Humanity Lost. Chapter Two. Part Two

A few weeks before I was due to start, she called me. Called me. At home, which at the time was mum and dads. It was so random, strange and hugely exciting. It seemed that we had been paired up to work with one of the students there.

Day One. I had never worked with people before, having spent my summers between university working in my brother’s shop. While I could talk a good talk about having empathy and empowering people, actually doing it; I mean, really looking after someone, was way beyond my understanding. I was so nervous when Adam finally arrived on site, but was desperate not to show it in front of my more experienced work colleague. It was at this point all my training as well as my misconceptions about people with disabilities, went right out of the window.

I was face to face with shit. This was nothing like doing a baby’s nappy, which, incidentally, I hadn’t experienced either by this point. This was, well, something else altogether. There’s me, another guy’s backside and more faeces than I ever imagined could actually come out of another human. I tried desperately not to gag, I mean, this is why I was there, to support another person to do stuff that we often take for granted. As I wiped, I realised that from that point, whatever shit came my way, I’d stare it right in the face and not let it beat me.

Adam, as it happened, was quite an intense young guy. His moods would swing from quite bright and breezy (as bright and breezy as a guy with an obsession about politics could be), to quite dark; at which times his support needs would increase tenfold and he would become demanding to the point that he would be childlike in his behaviour. Every demand would need to be fulfilled with the utmost efficiency or his frustration levels would completely boil over. And he was prone to tantrums; which there was no way to deal with apart from to smile and take it. Within a week, supporting Adam had become an ever repeating set of tasks.

Only the outside, non working, world broke up the monotony. My flatmates in the student village, which in Coventry sat between concrete on one side and a rather unappealing council estate on the other, were like the contents of a railway’s lost and found office. There was Becky (? Or Becki?), a memory of whom I cannot form no matter how hard I try. Peter, a sweeter guy you could not wish to meet, whose concern for money and alcohol became an almost daily obsession. He once made me glazed carrots with a roast chicken, and very nice it was to. Another guy, who I want to call Richard, although, honestly can’t remember whether that was his name or not. He was the veteran of the group, having worked as a volunteer before. In retrospect, I suspect he was just on a free ride; avoiding real work at all costs, so that he could get high all day on the copious amounts of weed he smoked. I really do wish that I had gotten to know him a little better! And of course, there was Gemma.

It kind of felt that our love affair had started weeks before we had arrived in Coventry. From the open day perhaps? It was indeed a strange twist of fate that we were paired up with Adam. Perhaps ‘they’ though that I would benefit from her experience; maybe ‘they’ thought that we were alike? I have never really managed to work that out.

It didn’t take us long to get close. I loved just how natural Gemma was; in herself and with the people around her. She won’t have realised it, but I’d loved just how comfortable everything was to her. Even down to the way she wore a tracksuit. I always thought she was prettier dressed down rather than with all that war paint and those shiny clothes on. Gemma managed to teach me an awful lot about myself in quite a short time. That I would always need someone in my life to look after me; that mother figure who would reassure me if I was sad; feed me if I was hungry and build me back up if my confidence had been knocked. She taught me to care less about what other people thought of me. She taught me to be jealous, bitter and spiteful.

And I’m sure that we would have had a bright future had it not been for her boyfriend, my girlfriend, Graham (a stereotypical happy-go-lucky ‘liked a good craic’ never ever to be mentioned again this story, Irishman) and Heather….