This blog post is going to be my highly requested "Draw My Life". I want to warn you now that it's super, super long so go grab yourself a warm drink and get comfortable.
I was born Alisha Valerie Cummins at Fazackerley Hospital in Liverpool on a Sunday morning on 31st July 1988 at 1.05am to a really loving family. My parents, Elizabeth and Mark were at my birth and my grandmother Valerie. My mum was in labour for 23 hours with me so as you can tell it was a pretty long and painful labour for her. She says she never got over the shock!
You can read more about my parents in my blog posts Meet My Mum and Meet My Dad.
Even though I lived with my parents, I have so many amazing memories at my grandparents house growing up. One of my earliest memories when I was a baby in playing in a big lemon baby bath with a rubber rub whilst my nan bathed me in front of her massive fire-place and fire my grandparents the living room.
Nursery is something I really remember when being little, it was like a giant play room where I made my very first best friend called Katie. I still talk to her today on facebook and she's as amazing as ever. The nursery had an indoor giant sand pit, a massive indoor pond and a awesome indoor tree house - where on many occasions I'd fall asleep in and my mum would have to come and wake me up at home time.
I would go on a holiday to PrestHaven Sands Caravan Park in Wales nearly every Easter time when I was younger, with my Grandparents in their caravan. We'd get up really early (like 4am/5am) and feed all the animals that were around, spend our days exploring and the evenings at the caravan parks entertainment centre were I won countless times on the teddy-bear pick up machines - I still get excited when I see a pick up machine and have to have a go! I have so many happy memories there that I really cherish.
One very sad thing that happened to me in my early childhood was getting the MMR vaccine at juniors school. In 1995 I remember lining up and walking into the great hall at school to have it done and crying because I was so scared. Unfortunately, I had a very rare reaction to this vaccine and have now got a life-long condition called "Rheumatoid Arthritis", or "RA" for short.
I was transferred over to Alder Hey Children's Hospital and there it was confirmed I had RA and the doctors told my parents it would be best to put me in a wheelchair because I would never be able to walk properly again. My parents refused until I needed the actual wheelchair and but it did stopped me doing so many things in my life and the doctors even told me that I had to give up everything I loved and enjoyed. I was so upset.
Juniors school was not fun either as was bullied pretty badly but during all of this I had my best friend Katie. We would sit in the playground every day with one of our coats on the floor as a mat and the other coat over us to keep warm. It was our little safety blanket and we loved it. After a year of being bullied I finally plucked up the courage and told my parents and the school what was happening, they were really supportive and stopped the bullying right away. I'm so thankful for that and I hope anyone getting bullied out there please speaks out.
At juniors school I done some awesome things. I was involved in a couple of school plays, the choir, I dressed up as little bow peak for World Book Day, and I even won £100 voucher from a competition on the teletext! Other things we did in school, my parents got involved with; we walked a 5 mile hike in Yorkshire to raise money for charity, and had an amazing Victorian themed day at Croxteth Hall were I dressed up as a Victorian guest vising the Hall and my dad was a woodcutter. We had so much fun and I was pretty proud of myself for doing all of this even though the doctors said I never would!
My parents decided to move home, so we packed up our stuff and moved to a massive house - actually just around the corner from where I live now. We hated that house, it was haunted and some very strange and scary things happened whilst we were there. I still get the chills whenever I go past it even now.
I've always loved reading and when I was 10 years old I entered a competition in my favourite magazine at the time "Girl Talk" to win my very own magazine column. I won! It meant that I would be able to go down to London and interview so many celebrities and write about everything I thought was up and coming in the world, and really that was the very first start of me having a blog sponsorship.
We celebrated my win with a family holiday to Puerto Rico in Gran Canaries and it was my first time on an aeroplane. I cried the whole of the way because I was so scared. I still get nervous when travelling now!
When we got home my parents decided they would finally get married. They had an amazing wedding in our family church and my mum looked like a Queen in her massive white dress. I felt like a Princess and this part of my life was wonderful.My school teachers even came out to see the wedding because it was such a big deal, and I remember seeing my favourite teach from school Miss Slattely in the church.
Just after this my mum found out she was pregnant again, which came as a massive shock after 11 years of their first born, me. I was so excited and really wanted a baby brother so when we found out that my mum was pregnant with a boy I was so excited! On June 25th 1999 my little brother was born, my parents named him Mark Lewis and he's been one of my best friends ever since. He's amazing and I really don't know what I would do without him in my life.
You can read more about my brother in my blog post The Sibling Tag.
Whilst my mother was pregnant we decided to leave the haunted house and moved to a road called "Broad Lane" in Liverpool. I LOVED IT! We moved to a smaller house but we lived directly facing my grandparents house, where I spent every weekend and loved, and they lived behind a park. A lot of my family lived on the road and I also I met so many friends and had loads of fun.
My family decided we could get a pet and we picked a dog. We rescued her and named her Sassy, as my brother was obsessed with Homewood Bound at the time and could only say Sassy out of all the other animal names on their. Sassy was a Jack Russell and quickly became my best friend, she was my little star through this next part of my life...
I'd started High School and it became clear that I did not fit in. Katie and myself had drifted apart and although I was never bullied but I jut didn't fit in to a "click" or group of friends. This upset me greatly and I became to hate school a lot, it was my own personal hell. Thankfully at lunch times there was always something on and I spent most of my lunch days in the art rooms drawing or painting. This was when I fell in love with make up, it was my art for my own face, my own of way of making myself look pretty and not ugly.
