Here we can all be heard for a little while. Part 3

onomatopoeia99

I sent off for my provisional licence driving licence when I turned 17 and started lessons as soon as it came back, no way I was waiting. Bought my first car when I was 18, all with my own money from my holiday job. Living somewhere with rubbish public transport - no buses and a station at which hardly any trains stopped, and not being allowed to cycle outside of the estate, I wanted independent travel as soon as I could get it.

Of course that meant I was the one who ended up driving everyone to the pub and back again and not drinking more than a pint of beer!

To be honest anyone living here where I do now that couldn't drive would get frustrated, there are buses, but they aren't frequent and the last one from the centre of the city is at 10pm, which is rubbish for a night out.

Torry_Quine

I have never driven and its never been an issue. Even if I could drive it wouldn't make much difference as he needs it to get to work so I would still be without one much of the time. I have friends who give me a lift to church for instance and are happy to do so.

codemonkey

In my case, because if stress in my teens, I started dissociating so I wasn't safe to learn to drive. Then came uni and after that I was too poor to afford driving lessons. I moved back to my home city where the public transport is reliable and easier than driving. Driving is really difficult there and parking non-existent. Then I took lessons with a horrible driving instructor who'd scream at me, failed my test twice, totally lost confidence in my abilities and gave up. Now I'm on anti- seizure medication which ironically causes seizures so I can't drive. I take a train and walk for 30 minutes to cover a 20 minute drive because I don't want to kill someone.

Feel a bit like a burden on Mr CP so thanks for that.

Georgiegirl256

Code, you are not a burden whatsoever :grouphug: My Aunty never learned to drive, and it's never bothered my Uncle at all.

The only time it would become a problem in someone's relationship is if someone took the P, and you don't do that, so it's fine.

Today was nice, had a laugh as well as a cry. Quite windy though so we just stayed in the car. Thanks for your good wishes all. :A

codemonkey

Glad it went ok Georgie. :beer:

jobbingmusician

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

I've never had that with a game, but I did when I finished the third novel in the Millennium trilogy by Steig Larsson, I was immediately gripped by the first one and read all three of them in a week. Finishing was like saying goodbye to a group of friends knowing you'll never see them again.

Ooooo Ono, you have reminded me! I haven't read it yet, but you do know about this, don't you? (It is supposed to be good!)

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Mostly for Pyxis, I was listening to radio 4 on the way home just now. It was "Word of mouth" and they were talking about irregular verbs, particularly in the past tense and participle, but the subjunctive got a mention as well (in the context of lay / lie).

Will appear on iplayer here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079pr8y

The simple past and the participle seem to be where most of the irregular conjugations are in English verbs and they talked about origins in Germanic and the older indo-european languages. An interesting half hour as I drove through the rain anyway .

I heard that too! Fascinating, wasn't it! (Hope you noticed I panged a reply straight back at you )

Waves_and_Smiles

I understand what you mean, Code. I feel like a bit of a burden on WaSp as far as driving goes. I had taken lessons and was ready to take my test and then I became very anxious and thought ok, I will wait until it passes. Of course, it didn't pass and resulted in psychosis at which point I was told that with combination of medication, hallucinations and catatonic posturing that I would never drive. I was upset but I saw their point, the last thing needed is someone throwing both arms in the air while going around a roundabout.

I am fortunate in that the NHS and my favourite psychiatrist accommodated me when I had therapy appointments when WaSp couldn't get time off work and managed to get partial funding for taxi's that always had the same driver to get me there. I am very grateful for that and still have no idea how they managed to get the funding for over a year. It is another reason why my favourite psychiatrist is my favourite, as long as I cooperated he bent over backwards for me.

Not driving does make me feel unfair to WaSp, plus if I could drive I would likely get out more because I tend to feel safer in cars. But it's not going to change and WaSp says he loves driving luckily so I just say sorry a lot.

Waves_and_Smiles

On the subject of that I wrote to my favourite psychiatrist today to say thank you. I even had a little cry whilst doing so. I had forgotten how far he went for me in so many ways.

As well as the taxi's noted above he was also the one who got every professional I had in my life to write me a note telling me what they thought of me. I ended up with a pile of letters I still have saying lovely things about me and he told me to look at them when I felt low and remember that these were written by people who had training and worked many different types of people. If they could see good in me it must be true.

Another thing he did that no one else had ever done was as well as supervising my therapist weekly he arranged for the three of us to meet up every 6 weeks and talk about how things were going because he wanted me to be part of my organising my treatment. We would review how far we had come and how all 3 of us felt about the progress and what our hopes were. It made me feel very included.

Once after I had badly hurt myself I was crying my eyes out to him and he quietly said "I know, love." It was the first and only time he ever used an endearment but it was huge to me. I realised he actually did care about me as a person, I wasn't just another case to him. He probably has no idea how much that meant, if he even remembers it. For a second he was just one person empathising with another and it built my trust in him so much.

Then there was the constant therapy. In the beginning he told me we would split up all of my mental health problems and work on one at a time and keep going until we had covered them all. When one therapy was coming to an end we would discuss what I wanted to work on next and and he would refer me for it so there was a little gap between therapies as possible. This went on for 5 years of constantly working on my problems with him supervising it all the way through it.

It is no surprise to me now that he is so renowned in his field now. He was always incredibly dedicated and extremely good at his job, he was something special. I put all of my memories in the email and I hope my letter makes him smile, he always said we weren't aiming to cure me, just for me to be able to live independently and experience happiness. We did it.

heartbreak_star

I honestly have no idea how I went for so long without a driving license I certainly would have issues with LARP as I have so much kit!

Aww WaS, your psychiatrist sounds like such a sweetheart!

HBS x

Waves_and_Smiles

Hello HBS! How are you today? Another night owl like me! As much as I don't drive I would be lost if we didn't have a car, I can no longer take taxi's (Eeeep! locked in a little metal box with a stranger!) so I wouldn't make it to my hospital appointments.

My psychiatrist was wonderful and I am really pleased for him that he is now so highly regarded and other people think so too! I knew him when he was no one! :rotfl: