Saying what I think

Something I’ve realised recently that I want to put out here.

I know now - and was vaguely aware of back then - that I had a way my brain worked. Which I couldn’t change no matter how hard I tried.

Until a few years ago I would get an idea in my head. Without thinking about it I would immediately say it out loud. No matter what it was. It was as if I stored nothing in my brain, it just travelled straight through it and was gone into the air via my mouth!

In the first few years after my TBI I must have come across as a bit of a simpleton, as I didn’t hone the words and phrasing of it, I just blurted exactly what had entered my head.

But at the time I was completely unaware of that fact.

After around a decade I started to realise what was going on. But I wasn’t able to change the process at all.

Now though, things have changed but I don’t feel that my conscious effort to change it made any difference. Now I think of something and it stays in my brain. I toss it around, turn it backwards and forwards and eventually choose to describe it in the outside world.

It makes me smile a bit, as I know I’m becoming more like the original person I was. Before my TBI Paul used to laugh at me. He’d come home from work and find me sitting on the bed, twiddling my hair silently, with a far away look in my eyes. He’d ask me what was going on.

I’d always answer briefly. “Just thinking.”