Waiting in the waiting room of St Mary’s hospital I spotted this girl and immediately was drawn to her. She was a similar age and was also with her mum. I weirdly had a sense that we had a lot in common but it didn’t even cross my mind to say hello. As we do we carried on with our wait (obviously a long one as is compulsory in the nhs!) and didn’t give it another thought.
Someone had a plan for us though and we both ended up sitting next to each other for bloods in yet another clinic wait.
I couldn’t hold it in and started up a conversation. I felt like I was watching a mirror image of myself answering back. This requires a little more explanation but when you have a brain injury everything requires so much concentration and so any added scenarios can often deplete those supplies further. A classic example is that Carer number one will chat to anyone and everyone. I on the other hand need to be selective for self preservation reasons and so often avoid situations like this which often looks rude but it really is not.
This is what hit me with This girl. I immediately saw a hesitation, a little bit of panic, a little bit of I’m not really up for chatting and a little bit of I would really like to chat. Oddly enough there isn’t one word that can sum up that emotion and even worse it is even harder to deal with as it takes a little while to compute.
It felt brilliant to see this as I felt I saw how I feel in a third person.
After an evidently shaky start (well from my side definetly) we had an amazing chat and have been keeping in touch.
Lovely post as always. You might remember you were going to get her mum in touch with me? So lovely to see both of you moving forward and hope you keep in touch?
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