by Chris Birch
‘This is from when we were in the play, I remember how close we were then,’ she said.
‘You talked me into that didn’t you?’ I said
‘I did but you enjoyed it in the end,’ she said.
I wished I could reminisce with her, it was old Chris that should have been sitting there with Lynsey, not me. I felt bad that I didn’t remember more about her.
‘I would never have said you were gay then,’ she said.
It was a relief to hear her confirm what I had always thought.
‘Obviously, some people don’t believe me,’ I said.
I was relieved the conversation had started to flow.
‘Well, people can’t judge, they didn’t know you,’ she said.
Lynsey had no idea how much her words were going to help me, she had given me the answers I needed. It was the beginning of a case I was building to prove to the world I was telling the truth – and with each piece of evidence I uncovered, the more determined I became.
Chapter Twenty One: Is It Possible?
Shards of bright colours arced above my head, patterns decorated every surface in front of me. My eyes struggled to take it all in, going from one flamboyant painting, to another, to another. It was a sensory overload, as if I were viewing the stained-glass windows of a Cathedral.
‘Hiya Chris, I’m Tommy.’
I glanced over his appearance, he had grey-hair and was wearing spectacles and plain clothes. As he held out his hand I wondered how someone who looked so normal and ordinary, could live in such an unusual place.
Before we had come to Tommy’s house the researcher for the programme had told me a bit about him. Tommy McHugh was an ex-criminal, a tough guy from Liverpool who didn’t have an artistic bone in his body. But when he suffered a stroke he suddenly had an unwavering need to draw, paint and create art. He had painted and drawn on every possible surface in his small home, sometimes twice over.
I had hoped that if people saw other stroke survivors who had suffered a severe change in their personality, then they would realise it wasn’t a huge leap to believe a stroke could change your sexuality too.
‘Look at this one Chris.’
Tommy motioned for me to join him on the stairs with the enthusiasm of an excited toddler. Tommy stood next to a patch of the wall that was covered with scrawling colours, it reminded me of cavemen drawings, the messy pictures seemed to have been drawn in a rush.
‘I can’t stop myself, ever since I had the stroke I have to draw.’
I had arrived at his house slightly nervous but five minutes with Tommy and his warm, accepting nature had put me totally at ease.
‘I was a builder before the stroke, I didn’t do any art, at times I wished this had happened when I was fourteen, so I could have been an artist all my life.’
‘The stroke changed me. I lost family, friends and even my wife because I changed so quickly,’ he said.
I nodded and as Tommy looked at me, right in the eyes, I knew he felt what I did.
‘You are isolated and alone in what you’ve been through,’ he said.
Tommy showed me around his house, as we moved through the rooms I told him my story and he accepted it as fact. He didn’t question me like other people had. We had a natural ease with each other and after spending a few hours with Tommy and seeing all of his artwork, he gave me a piece of glass with faces carved into it.
‘I want you to have that,’ he said, kindly and then grabbed me into a hug.
‘Stay strong,’ he said.
‘I’ll try.’
‘Listen, if the doctors and scientists of this world have no idea what happened to me and you, how can our friends and family have any idea?’ Tommy said.
He was right. But I didn’t want to just accept that, challenging the medical world was what I had to do next. If I could get a doctor to recognise that the stroke had changed my sexual orientation then the rest of the world would have to accept it as the truth.
The following week I was taken to Queen Mary, University of London, to meet Dr Qazi Rahman, a leading expert in human sexual orientation. He had researched the neurological differences between gay and straight men and women to discover whether their brains behaved differently. From his research he had developed a personality test which could, supposedly, determine whether or not a person was truly born gay. I was taken to a room, given a computer and asked to answer simple, multiple choice, questions. Jack waited outside the room for me and I nervously pressed my responses, painfully aware of how significant the test would be. After an hour of being tested we waited for the results.
‘How do you feel?’ Jack asked.
He squeezed my arm reassuringly.
Even though I knew he didn’t necessarily agree with me, it felt like Jack hoped I would get the result I wanted, just so I could finally be at peace. I knew I wasn’t gay before the stroke but I needed the results to prove that so that everyone else would believe me.
‘Right, we’ve got the results so we’re going to film now,’ the director said.
He signalled for me to come over to the spot where the doctor was waiting.
‘So, ultimately, we tested you on how gay your brain is,’ the doctor started.
I nodded.
‘For half of these tests you perform as a homosexual man and for the other half you perform as a heterosexual man,’ he said.
‘Right.’
