Stories like this epitomise the reason we created Stozzys. A heart-warming and inspirational story of a young woman navigating her way through epilepsy and learning to love herself along the way. She learnt that “life will always throw the unexpected, the only consistency is yourself.”
You can learn more about epilepsy and how to manage it via the NHS website.
Control
“Human nature is to seek control. Control over our appearance, control over the people we surround ourselves with, control over the way we are perceived by others. Driven by fear, most of us spend our lives trying to paint our own narrative. For the non-disabled population, loss of control of one’s physical and mental body isn’t something they would need to plan for. I don’t just mean getting loose, drinking too much and losing your inhibitions. I mean one minute you are completely yourself and the next your consciousness has been stolen from you.
Until the second year of university, I had never considered the impact of losing control of my body, until I lost it. It started one day when I was out walking with my then-boyfriend, all of a sudden, my hand started twitching. I shook it off as the result of partying too much and a lack of sleep. But then it happened again, this time my whole arm started shaking. It would last for a few minutes and then disappear again. Over the course of a few weeks, the episodes got progressively worse, sometimes I would slur my speech, sometimes my head would shake, sometimes I wasn’t able to move my whole body. The physical sensations were strange, but the cognitive dissonance was even more distressing. For 10, 20, 30 minutes at a time, it would feel like my brain wasn’t my own. In a weird haze of emotion, shooting thoughts and confusion I would often struggle to communicate with the outside world. I had a history of epilepsy as a teenager, but it was nothing like this. Sometimes I would experience up to 6 of these episodes a day.
It got so bad that I had to drop out of University and quit my job. I was at the doctors or hospital weekly. I went for MRI’S, sleep-deprived EEG’s, blood tests. At one point they thought it was a brain tumour but thank goodness concluded it to be a different type of epilepsy. I started taking doses of epilepsy medicine that reduced the frequency of episodes. However, the side effects of lethargy and slower cognitive function felt like a terrible trade-off. By this point I wasn’t able to see friends, go out drinking, ride a bike or even have a bath without someone checking on me – just in case my fits caused me to hurt myself. I felt like I had regressed to a child, feeling completely incompetent with nothing to offer myself or anyone else. I would rarely leave the house and it severely impacted my relationship with my boyfriend.
For a few months, I definitely wallowed in self-pity. But slowly I started to put time into caring for the body and mind that I had so adamantly resented. I started hypnotherapy, reading books on the mind and learning ways to create a healthy thought pattern. I started meditating, running and doing yoga. A cloud suddenly shifted and I realised the relationship with my boyfriend was over. More earth-shatteringly, I realised the relationship with my old self needed to end. I moved out of my exes house and into a completely different city. The fits were still there, but every time they came, I treated myself with compassion and started to accept them. I managed to get a job and put the effort in to reduce the years of anxiety that had been brewing under the surface. Slowly, the frequency of fits reduced. I came to realise that the fits were a symptom of the life long self-loathing and anxiety that I inflicted on myself. Following months of self-care, I was able to come off my medicine and go back to University.
3 years on, I have graduated with a first in my degree, spoken at a scientific conference in America, trained to be a yoga teacher in India and moved to Canada. One thing I came to realise is that the only control we have in our lives is that we have NO control. And to be honest, control is overrated. Before the fits, I thought it meant something; that I could repress who I was and orchestrate a life that I thought was expected of me. But now I know that compassion for oneself and an openness to accept change and treat it as an opportunity is far more important. Life will always throw the unexpected, the only consistency is yourself. So regardless of who you think you are, or who you should be, embrace it.
If you would like to submit your own true-life story to Stozzys you can do so at stozzys.com.