Will Pike

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like, because it's just, it is grief.

Grief for who you think you're no longer going to be.

It's just overwhelming sadness and confusion because you have no idea what this means for your life.

It's not just walking anymore.

You know, bladder function, bowel function, sexual function, image, just everything.

Existential dismemberment, like... I was lost.

Yeah, I mean, it really resonates.

Like when you talk about you measured how you were coping with how often you cried.

And I can relate to that in terms of grief because I lost my father a couple of years ago.

And, you know, and it was exactly that.

It was sort of like crying uncontrollably, really, like on and off for weeks.

And then that just slowly reduces as you sort of get further away from it.

And, you know, obviously you come to terms with what's happened.

um so obviously it generally is grief that you were you were suffering it was it was a genuine grief yeah and it's exactly that like those pang is that kind of like you're just doing what you're doing and then hit you like um and then it's heartbreak and you you you just deal with it anyway you can

Chapter 8.

This is how you don't kill yourself.

So Will was facing a future that he didn't recognise, a life he wasn't prepared for, and it was taking its toll.

However, he says he was lucky because of the others who surrounded him on a daily basis.