Remember that care center?
This was Martin's life now. Day after day in a wheelchair, facing the same walls.
Because the staff believed no one was home, the TV played Barney. For hours.
"I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney."
— Martin Pistorius
So he watched something else. The sun moving across the room. The shadows crawling over the floor.
He learned to tell the time by them. Why? "Simply to make it to when I was taken out of my wheelchair."
Years later, he could still tell the time of day by the shadows.
Some days, the darkest thoughts crowded in. Your family doesn't see you anymore. You will never get out.
So he learned to switch off. "You don't really think about anything," he said. "You simply exist."
It was a very dark place, he said, because "you are allowing yourself to vanish."
He was in his 20s now. Still trapped. Still invisible.