It was 5 years and three months since my last seizure. It’s the reason I have been writing less here, because I felt like I had no right to talk about the subject. It didn’t mean I didn’t have to take medication, or be aware of the situation always, it just was kind of the feeling like I had a completely neurotypical brain. I didn’t have to worry about seizures somehow.

Then one happened.

It happened at a mall, in front of a lot of people. A full blown generalized tonic-clonic grand-mal seizure. Eyes rolled back, started making a choking sound, hit my head on a shelf and the ground. Mall security was called and paramedics arrived quickly. Luckily I had a friend with me who confirmed that I have epilepsy and it wasn’t some kind of overdose.

Previously, seizures lasted 30 seconds and I recovered within a few minutes. This time, the seizure lasted a few minutes and I am still unsure if I am recovered. I can’t quite remember anything from the last few days. I’ve been making lists for everything so I know some things got done but I don’t remember actually doing them. When I’m awake, I’ve been watching movies but I have no idea what I have watched. I know people have come by, because I wrote it on my calendar but I don’t recall it or anything we talked about.

A friend of mine told me about the phrase “Breakthrough seizure”. When triggers pile up and a person who has gone a year or more without an episode has a seizure. They can be more violent to the body and I would definitely attest to that. My body is sore and my head hurts, I can’t remember things, it’s like the extreme version of what I was going through. This is similar to when I started having seizures at the age of 14. Those were longer, they took a longer time to recover, and I was totally lost during the recovery period.

This time. This time is a lot of different factors. I live really far away from my family. I’m divorced. I live alone-ish. I have a puppy who is only 3 months old. I have to walk her every three hours because she is still working on being house-trained and has oodles of energy. I have to be more careful than I ever have been. Even when I lived alone before, I had already been having seizures for a few years and they were less severe than this one was.

Also, I cried. I cried so much. The paramedics had to hear me cry. I was so embarrassed. I’m still embarrassed. There are a thousand reasons that I should not be, starting with the fact that this was out of my control. Except that, I do still feel this way. I probably scared everyone in the mall. I probably scared the friend I was with. I have no idea what I’ve said to anyone since then. I would probably just sleep and stay in my apartment if I absolutely didn’t have to take Ophelia outside (that’s the puppy). This feels as bad and as hard as the first time that it ever happened. All of a sudden, it’s like I’m 14 years old again, all my friends have abandoned me, and I’m covered with bruises and a migraine. I KNOW this isn’t true, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t feel this way.

The reason I wanted to write about this is because I think I had forgotten what it was actually like to experience a seizure. Not just the episode, but all the subsequent trauma. Even just imagining how people see me now as a person. I think I am going to need to re-read my blog to remind myself that this isn’t the end of the world.

I am epileptic. I had a seizure. I will be okay.