Tag: epilepsy?

Homesickness

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I’m currently wading through what I’m calling “a dark night of the soul.”

Maybe it’s the time change after we “fell back” earlier this month.Maybe it’s the starkness with which the seasons change up here in the mountains.

Maybe it’s the antiepileptic medication.
Maybe it’s the 55-gallon drum full of trauma that I’m dragging around while I try to dig to the bottom of it all, understand my feelings, and clear it all out.
Most probably, it’s a combination of all the above.
I spent my first year back here convinced that I would feel more at peace once we found a house. Okay, that’s not exactly true. I spent our first three months here thinking we had a house, then I spent the nine months after that trying to find a house. That was the prize that I kept my eye on. Just find a place to live, and everything else would sort itself out. Eventually (almost a year to the day after we moved), we closed on the house we’re living in now.
Then I was diagnosed with epilepsy, which means I can’t drive for at least a while.
Then Gomez and Elroy met a deer in the middle of the highway and almost rurnt my little car.And the hits just keep coming.

Seeing how happy Elroy was here and seeing Gomez flourish at his job were enough to sustain me through a solid year of the three of us living out of one bedroom, but I don’t know how much longer that sustenance will last.

I’m homesick, but my homesickness isn’t for one specific place.

I’m homesick for a pre-mined Yates Gap that doesn’t have a clear view to where my grandmother’s house used to sit and for a Fremont that doesn’t smell like the sulfuric pits of hell.

I’m homesick for our old house because that’s where I watched Elroy grow up.

I’m homesick for my life before I came back “home” – when distance was the reason I felt like we were always on our own because the truth is that absence is a choice, and the truth hurts so much.

I’m homesick for the option to shop from more than one grocery store, for a Wal-Mart that doesn’t take the better part of an hour to get to, for decent healthcare that doesn’t require taking a sick day and spending three and a half hours on the road to access.

I’m homesick for our barely-middle-class life, for a time when the idea of having to pay for braces for Elroy or a routine oil change or an annual property tax bill didn’t send me into a “how are we going to make it this month?” panic.

I’m homesick for the anonymity that living in a larger (relatively-speaking) area provides. That way, I could seize out in school in peace without having to assure my mother months later that I absolutely did not have a stroke despite what “everybody” says.

And despite all of my backward-looking sadness, I know that we have to make this work. We chose to move here, out of everywhere in the world, and we don’t have the option to change our minds now.

Beyond the Native Capacity

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This past spring, I cried in front of a co-worker. This was a huge deal to me because I never cry. I hadn’t really cried in years. At the time, I told my (probably freaked out) colleague that I felt like a glass of water that someone kept adding drops to, and that I guess the state testing we were knee-deep in the middle of was the drop that caused my glass to overflow. 

Have you ever felt like this?
So, of course I wanted the official name for whatever this is called. A quick Google of “what’s it called when water extends above the rim of a glass?” led me to this explanation, where the author describes the physics behind filling a glass “beyond the native capacity.” Now, I’m not a physicist, but I do love language and I thought I had reached a point “beyond the native capacity” of my ability to handle life last April.
Then, I told life to hold my (overflowing) beer and Gomez and I bought and spruced up a house. Then, we started a new school year. And I made it not even three weeks into the new school year before my brain lit up like a Christmas tree, and life since has been a stew of foggy (at best) memories and doctor’s appointments.
My latest brain short-out has really turned my feelings up to 11. I’m all tears and emotions now. A few days ago, I cried because we don’t live near a Target anymore. Last night, I cried when I realized that Gomez had put my favorite blanket on our bed when he changed out the linens earlier in the day. It’s messy and quite uncomfortable for anyone who happens to witness my now-frequent “spells,” as Granny would call them.
So, guess what I did today, when the neurologist officially diagnosed me with epilepsy?
I cried. And I realized that I am, right now, officially beyond the native capacity.
It’s a lot to process. It’s one of those moments when time divides itself into “before” and “after.” Before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, Gomez could count on me to help with the errands and Elroy-running; after, I’m not allowed to drive for at least six months. Before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I relished in the solitude of a quiet house while the boys went camping or fishing or to a ball game; after, I’m scared to be home alone. Before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, I craved the rural obscurity of our new hometown so much that we moved back here; after, I wonder if moving two hours away from a semi-decent hospital wasn’t the worst decision we’ve ever made.
Life for me is scary right now, and all I can do is try to stay calm and wait for the glass to stop overflowing.

A(n) (Un)Burdened Mind

On By The Homesick Homecomer2 Comments

I had a doozy planned for my next post. It would’ve probably evolved into a series of sorts, full of observations from my time as an accountant in the coal mining industry, musings on the healthcare vacuum in our area, and my best attempts at squaring my feelings about the larger forces I see at work behind the scenes.

Then my brain exploded, and I’ve spent the past four days losing the trash can in my kitchen (that’s not some cutesy euphemism – I literally cannot remember where the garbage can sits).

I’m not sure which is more terrifying – waking up on the floor, surrounded by paramedics telling me I’ve had a seizure (which is how my last two “episodes” played out) or knowing that it was going to happen before it did. Both situations are equally terrifying in their own ways.

I think back to when Elroy was born as the first time I ever felt like my body had let me down. I did not handle that revelation well at all. His premature arrival kicked off two solid years of postpartum depression that left me on shaky ground with my then-employer and afraid to be alone with my own child.

And I feel the sadness creeping back in around the edges. I’m a control freak, so knowing that something can sneak up from nowhere, sock me in the hospital for three days, erase a ton of my recent memories (while not erasing any of the recently-recovered trauma memories – thanks for that, brain), take my driver’s license, and completely change my life makes me feel helpless on a level that I can’t do justice with words.

But this time, I also feel warmth and love from my community and my neighbors. I feel the fight that that I used to finally break through the thickness of  the sedatives that kept me out for 36 hours because all I wanted to do was talk to my boy. I feel a sense of commitment to my family and my students. I’m not afraid of the potential weight gain or rage that I might experience while my doctors and I try to figure out the meds that will work best for me. I’ve finally tamped my vanity down enough to embrace the C-PAP that will be taking up residence on my nightstand really soon.

Because the truth is, I will do and accept all that and more if it means I get to spend more time with Gomez and Elroy.

I met my own mortality this week. It really scared me. And it made me really thankful, too.