Before the age of 15, I was as healthy as anyone could wish to be. In my sophomore year of high school, though, my seizures began. Nobody knew what they were at first; they looked as if I was passing out. These “episodes” as my mom and I were calling them, were finally defined as seizures when a nurse at the hospital saw that during one of my “episodes” I would clench my jaw shut and my muscles would tighten and shake. Doctors put me on three different medications over the next few years. The first , Dilanton, did nothing for me. The second, Tegratoal, was killing my white blood cells which made me extremely sick.
The third , Depekot, worked, but with it came some nasty side affects, and I was still having seizures two to three times a week. I became depressed after a year of having seizures and being told by many doctors that they didn’t know what was causing it. The doctors also didn’t know how to treat it. I missed a lot of school my sophomore and junior year, which was why my grades weren’t what I wanted them to be. My teachers harped at me about not getting my work done. They didn’t understand. I also got a lot of strange looks from people when I walked down the hall.
Most of my seizures happened during school. I can’t be positive about when my depression began to reach a climax. Maybe it was when my mom and her boyfriend would yell and scream at each other about how they were going to pay for all the hospital expenses. Or maybe it was all those nights lying in bed listening to my mom cry. Whatever the reasons, I developed the mindset that I was causing my family all this pain, that it was my fault, I would never get into college, so it would be best if I wasn”t around anymore. I felt other no emotion except sadness.
I felt as if I were walking in a different dimension. I could see and hear people, but nothing anyone said made any difference to me. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. The world no longer had any color in it; it was all black and white; this is what I saw. I thought about how much better life would be for everyone if I were gone. One afternoon while my mom was at work I swallowed a bottle of Advil and a bottle of anti-bacterial hand soap. I got really sick, but didn’t tell my mom why. A couple of days later I had an argument with my mom – about what, I’m not sure.
I went upstairs to my room, put on the movie Twister and sat on the edge of my bed staring at the TV, not watching the movie, just glaring at it. Tears of sadness, anger and confusion streamed down my face. The only thing I remember after that was holding a pair of scissors in my hand and looking down at my wrists. When I woke up in the hospital, I had no idea what had happened or how I had gotten there. My mom was sitting beside me, holding my hands with her head down. I had gauze and bandages around both my wrists and that is when I realized what had happened.
Immediately after that occurrence I visited a psychiatrist three times a week for a year. She was wonderful. All she would do is sit back and let me to talk. I told her everything that was and had happened in my life. It felt awesome to get all of the congestion out of my body and mind. She suggested that I talk to my mom the way I talked to her. Building up the courage to tell my mom everything took me a while, not because I was afraid she would be angry, but because I was not as close to her as I could have been and I wasn’t sure how she would react. But when I finally started talking to her, it felt great.
She shared with me experiences she had as a child, and I came to find that we had much in common. I felt as if my world was being born again, as if this heaviness I was carrying around with me was disappearing from my body. My mom and I are now the best of friends; we tell each other everything. Sometimes she may not want to know, but I tell her anyhow. I realize now that there is much I want to do with my life. I want to go to graduate school, get my Ph. D in psychology, go to law school and medical school and join the FBI. Will I accomplish all that? Who knows, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything get in the way of my trying!
