Author: hustlehard4life

I wished so much at the time I went through what I’m about to tell you I had someone to help me through it who had been in a similar position to me. But, like the entire journey of my recovery has been, I had no one to speak to about it and I had to deal with it all myself. Like many of you guys out there, I know what its like.

A hard thing to come to terms with after suffering a TBI is being told you are not able to drive.

Being an independent adult at the time of my injury, I was devastated to know that I wouldn’t be able to drive again for a long time.

At last … another opportunity to help me get my life back on track!

Looking back on this time in my life, I wasn’t respecting my brain injury and you can put it down to my age (22 at the time) or the knock to my head, either way it’s apparent. My first piece of advice would be to respect the fact you now have limitations and perhaps be a bit more aware of them than I was!

It was so early on in my recovery at this stage that I was still convinced I was ok and all the doctors were wrong about my symptoms and prognosis. I was in denial.

On the day of my ‘test’ my consultant had set up for me with a TBI specialist,  I experienced true fear for the first time.

People who have suffered brain injuries are sometimes unable to move on from subjects, they become stuck on them. We often ‘catastrophise’ or obsess over things which makes them appear far more intense and acute than they actually are. But that does not mean the fear is not real. 

The man who was due to assess me arrived 30 minutes late. Although I was told he specialises in brain injuries, he clearly didn’t have the knowledge that people with TBIs find it very challenging to deal with any sudden changes to plans or routines.

We got in the car and he wouldn’t stop talking to me. I was trying so hard to concentrate, but he just wouldn’t shut up.

People with TBIs have extremely compromised executive functions, and their ability to concentrate is also severely diminished. I found it so hard to concentrate under the pressure I was feeling in conjunction with his ability to talk non-stop without oxygen inhalation that I made silly mistakes.

I was devastated when he told me at the end of my assessment I’d need to see him more, because my driving wasn’t safe. I was certain he was trying to manipulate a vulnerable with the sole purpose to increase the linings of his pocket.

I took no for an answer. I felt my driving was safe and he was merely trying to take advantage of me in order to spend more money on him. In the report he’d written to my consultant (after I had shouted at the instructor down the phone, accusing him of being a manipulator) it was clear he was trying to falsely obstruct my progress.

There were numerous things in the report that didn’t happen. They were plain lies, and at this point it was clear what he was trying to do.

So I contacted my old driving instructor who had passed me before my accident. I told him what happened and asked if he would assess me instead.

He said yes. He showed up to my house on the day of the assessment and I drove him around Bournemouth for an hour and a half. After the assessment has said:

“If I’m honest Mikey, you drive better and more safely than my wife. There are no problems with your driving at all and I will write a letter to your GP as you asked. That other instructor was overcharging you and clearly trying to take advantage, I’ve heard of him”.

The letter he wrote was good enough for my GP, so I was back on the road after a year out.

After TBI, If you want something to happen, you have to go about it in your own way. Everything is a fight.

I know how it feels to be told you cannot drive. The depression and anxiety that comes with this is unbearable, I remember. I wish someone with a TBI could have told me:

Don’t rush. Respect your limitations, but understand you might need to think outside the box to achieve anything now. And if you’re not quite ready for driving, don’t be scared to take some refresher lessons to get your skills back on track. 

You survived a TBI. You’re already a certified badass, don’t let the rumination horrors, bouts of extreme depression and anxiety issues we face override this. I did at the time, but I’m now in a place where I ensure that these two daisys that I experience daily, never get the better of me.

If you want to get back on the road, like everything in TBi world, slow and easy wins the race. Meditate everyday and get your emotions and thoughts in check as much as you can, then show everyone how much of a badass you are by getting yourself one step closer to living a happier life again.

Sometimes I have days at work where I wonder if it’s realistic or even possible for me to be a nurse. These are what I’d class as bad days.

Every morning I wake up early to meditate. My brain injury means I HAVE to live now and not later, or yesterday. I only see what is in front of me, I don’t regard much else.

