A Fragment from the Diary of an Epileptic
I’m tired and it has been a long day. Maybe it’s the time of the month, maybe it’s the time of the moon. It’s stalking me again. I must be vigilant. The beast is out there coming in to take a piece of my mind and my life. How to arm against it? Quick - take an extra pill - wait quietly and hope the beast will go.
No, he’s moved closer now. The giddiness begins. Just enough for me to feel it deep inside my head. Now I begin to use words out of context. Me, the wordsmith, the person who guards the power of words with an almost religious fervour. The words mill around inside my head and I try and catch the right one as it swims past me. But miss and stumble and correct myself. I look at the people around me and wonder if they think I’m drunk. I toy with an explanation but it seems too distant - I can’t quite get the enthusiasm necessary to care.
The room is brightly coloured, iridescent and surreal, shapes elude me and mutate around me. The beast is winning the fight. I continue to talk to the shadow people around me. I try to catch what I’m saying. I watch them to see if they notice that the beast has taken me to his liar. I wonder what I’ll remember at the end of this absence. I try to put up a struggle in my head. Try to leave the situation and go to bed. Go to sleep with the beast where no one can see him hijack me. I’ve left it too late. I am no longer me. I spin away and have no conscious mind anymore. My last thought is always the same. “ I hope no one notices, I hope I hurt no one by saying things I can’t control.”
Hours later I wake up in bed. I’ve got quite good at getting myself there over the years. I have a headache. It feels like the inside of my brain is shattered particles. The pain is intense. The world is fog and cotton wool and I try to move through it. Everything happens so slowly, it’s like straining against elastic bands imprisoning me. Time to pick up the pieces. I go into the day, pretending it is a normal day. The beast took the night. I remember watching myself talk to my friends, but that was early in the evening, before supper maybe. What happened next? Did I appear normal until they left? What did I do?
It’s too late to get time back. Try and screw up the courage to face the day, my life. Move forward, work out a game plan of how to find out what I did without people knowing I have no memory of the night. Pick up the pieces left behind by the beast. Pretend I don’t really care and am not frightened by the now absent hours. They are gone. I know from experience that no matter what people tell me happened in those hours, it will never strike a chord in my memory. They are gone forever, stolen by the beast.
Like a child learning to walk I pick my way through other peoples memories of last night, desperately piecing together a kaleidoscope which will remain forever broken.
And wait for the beast to fetch me again.
I’m tired and it has been a long day. Maybe it’s the time of the month, maybe it’s the time of the moon. It’s stalking me again. I must be vigilant. The beast is out there coming in to take a piece of my mind and my life. How to arm against it? Quick - take an extra pill - wait quietly and hope the beast will go.
No, he’s moved closer now. The giddiness begins. Just enough for me to feel it deep inside my head. Now I begin to use words out of context. Me, the wordsmith, the person who guards the power of words with an almost religious fervour. The words mill around inside my head and I try and catch the right one as it swims past me. But miss and stumble and correct myself. I look at the people around me and wonder if they think I’m drunk. I toy with an explanation but it seems too distant - I can’t quite get the enthusiasm necessary to care.
The room is brightly coloured, iridescent and surreal, shapes elude me and mutate around me. The beast is winning the fight. I continue to talk to the shadow people around me. I try to catch what I’m saying. I watch them to see if they notice that the beast has taken me to his liar. I wonder what I’ll remember at the end of this absence. I try to put up a struggle in my head. Try to leave the situation and go to bed. Go to sleep with the beast where no one can see him hijack me. I’ve left it too late. I am no longer me. I spin away and have no conscious mind anymore. My last thought is always the same. “ I hope no one notices, I hope I hurt no one by saying things I can’t control.”
Hours later I wake up in bed. I’ve got quite good at getting myself there over the years. I have a headache. It feels like the inside of my brain is shattered particles. The pain is intense. The world is fog and cotton wool and I try to move through it. Everything happens so slowly, it’s like straining against elastic bands imprisoning me. Time to pick up the pieces. I go into the day, pretending it is a normal day. The beast took the night. I remember watching myself talk to my friends, but that was early in the evening, before supper maybe. What happened next? Did I appear normal until they left? What did I do?
It’s too late to get time back. Try and screw up the courage to face the day, my life. Move forward, work out a game plan of how to find out what I did without people knowing I have no memory of the night. Pick up the pieces left behind by the beast. Pretend I don’t really care and am not frightened by the now absent hours. They are gone. I know from experience that no matter what people tell me happened in those hours, it will never strike a chord in my memory. They are gone forever, stolen by the beast.
Like a child learning to walk I pick my way through other peoples memories of last night, desperately piecing together a kaleidoscope which will remain forever broken.
And wait for the beast to fetch me again.
No comments:
Post a Comment