This is a subject I’ve debated with my dad about on many occasions, because he’s a smoker, and I’m not, and It really sickens me! I have no idea why, but it’s just something that super annoys me.

This is a subject I’ve debated with my dad about on many occasions, because he’s a smoker, and I’m not, and It really sickens me! I have no idea why, but it’s just something that super annoys me.

I grew up in a smoking house. Both my parents smoked, and it didn’t hugely worry me. I’d grown up around it, and the houses we lived in had always been smoked in, so for me, it was pretty normal.

Later on though, I remember heading in to family pubs with my mum and her then boyfriend and the smoke in there was so dam terrible! (this was before smoking had been banned in public places). I have not so fond memories of those clouds of smoke. Not nice!

More recently, when my parents where living together (I was between 12 and 15 years), again, the house had been a smoking house, and it was pretty much the normal for me, at this stage it didn’t bother me so much at all really. But then me and my dad moved out and in to our own house (a rental property), which meant that the house had never been smoked in, and meant my dad had to smoke outside.

It was about that time that I started to get a little more sensitive to it (I’m not sure if that’s due to my M.E, which could be possible, or whether it was the transition from living in a smoking house to a non-smoking house), and it really started to make me feel sick! Since then, when I’ve been around smokers, it really does make me feel a little sick, and generally makes me cough.

So in answer to the original question, my feelings toward smoking are negative ones. I really don’t think smokers should have rights to smoke in public (I agree with the ban), I think smokers have the right to smoke in there own homes. I also feel they shouldn’t be aloud to smoke in or around children.

Other peoples thoughts on the matter would be happily received. I know those are only my opinions, I know what smokers think on the subject after debates with my dad, so your thoughts are more than welcome.

This was a hard one to answer. I’ve been contemplating it for some time now and it’s really hard for me to narrow it down to just one accomplishment! So many things have happened in my life, and so many seemingly ‘normal’ events have actually turned out to be a really big deal for me, as we never thought I’d be well enough to manage them.

I think for me though learning to drive would have to be my proudest life accomplishment. I applied for my provisional when I turned 16, which was exciting, for sure! I applied for lessons later that year but didn’t start my lessons until I nearly turned 17. (I could learn to drive at 16 due to a benefit I’m receiving).

My dad took me out in the car most nights in the early days of me learning. (We didn’t learn the brakes until the second lesson!). By the time I started learning with my instructor, I had already mastered most of the basics.

The lessons where intense, definitely. It really took it out of me, physically, and financially! I took and passed my theory with flying colours, and passed my test on the second attempt (due to a minor fault on the first which was unavoidable).

Learning to drive is something that I’m really proud I managed to accomplish. Many people assumed I’d be too ill to do it, and I loved proving those people wrong!

There’s other things I’m proud of as well, one of them being when I got my first tattoo. I’d planned to have it for years, and the tattoo itself had a lot of deeper meanings, so for me, going through the pain of getting it was 100% worth it! People say to me when they see it ‘Wow, that must of hurt’, and I get a kick out of that, for sure!

I’m also proud of gaining the courage to apply to the Open University. I’d put of studying in the IT field most of my life, as it was just something I was good at, I didn’t plan to take it on as my career. Eventually though a close friend encouraged me to apply, and here I am, studying for my Computing degree!

I’m proud of the setting up home with my Dad, it was a big thing for both of us, we had very little but managed to thrive for many years. Along those same lines, I’m proud of moving in with Richard in Coventry, they both where big accomplishments for me!

I think that’s about it. There has been so many things that I’m proud of, that it was hard to whittle it down to just one!

What is your biggest fear? Have you tried to overcome it?

This was a really difficult question to answer actually. I have many smaller fears, things that scare me on a smaller scale, but not a ‘big’ fear of anything in particular. In writing this actually, It made me question what ‘fear’ actually is, and whether the things I’d say I fear, are things I actually just worry about.

I have a fear of spiders. I think thats a real common fear though. It’s just their legs, and the way they creep around under my bed. EWW!. It’s something I just have to leave with though, and I’ll pick them up in a glass and throw them out the window as I don’t have any other choice!

I fear heights. That’s a definite fear. How did I overcome it? Hmm. I put myself in situations where I had no other choice but to face it. I sometimes take the glass lift from the top floor of the shopping center all the way down to the ground floor, and make myself look out over the ground below me. I hate it but for me it’s the best way to deal with it.

I fear loosing the ones I love (through an accident that should have been, or could have been prevented), but I think that that’s a really common fear.

Writing the above was a really difficult one for me, I don’t think I’m a person who hugely has ‘fears’. Not great fears that dominate my life. People expect me to say that my biggest fear is never recovering (from my M.E), but for me, that’s not a fear, that’s a part of life that at the moment (due to there being no cure) I have on control over.

If your friend or partner left his or her email open, would you look? How about a journal? Have you ever peeked at something private?

With past partners (there hasn’t been too many of them actually..), yes, i defiantly did ‘peek’ at things which, for that person, were private.  Back then i was younger; i think my view on what ‘privacy’ meant was different from my view no the subject now. I felt that I diserved to see anything that the other person had on his mobile, or email account.. So yes, I did end up ‘peeking’. I think it relates to me not actually trusting the other person, hence why I’m no longer with those people.

Now, my views on the subject have changed. I really don’t see the need to do that kind of thing. I trust my boyfriend implicitly, and know that he has nothing to hide, or that he’d want to hide anything.

In my opinion, everybody deserves some form of privacy. Even though we’re 100% honest with each other, i don’t expect him to update me on everything that happens in his life. If he doesn’t tell me something (the kind of thing that I’d probably find in his emails or on his phone or journal if he had one), is probably things he doesn’t feel are important enough to tell me, and i respect that.

In addition to the above, I think I’d be slightly hurt, if the person i was with didn’t trust me enough and felt the need to check through my written journal, or my mobile, or my emails. I’d respect the person more, I think, if they where honest with me and asked if they could read through my messages, and I’d be completely open to doing that.