Stress, Excitement, Seizures, oh my!

When I was a child, our beloved family dog, Gisben, had a seizure once during a moment of great excitement. We never figured out if it was the activity that sparked his fit or his taste for the industrial cleaner my father used to use on the kitchen floors. Either way, we tried to keep Gisben from getting overly stimulated and my father spent all the rest of his life cleaning the floors with vinegar.

I have a cat now, Coco, who is prone to seizures under moments of great stress. I was moving a few years ago and found myself alone with Coco, on a street corner, helplessly peering into her little carrier as her entire body convulsed. I had movers set to meet me at my old apartment in ten minutes, the vet was closed and my beloved cat was in the throes of death. Once she stopped convulsing, she sat up, staring blankly ahead with the widest eyes I’ve ever seen. And now, whenever I do need to take her to the vet for a checkup, she screams the most loudest screams you can imagine coming from a cat as a clear warning that she is preparing for another seizure. It is utterly terrifying.

Recently, after 13 years of partial seizures, it was my therapist who first identified that it was a period of extreme stress that brought on my recent cluster of time travels. It finally ended after a little more than two weeks. But in the past few days, it’s been threatening to return. I’m having blips. Little micro-visions that quickly melt away without the decent into another world. And today, I am particularly stressed. Too many deadlines. Too many people on the team needing me to figure something out. Too many moving parts. I can’t keep it all straight and I’ve got the shakes.

I realized, I need to get it together or I’m going to pull a Gisben and a Coco and I’m going to pay a visit to the real reality in the form of a grand partial seizure that takes from me what little bit of memory I’ve held on to this week. I need to chill the f*ck out. So, I’m writing this and then I’m going to a meditation class. Those 30-minute meditation classes pull my brain back from Seizure Town, USA like nothing else.

The work will still be here when I get back.