The reason so many people in the world struggle with brain injury understanding is due to one specific thing.. they think. 

“Why is he acting like that? He didn’t act like that yesterday”.

“What sort of a friend says that?”

“What does he really mean when he says that?”

The mind is poisonous. People that only see whats in front of them and do not let their mind run away with itself are often the only ones who can understand the most.

There is no ulterior motive with brain injury. What you see is what you get. We don’t have the capacity for other socially acceptable games.

Like Texting

Apparently there are rules, like not opening a message until you’re ready to reply so the other person doesn’t get upset or cry.

Don’t reply straight away, you might seem needy

“OMG he three-time texted you?”

…..Da hell is up with this buffoonery nonsense.  Good jesus.

Being a nurse while brain injured.

I started this blog with a sentence that wasn’t really me talking, it was an example I wanted to use.

It’s an example of how to fail at something that seems impossible, whatever that might be. You can’t ‘wonder’ without thinking and using the mind. I don’t wonder if I can be a nurse with my condition, I don’t even ‘believe’ I can.

To believe in something is openly admitting that is not true, like believing in god. Believing seems to imply you want to give yourself to something but you can’t, because you know it’s not 100% true.

I know I can be a nurse. I already am. It’s proven. I just have to work harder, be smarter and be openly accepting of anything else that will inevitably crop up. People always try to become, to get somewhere. Rush. What about right now? What about the blissful silence inside you right now?

Admittedly, I had a wobbly moment on my first shift on placement at the start of the week. I left it too long to eat lunch, a rookie mistake.

I felt dizzy, my eyes were blurry, I had thumping temples, every time I moved my eyeballs there was a lot of pain. My communication skills started to go, the lisp arrived. I felt my stomach start to turn and let me know it needed emptying, classic sign of symptom number 5 of my neuro-fatigue experience.

Ok Mikey time to grip yourself. There’s no way you’re going home early on your first day, so sort it out. 

So I did. I went on my break, I ate something, I went to the toilet and meditated in the cubicle, I drank water and tea and gave myself a mini head massage. When I returned, nobody was any the wiser and I performed great for the rest of my shift.

Being loose and natural.

I am my own person. Love it or hate it, that’s not my business. Just know that I’m mindful of my brain injury. But I’m also mindful of who I am, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I never have reservations of being my true self, wherever I am or whoever I’m with.

Life has its challenges, we all have them in different forms in our lives. The topics I discuss in this blog are relevant to all aspects of life, not just brain injury.

Helping others is my passion in life. I love tattoos. I love the gym. I love kids. I love making people laugh. I love fearing nothing, fearing something is the work of the mind. I aim to please nobody. I’m a children’s nurse. I love animals. I love blondes (no filter for you there). I love my family. I love being true. I love living now. 

I am as free as a bird and doing my thing.

I find myself in another tricky situation where an effective decision needs to be made regarding my brain injury and working as a nurse.

I have been very upfront and honest with members of staff on every one of my clinical nursing placements over the past two years, from my mentor (the lady who grades me), to the domestics who clean the toilets. My rationale was the more honest I am with people, the better it would work out for everyone.

Alas, this has not been the case.

Each time I have been graded following completion of my placement, the negative feedback I have received has all been focused around the brain injury and my symptoms. The symptoms I told them about. The symptoms they may not have even noticed had I not have been so honest.

Had I have held back with information concerning my brain injury and symptoms, I would not have received the feedback that I have done. There’s been no nasty feedback, it’s just a bit soul destroying after two years.

For the record, I would never push myself too far. I always accept my limitations and go home if I need to, I would never jeopardise the safety of patients, something I have proven I am able to do. I’ve had years of specialist rehabilitation to enable this. 

It all goes comes back to my original realisation that the more you tell people about brain injury, the less they empathise and understand it. This applies to every single person I’ve come across in my life, apart from my parents.

