FOOTNOTE: 1 | Big Fish
A jolt, as if touching a battery with my tongue. A flicker, as if watching my tv briefly lose its signal. My vision blurs. I rip off my headphones to stop the song screaming in my head and get to the ground immediately, sitting, anchored around a stationary bike. Outside noise disappears, replaced by the sound of my heart echoing in a hallow cave and my thoughts circling at a dizzying pace.
Steady now, everything is ok. Don’t worry. Just take deep breaths and focus your mind. Picture the ocean and the waves. Hear it. Just keep breathing. Long deep breaths, in for four, out for four. Now stand up and move to the mat. It’s safer there. You can do it Rebecca.
Get up. Just get up. GET UP! Can’t stand up, then crawl to the mat. You can do it. Stop the dizziness. Breathe. Breathe. Can’t crawl. Can’t move. That’s ok, just keep breathing. Hold on tighter. Breathe. Breathe. Don’t worry, Rebecca, this isn’t going to happen. Just do what you’ve done before. Pull it back now. Pull. You can do it. PULL! Breathe. Breathe. It’s slipping. It’s slipping away.
Oh, no. Please. Please stop. STOP!
Someone look at me. Notice me. Pay attention to me. Why can’t you see me? There are so many of you. I need help. Why won’t you help? Please look Catherine. LOOK! Catherine, please. Don’t you see me wrapped around this bike? Just look.
Pull it back. Pull. Try harder. Fucking pull.
Scream. Scream. Fucking scream you idiot.
Someone help me. Please.
It’s slipping. Breathe. Breathe. Pull it back. Pull. Try harder. It’s slipping.
I’m alone.
No. Breathe. Breathe. Please. Breathe. Breathe. Please. No.
NO!
Blackness.
Fuzzy. Head hurts. Fucking hell. Shit. Shit. Shit. Please no. Not this.
It had been eight years since my last seizure; this one is number four. I thought the epilepsy nonsense was over. Gone. Done. Next. Although I had plenty of warning and I knew the signs, I couldn’t pull this one back like I successfully had many times before. Darn.
The first face I see on the floor is Catherine’s, the only person I know who was near me and that stupid bike. Catherine and I share similar workout schedules and favour the same treadmill, creating a friendship built over months of sweaty nods, hellos and encouraging compliments. Today is cardio and back (at least that was the plan until the rude interruption). Other faces appear blurry, then eventually in focus—four, maybe five, then more. There are a lot of voices, each asking questions, but they are just noise in the background, dropping against the realisation I had a seizure despite wanting to believe it didn’t happen and I was perfectly fine.
I want to sit-up, but hands keep me down. More questions. More noise. My brain is clear as I look at the faces asking questions. I insist I am fine, there is nothing wrong and I just want to sit up, but my voice is not my voice. The words coming out are not words, just gargled noises as if under water, like cement poured into my mouth, restricting my tongue and lips from forcing breath into sounds. Words won’t come, just gobbledygook. Not even my name progresses beyond “rur…”
Their mouths work. Their faces and their hands work as they push me down while I fight to get up. I know it’s help they are offering, but I feel weak like I have every time strangers have seen me fall and witnessed my stoic façade explode. I want to hide. I want to smile and make a joke about my clumsiness, then crumble at home, but this one I can’t hide. They saw my brain short circuit and my body convulse.
Their questions persist, flung all around like a bird circling its prey. I want to answer their questions. I want to tell them my story. The story of how at age 20 I awoke with numb feet, which then crept up my legs over the course of three days until I could only crawl, not walk, up the stairs of my sorority house. The story of endless spinal taps and MRI’s, matched with endless I don’t know the cause from neurologists until finally diagnosing me with Lyme Disease because I spent a week in Minnesota a few months before—that too, turned out to be false hope, as if readying me for the more terrifying reason. I want to tell these onlookers the story of the first few years with unrelenting and aggressive episodes of numbness and partial paralysis, cold feeling burning hot, debilitating fatigue, failing memory and strange halos circling my view. I want them to know the story of déjà vu episodes that climaxed until two weeks before my 30th birthday when I had a seizure at work and then again, a few years later, another seizure, but at a different job, this one on the trading floor of the world’s largest investment bank. The story that it had been eight years since I had a seizure. The story that my husband missed the bad MS years, that I haven’t had a new episode in 13 years, that I have two healthy children, despite being told I would have trouble conceiving because one fallopian tube exploded at age ten and warned that if I miraculously conceived, I’d have a relapse after childbirth. I want to tell them that yes, I am American, but I have lived in London for 15 years and love it. I want to tell them that I’m mostly healthy and no one would know the ravages inside my brain unless they peered into the deep folds to discover the dead parts that can’t escape.
I want to tell my entire story, the strong parts, the mistakes, the this isn’t me parts, the journey, the I can do anything parts, but my tongue won’t move. Words won’t form. Not even the names of my diseases. The harder I try, the more I want to be heard, but sounds won’t escape. I’m mute.
Instead, I laugh.