I was writing a letter to a friend earlier this week (yes, sometimes I contact people in other ways than phone calls, texts, emails, or throwing rocks through windows with notes tied around them) and came to kind of a strange realization.
In the letter, I had initially written about how I just got out of the hospital, had a bunch of electrodes inside my head, went through a variety of different tests… and then I realized that all of this might be completely new information. Maybe not to him, given that he knew I took medication for seizures, but definitely for most of the people I knew within a certain (long) period of time.
I don’t always remember what I’ve written here for public consumption, especially given how much I’ve been writing over the last few weeks, but the short version is that I was having uncontrolled seizures for a few years and ended up going through EEG monitoring for the first time in 2001-02. With the data my doctor gathered, he suggested we try two new medications: lamictal and depakote. It was a good combination—my last big seizure after starting the new meds was in April 2002 and I didn’t start having seizures again until 2017.
A lot happened within those 15 years. I met a lot of people. I went to some different schools and earned some degrees. I was an extra in a handful of movies and TV commercials. I played intermural soccer for a lot of years. I acted in a handful of plays through a local community theater. I was on a reality show in 2005 called Beauty and the Geek. (I may have mentioned earlier that I have a lot of stories that I could share…)
So like I said, I met a lot of people during that time. Among those people, if they never saw me take any seizure medications or never saw me volunteering with the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota—that may have led to some questions—then they wouldn’t have had any reason to know that I had epilepsy. Why bring it up as a topic of conversation if it’s a non-issue at the time? Why talk to people about seizures when I’m not having them?
Those questions make complete sense. Of course I’d have no reason to say anything, but given how having epilepsy has become such a huge part of my life recently… and this thought process started before writing the letter to my friend, too. I’ve been posting links to these blog entries on my Facebook page and someone from Beauty and the Geek gave a heart response to the message I wrote to my care staff. She was my partner on the show and we shared a bedroom for about two weeks, so she may have seen me taking meds, but what about everyone else on the show? Or my school classmates or my soccer teammates or…
While it may not be the best mental process to engage in, there have been a number of times where I completed something (school, theater, etc.) and then felt like I was cutting ties and turning the page to a new chapter. There are dozens of people who played a significant part in my life story earlier, but I moved to the next chapter and I’ve never heard from them again. It’s not a great way to develop lasting friendships, which… well, friendships are good and I recommend that you try to maintain at least a few if possible. Trying to get through life on your own can be extremely difficult and generally isn’t good for your mental and emotional wellbeing.
And that’s my TED talk about the benefits of therapy!
I’m only sort of joking when I write that, but the fact remains that if I accidentally bump into someone from my past or if I attend a college reunion at some point, something along those lines… people would be shocked when they heard about what’s happened over the last few weeks. It’d be like an old acquaintance walking up and asking if you’d like to attend a gender reveal party and you’re thinking, “Back up… the last time I saw you, you were 12. Maybe you should fill me in on a few details before I agree to join the celebration.”
But I also want to add that no one has done anything wrong. I’m not upset nor do I feel guilty about losing touch. Some people are friends for a chapter; some are there for the entire story. It just felt a little strange to write a letter to someone who was part of a previous chapter and now he may need to do some homework to understand what’s happening right now. Maybe he can find some Cliff Notes to get a general outline. Or maybe I’ll have to wait until I see him again and then he’ll have to sit through an extended session of Story Time to find out what the heck has been going on recently. If it’s the last one, well, I’m sure that I could share a multitude of stories, but I’ll need to remember that he’s listening to me as a friend, not a therapist.