I am an ordinary 15-year-old girl. I go to school, chat to my friends, play my clarinet. I don’t have much on my mind. At least, that’s what most people think. In fact, life changed drastically for me and my family in the summer of 2011, when I was 10. It was a beautiful summer’s day when my dad had his accident. He had gone out for a bike ride and seemed to be taking a lot longer than usual. When Mum called him to check everything was all right, a nurse answered the phone.

I was inside the house and could hear her speaking to someone in the garden. As I looked out of the door I knew something terrible had happened. She looked stricken and I stood frozen in the doorway until she hung up and told me Dad was in hospital. He had been involved in a road accident and had a spinal cord injury. He was in hospital for eight months, all during my first year of secondary school

On that beautiful day, we didn’t have many details about what was going on because the nurse couldn’t disclose much over the phone and the unknown was the scariest thing. I had no idea whether my dad was going to live. My mum went alone to the hospital and I stayed at my grandparents’ house. I was too shaken to do anything, so I just sat quietly and hoped that everything would be OK.

The first time I went to visit him in hospital was a while after the accident. Mum hadn’t wanted me to be traumatised by what I saw, so she had waited until he looked a tiny bit more normal. I had just got back from a trip that my friend’s parents had invited me on and it had taken my mind off what was going on at home. But after having a lovely time, it was very shocking for me, as a 10-year-old, to go to a place where everyone had such frightening injuries. It made me so upset to see him, my wonderful dad, broken. He was lying in bed and couldn’t walk, use his hands properly, eat normal food or stay awake for very long. The last time I had seen him, he had been kitted out in cycling clothes, looking fit and healthy. Now he was hurt and didn’t resemble the person I used to know. That night, I hugged my mum and cried. I didn’t want my dad to be disabled and I never imagined it would happen to someone I loved.

Dad’s time in hospital went on for so long and progress was extremely slow. I used to visit him with Mum every week and now the smell of hospitals makes me feel sick. They are places of such sadness, yet when you are there most people try to stay upbeat for the patients. It was when we got home that all the emotions would flood back and the reality would hit me. Nevertheless, Dad made vast improvements in his ability and went from being almost immobile to using walking sticks. He will never be the same as he was, which breaks my heart, but I am so proud of him for persevering because it would have been so easy to give up.

I don’t have any siblings, so Mum and I were the only ones in the house for the eight months that he was away. It seemed empty and quiet, especially as Mum was sometimes at work when I got back from school. Before Dad went into hospital there had always been someone there to ask me about my day and help me with homework. Now there wasn’t. I became more independent and tried to take care of myself as much as possible. When I think about my life, I split it into before and after the accident because I feel like a very different, more mature person from the one I was before. Most people’s childhoods fade slowly into adolescence and then adult life, but mine ended abruptly. I was forced to grow up.

My teachers knew what was happening, but I only told four pupils from my school. It was too difficult to speak to anyone else about it because I felt that, if I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from crying. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me or treat me differently. I coped by separating school from home. As soon as I walked through those gates, I was the “old me” whose mum and dad were just out at work. By pretending nothing was wrong, I didn’t have to talk about it for a whole seven hours. This worked short-term, but it prevented me from making more friends, because I didn’t want people to find out. Luckily, the friends I already had were very understanding and didn’t pressure me to talk about it, but were happy for me to tell them what was on my mind if I wanted to.

Trying to cope without Dad and wondering if he would ever walk again were my main worries, so it was one of the happiest days of my life when he came home. To have spent so long without him and then to know that when I woke up tomorrow he would be there was a fantastic feeling. I had missed the little things: holding hands and feeling sure that he was strong enough to stop me from falling; going to the supermarket together to choose ingredients for dinner and having long discussions about all manner of topics, like whether the universe had an edge.

I imagined that now he was home, things would go back to how they were before. Everything would start up from where it had left off. However, nothing usually happens in the way you think it will and this was no exception. I had grown up and Dad couldn’t do all those things any more. I was the one making sure he didn’t fall over and Mum did the shopping online. Everything had changed and I missed all of the things I used to take for granted.

There is a limit to what we can do together because of Dad’s disability. He can walk with sticks, but only slowly and for short distances. A small amount of movement tires him out, so we sometimes finish days out sooner than we would like. Most of the time, Mum and I just go on day trips without him because it’s too difficult to manage. I want him to be there, too, and for us to do things like other families, but we have to compromise.

We have all come a very long way from those awful eight months and have begun to accept the situation. Dad has retired and it is nice always having him at home because we can still have our long discussions. Mum has more time to go swimming or go out with friends now that that Dad can look after himself more. It is great to see her so happy again and we can go to see plays or go shopping together without worrying about him. My life feels more normal again and while we may not be the typical family, I don’t think there is such a thing.