London -the final chapter

London was harsh, built up and busy, with too many people too close, too much cigarette smoke, too few places to hide, rest, shelter, even though I made friends with homeless people and got on well with food run people and some lovely daycentre people. I remain in touch with the Christian daycentre and housegroup who looked after me.

London has a wonderful atmosphere and is full of opportunities and boroughs, I will always remember being homeless in the Capital City, but I don't know if I will ever go back.

I remember when I swapped from going to the strand to spending more time at waterloo with my 'friends', one evening the lovely kind man from the daycentre was there, he always made sure I had clean towels for a shower or clean clothes on clothing store days and he was always cheerful and smiling. When I saw him at the food run I thought he was helping out, but he told me that he himself was homeless, I was astounded and saddened, he deserved better than homelessness, he was a lovely kind man.

I remember meeting the homeless German woman at the daycentre who had a teddy on her trolley, she stopped and greeted me and the giraffe, 'Toys are such a comfort' she said, she told me that her husband was at the hospital with suspected cancer, she was so upset and she said it might be throat cancer, which is a bad one, she said that her teddy was such a comfort and she understood why I had my giraffe. She was a catholic so we prayed for each other and blessed each other.

I was still searching for help, help to help me to cope and help to protect me from further interference from the church which had been threatened and which would get me into further trouble if I tried to fight back, as before. But getting help was impossible, I tried to contact a trauma helpline but kept getting the answer machine.

The trauma helpline tried to phone a few times when I was in the daycentres where I had to turn my phone off and phoned back when I was asleep in a deckchair in the gardens at embankment, a rare time when no-one came and smoked over me and so I could actually rest. (The deckchairs are left for anyone to use in the winter) They left a message which I thought was totally incorrect, they told me that if I was in distress then I should go to casualty. I phoned back and left a message telling them that they shouldn't be encouraging people to waste casualty's time as casualty cannot treat trauma and unless someone is mentally ill, casualty will turn them away. So that was another disappointing dead end in my search for help.

However, a few weeks later the distress and horrifying memories of the way the church had stiched me up and wrongly accused me and got away with it were too much for me, and I was desparate and went to casualty and told them that a helpline had advised me to go to casualty if  I was suffering trauma, it was 9pm when I arrived at casualty, it was busy in there and I doubted going in for a minute, but the receptionist smiled and said that they would get me to see a nurse and assess me. She put me in a corner as I was shaking, terrified of leading myself into a lockup situation, of which I had suffered too many at the hands of the church.
What can anyone do for someone who is in collapse due to trauma? They can't medicate me because my autism means I react very badly to anti-depressent medications, what can they do? not a lot.

As I wait there is a man with serious mental illness there, he starts going violently out of control and has to be restrained, while he is going mad he is blocking me in the corner that I am sitting in and I panick and escape casualty, which is a high risk thing to do in case they send the polices after you, but the reception lady comes after me and gives me another quiet area to sit in and the man is sedated and taken to a ward. The church think or make me out to be mad like that man because my distress went out of control in reaction to the way the church and clergy treated me. The church are the coldest and most unsympathetic organization I have ever met.

A 'Nurse' calls out my name, and I go over, I start to explain to her why I am there, and because of my communication problems I start by telling her I have Asperger's syndrome in order to warn her that it is going to be difficult for me to explain myself, she leaps in and says she's never heard of Aspergers syndrome and doesn't let me continue but assumes that the Asperger's Syndrome is the problem and asks what symptoms it presents, I struggle to explain that thats not why I am here but she doesn't understand, I know she can't help and I ask to speak to someone else, she says that she is the head of the department and why should I speak to someone else?
 (If she is the head of department she should be trained in Autistic spectrum disorders, this is essential in case someone with an ASD comes in and has the communication problems I am having).

The level to which failed interactions like this affects me always leaves me upset or in tears, this is no exception and I go and tell the receptionist that I am leaving because even the head of department doesn't understand me. I always end up upset with myself for not being able to communicate.

I go outside, but I don't want to be alone in the dark with my despair, so I go back in and the receptionist gets a male nurse to come and talk to me, he is very cheerful and nice and communicates so clearly that he could almost be speaking autistic language, he gets me to talk to him and I tell him about me being adopted and abused in the church and the repercussions of my reactions and reportings of the abuse and how I am in so much distress every day and it is getting unbearable and how I can't stop crying when normally I don't cry.

