Not being known as the sick kid

Going to university felt like a reset. A chance to start all over again.

Before everything changed, I was clever. I don’t say that to brag, I say it because it mattered to me. Learning came naturally. Thinking felt fast. I trusted my brain.

Then my brain disease slowed my cognitive ability, and suddenly I could feel the difference. Processing took longer. Concentration was harder. I noticed it before anyone else did, but eventually others noticed too.

At school, I think my teachers struggled with how to handle me. I don’t blame them. I know they probably didn’t want to push the sick kid. But that lack of pressure, even when it came from kindness, slowly changed how I saw myself. Encouragement faded. Expectations lowered. And without meaning to, I started to believe them.

University was different.

No one knew my history. No one knew what I’d been through. I wasn’t “the ill one” or “the fragile one.” I was just another student in the room. And that anonymity gave me something I didn’t realise I’d lost.

Freedom.

At uni, I wasn’t defined by what had happened to me. I could work at my own pace without being pitied. I could struggle without it being medicalised. I could succeed without it being framed as “inspiring.”

I learned that my intelligence didn’t disappear, it just changed shape. I learned differently now. Slower, maybe. More intentionally. With more effort and more patience. And that doesn’t make it any less real.

Starting again helped me rebuild confidence on my own terms. Not as the person I used to be, but as the person I am now.

University didn’t fix everything. But it gave me back something important. The belief that I am more than my illness, and that I still deserve to be challenged, trusted, and taken seriously.

Sometimes starting over isn’t about becoming someone new.

It’s about remembering who you were before the world started treating you differently.