Regaining consciousness did nothing for my mental state. I was still alone, in darkness, with nothing encasing my mind but the fact that I was still alive and my stomach was on fire. I was in pain and I was a failure.
A sob crawled up my throat, failing at an exit as it slid back down and I choked on the cry. I couldn’t move, which made me want it more. I couldn’t die, and that made me want it even more.
It took minutes to calm myself, steadying my heart and catching my breath. I could catch light seeping through the heavy curtain, the silver air seeming far from my tender eyes. The entire room stunk of antiseptic, the air thick with cleansing. There was no way to say how long I had been here, days, months, years, and all I knew was that I wanted none of it.
To have fear you can’t control is something I would never wish on another being.
This lack of control, this inability to move, is one of the greatest fears I’ve been hit with, but it didn’t quite compare to seizing.
They greeted me with dizziness and fatigue, stealing my awareness. My head would crash through my skull as it ascended, seeming to drag my blood along with it. I would be hit with ice and fire right before I lose everything.
And then there’s nothing. I’m not in my body; I’m three feet above as it spasms and convulses, snapping from composed to chaotic in a split second. My muscles are rubber bands, and there is someone stretching them until they snap. There is an earthquake in my body, and it waits until everything is destroyed to calm.
The aftermath is unpredictable. I can be a vegetable, emotionless, or a seemingly inebriated mess. Either way I feel hung over, the weight of the incident resting on my head. Muscles are screaming in pain, having been electrocuted. I don’t know where I am. I barely know what just happened.
To lose hope is to lose it all.
Medication dulled the electricity, stopping the attacks, but it lead to attacks of other forms. Paranoia grabbed at my heart the moment it was vulnerable, sending its ice down my veins and sending my heart rate through the roof. Constantly. And then the voices, the feeling of having others in my head with me, had me clawing at my skin. Trying to cut them out. Trying to cut myself out because this body was cursed.
Find a door.
I’m insane, because there cannot be more than one person in the same body. Maybe it never was my body in the first place, and maybe this other presence is the true owner. Those seizures were their way of fighting for control while I was simply warming the seat. Maybe it was time to give it up, back to the owner.
I remember it only took seconds for that idea to completely envelope my mind. I locked myself in the bathroom under the pretense of a shower, running the water to cover the sound of release. My Phenobarbital prescription had just been refilled, and there were no reservations as I brought the bottle to my mouth.
And then I slept.
And then I woke.
The voices, hushed as ever, are not gone. The Phenobarbital is still in my system, but this body refuses to die. It threw the medication from my stomach while I slept, and now my throat burned. A bomb had gone off in my stomach, and now I was alone in the dark.
Freezing.
Terrified.
And still not free.
Never free.
