Returning to daily life – Skin deep

Transcript

[Different young people talk]

It's hard to go back to school. It can be hard. I found it hard because I was kind of building it up in my head, like it was gonna be a catastrophe and everyone was gonna be all over me.

But the first day was really tough. I think my grandparents lived next door to the school when I, I kind of, I wanted to go home a few times and I was very, very scared. I guess being different is a very, very scary thing, especially when you don't have the social maturity to say it's okay to be different.

When I first got burnt and I had to go back to school, like I thought, oh yes, I'm gonna go back to all my friends, and then we had a class presentation and I was really scared standing up there with my big sister telling them what happened. Because I had, stuff on my head and my body. It was, it just didn't look right. It looked really weird. Everyone didn't want to be my friend because I was different. And every school I went to, I had probably one friend. And I went to about 8 different schools, but then I moved to Browns Plains and everyone wanted to be my friend.

When you get back, your friends are gonna want to know about your burns a lot. They're probably gonna ask a few questions or worse, which I found worse for me was when they didn't ask, but you could tell they wanted to because they feel awkward and they feel like they shouldn't. And it's sort of a, I don't know, a social, don't ask, just stand there and smile.

For me, I moved on very quickly cause I was able to talk and I played sport and I was able to connect with the boys pretty quickly and I could talk and you know, listen to music and all sorts of stuff. So I had a very, very wide array of things that I enjoyed. And after a few weeks, like people didn't even, you know, care really. I think when I was really little, you know, maybe 6 or 7 people might have given me a bit of a hard time. But that was probably just because I'm a bit different. But on the whole, I've never really had any kind of, you know, I don't even, it was for my burns either. I think it was just cause I was like, I don't know, listening to classical music or something ridiculous.

In Grade 7, I had another operation on my neck. We ended up running out of stuff to put on my neck. So I decided to go to school with nothing on it, and it was a pretty hard day. Nasty things were said to me and I got really upset when I got home. I just, it was really hard, but I worked up the confidence and I kept having nothing on it. And it was good. I had to stay positive. Like I did have friends there for me, but I didn't know whether they, what they were thinking of it, because I didn't like it myself. People are going to judge you, but you judge yourself the most.

And I got a job at Big W. Worked there for a couple years, worked on the registers, talked so much. They moved me off the registers. I work at Coles now and that's a pretty good stable job. I really like, like working at Coles. Good bunch of people I've met. Being burnt, having gone through these things is something you can talk about to a manager. And I mean, my experience, it's something people are always very interested to hear. Because I think it does give you a bit bit more social maturity and able to deal with adults and things better because you're constantly talking to doctors and things. And that's something that's quite, it's just another thing to put on your resume type of deal. You've just got something a little bit extra, a bit of a drive, a bit of a fight in you. And that's something that I would, I would look for and I think a lot of people do.

My friends were great because they sort of, they understood sort of, well they didn't understand at all, but they tried to give leeway. Some of them were very nervous about hurting me all the time, and I'm like, I'm fine.

Now I'm not scared to show my arm off. Like I don't care that people can see my arm. It's more so the neck that I don't like people seeing, but you get used to it.

Everyone was just the kindest about it and they didn't make fun of me or anything. They were just, they just wanted to see if I was okay. They treated me normally, which was what I wanted because I'd been in hospital and everyone was going, ooh, cause they don't wanna hurt you. They don't judge you or anything. They just wanna find out about it.