No More Empty Fortune Cookies!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

My mind is a dangerous playground

Hello bloggoverse!

It's been a while hasn't it? I promised at the beginning of this year to spend more time with you and it seems that I did quite the opposite. I know, I suck. You can beat me with an anvil later. On the bright side, I know now to make my 2010 resolution to spend less time here, and if history holds true to form, I should end up spending an extraordinary amount of time writing and posting here regularly.

We'll see how that works out.

So what's happened in my world since we last talked? Gosh, a lot. I've taken and passed some really tough classes. I *tried to* organize a marriage equality rally, and was the one lone demonstrator in said rally. I reunited and reminisced with some old friends, and I've baked a LOT of Sunny Dog Snacks. I've been a very busy Cookie!

One thing that has really had me contemplating my relationships and how I communicate to those closest to me has been the untimely and truly unfair passing of one of the youngest family members on the Wifester's side. Tragedy strikes without warning and is often a prelude to this type of introversion and retrospect.
How can a child be taken away from a family before she even has a chance to live her life? How is that fair? How do her parents and brothers go on after that? Her grandparents? What good reason could all of that pain and tragedy possibly serve? And who am I to question these things? Who am I not to?
I can't answer any of it. I don't know that I want to. But I hate the not knowing.
Could it have been averted? Why wasn't it detected before? How did this go undiagnosed? And then, the worst part; the selfish part... because she suffered a seizure... is my nagging, incessant thought, "Will that happen to me one day?"

She never had a seizure disorder before.
Neither did I, and then one day I did.

I try not to think too much about those things, and just live my life like I always have, but its there always, lingering in the back of my mind; What if...

What if's could easily land me in a cave, surrounded by padding, helmet secured in place- if I let them, so I try not to let them.

I hope to see more light shed on epilepsy and seizure disorders and the people who have them in the future. So often, people think, upon finding out I have epilepsy, that they will inevitably see me shaking and convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Sure, that's happened. But more often than not, it presents as a strange, repetitive movement of an arm or leg. Or it presents as a distant, vacant stare followed by blinking and lip smacking. Sometimes, Wifester says, I look like I'm picking invisible somethings off my shirt, over and over again.
Yep. I'm a regular amusement park. Wifester even makes a game of it. She likes to confuse me by speaking in Spanish or saying nonsensical phrases to me, just to illicit my postictal response. She always has a good laugh telling me about it later.

At least I can serve to aid in comic relief.

I don't like feeling bogged down with the why's and what if's and how's...

I prefer to live freely and openly and not be bothered with such questions, but they persist. My mind never rests until it feels secure in the answers that it seeks, and those answers become more and more elusive the older and more inquisitive I get.

What reality do you question or life circumstance do you investigate with the microscopic lens of a research analyst on the cusp of a major breakthrough?

4 cookies cracked:

Real Live Lesbian said...

Same thing. What if ______ dies. My parents. My love. My dog.

I have no idea how people do it. And when IT happens to me, I have no idea how I will do it.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Gary's third pottery blog said...

You don't suck a'tall :)
Man, I think my head is simply a fuzzball, I get pretty pissed about republicans and rednecks but other than that not much between my ears :)

Aunt Jackie said...

I'm sorry as well.

And when something happens like this, we still don't know how we did or how we will do it, but we just do.

In the case of my Dad, I of course was devastated, but something just "happens", I don't know if it was the knowledge that he was having the time of his life and finally free from all of the chains of being in such bad health and confirmations that everything was ok, or what, but I am surviving.

I feel worse for my Mother than I do myself, because she seems to have a much harder time but then that was her husband of 48 years.

We have our good days and our very bad days but you take one day at a time and you live through.

Jay said...

I don't really question reality as much as just ignore it. Reality hasn't worked out that great, so I like to just pretend it isn't there.