for the final result as I haven't achieved what the average person has in total. Our qualities of life are better than average now but all the suffering from before levels off to being below average overall. What we have now doesn't make up for what we lost out in for over forty years.

If only you were around I am sure our lives would have been much better, so please be proud of me even though I feel like I am a failure through no fault of my own - it is what I have put my mother through why I feel so bad.

Thinking of you helps me, but something needs to happen to let me know how you feel of me.