On one placement in particular, due to my special considerations, the nursing staff assumed I was only studying nursing because it was paid for and I was looking for an easy way out of hard work.

When I mentioned what really happened to me and the challenges I face on a daily basis, everyone instantly changed their opinion of me. It spread like wildfire.

Nurses that ignored me for weeks even started saying ‘good morning!’ and even smiling at me! Did they think I had a sprained ankle all that time?

So what?

“I have a medical condition. It causes me to experience symptoms, the likes of which are hard to comprehend. I’d like to keep the details of my condition personal, nothing against you (just against humankind) but I will let you know if I feel things are becoming too difficult for me”.. or words to that effect.

I don’t care what people think of me. If they think I’m trying to be a shirker and skip night shifts because I’m lazy, so what? I will keep my brain injury to myself for this placement. I’m sick of being marked down for something people probably wouldn’t even have noticed had I not been so upfront and honest with them about in the first place.

I am competent and caring, kind and compassionate, this has been proven in my grades and achievements over the last two years.

NOBODY understands my condition and my challenges. Or they do for a while, then I lose them. It’s inevitable, but this is the truth nonetheless.

I wish I could work long days and night shifts, of course I do. I hate having to go home early from a shift, I’d love to really be part of the team again, but the reality is I probably never will.

But I can live with that, I really can. It just remains to be seen if others can too.

……Let’s see what happens when I say nothing. 

I received a letter today from the DWP stating that they require a health assessment for a benefit I receive, despite only recently attending a tribunal headed by medical professionals stating that I was entitled to this benefit.

I think it was only my last blog when I said that once you have a brain injury, your life turns into one great big fight. Endless battles one after the other!

I’m starting to make headway on my quest to obtain a parking permit for work, although I’m told an OH assessment will still need to take place in the future at some point (despite supplying letters from three medical professionals).

Slowly slowly catchy monkey

Tribunals, assessments, appointments, countless trips back and forth, solicitors.. it is an expensive lifestyle living with a head injury!

Thats not accounting for the divorce either. Thats a financial doozy.

I’m preparing myself for my placement which I am due to start next week. Every placement so far has pushed me beyond limits I could ever imagine.

I need to prepare myself for the pain and symptoms that are about to crop up. I always find out about a new one each placement, I’m genuinely curious as to whats next.

I was recently put in a very difficult position where I had to make an on-the-spot decision which could have been potentially catastrophic for me, both professionally and morally. However, I could have avoided this in the first place by looking the other way, turning the other cheek and getting on with my life.

But hang on. What gives me the right to sit here and publish blogs like this one that harps on about humans and their inability to be compassionate and understanding if I did that?

Veritas – ‘Truth’

I’ll be the first to tell you I’m nothing special. I live a certain way which may be different to others, but I am so insignificant in the grand scheme of things I can’t possibly be arrogant. No offence, but we are all insignificant. Yet that doesn’t mean I should stop being insignificant.

If compassion was a 7th sense what a different world we would live in. The good old saying ‘evil prevails when good people do nothing’ has always been a favourite of mine.

It’s easy to misunderstand people, mental health being a prime example.

Whatever people have become is a result of what they’ve had to endure.

.. just like the homeless people I wrote about in my previous blogs – they didn’t just decided to wake up one day and take drugs or drink alcohol to excess and let it ruin them. And yet people justify not giving them a measly £1 by saying ‘Oh they’ll only waste it on drugs anyway’. 

If you’re one of these people then I’m not keen on the way you think. I mean that, you’re just not for me. And if you told me you would say that to me in person I would say it just as I’ve written it. No anger, just a simple no-filter fact. 

Then again, the reason people are so judgemental a lot of the time or they try to justify not giving a homeless person change is a product of what they’ve had to endure in their life. In which case I only feel sorry for these people. Again, no anger, just another no-filter fact. 