He tells me that he will refer me to the doctor, and he takes me onto a ward, I am not good at hospital wards, the noises and lights and bustle are an autistic person's nightmare, they put me in a cubicle and I scramble onto the bed thing and try to settle down, but it is not easy, in the cubicle next to me is the mentally ill man, he has been sedated but is still furious and in and out of consciousness he growls and swears, in the other cubicle a man has been in a serious accident and has head injuries and they are trying hard to keep him awake and assess him.

Every time someone shouts or screams, I potter to the door of my cubicle because I am frightened. I don't think that being here is helping me a great deal.

In the end after a while and a few reassurances, I tuck down on the bed and leave Patrick the giraffe on guard.

I sleep, because these days I need sleep all the time, I am exhausted all the time.
It is gone midnight when a doctor comes and wakes me up, I am in a stupor but I am afraid of being told off so I leap up, but she is a nice smiley doctor and she smiles at the giraffe and asks me to explain things and I do my best, she assesses my mental state and says that it is difficult to help because I am not admitting to being suicidal and I'm not mentally ill. She tells me that normally with a vulnerable adult they would be concerned about letting me out on the streets and would prefer someone to be there to help me, I tell her that I can't cope with social services and she is amazingly understanding, this doctor really does understand me!
She also tells me that even if I was suicidal it would be unlikely that I would be locked up as keeping people in a secure hospital is reserved for extreme cases as there aren't enough resources.
As she says that I remember my paranoid schitzophrenic friend P. begging to be put in a psychiatric ward as he was struggling, and being turned down, refused. I have a terror of being locked in, especially since the church have tried so hard to have me put away and made me out to be insane so much. Well if you are seriously mentally ill and are turned away if you beg for hospitalisation then if you aren't mentally ill then you are hardly going to be locked in.

I ask the doctor to check my heartbeat as I have been  more breathless and tired with more chest pain, and I have never fogotten or understood that heart scare I had four or five years ago, but my heart is ok, it's just the asthma. The worsening asthma.

The doctor tells me she needs to speak to her senior in order to ensure that they can let me go in this state but she assures me that I'm not trapped here.

while she is gone a nice but slightly misinformed nurse comes along with a gown for me because she thinks I am being admitted, I tell her I don't think I am staying, she asks if she can at least take my pulse and blood pressure  and I agree very happily, she goes off to get the pulse thing and obviously loses her way as I don't see her again.

The doctor comes back and says that my records say that I am under that maudsley team that I said no to, and aren't they helping me? I have an asthma attack at this news and I tell her the situation and that I am not under that team and have said no to them so it shouldn't be on record that I am under them. She says that that is ok and that she will write to them.

I do not agree to be under any mental health team or social services, because mental health teams are for mental illnesses, I haven't got one for them to treat and it gives the church something to say against me in the press if I commit suicide, ie 'oh, she was under the mental health', because they cannot say what they hoped 'oh she was just mentally ill, we didn't do anything', they have continued to blame me and deny any responsibility even though they can't say I am mentally ill. And mental health teams who I have briefly interacted with before haven't actually been able to help me. I don't talk and I can't be medicated.
As for social services, they have never been known to help anyone.

I am released from the hospital, it is 1.30am I stagger up the road and realise that I haven't really eaten or had a hot drink for some time, I wander over to the all night burger van, the man puts a cuppa on the counter without even looking up, he is the same as me, he doesn't like speaking unless he has to, we had a few seconds of discussion one day when I asked for something and he said he'd never heard me speak before, and I told him that speaking isn't my favourite thing, he replied that he was the same, and he is, despite running a business where you have to talk.
Anyway, this time he got my cuppa without even looking up, because he knows I am a cuppa with two sugars, but I broke the silence by ordering some chips as well, then I went back to my bushes and slept. So if anyone in traumatic distress goes to casualty, be warned, casualty is a bit limited unless you admit to being suicidal or are found to be mentally ill. In my case, even if I admitted to being suicidal, there is no-one who can rebuild me from what the church has done, no doctor, no psychiatrist, and trying to talk to medical personnel tends to add to my stress.

