Not many (or any) of your reading this will have any idea what it’s like to lose your personality, to lose how you used to be and all the different qualities that you acquired over the years that made you who you are and what people love about you.

Sometimes I forget I’m not as quick as I used to be. I start talking and forget what I’m saying, so I quickly recover. Or I forget my words, my sentences become mixed and jumbled. I become aggressive over trivial things, or I remember I’m not as patient as I once was.  I’m constantly exhausted – Not many people notice, because I don’t have many problems that are visible to the naked eye. And I’ve become adept at dealing with my symptoms so well they are even more hidden! Ultimately I am a walking clown that makes more mistakes than the average bear on a daily basis. But guess what, It’s Ok, because….

I’VE ACCEPTED IT

The hardest thing I have ever experienced was the day I needed to forget who I used to be prior to my honeymoon, and start to relearn everything all over again and become someone else. It takes more guts to do this than anything else I can think of, which is another reason I don’t experience anxiety or fear anymore.

Once you can take that first step in the healing process, you have mastered the scariest thing imaginable!

It’s like waking up one day and finding you’re in a different body entirely

Don’t think I’m exaggerating, this is exactly how it feels. Not being able to breathe and not knowing whether the next time the nurse puts the suction catheter in your mouth  is going to do any good is a scary feeling, I’ll admit that. It’s also scary being strapped to a bed in a leer jet for 17 hours that you think is crashing, and the fire coursing through your veins in the form of sepsis in conjunction with this is slightly unnerving. Feeling life slipping away from you with each gasped and laboured breath with severe and acute pressure caused by the haemorrhages in your brain is scary. But this is scarier. Some people never reach this realisation, or they’re too scared or ashamed. Luckily, I made soooooooooooo  many major and heartbreaking mistakes I realised that there is a huge change in me and if I didn’t do something about it pronto I wouldn’t survive.

We might look OK, we might act fine and you won’t necessarily see any problems. But Maybe that’s because our spirit has taught us to hide it from you really well, otherwise we will become ostracised. Some people, like myself, are lucky with the people they have around them. But there have been people in my life that haven’t been able to deal with it. So not only do we have the bereavement of our old self to get our head around, but the bereavement of the people that are no longer by our side as a result of these changes in us.

Please don’t think any of this is in any way exaggerated for the purposes of this blog. People live with this pain everyday, and they are alone. Watch what you say to people, phrases like “Oh don’t worry I do that all the time” can be so damaging to people like me, and we don’t forget – it’s a symptom!

This blog was inspired by a lady with a brain injury who made a big choice recently in selling her horses; her love, enjoyment and passion that still existed from her old life, something that has changed in that she no longer feels the same way. I believe that she will start to heal as of now, but I’ll be the first to say that the road ahead is not gonna be easy. but she and I have something in common, as the picture above shows.

Be thankful for the different traits of your personality. Embrace the good and bad and don’t let anyone else’s opinion on things matter too much. Don’t worry about anything – love your friends and family – and more importantly –

Hustle Hard