Whilst 'Hell' was going on, I was really suffering with my stomach. I'd have pains every single day and cried a lot, my parents took me to the doctors who said it was my body telling me it was going to be time to "start my periods soon" and I was shrugged off by doctor after doctor. I noticed that I started going to the toilet to poop a lot more too, and after countless times of walking out of class to go to the toilet and being bullied from girls who hardly knew me saying I was "anorectic" and "bulimic" I'd lost a lot of weight and had dealt with this pain for over six months now, so one day I gave in, and one day refused to go to school. After months of tests and being unwell, I was finally diagnosed with Ulcer-active Colitis. A chronic life-long illness, which basically means I'm a spoonie! I left High School a year early half-way through my year 10, with no qualifications at all.
You can read this part of my life in detail on my "Colitis & Me" blog post.
I made a YouTube Channel, I loved it, but I got a lot of hateful comments because of my accent which really upset me. I took all of my videos down and promised myself I'd never go through that again. That was the very first time I'd ever had anything hateful said to me on the internet and hated it. A month later, I decided to make a blog - at least people couldn't say anything about my voice then. I started my very first blog on MySpace, then on Freewebs, then Webs, then Tumblr.
Last March (2015) I was over-joyed when I was contacted by a company asking to be my full time blog sponsors, and I love it! The only problem was I had to start a brand new blog on Blogger and for me I didn't mind. I have the best job ever! Best. Job. Ever.
Now that my UC was under control and my first blog was up and running, I started college and loved it. I met so many friends. In the two years I was there I studied; Fashion and Styling Levels 1 & 2, Hair Dressing Level 1 and Beauty Level 1, ICT Levels 1 & 2, Art and Drawing Level 1, English GCSE and Maths GCSE. I finished college with top marks and was so happy when I got into uni.
Whilst at college, I went to a friends house and met a guy called Phil. We became great friends and after nearly seven years of being friends he asked me out when he was drunk, I said no but he asked me again the next day when he was sober and I said yes! We've been together ever since. <3
You can read more about Phil in my blog post The Boyfriend Tag.
Once I'd finished college, I got in touch with some old friends and met loads of new ones, a big group of us would meet up each weekend in Liverpool city centre to go shopping, drinking, or to Rampworx - a skate park in Liverpool. Some of my best memories were spent in either Rampworx, Formby Beach, Heebie Jeebies beer garden or The Jacaranda. A year later a group of us decided to go on holiday, we went to Llandudno in Wales and had an amazing time!
Once we got back from Llandudno the summer had ended and for the next 12 months I had no clue what to do with my life. I was still doing my blog but by this time I wasn't sponsored and I was simply bored of just going out drinking and watching gigs all the time, so I applied for a uni in Liverpool, a uni in London and a uni in Paris all studying make up.
I got in to all three uni's (which I was rather shocked at!) but decided to stay in Liverpool, after being begged by my brother. I did want to move home though as I didn't want to live with my parents any longer and got myself a flat in the beautiful town of Prescot, England with a friend. My brother wasn't happy, but he understood. I even took Sassy with me to live! I loved my new little flat and I loved living away from home, we had countless flat parties and so many great times there. For two years, my life was wonderful.
At the end of uni I finished with a Diploma and that's when Phil and me started dating and after only being together for under a year I found out I was pregnant. We were very shocked but over joyed! We found out we were having a little girl and decided to name her Katie-Mae. On Christmas Day 2013 at 17 weeks pregnant, we sadly lost our daughter and for the next year, depression took over my life. I also because really unwell and found out I had lost too much blood so had to have an emergency blood and iron transfusion - it was a horrible time for us.
The next year is a blur of dark blackness. Phil had proposed to me and I had said yes! But even though I love him I was so miscible about loosing our daughter. I threw myself into blogging and also whilst being depressed, I left living in my flat which was by then taken over my mould, and Phil and myself moved in together. Our new home was a lovely 3 bed-roomed house which we tried to buy, but within doing so we found out that it had been sold with us living in it and within only 5 months of living there we had to move again. We also lost our cat Tiara around this time too and she's never been seen since - we still have hope that she will turn up one day. We moved to a big house in Prescot and we loved it. We spent all of our savings (nearly 15 thousand pounds) doing it up.
I loved our new home and things finally seemed like they took a great turn, we had some awesome parties with friends there, a wonderful Engagement party and 12 weeks after our Engagement Party we got married. We were married in my families church in Liverpool, on Friday 12 December 2014. We only had a small wedding which is what we both wanted with only 30 day guests and 70 night guests. We loved it, and it really was one of the happiest days of our lives.
About a month after our wedding we noticed something was wrong with Sassy, we took her the vet and after loads of different tests we found out she had cancer. We spent the next month looking after her and spending as much time with her as possible, we didn't want to leave her on her own encase she died during the day so would take turns staying up with her. She was in so much pain and it was so upsetting to watch so we finally decided that since her injections went helping her the best thing to do was have her put to sleep. The vet came to our home and let us say our goodbyes before she gave her the injection, it was one of the hardest discussions I have ever had to make. Sassy passed away on a horrible dull Sunday morning of 14th February 2015, she is buried in the garden at my parents home.
We want to say a massive thank you to Companion Care in Prescot for the support and understanding they gave us at this horrible sad time in our lives.
We were starting to get some sort of normality in our lives when started feeling unwell a lot, after some blood tests we found out I have anaemia and osteoporosis, which is in the red. We decided it was time for a massive fresh start and in February 2016 we moved from Prescot to Liverpool. And well if you follow me on my other social media accounts you'll basically know my life from there...
If you wanna know more about my family you can always read My Family Questions Tag.
So there you have it, that's my Draw My Life - I hope you all enjoyed reading this super long blog post. Thank you to everyone who took time out of your busy lives to request this blog post, and a massive huge thank you to my husband Phil for drawing the pictures for this blog post - you can check out more of Phil's drawings by checking out his instagram page. I hope you all have a wonderful day!
With love, Alisha Valerie. x
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