There are many idiots who will park in the Blue Badge spot as there are other people who will help you get out of the chair, get out of the car into the chair. So for as many idiots as I shout out for parking in disabledyeah, I’ll sometimes, I’m offered by two or three people in a row when I’m getting out the car. I don’t know if it’s just me. But people can be very generous and as equally as being very generous you can have utter morons. So I suppose that’s just human nature, isn’t it really? So, there’s no accounting for human nature really when it comes down to it. There are ignorant people. There are people that will stare, but on the other side of that, there people that will offer help.

I don’t know whether it’s me, I just seem to take the good with the bad. I try not to pay too much attention to it. I think you can get very absorbed by the negativity of it if you pay too much attention or are too aware of some of the problems. I tend to be, it’s more of an impact on me when people offer me help that I don’t really need. I think sometimes they’re patronising you and they don’t mean it, but I think it’s nice that people offer help when they see an idiot like me, kind of rushing across Sainsbury’s with a big basket of food on his lap. Clearly I can cope because I do it all the time. People don’t necessarily know that, so I get offers of help quite a lot. But, no you just have to be quite tough to that experience of negativity.

I’ve not experienced any kind of direct hostility from anybody. I’m sure people have, but I can’t ever say I’ve experienced any kind of hate crime, which I haven’t, but I’m sure people have. I just haven’t personally experienced it.

I just want to get across to people who aren’t visually impaired… Since I’ve lost my sight, it’s, for certain people, it’s difficult for them to talk to me. They, they won’t come up and engage me or like, like on a social level. I mean this is happening – it’s really been pointed out at college more than anything. it’s, at certain times like, like people will be less inclined to talk to me. Maybe they feel awkward or maybe, yeah, they just don’t know what to say; they’re worried about putting their foot in it or whatever. But, it’s really difficult because I struggle to engage people because I can’t see where they are, or whether they’re busy, or whether they’re doing something, and you know, it’s good to make an effort, don’t, if you see like a visually impaired person, you know, like in a social situation, I mean you shouldn’t really hesitate to go up, because I’d always appreciate someone coming up to me and talking to me and you know, just making the effort and if I felt like talking to them, fair enough, I would be like, You know what, not right no. But I mean it’s good to make the effort because I know it’s, it’s a dark intimidating world when you’re blind and the social side of things has been quite difficult for me.

And when you’ve told anybody about it now have they reacted badly towards you?

Depends. Sometime I see people looking at my eye and they avoid asking me. But I know that they’re looking at it you know, because maybe you know, they lose their train of thought or they get like stuck there. And no but usually people who ask don’t get any type of I don’t know maybe empathy, but other than that nothing.

As soon as you hear of brain injury it’s natural that you’re going to feel slightly concerned for your own sake. Well actually I’ve found that most people are more likely to do harm to themselves than anyone else. I would say. it’s more likely to be an issue of self-harm rather than harming anybody else, which is what people worry about I think. I think people are concerned that you might have an anger management issue of some sort. But not really no. I haven’t really seen people turning on each other. it’s more turning on themselves, which is natural. Well I mean your whole as you know is completely destroyed and then you’ve got to try and patch it all back together if you can, which is not really possible.

Well you know, when you’re watching television or you’re reading newspapers, they always talk about something that’s happened in the media somewhere. it’s always commented on in a certain way. So you’re sort of stereotyped as a sort of a mad person. You know, then somehow you’re dangerous or something or that, you know, you’ve got anger management issues and so on. And I’m sure in the beginning that some people are in that situation. So yeah, you will get socially isolated. I mean that’s guaranteed.

You said there that you don’t really think of yourself as being in a wheelchair.

I do. I totally do all the time.

Sorry you totally do?

I do. I do think of myself as being in a wheelchair.

Okay.

I think I could not think of that. I think of it all the time. You know, nobody doesn’t. But other people, I know this sounds like wishful thinking me saying what I want people to think, but I’ve just heard it too many times. Obviously when people first see you, strangers, people out and about, new people you meet, it’s the first thing they’re going to notice and they’re going to be intrigued and they’re going to want to know. But after a little bit, once you’ve kind of Once they know, you know each other and you know, they have a sense of who you are, and you have a sense of who they are, I think you find that most people don’t even think about it. You know, I’ve lost track of the amount of times I go out to places and it’s like, Oh shit, sorry, I didn’t even think of the fact you’re in a wheelchair. I don’t even think about that, because you know, it’s always fine. So I think it’s good, but again sometimes you feel like people don’t understand. But I find, I think it’s quite good to feel like people aren’t making special allowances for you. That more than anything would kind of wind me up a little bit, you know. You know, because then you’re sort of taking away from what I’m trying to do which is to put in the effort to do something well.

But I think people who you come across assume that you are a well person, who happens to have to sit in a wheelchair rather than walk. So, you know, they are unaware and have no reason to be aware of you know, the problems that you might have with your bladder and your bowels and your skin and your chest, and, you know, your paralysis in your fingers and… And maybe its best that way, because I think you don’t want to be thought of as any more incapable than you need to be.

But sometimes you do kind of get the impression that people almost think, Well, I bet he leaps out of his wheelchair and jumps into bed when he gets home in the evening And obviously you think, I only wish I could.

Do you think you had any preconceptions about what survivors of brain injury were like before you had your injury?

I guess yes, I would guess straight away they’re in a wheelchair, whereas I’m not and a lot of people at Headway aren’t. There’s probably a third or half of them that aren’t in wheelchairs. And so you have preset conceptions and you think okay, head injury means this and it doesn’t always mean that. And Headway – say there’s 20 or 30 people in there on a given day – I wouldn’t say there’s, we’re not all the same. We’re not all the same. Our injuries are different in some ways. And it affects us differently in different ways and okay there’s a common thread where memory’s impaired, stamina’s impaired. So by about 3 o’clock for example, one or two people are yawning because they want to get home and get back into routine back home, maybe lie down and take it easy. So there are certain things are the same. But certain things again, as I say at Headway no, no one injury’s the same at Headway, they’re all slightly different. But they are all the same too. they’re the same but they’re different.

I think the reason was that I suppose I want people to like me for who I am now and notAnd I don’t want anyone to have any preconceptions about; oh she’s got a brain injury. I think, if in the internet dating, you would hardly put it on anyway, but if I put, you know, I’d been in an accident and had a brain injury, I don’t think people would have wanted to see me. So, as far as I was concerned that was a dating issue really. I don’t think people would want to see you. And once I’d seen him a few times I suppose I just, I didn’t want it to go on forever, which I could have done, well I couldn’t have done, but I just felt I wanted to get to a stage where we both wanted to see each other still. So… For it not to be an issue really.

Right. You said there that you could have hidden it for a long time and then you said but actually I couldn’t. Do you think that it would become obvious to somebody?

No. But I think once we’d become more friends, more boyfriend/girlfriend he would have met my friends and they all knew. So, it wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have done it.

Hm. Yeah.

Plus, I mean there are things like hitting my head on the cupboard in the kitchen and you know, not remembering where things are, where the grater is or something like that, which would have become, particularly irritating I think.