I angrily contacted the maudsley team who were interfering and claiming me to be one of their clients, they somehow managed to persuade a very distressed me that they could help me, which shows how vulnerable I was, and said that my immediate crisis was not relevant and that I needed long term help and how would I like sheltered housing? my experience of sheltered housing was a hell when I was a teenager that left me more damaged and disturbed and because I could wash and feed and look after myself, the sheltered housing was of no benefit to me at all. So i once again told this leeching social worker and team to strike me off their records, I needed crisis help, not sheltered housing.

As I continued to really struggle on London's harsh streets, I continued to look for places to eat and wash away from the aggresive immigrants, and because I had been to the women's centre and found it so quiet, I looked for another women's centre, a dayccentre where I would be able to eat and shower, it wasn't very easy to find anywhere, the nearest one was more of a trek than the women's centre that had no showers but had computers.
I went to look, it was a disappointment, I went in, no-one looked up, no-one spoke, not even the staff, there were two members of staff, both were behind a desk, they wouldn't acknowledge me, after I had been standing at the desk a few minutes, one of them looked up and asked in broken english what I wanted, I said I was new and was I allowed in here? what did I have to do to come here?
She grunted that I could be here and that I should get a cup of tea or coffee.
I found the tea and coffee, there was hot water in two flasks, only it was lukewarm water. The staff took no more notice, I looked round, there were women sitting here and there, not really doing anything, I walked round the building and found a television room, there was a girl in there with her posessions strewn on the floor, I went in the corner to sit and she tried to get me to move out, she was only a guest there, the same as me.

The attitude of the two members of staff made me reluctant to go back to them to ask about showers or food and the 'timetable' on the wall just showed everything to be cancelled due to lack of staff. I left the centre, no-one even looked up, especially not the staff.

I went over the road to where there was a library, I asked the man if I could use a computer even if I wasn't a member of the library, he asked why I didn't join, I said I was street homeless, and he said I could use one of my daycentres as an address, and so I did and library membership meant that I got full internet access. As I was struggling along after all this I chanced upon the charity that allowed me to have osteopathic help, and so I was given an appointment for Osteopathy, that was the first actual help I had had with my increasing struggle to walk.

The following day I received an email from the women's daycentre that I had left, I had emailed them before I had gone there and asked about the daycentre and got no reply, they hadn't even registered that I had been to see them, and in reply to my email of enquiry they said that I should come and see the daycentre, I told them I already had and it wasn't going to work for me, it was too far and wouldn't help me. They replied that I should 'Kindly refrain from emailing and come and see them instead' and I was unimpressed and told them that 'kindly refrain' was incorrect terminology in an informal email where I was doing nothing untoward.
I never went back there.

The access to the computers at the other women's daycentre when I could get there was helpful, as the only other access I had to computers was  in the library where the computers were in demand or internet cafes here and there.

I went to the women's centre one day and as I was sitting in the sitting area, I picked up a brochure for a residential college, I asked the staff about it, I don't know why, because my hope in the future has been gone for a long time and yet in a way I have gone on having hope. The staff, who normally just sit there quietly and leave me to it, phone up the college and try to arrange an interview for me, the process gets complex and I get confused, the staff keep saying that they will phone back or that someone will be in contact, but nothing happens. Then when i go in there one day a member of staff tells me that the sexual violence worker wants to talk to me about my college application, I am confused and ask why, she says that this is so my college application can be clarified, I am still confused, especially as she asks me to wait in the centre, I tell her I have an osteopathy appointment about 30 minutes tube ride from there that afternoon and I will have to leave in plenty of time for that.

I waited for the sexual violence counsellor to turn up, when she came in she kind of winked at the receptionist, this seemed rather strange, I waited and waited for her to talk to me and she didn't. Then as she walked past me as I rested on the sofa, she said 'whats happening about your college application?'
I said that I had been asked to wait and speak to her about it, she said she knew nothing about it, and I replied puzzed that I had specifically been asked to wait and talk to her about it.
I remain puzzled by all this but will explain in a minute, she is a 'sexual violence counsellor' and yet she came over to where I was resting and started waving her arms about and talking aggresively and saying that she knew nothing about the application and why should she? I replied again that I had been told to speak to her about it, and that I didn't know why.

