Seizures, or why I had to escape my own cage...

Seizures began as a "what-if". After watching one of America's favorite zombie shows just after having a seizure that sent my brain into overload I had a bit of an epiphany. For over a year I'd been hiding from the world, afraid to go out because I might have a seizure. When people stare at you, accuse you of being a drug addict, or wonder if they should shove something down your mouth you start to become a bit paranoid about going out into a world full of seizure-triggering dangers. Someone will SEE you.

It was much safer, and less starey, if I stayed in the house. Facebook became my lifeline and I joined several groups for people with seizure disorders. I noticed that a lot of people felt as though their lives had never actually started, or with new seizures, that their lives were over. I recognized that feeling, I knew it well, we were BFFs and had tattoos to prove it. Right over my heart. In my head it was the word COWARD in big old yellow letters. I was afraid of the world and afraid for the world.

I felt like a failure as well as a coward; as though I'd given up on life. When I watched that episode of said show I felt like even more of a coward. What would I do, how would I survive, could I survive? I was barely surviving real life without zombies, how would I survive that? That's when I realized I had to find that backbone I used to have and stop hiding from the world.

I learned what triggered my seizures and have become an expert at avoiding most of it. I went back to school and earned a master's degree. I moved to an entirely different country and then another. Then I started writing even more. I've now written my way through three keyboards, smudging the letters off or just pounding them into submission with daily use. I've written professionally and for my own pleasure. I've written several stories, two books in different series, and quite a bit more.

I'm not an expert, by any means, and I'm certainly not Emily Bronte but I am getting by. I'm learning, I'm researching, and most of all I'm living again.

Life became almost unbearable, in the dark, hiding, afraid of someone witnessing a seizure and freaking them out. I was terrified, not of being harmed, but of harming someone through injuring them, through their uninformed actions that could leave me injured, or just scaring them. People don't react well to seeing someone have a fit and the uninformed can do some damage in the process of trying to help. I didn't want to be someone's emotional scar.

Now, I try to live in the light. I have to still deal with seizures, I have to deal with the outcome of a seizure, and live with a heart defect that causes two of the valves in my heart to leak. Life can be tough some days. Some days I wonder if I'll even make it through to the end. But I keep going, determined that I'm not going to live in survival mode, there's no need to. I have a disability. I'm not dead yet. And neither are the people walking around outside. They're just like me, trying to get through each day, hoping for the best.We have to live life, it's all over before we know it. Hiding works for a little while, it gets you through that initial "OH MY GOD" moment when you realize your life is far different from others. After a while, though, when you're ready, you have to step out of that dark hole you're hiding in, that refuge, and become an uncaged bird.