Pretty picture right? People would give us money. Yet I’d wager they they wouldn’t be as quick to surrender money to these people –

Just another no filter fact

For a while I thought that my paranoia came as a symptom of PTSD, but seeing as I’ve been treated for that and feel cool with it now I’m starting to see it as more as an after effect of the brain injury (and probably life events).

I’m terrible. I mean, I really am bad when it comes to trusting or even believing people and what they tell me. I just assume their lying without even realising it.

Recently, something came out my mouth that I was very surprised to hear. I was probed about why I am the way I am about letting people into my life (or, how I don’t let people in).

I found myself saying –

“It’s the lesser of two evils. It beats being lonely, because at least then I have people around me in my life.

I’m not wondering why I do it, I’m not pondering how it happened or saying I need to change. I’m simply making an observation. I choose to live like this with everyone.

I like to be alone in my heart but like physical company when I feel up to it. It changes depending on my fatigue and capacity levels dependent on how much I’ve got going on in my life at the time.

You’ll notice with me if you ask my opinion on a matter, whatever it is, I answer it super quick. That’s because the answer you’ll get from me is unfiltered, my brain doesn’t waste time with putting filters in the way of what I want to say. Life becomes simpler when people are honest.

If I had one wish it would be that humans had no filter. Yes, I might upset people because I’m not conforming. I might get strange looks, or people often have something to say about the way I do things. I might get hated and ostracised….

I See you!

……but…..

A) I’m really not bothered

and   

B) People hate what they are too scared to try themselves

Scenario in Mikey’s ‘no filter’ world:

Two men are walking down the street. One is dancing and singing out loud, the other is walking with his hands in his pockets looking miserable. Pocket man says, 

“You’re weird. Stop dancing around like a pranny. You look stupid”

Dancing man: “Ok. Well you’re an ugly twat”

Pocket man:” Fair one” 

The two men shake hands. The dancing man carries on his way still dancing, unperturbed. The man who had his hands in his pockets also goes his own way. But he checks to make sure no one is looking at him, then he takes his hands out of his pockets and dances about with a big grin on his face. 

My moral to the story? Honesty and difference. See what the worse thing that could happen would be. You’ll find that those who mocked you at first for being so ‘different’ or ‘weird’ are so desperate to be honest and free that when you turn around they’re trying it out for themselves.

“If they’re hating on you then at least you know that you’re doing something right”

(maino)

It’s late, I’m tired, I can’t be bothered with writing anything sensical. This blog, like all the others I write, is for me.

I’m sick and tired of being made to feel like an idiot. Sometimes I find it hard to concentrate, so I miss out on things. However, this isn’t because I’m a useless thick and lazy idiot, as I’m sure many people may think, it just happens. And that’s what I feel like after each time I do it, frustration and inadequacy.

Trying to make anyone understand how difficult it is for people with a brain injury to make a simple decision is time I wouldn’t even bother wasting. In fact, there is no one in my life I feel I could trust to try and explain this to, apart from my parents, who try to understand everything. They are the only people who have stuck around in my life to live this nightmare with me. Everyone else has fucked off.

To be fair, people are usually so insensitively stupid themselves their reaction would only serve to annoy me.

And that’s energy I can’t afford to lose.

And now I have to waste time in the morning trying to find a parking space because I’m charged full price for a permit that I can’t afford, as I’m needing to prioritise a permit for placement instead (an ongoing struggle) despite having medical evidence. You see how a simple change to a routine for a brain injured person can drastically affect their daily living? Probably not, but it’s true. Honestly.

But wait, life is hard for everyone right? Sadly, that’s where I lose people.

Although I can’t say I’m bothered if people get this or not. I just assume not, which is cool.

Equality act? What equality act?

This next paragraph highlighted in bold is purely fictional. Any similarities are coincidental.

There is a hospital in the UK that someone works for who didn’t accept two forms of medical evidence to supply them with a permit. Overall the person in question is looking at spending over £250 every time they need to park there over their placement.  The same person is unable to work whilst studying for a full time nursing degree due to their health condition.

