Learning to Stand Up and Be Counted

My goal for this year is to show more understanding and compassion to people who might be struggling, by continuing to work on myself and trying to utilise some of the things I’ve been taught.

When you see someone vomiting or coughing or sneezing, it’s immediately evident they are unwell.

If someone is in a plaster cast you can easily see there’s been an accident.

When someone has had a head injury and they’ve worked so hard with all the medical assistance they can receive and their face now has basic symmetry, no one’s going to know there’s a deep disabling struggle going on inside. That’s where I came undone.

It’s easy to come to the wrong conclusion when you see someone sleeping rough or sitting alone, drunk and sad in a pub, or sitting in an alcove along a quiet street using drugs.

The first impression can sometimes inadvertently be a demeaning or negative one towards the person, but all they are trying to do is escape.

Escape from what you might ask? They are trying to escape the voice and horrible thoughts in their head that are telling them that they should have done better. The trauma that happened to them, could have been avoided if they had only had their wits about them, but how can we orchestrate our fate?

I have learnt this the hard way too.

Just over 30 years ago I was in a car accident and was able to overcome the physical injuries with constant physiotherapy and exercises, but I also experienced an Acquired Brain Injury with three haemorrhages in my left frontal lobe.

I had to learn how to walk and talk all over again. Thankfully my intellect wasn’t affected but I had endured what others might experience if they suffered a stroke. The right side of my face had fallen, the right side of my body was close to useless for a while as I struggled with coordination and I spoke in a telegraphic speech pattern for quite some time, only using the essential words to express my needs.

The most infuriating part of the whole experience was, within the depths of my mind, I thought I was okay and did not understand why I was being assisted.

As I was to learn as the years progressed during sessions with both psychologists and psychiatrists, was that the left frontal lobe is in charge of rational thinking, risk-taking and anger, along with issues with balance and coordination. The anger and sadness started to build when my memory was so poor, or I fell. My inner voice started to kick in and tell me I was useless. If I made a mistake or broke something by accident, the little voice sitting on my shoulder would tell me I was never meant to succeed. I am a failure. No wonder difficult things always happen to me, I’m an easy target.

So yes, for a time I was desperate to escape myself and hide from myself. I didn’t do drugs but had the opportunity to learn from others who had been through their own challenging trauma as to why they did. Just like me, they are trapped within their bodies and their own lives and want the noise to stop, in whatever way it can.

When my inner voice got too loud, I would try to close it off with a couple of glasses of wine, but with the injury to my brain, I couldn’t handle too much and it then immediately boosted my grief, pain and anger toward other innocent people and made things worse.

I have been very lucky and privileged through being able to make a brave decision to go to my doctor and plead for help. Through that, I was able to be referred and then given treatment that now works.

This opened many cupboards I thought that I had sealed shut and made me relive painful moments in my past, which in the beginning was very tough, but through slow and patient work I have been able to now finally believe in myself. This has given me a second chance.

When I do have maintenance treatment, it allows me to meet other people who have also been through their own private and immense struggles, sort help and then be able to share just a little of their own story. They shared just a little of their trauma and how they had tried to shut down the voice in their head and deal with it in silence.

My goal for this year is to share as much compassion as I can. I will encourage others to not come to the incorrect conclusion when they see someone who looks lost or drug-affected or sleeping rough.

There are so many different pathways that can lead to the same destination where there is a queue of people begging to escape, but what a kind of escape is that when it is only opening a door to a new room that will be locked as soon as they entered. The locked room of addiction.

My own experiences and observations are driving me to want mental disability to not just be seen as someone requiring physical assistance but to also acknowledge that many people all around us are struggling.

The hardest part is the first part when you say, “I’m not okay and I think I need help.”

Finding out and acknowledging that you suffer from depression and anxiety is only the beginning, but unfortunately if the community and family do not embrace the person fully, it can also be the end.

Let us all stay as connected to the people we know and love as much as we can this year and show that we want this situation to continue to be discussed. It wants to be acknowledged just like the yellow flower in a sea of lilac. It’s there and shouldn’t be ignored. It’s begging to be seen and heard and needs to be our priority.

That’s my pledge for this year, to embrace the oddness of life, find beauty in it and know that a lot can be learnt from it.

Each trauma that we can learn to sit with and not be weighed down by, allows us an opportunity to see true beauty.