Prologue

I watched a film the other day and it really resonated with me and my life. The film was 'A life less ordinary' and the main character (MC) began with an ordinary life that was dull and uninteresting. An event happened that in the big scheme of things was nothing serious, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back and resulted in the MC taking unexpected action. Fate then intervened and led the MC on a crazy journey.

During that journey, I think the MC would have done anything to have his old life back. It had a happy ending so it was all worth it in the end, but I wondered if, while he was going through hell, he looked back on his previous existence and forgot all the bad, remembering only the good. It was like getting on a roller-coaster. There was no getting off and no way to go back to a time when you hadn't experienced that fear. You just had to grin and bear it. When you got off, you weren't the same person that you were before. Your universe had shifted and nothing would ever be the same.

My old life had a lot of bad in it and yet I look upon it with a wistful smile and nostalgia. What bothered me at the time I now consider to be small and unimportant. Not that there was any way to go back, nor would I want to. I miss my sisters, but when you know your father doesn't love you and your mother, whether she loves you or not, is unwilling to go against his wishes, there is no returning. I think my mother does love me, but I could never forgive her for not loving me enough to even try and protect me.

Chapter 1

I used to get teased a lot. My mother was a devout catholic and didn't believe in contraception so I had a large family and we all lived in a four-bedroom council house in South London. My eldest sister had her own room which was just as well since she had reached her teen years and had become like Jekyll and Hyde. You were never quite sure if she was going to be sweet and caring or bite your head off.

In theory, the other two available bedrooms were divided into a boy and a girl's bedroom. However, I was the runt of the family. My two older brothers and Joseph, who was one year younger than me, were all much bigger and stronger than me and tended to give me hell. Mum got fed up of the arguments and finding me constantly covered in bruises so I was moved into my sisters' room. My two younger sisters were both caring and loved having me there. They did want to involve me with young girl pastimes, like playing with dolls and dancing. I figured if my brothers were going to tease me regardless of what I was doing I could please myself, so I played happily with them.

I wasn't just teased because of my size. I had a very unfortunate birthmark on my right cheek so I had two nicknames in our house. Runt and Ugly Princess. My father was a truck driver so we either saw a lot of him or nothing at all. Even when he was back he spent most of his time at the pub. He very much favoured my brothers and would also call me Runt, but I never felt any malice in it. My relationship with him could probably best be described as indifferent, although, at the time, I still thought he loved me.

It was a comment from him that started me on my crazy journey. Well, that and watching a TV show. He came home from the pub quite early. Most of the time he returned I was in bed, but that day there was a soccer match on. I never was a fan of sport, but I was probably put off because with my small size I was always picked last and struggled to keep up with everyone else. Not a lack of coordination, just running speed and strength.

He came back clearly worse for wear.

“Dad, you're drunk!” I said in surprise. My father did like the occasional beer, but I had never seen him drunk before.

“Yes, and you are ugly, but in the morning I will be sober. Now piss off,” he said irritably.

At the time I didn't know he was misquoting a famous Winston Churchill put down. I just felt upset because my own father was calling me ugly. I asked Mum and she told me that true beauty came from within and that boys didn't need to be pretty. My interpretation of that was that she thought I looked ugly as well. I was feeling upset and down. I couldn't help how I was born and it didn't seem fair.

Dad fell asleep watching the TV, but no one dared to switch the channel. He always controlled the remote when he was home and he had dropped off with the remote clutched in his hands. I ended up watching this talk show that had a guy who could bend spoons with the power of his mind. He believed that you could do anything, all you had to do was believe and focus. He even quoted the bible.

I became very determined that I would solve my ugliness and after watching that programme, I now knew how I was going to do it. Every day I would go to the mirror in the bathroom and imagine that my birthmark was a little bit smaller. I would spend at least five minutes focussing on making myself believe that it had worked and that it was minutely smaller. As soon as I had convinced myself that I had succeeded, I would leave it to the next day.

I was almost nine years old when I started and I didn't find it easy. Initially, it was hard to keep my mind from wandering or to swallow the doubts that would arise, but I was persistent. After two months of this and two weeks after my ninth birthday, Mum stared at me in a weird way and gestured for me to approach. She looked at my face carefully and commented that she thought my birthmark looked smaller and less red.

She shook it off as an oddity, but I was elated and now had external confirmation, my focus work was working. After that, I found it a lot easier to convince myself that it was getting smaller. If one of my doubtful thoughts turned up, I could quash it easily with that memory and knowledge that Mum had noticed it.

A mere two weeks after that my birthmark was completely gone. It was like I had a whole new level of belief and that made it work much faster. Everyone noticed now and I explained how I had done it. My brothers said that I still looked ugly, but my sisters had a completely different reaction. Cathy was six and she had a mole on her cheek that she wanted me to fix. I didn't think it looked bad, but she wasn't happy with it. Mum got involved and took pictures so that we could have a before and after. The boys tried to make me doubt myself but I had evidence every time I looked in the mirror. I knew I could do it and I knew it would work.

Every day, without fail, I made sure to take time to focus on Cathy's face and imagine the mole getting smaller. Within a week, Mum thought she could see a difference and before three weeks were up, the mole was gone. Mum took the after photos and we were all amazed at the difference.

That was when we all started to get a bit excited. Well, except my brothers who had poopooed it. I was thinking that I could help the numerous other people who were either born with disfiguring marks or because of some accident or other ended up with facial damage. My mother suggested a possible occupation of plastic surgeon without the surgery. My older sister Rebecca wanted me to work my mojo to give her bigger boobs. She decided against the idea when I explained that I would have to stare at them for five minutes every day until we had achieved what she wanted. She also called me a pervert.

We weren't sure how big of a deal this really was, so Mum booked me an appointment with our GP to discuss it with him. Father's reaction was not derisive and more thoughtful. He suggested we do another harder test and take lots of photos.

When I think back to those days I remember the heady feeling of success and the bright future that we all could imagine. We were all so naïve. We visited the GP as a giggling gang which was brought down to earth by the negative dismissiveness of the old-timer. He told us that both conditions that we claimed to have cured sometimes clear up on their own anyway. He talked about spontaneous remission which meant the body could randomly resolve any problem and any suggestion that I was responsible for these events was laughable.

Rebecca wanted us to speak to the media, but Mum said that we needed to gather more evidence. We spent a week going through everyone we knew to find suitable candidates.

Rebecca's best friend had an older sister with a hooked nose who swore that she was going to it fixed as soon as she had enough money. Her name was Chloe and she was eager to participate. She came over every day for me to work on her and we took lots of photos. It took a month to remove the hook from her nose, but she still wasn't satisfied.

I needed something to visualise and she needed to work out exactly what she wanted. We ended up scanning a celebrity nose that she liked and digitally pasting it onto her picture and then changing the colour to match her skin tone. It was well beyond my computer skills but Chloe managed it with the help of some of her friends. It took another month for that to work, but work it did. There was some additional difficulty with this method for me. Before I just had to play with the mental picture of what I saw, now I had to remember the picture that we had created and use that instead. Imagining a hooked nose becoming less hooked was a lot easier than imagining something completely different.

I'm not sure she was 100% happy with her new nose, but I also got the impression that she probably never would be happy. She had very low self-esteem with regards to that area in a similar way to my own worries about marks on my face. The pictures came out great. Father did point out that there was no way to prove that Chloe hadn't had plastic surgery. I guess if someone was determined to not believe, nothing you can do or say will sway them. Father did tell us that he would provide the next candidate.