The Three Decade Search - by Mark Daly

Autobiography - 1

My name is Mark Daly and I was born in Dublin on the 15th March 1974. My family moved to navan in Co. Meath where i went to ;primary school and my family lived there until 1988. We had a dog called Dougal or doug (doog) for short. We then moved to loughlinstown where  I went to secondary school in bray.

I have one older brother who is an academic and currently studying his Phd. I remember being a happy, energetic child with a constantly stuffy nose that used to drive my mother and brother up the wall. While I was in primary school my older brother was in secondary school where he was taught by the  Franciscan brothers and where he excelled at both academics and sports, but  he worked hard to achieve success. I loved travelling and we went to the USA a lot. My father has family over there and all of his siblings are in medicine.

My Mother had noticed a  a long time that there was something amiss with me, and so it began the three decade search to find out what my problem was.  My mother, My father and I travelled to Dublin and then a couple of years later to North America but nothing happened.

The first three years in secondary school were tough as were the previous six in primary school. The teachers knew that i had a problem but did nothing about it. The difference between Primary and secondary is that in primary they see each child as an individual and that is not the case in Secondary school where everyone is grouped together. It looks very odd if you don’t play sport like rugby or if you are slow in a team it is frowned upon. This was evident when i got into 4th year – transition year. In fourth year, the pressure mounts and you have to decide what subjects you are going to take for the leaving cert. It also means no more group C math. I happened to get a maths teacher who refused to recognise my difficulty with Maths.

So he ignored me.  I could tell he didn’t like the idea of teaching in any way that that was outside what he was told to do, because he would not correct my home work. So I was all at sea. In fourth year  they push you competitive instincts  and if you are slow it is seen as letting the side down in some way. Teachers would take so long get to me and my hand would be up for the longest time, then if they did get to me, I would have forgotten the answer. I was nearing the end and I really didn’t care at this stage. I just wanted out.

The bottom line and as far as I was concerned they  thought I was odd. I remember they desperately wanted me to choose something and they threw lots of things in my direction. “ Mark like computers, so computers it will be.”

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I hated third level where I studied computers, business, admin and office technology but one of the staff picked up on my learning difficulty. The college experience was balanced out by the fact I met someone who is a very close friend and it turns out we have a lot in common.

I was very fortunate to have a mother that liked the arts, literature, classical music and opera. So as a family we read a lot and we traveled a lot too and went to the theatre and cinema, which I love very much. I was big into star wars and sci-fiction. I can remember the first trip to cinemas

After college it was decided that I should work,  so my father engineered a job for me in a solicitors company, after the solicitors, which we don’t talk about in our house and there will be trouble at t’mill for even mentioning. One day my father was reading an ad for NRB,  he called them up, I went for an interview, but it was horrible and ended doing another course out in dun Laoghaire.

This was before the word  dyspraxia was ever mentioned. I did threshold for a very short time. They didn’t wa.nt me to do southside partnership. I ended up doing a CE scheme in shankill. It then that I heard of Rehab Care for the first time.

Looking back on the whole mess and by Christ it was some mess, they wanted me off their back. So I walked away and ended up doing a fas course in 2001 and ECDL.. I then ended up doing some work for my sister-in-laws mother who ran an English language summer school. I spent 2001 looking for a job and not getting anywhere. I have no Interest in working in the bank. I have a problem with typing quickly and the idea of working in sales is just horrible..

Through my local employment service office, I found out about freshstart., which I was reluctant to do but after much thought I went ahead and did it. I found Freshstart to be a mixed blessing. I didn’t want to anymore computer basics and found that there was a dismissive attitude from one of their “psychologists” and I found their attitude regarding CE schemes frustrating because we would go along only to be told there was a cap and that FAS didn’t know anything.

With FreshStart out of the way and my mother sick again with cancer, I didn’t know what to do. So I decided to volunteer my time with an irish based  overseas aid development aid charity and for a while I enjoyed it.   But dark clouds were gathering at home with my mother getting progressively worse. Not knowing what to do after the Irish based overseas developmental aid charity, we got in contact with my job coach again and he told me about this printing job in this printing company in Cabinteely.

I was pushed into it by overly positive family. It soon appeared that I had made a mistake and it was decided that I should finish out the week and then leave, which I did.  I went back to the irish based overseas development aid charity, with my mother going down I left the irish based developmental aid charity and haven’t gone back since.

My mother died in 2004. In September of that year, I went out to the bua center in blanchardstwon(now called Assessment Services)  with my dad and got diagnosed with having dyspraxia. My father died in September 2009 and my brother got his phd in 2007.