I’m sorry that you have faced this kind of discrimination. In the UK that is totally illegal and you have the court system on your side which would impose penalties on the employer and compensate you with what you would have earned. But clearly it’s draining and stressful for everybody to go through such a long and complicated process so for the majority of employers it acts as a deterrent for such awful behaviour. They must make “reasonable adjustments” for any disabled applicants/employees and can not use the disability itself as a reason why that person is not a fit for the team. I’m sure some still discount disabled people but are better at coming up with legitimate reasons why they took on someone else instead, but with that attitude I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.

As someone who is truly terrible at learning languages I still look up to you for continuing to push yourself to cope with living somewhere that doesn’t use your first language. Having said that, I do understand how you are questioning your abilities more now, particularly as it can feel like your brains “lie” to us at times after a brain injury.

I sometimes get praise & encouragement for my art (for which I’m very grateful but have now lost joy in my art too) but I almost never get that for all the other thinks I try to do: people get angry with me, think I’m lazy, and I get told off for not doing them right, that I must try again and work harder at them = even when these tasks have been made impossible for me to achieve or I’m supposed to come up with creative ideas to sort them which puts my brain into mega overdrive so I can’t rest or sleep coz it’s trying to find solutions to these stupid things and I can’t stop it so I need people to STOP giving me these extra problems – I’m already really struggling even to prepare food & chew & swallow and wash myself and my clothes.

And trying to explain my memory problems (worse now since I had to move home) people say ‘write lists’ = derr: been doing that right from the start & it doesn’t help at all when I’ve got too many tasks that are too hard already plus lists get longer coz I can’t keep up with the unreasonable demands on me = makes me go into huge desopair & I cry loads & don’t know what to do with myself because of the TERRIBLE brain-burn & tickles that feel so awful but nothing (other than NO stress & PROPER sleep = can’t get) helps.

Thanks Paul and I completely understand what you mean by “trapped but lost”, it does make sense when you’ve been there.

Thanks Julie it’s kind of you to say that ?

I send all my best to you and your son. Thanks for your support.