Essay 1 - Revised

Don't Worry About Me

I'm not sure I remember the first time I got sick. Actually, I don't remember ever not being sick. Some of my earliest memories come from doctor visits: the neurologist, the cardiologist, the gastroenterologist. At four years old, when my mother said the names of those doctors, matter-of-factly, telling me I'd be missing school again that day for an appointment and testing, I remember being a little scared because they sounded big and scientific and important. The tests would never find anything, anyway. All these years later, I still don't know what's wrong.

One night, I ate dinner over Genny and Jerry's house, my grandma's neighbors who I'd often visit while staying at her home. I was playing with their kids, Vicky and Eric, then around 4 and 2 years old respectively, which means I was no more than 10. We had brussels sprouts, which I remember pretending to enjoy to be polite. At the dinner table I began to feel faint, so I went into the living room to lay on the couch.

Lights flashed, completely surrounding me, colors moved over everything as far as I could see. I'm all alone. Where am I? I try to yell, but my mouth won't move - do I have a mouth? Have I ever spoken? What are those sounds? Everything is slow and stretched apart, it sounds like a record being played at half speed, backwards. After what feels like hours, I start to hear what might be voices in the distance. As they get closer, the lights start to stretch apart, like a prism of melting plastic. Jen...Jen...Jen...

Five minutes later, I woke on the floor of Genny's living room. My mother was crouching over me, saying my name over and over again. Genny is standing over her, looking intense and worried. My grandmother...my nanny was there, standing further away or maybe getting water. Why is everyone fussing over me? What’s going on? Leave me alone. I don't remember the rest of that day.

I've probably been to every specialist in the book. I know that the issue isn't psychosomatic. Who makes up an issue that feels like an acid trip gone horribly wrong? Nobody. That's horseshit. Probably ten neurologists have told me I'm not epileptic, as many cardiologists have told me my heart's in good shape. No matter what test they put me through, there are never any answers. Nothing is ever wrong. So everything's perfect. That's why I'm randomly unconscious. That makes sense.

Of course, I can’t honestly say that being sick has always been a burden. Sometimes, when I was a kid and I didn’t feel like going to school, I’d tell my mom I had a stomach ache and she’d automatically keep me home, for fear that I might have a seizure. I spent many leisurely days of the 5th grade at home with my grandmother, watching awful daytime tv and eating junk food because I didn’t want to do group work. It got to a point where I became very aware of what I would feel before I passed out, how my body would react, how I would subsequently react to the way my body was acting. And if I felt more like napping than taking a science test, it got to the point where I could emulate those behaviors and my mom would be turning the car around and dropping me off at Grandma’s instead of school. Since there were no physical/tangible indicators of my illness, she had no way of knowing if I was telling the truth. Having a permanent excuse to get out of doing things I didn’t want to didn’t make me feel much better about the situation, but at least the cloud had a silver lining, right?

Being sick has effected every major life decision I've ever made, and often many of the minor ones. I can't live alone for fear that I might fall on the floor and choke on my own vomit like a rock star, but without the booze. I can't go to college out of state, because then my family would be too far away. I can't do the drugs that I used to do because now the increase or decrease in my heart rate will set me off - something that wasn't always an issue. That's probably a good thing, but I assure you that the realization of this fact did not come to me easily.

Jazz and I snorted a couple of Oxys in the high school bathroom during study hall before heading over to smoke a blunt with Sue. It was just like every day that week, and probably like every day for the past who knows how many months, but who keeps track? So we get to Sue's and we're hanging out, listening to music and shooting the shit before her mom gets home. We spark the blunt and pass it around a few times. I take a hit and cough, and I keep coughing hard. I start to get really light-headed.

I'm surrounded by a pulse, an all-encompassing nothingness and darkness. I'm alone but it's only scary because I don't know who I am. I'm embarrassed, but I don't know why I'm embarrassed because I'm all alone and I don't remember having ever done anything. The heartbeat of space explodes in sunbursts surrounding each eyeball, tiny rays of light I'm emitting from my own suns in my personal darkness. I hear something in the background, but the noises are so muffled and slow, I feel I might be inside my own heart. Woosh...woosh...woosh...

