Finally Talking

The "I fake it until I make it" saying should be pasted on my forehead. If I'm being honest, and I want to be completely transparent here, my life has been rocky for basically the last 6 years. What I'm about to say is probably one of the only things I'll write about here that people do know. When I was a senior in high school, almost 6 February's ago, I came downstairs for dinner, and walking into the kitchen I stumbled multiple times. However, I couldn't seem to stop.

It was the weirdest thing, I had absolutely no control over what my body was doing. My sister was crying and asking me what I was doing, and I just remember at that point how angry I was at her. I had no idea what was going on, but her being emotional was too much for me. Pretty much right then I blacked out. What actually happened after that, to the people conscious (obviously not me), was that I had a Tonic-Clonic seizure (it was called Grand Mal at the time). To be short and sweet this loosely translates to I lost consciousness, collapsed, and my entire body began to tremble.

Now for people who have not known someone with epilepsy, when you have a seizure it is basically like you have checked out of that situation. There is complete memory loss and all you see is basically a blank. For me, the hardest part of that is I can feel, and I know there was a chunk of time between me stumbling in front of my sister and what happened next. It is just not accessible to me and it never will be. Suddenly I was sitting in my dining room talking to a paramedic and I snapped out of it.

I looked around and saw firemen, my dad talking to paramedics, a stretcher (apparently ready to carry me out), and my sister in the corner. I think she was out of tears because her face was just shocked, as was mine. You know it has been six years and I still have never been as self-conscious, embarrassed, and just frozen as I was when I became alert. I even was answering questions before I had fully grasped the situation. It was like coming out of a really deep sleep, except for me it was a nightmare. I knew, right then, I just wasn't the same. That is pretty much where my story started off.