I'm rude!!

I used to think highly of my 'Intellect', so this is not something that I tell you lightly, in fact it is such a huge thing, that I don't think I will ever get over the trauma of living with a 'brain injury'. 


Sometimes, people are horrified with me for being this rude, but I can't help it! It is like telling a woman on the bus, that she was sitting in 'my' seat! How embarrassed my 'bus mate' was with me and she said that I should be more tolerant with people and keep my voice down, when I said 'but she is sitting in the red seat and she is not supposed to. They are only for disabled people and ladies with babies and old people' (they aren't just for disabled people, the man from Sydney Buses was so nice in answering my queries, and I will put an excerpt from his letter to me, **At this stage the idea of the red seats is for other customers to identify that these seats may be required for less mobile passengers but this is not compulsory and is not enforceable, however we hope that common courtesy would prevail** well, it doesn't!!, so, we just have to put up and shut up! (now I know how it is for my nephew, who has Asperger's)), and my bus mate had to explain to me that it wasn't a crime that the person was sitting in the red bus seats and she said that she was sure the person would move if there wasn't any where else to sit!!


Another example is a few weeks ago, I bumped into my dentist in the parking lot of the building where I work, and went up to him and opened my mouth wide and said, 'oh John, I have this chip where 'blahblahblah', and John, being the nice man that he is said, 'come to my office and I will see what can be done', but my friend who with me, looked most appalled and said, 'oh Wendy, you can't do things like that'. Like what??? It took me several minutes to understand that people did not act this way!!!! I have lost the 'Social Skills' that I used to take for granted, and it happens all the time, that is another of the 'brain injury' things that I have only just come to grips with, and not only me, but my family and friends as well.


Another thing is, that I have to be told upwards of 10 times to get anything to 'stick' in my brain. I will ask one of my daughters something and then a while later, I will ask the same question again and I couldn't understand why the girls (teenagers!) would get cross with me, then I would ask the question, again! The telephone is something that I used to use without thinking about, but now, I hesitate and only like talking to my good friends or family on the phone and I am quite good at texting, rather than talking, because I am not sure what the person said! 


Sometimes it is clear and simple, but if it has numbers or an address etc, I am lost! If someone is putting me on hold they might as well hang up because I won't remember what it was they had told me or what address or what number I had to press! So, as you can see there are a lot of people like me, the 'broken people', who just can't fathom or don't know what is going on around them, not because they don't listen or don't care, but because they just do not understand. 


So, those of you who read this blog will understand that it is not very well edited, because I have trouble spelling and leave out a lot of words now, things that would never have slipped through before, but, I can cope because so much of me has come back and every day in every way, things ARE getting better.