Join the Queue…

..To the long line of people and organisations who are clueless to brain injury.

Organising and planning is the hardest thing for someone with damage to the frontal lobe to deal with. But not in ways you might think.

Ah, I’m not angry at the world for not being wise to it. After all, I certainly had no idea of the effects of brain injury before I had one myself. It just gets frustrating at times.

People misread my intentions, my actions or my behaviour and believe them to be something that just isn’t true every day. This is a major factor of brain injury life that we have to come to terms with, if not then we’re destined for a life of utter misery.

This is why I’m lucky I don’t care about other people’s opinions. I HAVE to be like that.

• If you’re feeling fatigued, people think you’re miserable.
• If you’re experiencing pain in your head and you try to deal with it in your own quiet way people think you’re in a bad mood.
• Symptoms of PTSD lead people to think you’re a rude arsehole.
• A lack of filter means people think you’re arrogant and full of yourself.
• If you are unable to commit to a relationship, people think you’re just a player.

On my first hospital placement, many of the staff members seemed to be really funny with me. They’d ignore me and try to avoid every having to work with me.

I later found out that the staff had treated me this way because they were unhappy with the adjustments I have to have in place for my placements as the result of my injury.

Following my adjustments letter, one member of staff admitted that they had all said at the time ‘He doesn’t want to work long days? He doesn’t want to work night shifts? He doesn’t want to work a late shift followed by an early? What does he want to do?’

I know that every ward I step on to for the first time will all have members of staff who have their own opinions of me and their mind is already made up. Much like how it was at uni for a while, people heard me and my voice and many of them didn’t like me and I’m pretty sure there are still many that don’t!

I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s great not caring about other people’s opinions or views. It’s liberating.

But I do care about one person’s opinion

I would do anything to be able to pick Reese up from nursery, take her back to my place, have some dinner and play and then take her back the following morning. I cannot possibly put into words how much this would mean to me.

But the fact that I may have a night terror (a the result of the injury) and risk her seeing it mean’s that I can’t have her to stay overnight on my own. She’s nearly 4 and I’ve never had her to myself overnight.

But like every pain that I feel, I use it. It fuels me with fire like you wouldn’t believe and energises me. I use it to get through the hardest times, I use it for inspiration to try and do the impossible and live our dream of me becoming a nurse.

I’m starting to see pain as my friend.

It fills my heart with joy that she constantly asks how me and Dr Ranj make people better

It breaks my heart when people look down their noses at the homeless. How sad that we think we have the right decide if people have the right to a measly one pound based on their appearance and whether we think they are drugs users or not.

While I’m certainly not condoning drug use, people can’t possibly know what hardships they’ve had to endure in their lives.

I guess all that I’m trying to say is not everything is as it seems.

Grovesner Hotel, London – 2013

I sat there squinting as the overhead lights shone harshly in my eyes. They lit up the table I was seated on, revealing my name on a gold tinted plaque placed in front of me on the table. Viv Bennett was a stone’s throw away, she was chatting to Jayne Cummings on the next table. 

July 2012

Telephone conversation with Jennie Middleton, editor of the Nursing Times:

“The team and I cannot think of anyone better to represent the student edition of the magazine. You’ll also be invited to give out an award in a prestige hotel in London”

“Well Jennie, I’m flattered. But why me?”

“You’re like a nursing celebrity!”

I’d created the first major online twitter chat and published the debates in the nursing times’ magazine, I’d worked on their first podcast and helped out with a nursing documentary aired on Sky living. The twitter chats had gone national. I had my dream and I was going after it like a man possessed.

The director of NHS England and the director of the NHS would be there – I could finally get my chance to meet them.. to make my mark, THIS was what I had worked for.

I tried to continue my nurse shift twitter chats after my injury, but I just couldn’t.  I would get too dizzy, then I would feel so nauseous I’d either throw up or have to sleep.