I wake and see Jazz's face right in front of mine. So startled to return to life, I jump and smack her in the face with my own face. She laughs, rubbing her forehead, and strokes my hair. "Jenny," she says with concern, "are you okay sweetie?" I groan and ask for water. Sue is freaking out. Jazz looks like a worried mother. I just want to go home, but I don't remember how I got there.

It took years of these types of situations for me to realize that not only did I have a drug problem, but that the drug problem was only exacerbating my whatever-it-is. I guess I should explain that, the whatever. Ever since I was a kid, it's been pretty much the same. I get a stomach ache, for whatever reason, and the nausea overcomes me. I start to feel dizzy and weak. Every movement makes it worse, and I can tell when it's coming. The flashes start coming into my eyes, and I feel like I'm going to throw up. And then, it happens. But, what is it?

I remember when I finally realized what I was doing to myself. I mean, I knew for years that I had to watch my diet. I couldn't eat spicy food on an empty stomach, couldn't eat this or that because I know that getting a stomach ache can lead to bigger issues. For years, I'd drink to excess, eat pills to excess, do whatever I wanted to excess because why not? For a long time, I was fine. I'd deal with sporadic illness, but the increase wasn't marked enough for me to consider it anything other than the norm. I think that I was about 24 when it really started getting to me. I'd drink all night with friends, do whatever drugs where on the table, get fucked up 'til the sun came up. That's just how it was. But so many mornings, I started to have problems because of the hangovers. I'd have slept over a friend's house the night before and wake up in the morning only to pass out on their floor. They'd freak out and worry, and then I'd have to explain the whole thing, tell them not to worry, tell them not to call an ambulance and could they just drive me home? I'd be fine tomorrow.

Every part of my body feels like it's sleeping. That uncomfortable, "pins and needles" kind of feeling, especially in my hands, feet, and legs. I can open my eyes just a crack, but everything is so blurry and it's all spinning. "Ugh, it happened again," I think to myself, "and where the fuck am I, again?" I try to get comfortable, no matter how I turn I feel worse. It smells like stale beer, cigarettes, and dirt. My mouth tastes about the same. As I begin to be able to open my eyes a little more, the sun shining through the basement window feels like I'm being maced. I pick up my phone and call Brian, this is his basement, I know he can save me. He answers, barely, and I mumble something about needing help and he needs to come down to the couch.

Brian runs down the stairs. He's not wearing a shirt and his hair sticks out at every angle.  He mumbles something about feeling like shit, but notices that I'm on the floor and rushes over to me. He's asking me what's wrong. I'm too weak to really talk. He keeps asking what he can do, and all I can muster is, "water...water..."

He drove me home and didn’t ask a lot of questions. I didn’t want anyone to worry about me, but then when they didn’t, it felt like they should.

The thing is that I wasn’t fine the next day, or sometimes the next after that. A seizure generally lasts less than a minute for me, but afterwards I could be sick for several days – generally feeling weak and achy, having stomach pain, and sometimes bruising or cuts from falling. Many times I’ve had trouble talking the day after because I grind my teeth and wind up grinding my tongue so hard that it swells up. But, I still don’t want anyone to worry. I’ve been dealing with the same illness since I was 4 – I know what to do, and I’m not gonna die, so just let me deal with it. The stress of someone else freaking out doesn’t help me feel better – in fact, it can sometimes exacerbate the issue because it makes my stress level rise, too.

I no longer think that I’m going to be cured. I’ve given up hope. I’ve been at my wit’s end, I’ve been suicidal, I’ve been sad and upset because I just want to be normal. I realize now that all of those worries were unnecessary, because in the end my disease is my cure. If it wasn’t for my seizures getting worse, I’d likely have continued to drink and drug myself to death. I had to stop doing those things that I considered fun because they were making me pass out almost every time, by the end, when in the beginning it happened so infrequently. My body gave up; my system didn’t want to deal with my shit anymore. Being fucked up saved me from being fucked up; passing out all the time made me realize that I was actually more normal when I was laid up on the couch than when I was doing lines of coke in some dirty bathroom at a club. So, I’m clean and truth be told it’s not very fun, but I feel a hell of a lot better. I’ll probably never know what’s wrong, but I guess I don’t need to because I learned to deal with it on my own terms. My sickness doesn’t define me, and it helped me learn that I shouldn’t let my vices define me, either. We are all dying; and we all need to learn to make the best of whatever we have. Don't worry about me.