YOU CAN'T GO HOME

4 Feb 23

It’s not unpleasant here. The doctors, nurses and all the workers are kind. Almost all of them look you in the eye and at least smile. They know that they have to relate to each patient. They aren’t afraid of touching the most abhorrent, aged or broken body. But what still makes me despair is the idea that I can’t walk up the front path of my house, open the door, and step back into my old life – lie down on my sofa, with a glass of wine and the Premier League. It seems unbelievably cruel that I cannot do such a simple thing.  

I had my accident on Boxing Day. What’s that - about a month and a half ago? This is a fact that is unbearable, a stone so hard and round, I can’t swallow it or spit it out.  It’s as if I have been plucked off the street by four anonymous policemen and been taken to a strange school, an irrational persecutory alternate universe. I have to find a way to survive, like we all did when we were children. I need to make friends, I’ve got to find out how the system functions.