I was frightened into flashbacks by the way she stood over me and waved her arms around, she is someone who should know better.
I left to go to my appointment but I was in tears again because of her aggresive attitude, I had done nothing at all to provoke it, I had done as told and waited to speak to her.

The Osteopath manipulated my spine and told me that it was difficult to work with my legs as my joints were inflamed with wear and tear and that he had to work my spine carefully because of defective vertebrae. He told me to try and get the inflammation down and then come back, how could I reduce the inflammation as I continued to have to walk so much and with nowhere to elevate the legs and put ice on them as he suggested?

I emailed the women's centre and said I was surprised and alarmed by the treatment I had received and that I was no longer interested in the college, the stress of the attempts to apply and the lack of communication and the way the sexual violence worker had treated me was too much.

However, I did return to the women's centre despite this untoward treatment, because I valued the computer access.

But more problems broke out.

I had told the 'social worker' and the maudsley team no, I had told them no very angrily again when I heard that they had me on record as being under them, but I was to find out that my angry NO's had been ignored.

Let me just change subject from the women's centre and to something else and then come back. In my search for help in these last weeks in London I had contacted an organization that claimed to help people with learning disabilities, this charity said they thought I could help, and got me to phone their helpline as well as arranging to meet me, I agreed to meet and phone the helpline, I was surprised that the helpline didn't really seem to help much, I only phoned them once.
I agreed to meet the woman from the charity and she gave me long and involved directions after a number of emails where I told her some of my situation and asked if she felt she could help, to which she said yes, they offered psychotherapy and advocacy services and she agreed to meet me, IQ levels were not mentioned at any point, Aspergers Syndrome is a learning disability, and they advertise having helped someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I also have the learning disability 'dysphasia' though it is nowhere near as crippling as it was when I was young.
Anyway, I went to see this woman, and again I was surprised, because this had sounded like such a great setup, but she wasn't listening to me as I spoke and kept repeating things back that she thought I had said that I hadn't said, for example when I talked about someone abusing me and the vicar defending them, she said 'so the vicar abused you?' .......  what?!  I kept my temper, in fact I wasn't angry, just frustrated, and she tried some very cheerful psychology comments about how all this was about me and my healing and how even if the abuse was denied, I knew it had happened and that was what mattered.
No, this wasn't good, but because they claimed to support and advocate for vulnerable people, I thought that I had found somewhere where someone could hear what had happened to me, and maybe help protect me.

As I left this bewildering session, the woman said that she would talk to her colleague who was an advocate about defending me from the church.
But I heard nothing more. I found out why later, the women's centre.

The next week, and the next day that I went to the women's centre I was woken up by the outreach team, it was different people but they knew who I was, they told me that they wanted to meet with me, they were all nice and smiley and telling me that they wanted to talk to me about bedsits and studio flats and would I meet with them, I told them that they had abandoned me after sending me to that horrible centre and why suddenly come after me again after all this time? they had no answers and I asked why they were talking about studio flats and bedsits when the woman at the maudsley who they had referred me to without permission had tried to tell me I needed to be in supported housing?! They had no answer, they tried to tell me she was a nice person, I told them that it didn't matter if someone was nice or not if they interfered unsolicited and caused me distress, it was 6am and I was already in distress from being woken from this stupor that could grip me for 14 hours at a time and still leave me tired when I was woken from it, being woken suddenly from it was traumatic, as happened at that assessment centre.


Anyway, these people said they wanted to meet me at the daycentre, I told them I wasn't interested and that their team had made things worse and that they had abandoned me some time ago and couldn't just pick me back up again and could they leave me alone please and that I doubted my ability to walk to the daycentre (it was at a point where I really found it hard to get to any daycentre).
They went away. And after a few hours of distress, I got myself to the daycentre with a letter to them asking them to leave me alone and ensure that there was no further interference from the woman on the maudsley team who they referred me to without agreeing it with me and while they were incomprehensibly no longer working with me. I also told them that if studio flats were suddenly available to rough sleepers then why weren't the rest of the homeless population off the streets and in these nice flats and rooms that have never been mentioned to anyone before?

I heard nothing in reply, I had had no replies to emails to them about the situation since they left me at the assessment centre.

I went to the women's centre the same morning, to my surprise the woman I had seen at the charity that said they helped people with learning difficulties was there, she ignored me, she was talking to the sexual violence woman, the sexual violence woman said to her that she was going to show her where the room was where she could work with people who came to the womens centre, and they went away.


