I'm not sure if this will make much sense but here goes. For a long time, I was in denial about the true nature of my childhood. I really wanted to believe it was okay, so I denied things, dissociated, blamed myself and danced around the truth for shame, for shame.

As my T once put it: "You can't bear the truth."

When I was younger, I read about children with problems at home, children who were abused, children who called ChildLine, and I thought I was nothing like them. Sure, I was unhappy, but I thought that was something to do with me, I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought I didn't have any reason, any right, to be unhappy.

But I think this is changing. I think I am starting to have just a scrap, a crumb of compassion for myself.

This week I read a novel called Little Mercies. I won't post any spoilers. But I was struck by two of the characters. Leah is nine and she has parents who are happily married, a nice house, a pet, a normal middle-class life. Jenny is ten, she has experienced abuse and neglect, she has spent time in foster care and she does not trust adults or expect help or comfort from them.

There was a time when I would have assumed my life was like Leah's, that I had that normal, middle-class life and I had nothing in common with Jenny. (I was in such denial, I once wrote an online review of a film where an abuse victim dissociated, and didn't recognise any of the symptoms in myself.) Had I read this book five years ago, I would have seen Jenny as being nothing like me. But when I read this book, Jenny was me. I wasn't taken into care, but I recognised myself in so many of her feelings and experiences.

And after I read the book, I cried. For Jenny. Not for me, you understand. But it felt like a step closer to crying for me.