Oh well, I still have my chance at the awards ceremony to make my mark…

Grovesner Hotel, London – 2013

I was shaking. I didn’t touch the 4 course dinner prepared for me, I felt nauseous and  dizzy. When I walked it felt like I was walking on a bouncy castle.

Then, I overheard a nurse on the next table speaking in a portuguese accent:

Instantly, I had flashes of images of blood dripping from the CVP line in my chest, doctors shouting and running around me, resuscitating and intubating me. Poking and prodding, I couldn’t breathe. Lumps of my hair were falling out from the trauma. The smell of hospitals, the smell of sterile plastic.. the pain

“And now, please give a warm welcome to our student nurse editors who will be handing out the awards!”

I told Jennie moments before that I just couldn’t do it. I watched each of the editors go up to an astounding uproar of applause, as I felt a hot tear run down my cheek. I ran out without saying goodbye and made my way back to the hotel I was staying in. Pathetically, I literally cried myself to sleep that night.

Nobody ever understood what that did to me.

Present day – back to reality

I never look back, or forward. I am too busy living for this moment. However, I wanted to write about this blog today for a reason.

Impavidum

I love anxiety when it dares to show it’s face, which it rarely does now, because I love confronting it and saying, “You know what, yeah, here you are. Now watch this” and I’ll do something so outrageous and contradictory to what the anxiety is telling me to be scared of.

I love being challenged, I’m so determined to be different and at times outrageous, it’s who I am. I love being pushed to my limit, my endurance tested, emotionally and physically.

I’m sometimes controversial and I never follow the norm, whether that be my appearance, my personality or whatever. I’m outspoken, but never rude. This experience has helped me come even closer to finding the real me, the one I am no longer fearful of portraying after my injury.

Since the awards I have never refused a challenge, whether that be a dare or attempting procedures at work.. there’s nothing I say no to.

This was one of many painful incidents that I experienced after my injury

In the words of my tutor…So what?

I have no fear, no anxiety. I fear nothing. Not death, people, I feel no embarrassment. No cares. No thoughts. No plans.  Just now.

If used in the right way, pain really can contribute to strength. The inner and real you can majestically shine through when you discard such trivial behavioural traits society has forced upon you if you can let go of them. Nothing is impossible.

As a firm atheist, taking Reese to Sunday school for the first time last week was definitely out of my comfort zone. And when a brain injured atheist walks into  church in the name of simply pretending to be religious in order to get your child into a top school, trouble is bound to happen.

Don’t worry, nothing happened. I behaved, well for the most part. Until we had to sit ‘on mass’ or whatever they call it. I struggle there like I do at uni when I have to sit still. I only blasphemed 3 times.

Behave is such a subjective and boring term.

Instead of singing the hymns I encouraged Reese to join in with my choir version of ‘Let it go’, followed by a well rehearsed (in the shower) edition of ‘do you want to build a snowman?’.

Then some bloke with a beard and long hair came out of nowhere with a big stick. I remarked that he looked like gandalf the wizard and was  xpecting him to whack the big stick to the floor any minute crying out ‘THALL SHALL NOT PASS’. I shared my thoughts with my mum, she wasn’t as impressed.

All of a sudden, everyone started standing up and walking to the front, their heads bowed in solemn prayer or something. The lady in front turned round to me and said: ‘would you like to take Reese for communion?’

Puzzled, I asked, ‘what’s that then?’

Long story short, basically you go up to the priest at the front of the church, kneel down and they give you a bit of bread and a sip of wine. Yeah a sip of wine. No, not a mouthful. God who created the universe can’t even spare a whole glass of wine. Just a sip.

 God. You’re tighter than a camel’s arse in a sandstorm.

As I went to reply to the lady with ‘Nah, if I have one drink I always want more’ jokingly, I noticed something astounding. I believed there and then that miracles really can happen. It was an outer body experience.

