00:00 Nine months ago today I woke up speaking with a Welsh accent. Nine months ago today
00:06 I lost my identity. I lost part of who I am. And how have I coped? Not very well.
00:14 I'm not gonna lie. It's been the longest, hardest nine months ever. I mean no one
00:20 knows how long I'm gonna have this accent for. It could go, it could stay, it
00:26 could change. Anything could happen. That's foreign accent syndrome for you.
00:31 And yes I'm all over social media and yes I share my journey and I share my
00:38 story and for good reason. I feel like I want people to know that this is real
00:47 life. This has happened to me. I have woke up speaking with a Welsh accent and it's
00:55 bloody difficult. It's so hard because you do get questioned everywhere you go
01:03 or if you bump into someone that's Welsh. "Oh where you from?" Oh it's so
01:11 difficult and it's actually quite stressful. I talk for England and I don't
01:18 mind speaking about it all. I love to tell people I woke up speaking with a
01:25 Welsh accent and you know this has happened to me because I have functional
01:29 neurological disorder and then people are aware. So it does help spread the
01:33 awareness. However I need people to understand how real this is and how I've
01:41 lost my identity. I've lost part of who I am and I'm just trying to figure out
01:48 the new me. And even though it's been nine months I still haven't adapted
01:54 because I still miss my old voice. I still miss who I used to be, what I used
02:00 to do, how I used to go about my life and it's all different. It's all changed and
02:06 I'm still figuring out life and how to do life now I'm so unable to do so much.
02:15 And just like that the Welsh accent is back. It does just come back on its own.
02:23 It does just appear randomly and the same way the English and the slurred
02:29 and stuttered speech just appears naturally. It just comes and goes when it
02:34 pleases. There is no pattern. I've tried to figure out if
02:42 there's a reason it happens or I just I don't know why. I don't know why.
02:52 It's like the English speaking me is slurred and stuttered and it's like a
03:00 flare-up and it's part of my FND and then it's like the Welsh is normal
03:06 to me now and that doesn't make sense. I can't get it to make sense in my
03:12 head. I can't get over that one minute I'm English one minute I'm
03:19 Welsh. It is really hard for me because I was English I woke up Welsh and now I'm
03:27 a bit of both and it just depends on what kind of day I'm having. It's
03:31 actually harder than you can imagine. How do you cope with that? How do you
03:38 cope with your accent being different and keep coming and going and then when
03:44 it's English it's slurred and stuttered. Your voice is who you are. Your
03:52 voice is your identity and mine keeps changing and I have no idea why it keeps
03:59 changing. So I'm always asked how or why I've woken up with a Welsh accent and I
04:07 don't know the answer to give to these people. I was told by a neurologist that
04:13 the word why doesn't matter. The reason why doesn't matter. Why isn't important?
04:20 Well actually I disagree because I've been asked to accept that I've got
04:27 foreign accent syndrome and FND and I'm finding it really difficult to accept
04:33 because I don't know the reason why I've got it. So it's making it harder to
04:39 accept without the reason and it's not like I can ask Joe Bloggs around the
04:46 corner because he's got it or Sally up the road because she's got it. It doesn't
04:51 happen to everyone. It's really rare. Foreign accent syndrome is really rare
04:57 to me but to the neurologist apparently it's not rare. He sees this all the time
05:03 but I'm struggling here. I'm struggling with why this has happened to me. Why me?
05:11 There's got to be a reason and I can't move forward. My mental health is
05:18 suffering because I don't know the reason why and it's easier for you guys
05:24 to say why does it matter because it matters a lot because my whole life has
05:29 been turned upside down. I've cried for the last week because I can't I can't do
05:35 the physical things that I want to do. I can't do the... I just there's so much I
05:40 can't do that it's breaking me down bit by bit and I want to know the reason why
05:46 I've got this so I can try and fix it and then other people can find out why
05:52 they've got it and they can fix themselves because we are all suffering
05:57 and it really isn't fair.
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