"I was gay when I woke up and I still am," he said. "It sounds strange but when I came round I immediately felt different. I wasn't interested in women any more. I had never been attracted to a man before - I'd never even had any gay friends. But I didn't care about who I was before, I had to be true to my feelings." Prior to the accident, Mr Birch was planning on settling down with his girlfriend and spent weekends playing sport and drinking with his mates.
Mr Birch, of Ystrad Mynach, South Wales, said: "Suddenly I hated every thing about my old life. I didn't get on with my friends, I hated sport and found my job boring. I started to take more pride in my appearance, bleached my hair and started working out. I went from a 19st skinhead, to a 11st preened man. People I used to know barely recognised me and with my new look I became even more confident."
He retrained as a hairdresser and now lives with his partner Jack Powell, 19, above the salon he works in. Stroke Association spokesman Joe Korner said: "During recovery the brain makes new neural connections which can trigger things people weren't aware of, such as accent, language or perhaps a different sexuality."
6 comments:
I find this quite hard to believe. A stroke completely altered his personality and the core of what he is, what he likes and what he thinks, but left everything else untouched? A more plausible explanation would be that after experiencing the fragility of life and his own mortality, the young man realised he didn't want to live a lie any more, didn't want to do things according to everyone else's expectations but be true to himself. The real self, that had been there all along, hiding in the closet. So to speak. Or could have been the stroke and a miraculous transformation.
I agree 100%
Unless you've experienced it yourself, how do you judge? If a woman can wake up with a foreign accent, I don't see why sexual orientation can't be effected. Until we better understand the causes of sexual orientation, I don't find it hard to believe that a physical trauma to the brain can alter personality.
I judge many things I haven't experienced myself. As do everyone else. Have you been tortured? If not, how can you say it's bad?
I am a skeptic. That means I don't automatically believe everything I'm told, I require evidence. The more incredible a story is, the more I doubt it and the more supporting evidence it needs to have to convince me. A gay man coming out of the closet and revealing his true personality he has always been hiding is a mundane occurence, happens every day. As is someone re-evaluating their life after a close call with death. Personality altering strokes not so much.
I am not saying this can't be what it's claimed to be, only that there is a simpler, more plausible and believable explanation.
Insolitus:"the young man realised he didn't want to live a lie any more..."
If he's deliberately using the stroke incident as a cover story for his homosexuality, then he's still living a lie.
Maybe so, Gammagoblin, but the new lie is at least much smaller.
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