I am Carlton – Skin deep

Transcript

I am Carlton and I am a champion.

There you go. I'm sorry. I was probably really cheesy. I'm studying at the moment to be a teacher, but I also really wanna be a politician. I'm not even aiming low, cause, like PM I'm talking here, like I would love to be the Prime Minister. I did a lot of public speaking, fundraising as well. So I did a lot around, Brisbane, Queensland, sort of areas. I would go to events and give an address. I've been to a few countries and done speeches to other kids in a similar situations.

70% of my body was burnt when I was little and quite substantially, and people sometimes don't even notice. Just sitting in the kitchen being a seven month old child, exploring to crawl out of, you know, get around, do my own thing, and unfortunately, I have grabbed the deep fryer and it's fallen on top of me, so it was hot oil, boiling, hot oil, both my arms, my legs, my chest very badly burnt.

I was forcefully anaesthetised number of times, like I was held down. I ran away a couple times, like I'd be down there and it's like, leg it just run, run all over the place. You know, dad, and mum are like pulling me in there, kicking and screaming.

I usually had to prepare myself mentally, you know, go into hospital. They'd be like, all right. So when do you want to get it done a couple weeks time, you know, whatever. We'll book it in. No worries. I went in one day and they said, we can take you in right now. And I said, whoa, no way. Not ready for this at all. So what I did was I grabbed some Nutrigrain and I just ate it. I'm like, you can't take me in now. I've eaten food. Can't do it. Of course they didn't care. They took me in anyway and, I was stick afterwards, because you don't meant to eat.

Looking ahead, it's a really scary road because you are gonna be every year missing out on school, missing out on playing sports, missing out on doing just general kids stuff.

It was a few times, I 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, it's not like just a splint that goes your arm. You kind of just like, you know, chilling down here, it's like a splint that goes all away. So you're walking around like this [holds arm out straight in front], 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. My dad just came and grabbed me, said, what are you worried about? They're looking at you because, you know you're different. Like it's nothing else, it's just that you , how, what is, what's going on up here? It's just like, if there was a guy walking shirtless into the shopping centre. People would look at him, people would do it to anybody. He wasn't just sort of singling me out and it kind of helped ground me a little bit, because I wasn't in the centre of the universe.

I had some dark, dark times. I think what really pulled me out of it was just something, my dad said to me and he just said that, I love you no matter what you do and all you need to do is do your best.

At Coles I did a bit of night fill work and I found that I had a bit of trouble doing that because my fingers, got a bit sore, you know, ripped boxes open and, and I had to change departments. But that's not a massive deal. Like it's probably better. I mean, no one likes working till midnight. It's terrible.

I don't think there's any detriment to being burnt. Doesn't hold you back. And I know it seems like it might, at the time, but it doesn't.

I'd 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 wide or whatever with no shirt on. I was burnt on the chest. And, to me it's almost like a symbol of victory.

It's skin deep at the end of the day. Like it's skin deep. People don't even really realise sometimes because I'm just so out there and just doing my own thing. They don't even really sometimes pick up that I am burnt.

I'm not ashamed or embarrassed about where I've come from and what I've done. I'm quite the opposite, I'm very proud of myself. For one, I've survived an accident. I've owned that accident and I've become a better person because of it. Wouldn't change it.

Easy for me to say, now I'm almost finished but tell you what, like, you know, you don't think that you'd ever go back to this normal state, but it really does. Like, people, if any, look at you in a different, more respectable light, like you've just, you know, you're a survivor,  you're a warrior, you're a fighter.