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How does someone write an autobiographical piece of writing if you don't have emotions you can identify to be able to write about? If you want to be honest and not make it up, but still write something interesting at the same time? You tell people why. You write about the nullity of your life, the suffocating monotone.

I could tell you that I was born at ten to two on Thursday the twenty-ninth of July at St.Peter's Hospital, Maldon, Essex, England, Earth, Milky Way, The Universe. That I lived in Heybridge, moving to Tiptree at the age of nine and that I attended Great Totham Primary School and, when I passed my 11+ examination, went on to Colchester County High School, reaching the point I'm at now, writing this. These mere facts are irrelevant; they don't tell you about anything exciting that has happened to me, nor the raw emotion I have felt at any stage in my life.

Jennifer allerton understands other people. She can see situations from all points of view and the feelings that might be behind actions. She always has her empathy with her, even if she cannot muster any sympathy. She would open her ears, half through Christian nature, half through curiosity, but she would not open her mouth so as not to be found dumb. She wonders ' is it because she doesn't need to step out of her own mind to see the views of others, and because she doesn't get tangled up in her own emotions that she is able to judge people well and understand how they feel? Or is not knowing her own mind an unfortunate side effect of knowing other people's?

At school, I can out my mind to use. The information is important, how I feel is not. I can tuck away confusion and stick to a routine, dull as it may be. I can believe teachers who say that we as students will not find ourselves stuck in a rut in later life, because I know they are talking about my career and not my emotions. I can exchange the bewilderment that my mind lends me for the understanding and safety of Latin grammar. After education, I will move on to practise psychiatry, delving into the minds of other people without knowing what is in my own.

School, however, although a temporary focus for my usually wandering brain, is not my whole life, however much we have all wished at some point that our teachers did not kid themselves that it was. Monday evenings see me as a young leader at Brownies, in a uniform that doesn't fit, with children who only wear me out rather than help me feel happy. Cricket practice is stress relief and exercise, escape for my brain and a workout for my body. At karate training, Sensei would have me focus on technique, theory, an imaginary opponent, breathing, and the right state of mind, making me feel as if I might faint from the chaos in my head, as if everything I have stacked up will fall like an avalanche, or If not, I would go deaf from the voices. Time to myself is rarely ever time to myself and meditation makes me lose my thoughts completely, not understand them or control them, meaning that, when alone, I have a choice between blindness or seeing so much I don't know which way to look, but never insight.

I know my family. They have always stayed constant. I am sure of my place with them, and of who I am. I love my family, which is the one emotion I know, recognise and feel. It is all I feel when I am sitting on my Granny's sofa, when playing with my cousins, when I am watching television with my aunty and uncle. When I stood in the kitchen on Wednesday the 31st of May one year ago as my mum's tremor of a voice travelled down the phone to my granny, audibly distraught from where I stood, and my dad phoned an ambulance for Grandad, I understood their pain but I didn't flinch, I only loved my mum. When I listened to tributes from my great uncle Don and my aunties, my happiness and pride came from my love for them. As the coffin was lowered, I loved my Grandad strongest of all, but I felt no grief, no longing, and, as my mind was not rushing with thoughts, it was blank, and I was so full of numbness that, had I not been standing, I would have assumed I had fallen unconscious.