 I was tired and dozy from being woken so early and suddenly. I asked the receptionist if I could have a sleep on the balcony and she said no, she said I could rest on the sofa, but there were a few women in the centre for once and I said that I didn't want to block the sofa, she said well this wasn't a homeless daycentre and something about me coming here for help with housing, I said that I hadn't come for help with housing, I came to the drop in for some quiet and computer use, and that I was going to go outside for a rest, she said something about me being under a specialist team and I said WHAT? she said got confused and wasn't prepared to answer and I asked what she was talking about and she said that someone had been in contact about me, and I said WHAT? I was very worried that it was the church or something to do with them, eventually by the time I was very upset and distressed, she said that it was to do with my application through the women's centre for behavioural therapy, that it had been turned down because I was supposed to be under that social worker woman at that maudsley team which meant I was invalidated for behavioural therapy!

I couldn't believe what I was hearing! That social worker woman was still making out I was under her and was still damaging my life! I had waited for years and years for behavioural therapy and here I was now having it turned down because this woman who I had repeatedly and clearly said NO to was still leeching on me and saying I was her client when I had said no from the start.

I was out of my mind with distress and anger, this news of me being 'under the maudsley team' had obviously been around in the women's centre already and wasn't new, but they hadn't told me, they had just changed their attitude to me, and the receptionist had let it out by accident, I phoned the social worker from the maudsley team and was very angry with her, the receptionist got the manager to come up, I wanted to know what was really going on, why they hadn't told me before that I had been turned down for help on grounds of being under this team, why the sexual violence worker had been treating me like dirt, and was the church or the bad record they had given me involved? seeing as my request to the outreach who had set the social worker on me to not make any contact with the authorities involved in the church harm to me could easily have been ignored since they had set the social on me without consulting me, and seeing as the social could access records.

In case this sounds like paranoia, paranoia is unfocussed and unrealistic, my hypervigilance regarding the church is based on real possibilities of the church getting their side accross and real possibilities of people treating me with prejudice because of the church and the bad record they have given me.
The manager of the womens centre didn't deny or confirm anything. I asked if this was to do with the church? and why I had been refused the help I needed on the grounds that I was under a team that I wasn't, and why the sexual violence worker had treated me so rudely, and why was I being treated with such hostility by the women's centre when I hadn't done anything wrong? I was being damaged by the intervention of the woman at the maudsley team and whatever information she had got hold of about the church and passed on.
I left the women's centre in tears because of this and I made a formal complaint to the Maudsley about all this as I had been refused help and damaged by this social worker's interventions, she had effectively taken away the therapy that I had fought to get for years, as well as impacting on me attending the women's centre and upsetting me at the hospital.

I am not sure how or if any of this description of the situation makes perfect sense, but the staff at the women's centre became unfriendly and hostile when they were contacted about me being under this maudsley social worker who I was not under, and I was unwelcome at the women's centre and refused the behavioural therapy that I had applied for.

The women's centre sent me a letter saying that I couldn't go back because I was 'too high support needs' and I replied that I had asked no support of them and was disgusted with the way they had treated me and had no intention of going back, I couldn't afford to keep going there anyway.
I am pleased to say that no other daycentre has ever turned me away, in fact they tend more to ask where I am and if I am coming in, which is lovely, I remain with good memories of my three London daycentres, despite being too tired and ill to deal with the immigrants very easily and struggling to get to the daycentres in the end. I am still in touch with one of the daycentres in London and I think the world of them. So, considering how empty the women's centre was and how unreasonable they were, I think they can keep their daycentre and it's horrible attitude, I am not banned from the centres in my home counties or here, because I am quiet and don't do anything, some homeless people do shocking things and they don't get banned but I don't do anything.

I emailed the woman at the charity who claimed to help people with learning disabilities and she came back with an incredible load of excuses about how she could only really help people with an IQ of lower than 70, (there are no such people at the women's centre and yet she was discussing with the sexual violence worker about setting up a room there to help people), she said she had 'been looking for alternative sources of support for me but hadn't found any', I asked why then she hadn't been in touch in the two weeks since she said she would speak to her colleage the next day, even to discuss alternative sources of support, and why, if she had really mistakenly thought I only had an IQ of 70 or so, she had let me cross London alone to meet her and expected me to follow a map? She knew my condition and ability because of a number of emails before I went to meet her, and had agreed to see me and also to look at referring me to her advocate colleague once she had seen me.