So I told Reese to look at this miracle before us that was in the shape of the priest leading the ‘disciples’ down the front of the church. He seriously had the roundest head I’d ever seen, which unluckily for him was also bald. It looked like an egg with sideburns. We laughed a bit more at him.

Remembering the question I had been asked by the lady in front about taking communion,  I turned to Reese and asked

‘Fancy that?’ she didn’t say no which means yes, she gets shy in public.

So I took one for the team, I held her hand and we rocked up to the place you get the aforementioned bread and wine, knelt down and put our hands out.

Now, reflecting on what I did next, I can see that it probably wasn’t good church etiquette. But I don’t believe in god, so like most things in my life, I wasn’t taking it seriously.

The priest offered me the world’s smallest bit of bread, then offered me a glass (sip) of red wine. So without thinking I just dipped the bread in the wine and stuck it in my gob. In between mouthfuls I remember saying ‘nice that’ or words to that effect. When you’re hungry anything tastes nice, I hadn’t had breakfast you see. Reese didn’t want hers, so I did the same with her bit of bread.

‘Waste not want not Reese!’ I laughed at my own joke, looking up at the priest.

He looked as though Jesus had just appeared in front of him wearing a mankini thong suit with his hair tied up in a bun dancing to ‘Gangnam style’. He wasn’t impressed.

There are nearly 3000 gods people all over the world pray to, each believing that their god is the right one. 

God got Mary up the duff without her consent. You can go to prison for that. 

Let there be light!

‘What about nighttime?’

Oops my bad..

I’ve been putting off writing about this topic for a good few years now. While I was scrolling through my blog stats earlier today, I noticed that I’ve reached nearly 4000 views from 66 posts. And it got me to thinking..

What do people look for in this blog? What keeps them interested?

The answer to this is a solid ‘fuck knows’, so I will just continue to be myself and be honest about the issues I talk about.

When I was young I wanted to meet the right person and settle down, raise a family and enjoy spending my time with and loving them 100%. Thats why I got married so young.

The girls I have met and got to know have all said pretty similar things once I’ve told them I am unable to commit to a relationship..

‘But I don’t understand. Why not?’

‘Maybe you’re scared’

‘But whats stopping you from at least trying?’

When girls have stayed the night, in all honesty,  I’ve missed not sleeping next to Francis and monkey. I like being on my own and enjoy the quiet, those two don’t talk much.

I do not often allow my thoughts to willingly stray from the present moment. However, from time to time I will indulge myself in the notion of romantic love, that special someone who you’d do anything for, who loves you for who you are. Not what they want you to be, or what you were. 

I enjoy watching romantic films or listening to soppy songs and pretending it is an actuality whilst I’m listening/watching. I fantasise, all the while knowing it’s nothing more than an illusion.

Did I find love with my ex wife?

I thought I did and still do, but when it is not reciprocated in the same way you once thought it did, it holds no meaning anymore. Even if it did, watching the acts prevalent in someone who loves/loved you that are unfavourable is probably even worse that if they didn’t ever really love you for who you are to begin with.

On my spiritual road to enlightenment I am seeing that what I once perceived as love was was in fact incorrect. Love has to come from deep inside you.

I keep people at a distance.

I tell them when I meet them I am not in a position to commit, take it or leave it, I do not and could not lie to anyone, I’m not into that. If someone begins to get ‘too close’ – I stop it there and then.

You must know if you decide to carry on seeing me with this understanding, that one day I might have to suddenly stop seeing you. I might not be able to give you a reason as to why, and If you cannot accept this then you’re free to walk away now, no hard feelings. Honestly.

And I have and continue to do this. Is it fulfilling? No. But I do believe you can take something away from each encounter you have in life and this can enable you to grow as a result. But only IF you are able to look for the seed in each encounter or ‘relationship’.

‘Aimer et être aime’ – To love and be loved

Loving is a magical phenomenon. But for me, I can only take it so far, for now at least. With a brain injury any one person needs to accept a few additional factors if they are interested in being in my life, in whichever capacity that may be.