Coping with public interest – Skin deep

Transcript

[Different young people talk]

There were definitely lots of times, especially in the first couple of years, where I felt really self-conscious in public, especially with the pressure garments on. Because most people don't know what they are. They probably never seen someone who's been burned and it's new and it's natural to be curious.

It was a few times remember when I was probably 12, 13, going through that kind of identity crisis, what am I gonna look like, that kind of thing. Where I had a couple of splints on to put the picture properly, like, it's not like just a splint that goes to your arm, kind of just like, you know, chilling down here. It's like a splint that goes away. So you're walking around like this, just sort of waving your arm around and I didn't like, people looking at me like, I thought it was really weird. I didn't appreciate it very much.

Person from the news. He sort of had covered the story of me and everyone in Laidley all knew about me. So they're all just like, oh my God, you're okay? I'm like, thank you. Great. Who are you?

Generally little children ask you. So I always tell them and tell them that playing with fire is not a good thing and just stay away from it.

And they'll ask how it happened. And you know, they always ask, does it hurt if I poke you? Because they don't wanna hurt you. They don't judge you or anything. They just wanna find out about it.

My dad just come and grabbed me. He said, what are you worried about? They're looking at you because, you know you're different. Like there's nothing else, it's just that you, just like, how, what is, what's going on over here? It's just like if there was a guy walking shirtless to the shopping centre, people would look at him, people would do it to anybody. It wasn't just sort of singling me out and it kind of helped ground me a little bit cause I wasn't the centre of the universe.

Well, when I'm out in public I do look around a lot to see people looking at me because I think they're going to be looking at my scars.

All the sympathy used to bother me because I just wanted to get back into my normal everyday life. I don't mind now when people are like, I'm so sorry, because, you know, they're reacting as you should.

I've never really been bothered by the skies. I kind of feel like I own that. I'm happy to walk around, you know, wet and wire, whatever, with no shirt on. I was burnt on the chest. And, to me it's almost like a symbol of victory.

Burns Camp has given me so much more confidence in myself. It's an organisation where all children that have been burnt and have scars go along and you build up your confidence. It built my confidence up a lot. It makes you feel so much better to know there's other people out there that have scars and have been through the same sort of stuff as you.

Skin deep at the end of the day. Like it's, it's skin deep. People don't even really realize sometimes cause I'm just so out there and just. Doing my own thing. I don't even really sometimes pick up that I am, burnt.