I asked if her if her sudden flurry of excuses after not contacting me at all was due to her interaction with the sexual violence worker at the women's centre and the intervention of the social worker from the maudsley who had forced herself into my life, but she didn't reply.

I struggled to communicate with another charity for help, but communication there was impossible as it was another answerphone system like the one at the trauma charity who kept missing me and then left the message about casualty, so basically the church had won in silencing me, no-one would stand up and say 'well hang on, this is an incorrect charge, there was no communication from me to the church up until they had been driving me med by phoning and emailing my friends, maligning me to churches and interfering in my housing situation for three months at which point I was going out of my mind with distress and started speaking up and asking them to refrain, etc'.
The church bore false witness. Had me accused wrongly and didn't explain to the court the tremendous harm they did to me to cause me to be so humiliated and so angry, and they have tried to make me out to be insane and the problem in order to avoid liability, and I will never recover from this.

So here I was with no help, the new doctor, who had no idea about all of this suggested referring me to the maudsley because I was suffering depression and he had never seen me before, and I said no, he was helpful in giving me stronger inhalers and referring me for physiotherapy for my legs. He accepted no to the maudsley without me having to explain and understood that I couldn't take anti-depressents.

My friends and I stayed in the waterloo and westminster area to get our handouts from the runs and meals where there were less immigrants and because I couldn't walk very far at all. One day one of the clothing runs gave me a duvet, a luxury in the homeless world, and as I couldn't find cardboard that night I used the duvet as a matress and put the sleeping bag over me, I was in heavenly luxury, really comfy and snug.
These were my last days in London and within a week it had started raining heavily again and there was no shelter at all, one night me and my duvet and my sleeping bag were soaked through, I had no waterproofing at all. I got up in the early hours and tried to shelter in the stairwell of the dodgy nearby flats, a few old men asked if I was alright, but they were harmless, though who knows what they were doing out at this time in the pelting rain. I had a blanket with me which i kept in a plastic bag for emergencies, and the blanket got damp from being wrapped around me while I was wet. I dozed in the stairwell and then went to Waterloo and got a cup of tea with my stickers.
It always feels good when morning comes after a bad night. But I was cold and endured stares as I kept the blanket around me.

Waterloo can be hostile to homeless people, so I was surprised as I walked past a laundry and the woman offered to dry my blanket, I left it with her to collect later.

I went to the daycentre, by now this was the only one I could easily get to, and my feet were getting sore as well. I got a cup of tea from them and they are ok with the doctor sending the physio letter there.

As the day aimlessly goes on I try to think what to do, I can't get help in London, apart from the free counselling which is hit and miss often fully booked, and the samaritans who have their staffing difficulties, there are samaritans in most towns and usually more safe sleeping places and sometimes less immigrants, but with being hardly able to walk, would I be able to access help in another town? and having found the only good spot in London to sleep, would I be so lucky elsewhere? where could I go? I couldn't go back to my home counties, the church had made sure I would never be ok there. Where could I go? and how? what help could I get if I did go? I just knew I was truggling and lost in built up, harsh London. I am very lost without my home counties and my old friends. I don't know which way to go from here, there is always a magnetic pull towards home, but I can't go back.

I had a ticket, still valid, an open return, from when I came back on the train from my brother's house, the ticket people had persuaded me a return ticket for if I changed my mind and needed to come back, as the return didn't cost any extra.
I decided to use that ticket, maybe not to go the full distance up to where my brother lived but stop off on the way or change trains, it was a big step to make when I was tired and caught up in the bad weather, but I decided I would go anyway, I could always hitch hike back. And so I did, I raided my stashed goods and took what I could, and left the soaked sleeping bag and duvet folded for the next person, and took my now dry blanket and headed off for the tiring trek to the station.
In some ways I chose the wrong day, the last two trains had been cancelled, and on a train that is always quite full there were now three lots of passengers, it was a nightmare! But I got to my destination and didn't look back, here I am now. And yes, I didn't go right up to my brother's home town, I stopped off on the way.