It wasn’t the conclusive result I wanted, in fact, it didn’t really prove anything.
‘Do you think the stroke could of made me gay?’ I asked him.
‘Well, no,’ he said.
I was furious. It seemed like he was just giving his opinion rather then basing it on the results of the test.
‘Is there a chance that it could go back and that he could switch back to being heterosexual again?’ Jack asked.
I looked over at him and suddenly felt terrible. In my crusade to prove that the stroke had turned me gay I hadn’t for one second thought about how that made Jack feel. He had probably spent our whole relationship fearing that I would have another stroke, go back to liking girls and then wouldn’t want to be with him. He was worried he could lose me, forever.
‘We don’t know,’ the doctor said.
Hang on, he’s just said that he didn’t think the stroke had made me gay but wasn’t ruling out that another stroke could make me heterosexual again? He wasn’t making any sense.
When the cameras stopped filming I gave Jack a big hug. I suddenly realised that he had a very understandable reason for not wanting to believe me. He didn’t want to think that our relationship could be threatened by another stroke.
I left London that day frustrated and downbeat. The documentary makers had organised one more specialist for me to meet, I just hoped he would be more helpful and open minded.
The next afternoon I found myself in the private office of Dr Sudad Johwad, in Cardiff. The building looked like it was a converted museum, it’s grandness was slightly intimidating.
‘This guy is an expert on strokes,’ the director said as we sat in the waiting room.
In the doorway appeared an old looking man with white hair, from appearances he didn’t look like a renegade who was going to challenge medical science.
This time I was going to ask the questions, after a quick chat we sat down and the cameras started rolling.
‘Have you ever come across someone whose sexual orientation has changed after a stroke?’ I asked Dr Johwad directly.
I waited patiently for his inevitable, ‘no’.
‘Yes I have.’
I looked back at the doctor, I was surprised but excited to hear more.
‘Yes, I’ve had a patient who went from homosexual to heterosexual after having a stroke,’ he said.
‘Right, okay.’
I tried to control the pitch in my voice so I didn’t sound too excited.
‘In your experience do you believe a stroke can change your sexual orientation?’
“Yes, it can change everything about you, so why not sexual orientation?’
Instantly, my body relaxed, I was elated, it was more than I could have hoped to hear.
‘That’s amazing, that’s great, I don’t know what else to say, I really appreciate you seeing me.’
It was all the vindication I needed, as I shook his hand I imagined all the people who doubted me watching Dr Johwad in the documentary and felt victorious.
When the documentary aired later that year, in 2012, it had a record audience for the TV channel and trended on twitter. It brought me back into the public eye again but this time I felt strong enough to take any responses that came from the public because I had evidence on my side. But there was one person, in particular, I hoped would see the programme. My mum. Somehow, I felt that if she saw proof that the stroke had made me gay she might accept what had happened and therefore accept me. I spent the next few days after the documentary aired expecting a phone call, or a message, from Mum but none came.
But I got a lot of responses from strangers and received my very first piece of fan mail which had been passed on by the BBC.
Chris, it started.
I’m so glad that I have heard about you.
My mother had a stroke and she almost immediately transformed from a reserved, Christian woman, to a hooligan who went to football matches, got drunk and started fights with strangers. We didn’t recognise the woman she became.
The doctor said it was the stroke that had changed her but I didn’t believe it. It seemed so unlikely that the stroke had changed parts of her personality, instead, I thought it was something she could control.
I could feel the regret pouring from the page, as if an emotional imprint had been left by the person who had written it.
Mum carried on drinking every day, she became more and more disinhibited and
less like the woman we knew. Mum hated who she had become so much that she took
her own life. I wish I had of known about you before, when she was still alive, then I
would have understood.
I clutched the letter in my hand almost crumpling it as I struggled to contain my emotions. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know this woman, or her mum, I knew all too well what she was feeling.
Amongst lots of emails and texts of support from friends and family I received an unexpected message on Facebook one day. I clicked on my inbox and saw the name Lauren. It wasn’t until I read the first lines that I realised it was from the mysterious fiance I had once had.
I saw the programme about you, it was great, she wrote.
You should have contacted me, I would of taken part and told them how different you are now. After all I knew you the best then. You definitely weren’t gay when we were together.
It felt as if a fictional character had come to life. I had heard stories about Lauren but since I had few memories of her she didn’t seem real, she was like a myth. Now, reading a message from my ex-fiancé, who wished me well, it was like my old life and my new one had somehow joined up.
