What I Remember — and What I Don’t

There are parts of my seizures I remember.

And there are parts I only know about because somebody tells me afterwards.

I can remember feeling strange sometimes. I can remember bits before everything disappears. Then there is a gap.

When I come round, the story has already carried on without me.

I may have wet myself during the seizure. That has become something that happens regularly for me now. It is embarrassing to talk about, but pretending it does not happen would leave out a very real part of my epilepsy.

Then there is what can happen afterwards.

I can become confused, frightened and agitated. Sometimes I lash out. I have kicked, punched or tried to fight the person who is actually there helping me.

The difficult part is that I am not choosing to do it.

In that moment, I may not understand where I am, what has happened or why somebody is close to me. My brain is still trying to recover from the seizure.

Later, I may remember none of it.

That is a strange thing to live with — being told what you did when, in your own memory, those minutes simply do not exist.

For the person beside me, though, those minutes happened.

They remember the fall.

They remember keeping me safe.

They remember cleaning things up.

They remember trying to calm me when I did not recognise the situation properly.

And then eventually I become myself again.

Tired. Sore. Confused. Sometimes embarrassed.

Sometimes asking:

“What happened?”

Epilepsy is not only the seizure somebody sees.

Sometimes it is also the missing minutes afterwards — the ones everybody else remembers for you.

— Stephanie