Fighting The Lightning

It’s overwhelming, and like nothing you’ve ever felt before when the lightning strikes. You feel all at once light and heavy, light you’re soaring in the sky and being crushed by the deepest depths. There’s a numbness that goes with it. It finds its way to the back of your neck and then radiates down. Your world starts to turn, and you think it’s because of the feeling at your neck but it’s not, by this point you’re already starting to fall. The colours bleed into each other until finally your world goes black.

It’s like a dream, the next part. You’re fading in and out, calling voices sound muffled like there’s cotton in your ears. You know what it is, the lightning has struck again and despite knowing what it is you still can’t believe it. The lights flash in front of your eyes, as they must, they need to make sure you are responsive. Then come the questions, your name, your age, your address, the date. Infuriatingly mundane questions, with the most obvious answers imaginable. But the answers don’t come, not right away. You know the answer exists somewhere in your mind, but it’s hard, everything has stopped, everything is in slow motion, including your mind. You’ve never felt more like a sack of meat than you do at this moment. Your weight is too heavy to lift, and every neuron you fire to make yourself move, jerks and twitches your muscles. Then comes the transportation, the sirens and gurneys and its here that you can only hope to sleep again. For more than anything, the enchanting prospect of sleep is too hard to resist.

It is some time before you wake again, there is nothing they can do for you, no medicines to administer no treatments to make it easier. The only thing that can be done for you is to give you space enough to rest. The lightning is gone now, and you are left weak as a newborn babe and, like a child, must learn to move again. This is where the anger sets in. You follow all the instructions and work so hard to take care of yourself and it happens again. You are again reduced to nothing, unable to control yourself or remember yourself. You can feel your mind being clouded by the fog the lightning leaves and thoughts bounce off the edges of your skull in strange directions. It is usually at this point that you are subjected to tests. Blood tests and X-rays mostly: You must be found to be in one piece. This is when the cold sets in. You can’t move to keep warm nor can you really do much in the way of calling out for more blankets. You are helpless. As your temperature drops you try to stay warm, hoping that soon there will be someone to walk by and get a blanket. They wheel you around to get X-rays and you feel like despite their oath they must be trying to kill you, and their pleas to you to ‘remain still’ are simply venom that they spit at you in your weakness.

At this moment you don’t need to believe in a god to reach out to one. You would make any deal that would save you from going through this again. You know in your heart you would capitulate to any demand if it meant you could be free of this hell. You lie back and watch the lights roll past in the corridor above your head and wonder why they don’t put anything up there to look at. More than miles and miles of hospital lights there could be pictures, something to take your mind off the coldness and sterility of the hospital. They wheel you back to where you need to be, and they leave you. The pleasantries about food and lighting adjustments are then made. The lights mean nothing to you now. The sun could be 5ft from your face and you would still sleep soundly. For this is not the sleep of fatigue, it is the sleep of one who wouldn’t mind not waking again so long as they never had to feel this tired. You know you should eat before you fall asleep, you’re certain it will be hours before you wake up again and your body will need fuel to heal you. But you’re never there right at lunch time so food must be set on your list of future problems and you let sleep take you.

It's the sound of the food trolley that tends to wake you, you wonder do they deliberately make them rattle and have at least one dodgy wheel just so you can hear it coming. The trolley is a godsend. You wake with a hunger unlike any other in life. You are driven by a desperate, almost animalistic need to feed. It consumes your every thought, and despite your desperation your muscles cannot accommodate your willingness to devour your meal. You must relearn here. Fingers are difficult to control when you can’t remember how they work. They spasm off at odd angles and you feel that even newborns have a stronger grip. Your muscles twitch, and cutlery seems like some sick joke. Who would need it anyway the food is invariably cold, even when labelled ‘hot’: Maybe it has been sitting beside you for longer than you thought? You can’t be sure you haven’t been passing in and out this whole time. Your hands shake as you attempt to coordinate your meal, in the end all knives are abandoned, and a fork is simply to stab and shove. It no longer matters for societal conventions, manners or the opinions of others. Without this food, you feel you will die, all reserves depleted, you must feed. Everything goes in no matter how big the slice; you shove it in and keep going.

It’s usually now that the true reality hits. You were doing so well, it had been under control for so long, and now this. Here you are again, at the mercy of others because you cannot take care of yourself. You are weak, vulnerable, and no amount of anger, frustration, resentment or bargaining will change that. The food is gone now, and you are heavy. You can’t understand how in normal life you don’t feel as suffocated as you do now. How did you never appreciate when you worked properly, when all systems were a go, and operating within normal parameters. It’s sickening…why? That word. That deeply hurtful word. Why? No amount of time or explanations will ever be enough to satisfy the enormity of that word. Every time you think about it, the only answer you have is ‘because you are epileptic’. It’s crippling. One word. One word to describe all that pain, all that suffering. This is when you notice the depression seeping in. You didn’t even notice it at first. It started with why and now it’s found traction. You can’t help the feeling; you feel like you’ve lost; like you were playing a game and you suck at it. With the weight of your own bones bearing down on you and the exhaustion and grief of going through it all again, you feel like a leaf in the breeze being tossed about on a whim. You know that these feelings aren’t going anywhere, and your only option now is to sleep; because you can’t stop these feelings, but you might at least be able to keep them at bay a little longer.

Everyone thinks it’s the physical pain that is the worst when the lightning strikes, but it’s not. You might bruise or dislocate or impale but that is short lived. That pain only lasts as long as it lasts. Once healed you won’t even remember how much it hurt. It won’t keep you up at night for months on end as you try to figure out the why? What set it off? Were you careless? Did you not take proper care of yourself? Were you too stressed out? Over time you realise, the why’s don’t matter. They never really mattered. It’s just easier to function if you can pin it down. It’s easier to be certain and say, the reason was because…but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you fell again, but like the hero in an action movie you got up again. You pushed through the pain and refused to admit defeat. The lightning might humble you, hurt you, bring you to your knees and damn near break you, but you refuse to let it beat you. You will not be broken by a neurological anomaly. Some small misfiring in the deepest recesses of a faulty organ. Your condition is not who you are, it is a small aspect that makes you more that what you hoped to be. It makes you stronger, fiercer, harder, but it also gives you clarity, compassion, empathy and wisdom. Because no one who suffers could survive without these things. It will always be there, a silent onlooker waiting for a moment of weakness. But you accept it, as a part of you, but what you never accept is defeat.