Ten months after the documentary had been aired Jack and I moved into a new house. We wanted to start afresh and Jack was desperate to add some more animals to our pet family. But when we unpacked our things I found the piece of glass that Tommy had given me had split in half. It was only a piece of glass but I was upset it was broken. So, I sent a message to Tommy to tell him what had happened, for some reason I felt like he needed to know. When I finally got a reply it was from Tommy’s son to say that Tommy had passed away. It hit me quite hard. I had only met him once but Tommy had a big impact on me, it was a shock that such a larger-than-life character could suddenly be taken. Tommy had embraced his new artistic skill and rather than wish the stroke hadn’t happened, he made the most of the changes he experienced. He made me realise that I should be grateful I had the stroke, not annoyed. In those early days, when I first realised I was attracted to men, I felt like being gay and all the other changes, were a bad side effect of the stroke. But as I contemplated Tommy and his positive attitude, I realised I had actually become a better version of myself. Suddenly struck by how precious life is, I realised how proud I was of who I had become. I am who I am, I told myself, and that’s good enough for me.
Epilogue
I read an article last year about a woman who was born with a conjoined twin. It wasn’t until she was older that she learnt that she had been born with a sister, who shared many of her organs, including her heart. Neither of them could survive together so their parents had to make the agonising decision to let one twin die so the other could live. The story fascinated me, it was with me for days until I realised why I found it so poignant. That’s how I think of old Chris now. Instead of imagining him as a stranger, or as part of me, I think of him as a conjoined twin, he gave up his life so I could thrive, he died so I could live.
Ten years on from the accident, I feel like I’ve come full circle. I am engaged again, this time to a man, I have fantastic friends and I have the support of a loving family, although now that comes from Jack’s side as I still have no contact with my mum, brother, or Nan, on my Mum’s side. Day to day it doesn’t bother me but I can’t pretend I don’t have lasting scars from losing people who were so important to me. I realised the other day that for everything I forgot during the stroke, I still remember my Mum’s phone number off the top of my head. But in the main, I have managed to forget Mum. There was a time when I would have welcomed a reunion but now if she called I wouldn’t answer. The space she had once left in my life has been filled with friends, Jack and other family. I haven’t had a mother for eight years and I’ve grown to not need one now. When me and Jack get married she won’t be getting an invite.
The documentary helped my recovery not only because it went some way to proving that my story is true but because I was overwhelmed with the feedback I got from other stroke sufferers who had experienced their own changes. It might not have silenced all of my critics and Jack still thinks there’s a chance I was gay before but I’ve got all the answers I need.
I believe we are all just layers of different experiences, so when my memories were wiped out, I had to reboot and start again. I was reborn. The switch that happened in my head when I had the stroke awoke a new section of my brain, but the years that followed and the experiences I have had, shaped me just as much as that. Whilst I wouldn’t be who I am now without having had the stroke, that day was only the beginning.
Just like me, you don’t have control over who you are ... your brain does. Our bodies are just vessels. Just like me, you could one day wake up with no memory of who you were before. I think my story proves that there is no such thing as a soul; if everything I was could be wiped out by a stroke, then ‘souls’ can’t exist. I’m living proof that we are all just a product of the thousands of synapses pumping information around our brain.
I still suffer from tremors in my hand when I get too stressed, that all too familiar warning sign that a stroke could be on the horizon. For all I know, I could have a stroke tomorrow and lose my sight, hearing, mobility or even worse, die. So, I take every opportunity that comes my way, I seize the day and never say no to anything, well, within reason.
With all the focus on the negative side of having a stroke, I’ve only just started to appreciate how lucky I am that I was able to start my life again. In fact, I meet many people who tell me they envy me. Some people go through life hating who they become, regretting the choices they made, and the chance to start again, to be reborn, with no memory of what came before, seems like a luxury to them.
I don’t ever take anything for granted. I know how it feels to be homeless, to have nobody, to spend Christmas alone, to feel desperately lonely, to hate yourself, to want to die. Every piece of good fortune I have and every luxury I can afford I remind myself of how far I have come. In fact, Jack says I’m a hoarder because I never like to waste, or throw away, anything. The truth is, now I know how it feels to have nothing I see the value in ev
erything around me.
I have no regrets about the journey I have been on and instead I feel grateful. I couldn’t be happier now and without the stroke I wouldn’t have this new life that I love so much, or Jack. I wouldn’t swap my life with old Chris for the world. It’s a strange thing to admit but despite the difficulties I’ve had, I’m glad I had a stroke.
