So Jason being here, in my home, is little to do with affection. He’s basically here to watch and monitor me, and although I do depend on his company now, I hate that he sees me so differently. That he sees me as an inferior rather than his partner.

I’m sitting on the sofa in my lounge. I’m not dressed even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. I was always such a motivated and get-up-and-go type person in the past. Fitness mad, I worked all hours under the sun. That’s the main reason I’ve never settled down, got married, or had kids. I had no spare time.

Now I can’t even find the motivation to get out of my pyjamas. I’m told this is normal behaviour for TBI survivors, though certainly isn’t encouraged behaviour. But it’s not just lack of motivation; it’s lack of energy too. I’m tired, all of the time. I can’t focus on tasks. Sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of a conversation or while eating. I can walk for all of five minutes before I need to sit down because my head is swimming.

Jason comes into the room with a look of concern on his face.

‘When did you last take these?’ he says, holding up a box of pills.

I frown. ‘When I’m supposed to. I can manage taking a few pills each day, you know.’

‘Ok,’ he says, in his challenging tone. He’s not all smiles anymore, like he used to be back at the hospital. Now he’s more like an overbearing parent. ‘So tell me, which drugs are these? Anti-depressants? Sleeping pills? Anti-seizure?’

I have a cocktail of daily meds. Anti-depressants because many TBI survivors naturally become depressed with their new lives, many develop symptoms of bipolar disorder, where one day they’re manically high, then next they’re suicidally down. It’s uncomfortable that those symptoms almost perfectly describe my moods. I also take anti-seizure pills because the risk of a brain seizure for TBI survivors is so high, particularly in the twelve months following the initial injury. If you have more than one seizure, you’re diagnosed with epilepsy. And I take sleeping pills to try and help my brain rest at night, to ease my insomnia and to help me recover. The more exhausted the brain gets, the more likely a seizure is.

‘They’re the anti-seizure ones,’ I say.