All my life I have been a single man; not so much out of choice, more just because that’s how the Dictators of Fate appeared to believe my life ought to be destined.

Used to happen a lot but I could never understand people who would laugh, pat me on the back and tell me my ‘standards were too high’, because realistically, as an 18-year-old fresh out of an extensive stay at Burwood Hospital Brain Injury Unit, honestly, I felt as though I was ready to take what I could get.

Problem was, in those early days as a recovering head injury patient, nobody took me seriously – boy-friends or potential girlfriends – to them I was just someone who used to be somebody but, through an unfortunate chain of events beyond his control, was now effectively nobody.

A 17-year-old able-bodied young man afflicted with the kind of brain trauma which, after the brain had collided with the inside of the skull then the injured portion had swelled to the point where it effectively killed itself, left me equipped with the faculties of a two-year-old while forced to still live in the body of myself; lying incapacitated in a hospital bed, subsequently, I was beholden to learn to walk, talk, eat, drink then yes, fit in with the outside world, again.

While my new brain still had the ability to think coherent thoughts and, indeed, operate with basically the same level of capability as most, it was the projection of these thoughts and abilities that caused issues; problem was I looked like a braindead zombie and, I guess, I sounded like one too. In hindsight I can’t blame people for disregarding my presence, casting me off as someone to be looked at but not talked to; it’s in our natures, after all, to discern who will best receive our approaches and, think about it, we do tend to overlook the less functional.

The years passed me by and, as I effectively stood spectating while my dream career as a diesel mechanic was pushed out of reach by a worsening post-traumatic tremor, try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to harness that projected ‘normalcy’.

The injury was sustained in 2000; it wasn’t until around 2012 that I felt truly able to take my constantly rehabilitating brain (medical professionals will maintain that the brain does all the healing it is likely to do in five years but I beg to differ) out for a spin in the real world…

Don’t misunderstand me, I was always in the ‘real world’, just not so real as a ‘regular’ person might perceive it. Hitherto, happier to stay at home (in the house that was purchased in 2003) rather than to go out and experience the world, possibly as a result of the constant failure/rejection/spurning/ridicule I was forced to endure in that world, increasingly I had become a recluse.

…Here I started an attempt at meeting new people and, although initial attempts were  sometimes met with a familiarly uncomfortable response, I had developed sufficiently in the cognitive realm to appreciate that this was simply the ‘error’ aspect to the fabled philosophy of ‘trial and error’; thus it was with a demeanour of duck-backed perseverance that I pushed on.

Alas, even with my modified brain now projecting something (which I was pretty sure was) akin to normalcy, failure after failure – error after error – humiliation after humiliation, continued to drive me back, crushing me down and leaving me desolate.

Self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth, self-possession thus self-respect, at this point, were failing me. Too much failure. Helplessly, I felt myself going backwards, drifting back to the place I’d begun, that is, after losing everything and starting again; slipping, sliding, clambering, stumbling, and still losing ground. Life felt hopeless.

Nothing to hope, so little reason to look forward.

Then one day recently it turned around.

A simple encounter; a fortuitous tryst. A remarkable woman; a transcendent being. I could finally stop pretending; could finally stop being so hopeful that one day I would see the light – think I actually saw the light.

I realised then, that no matter how bleak things might have looked; irrespective how much compounded shit might seem to be crushing the last modicum of goodness out of life, rendering every day a monotonous chore, relief is never as far away as it sometimes appears.

One day, one person; one bright soul, one calming influence and it changed.

Thank you.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Moe Min Tuss

Photography by Chan Farm Ashun