Submerged

Without any warning at all, the cold gripes me, plunges me into the dark depths of freezing, mind-numbing ice.  That’s how it begins, that’s how I know it’s happening again.  As the cold washes over my entire body, I start to shiver and shiver.  No matter what I do, I can’t get warm.  Nothing seems to warm my body.  No amount of blankets of hot water or heaters can make me warmer than the icy hand of death that grasps me hard.  I try and I try to get warm, but nothing works and I feel as if Death himself were dragging me to the Abyss.

The shivering makes me sick to my stomach and I fear that I am going to be sick all over the place.  I can feel it in the back of my throat, tasting the vicious bile grasping at my flesh.  But even when it’s the worst, I am never sick.  As I continue to shake, to shiver, I start to lose control of my body.  It starts with just simple muscle spasms, twitching.  But then I lose all control.

I can’t control my right arm.  I feel my heartbeat speed up, thundering between my breasts.  It goes out of control, twisting weirdly in front of me and I can’t do a thing to stop it from happening.  Then it spreads to my left arm and then my legs.  Eventually my entire body begins to shake, to move and I can’t stop it.  My legs move as if I was running, jumping, leaping, but I’m not moving, and I’m not going anywhere.  I can’t stop it from happening.  I try and I try to stop it, I try to regain some form of control, but all is lost and I plunge into darkness.

My body twists into bizarre positions.  I try to scream for help, to cry out, but the words won’t come to me.  Every time I try to speak, I only end in a mess of jumbled words and sounds.  I feel helpless and the ever present death grasp does nothing to help me.  I twist and I flail about, unable to control my body.  I scream and scream, but the only thing that makes it way out of my mouth is the jumbled sounds of a helpless, pitiful creature.

That’s when the real pain starts.  Sometimes it’s not so bad, sometimes it’s horrible.  It starts as just an ache in the front left of my head.  Like a dull ache and then suddenly out of nowhere it’s as if someone had plunged a knife into my skull.  I keep trying to scream, to let my pain known, but the words, I can’t find the words.  I try to grasp my head, to block the light, hoping that will help.  I can’t control my arms.  I can’t hide my face from the light.

Why is this happening to me?

A smoothing darkness overwhelms me and I sink down, down into its icy depths, smoothed by the calm of the cold.  It’s odd.  Even through the pain stabbing through my head, I feel a sort of smoothing calm from the darkness that grasps me.  Maybe it’s because I know it’s finally over for now.  I don’t really know, but it’s strange.

I still can’t speak for a little while.  It takes some time to recover and sometimes I don’t want to open my eyes, sometimes I don’t want to wake up, but I know I will eventually.  I don’t fully remember what happens during these episodes, these seizures.  I know they happen.  I know they have happened and I know this is how they happen, but I don’t know why, nor what caused them.  I don’t realize after a seizure, that I have had one.  Why?

I don’t have answers right now.  I can’t tell people what’s going on, because I don’t have much to say.  What can I tell them?  I need answers, but I know it’s going to be some time until I get them.  I am not sure I can make it.  I shouldn’t think like that, I know, but I can’t help but wonder if I will pull through this.

People will tell me that I am strong, that I can make it through this.  They want to believe I will and so do I, but how do we know for sure?  There’s no way to know and I can honestly tell you that I am not strong.  I am not holding up well and it takes everything I have just to try to make it through one day.  Every day I wonder if I will make it to the next.  Sure, I’m not tied down to a hospital bed like I probably should be.  I don’t have wires in odd places and I don’t have to worry terribly much about medical bills and whether or not I am going to be able to eat next week.  I have those guarantees, but that doesn’t make me strong.

And it does not make this any easier.  Money, insurance, it helps, but I still struggle.  I struggle to stay strong.  I struggle to make it through the day.  I feel like I am hanging onto the edge of a cliff, just waiting for the fall.  What’s going to happen to me?  Where will this path lead?  I am trying my best to stay positive, to stay in good spirits, but even when I smiles at my loving husband, I can’t help but ache in despair inside.  It hurts to know the pain I am causing him.  I see it in his eyes when he looks at me.  He hates seeing me like this, hates seeing me struggle, seeing me suffer and I hate it.

Sure, I know, I should be thankful right?  Not everyone has a loving spouse to pin their arms to their sides, make sure they can’t hurt themselves, but it’s still tough.  It’s still hard, because I know he’s got to work day and night in order to keep us fed, clothed and anything else we might need.  Just because I have someone holding me the whole time, doesn’t make it easier on me.

I am not sure what spurred me to write this tonight, let alone share it with people I barely know.  Maybe it’s just something I need to do, a confession of sorts if you will.  I have always found that it helps to just write.  Sometimes you can write with absolutely no goal in mind, but to bare your soul upon the blank pages of the canvas in front of you and that is what I have done.  I have filled this page with my pains, my sorrows so deeply wrought in the submergence of pain that I know there are people out there who will listen to what I have to say.

I don’t ask for you to comment.  I don’t need sympathy, pity or comfort.  Maybe I just need to know someone somewhere out there is listening to my story unfolds.  Life’s a journey right?  This is just another bump on the road?  It’s just another twist in the plot that I shall twist into something so crafty and be able to grab my audience and place them directly into this story.  I hope that is all this is, because if I don’t make it through this, who will tell my story?  I am the only one who can tell it, so I have to hang in there.  I have to be brave and have courage.

I ask nothing of my readers, my friends and people who might listen, nothing but to lend me your ears for just a few moments a day.  Take my hand and allow me to bring you into my story as it unfolds before my own eyes.  I have no idea what life is going to be like from here on out.  I have no idea if life will continue as it always has, but I am here and waiting for another adventure.  That’s all this is, another adventure on the high seas of blank pages of our lives.  And it’s time to fill them with words and stories that will leave an audience breathless and wanting more.  I’ve probably babbled on and on enough to annoy even myself, so I suppose this ought to be a good time and place to end our journey—for the evening.

Let tomorrow part the darkness of tonight in the rising sun’s light and be reborn.

~Pirate Out~