Susan Boyle, undeniably the biggest and most loved underdog artists of this year – and, some say, of many years until now as well – is just days away from the release of her debut music album, the aptly titled “I Dreamed a Dream.” In a first interview of the kind, the singer has agreed to talk to the Mirror about her days as a young girl and how her learning disability shaped her life – as well as people’s narrow-mindedness to it.

As fans must already know, Susan had a difficult birth, which resulted in her brain being briefly deprived of oxygen. She is normal in all aspects of her life, save for being somewhat slower when it comes to learning, she now says, which often made her the object of bullying when in school. She was also physically abused by her mates, the singer says, and, what’s worse, it all went by unnoticed by a system who does not care to slow down for others whose pace might not be as alert.

“You’re looking at someone who would get the belt every day. ‘Will you Shut up, Susan!’ – whack! I was often left behind at school because of one thing or another. I was a slow learner. I’m just I’m a wee bit slower at picking things up than other people. So you get left behind in a system that just wants to rush on, you know? That was what I felt was happening to me. There’s nothing worse than another person having power over you by bullying you and you not knowing how to get rid of that thing,” Susan says in the interview.

She then goes on to say that she believes things to be better now, since teachers are specially trained to see children with learning disabilities from the start and know how to work with them to the best of their advantage. In the same interview, the “Angel,” as fans have dubbed her, also speaks of what it was like to lose her mother and how hard it was for her to cope with the idea that she was no longer there, with her.

“After mum died it didn’t fully register until maybe six months after. That’s when the loneliness set in and there was nobody around except my cat Pebbles. […] My confidence was pretty down at that time. A good way of levelling it out, I found, was to tell myself that even though she’s not here physically, mentally and spiritually she is. That’s what keeps you going. I have my faith, which is the backbone of who I am, really,” Susan Boyle explains.