Luminous Lotus
New Here
I've probably sat here for an hour or two, just trying to figure out how to say what I want to say, and where to say it. I made my account here over a year ago now, and while I tried to be active at first my activity quickly died out. Even so, I've occasionally found myself thinking about this site, even drawn to it for seemingly no apparent reason. While I was thinking about what to say though, I realized what brought me back.
I hate this site. I hate this site because when I first made my account here, I was in a very dark place and I was met with a seemingly cold reception. Now every time I think about this place, and especially every time I visit this place I get a bad taste in my mouth. It reminds me of that time, when I felt like my life hung in the balance for a second time. It reminds me so much of that time that I can even smell the scent of the cinnamon candle I was burning two years ago when I spend at least twenty minutes staring at the black, blue, and white of these pages. I come back to this site because it hurts, and I know I have to heal the wound.
To explain a little more about what's going on, when I first joined this site, I was in a panicked state. You see, I used to have Epilepsy. I wasn't born with it, but I developed it in early childhood. We didn't know at the time, but my Epilepsy was caused by a brain tumor. It got worse and worse over the years, and with it came the degradation of my mind and to some degree, my heath. Years went by, and by the time I was fourteen there was practically nothing left of me. It was bad enough to where I could only seem to hold a thought for a few seconds. Just in the nick of time though, we got me checked into a hospital where they performed brain surgery and saved my life. Of course I walked away with a few scars; I went half blind, lost all of my conscious memories, and developed PTSD (though it was never actually diagnosed)... but that's not really the point here. I had been putting my heart and soul into my emotional recovery, fighting all day every day and even in my dreams. I had to go so far as to completely rebuild my self-confidence, and since the trauma was the only thing I knew I had to rebuild it on the idea that the seizures were never coming back.
But they did. It had been a few years after the surgery, I thought I'd come far enough in my recovery to start making something of my life. I got my GED and went to college. It was the second semester in my first year, and I was getting really stressed out. I was behind on some of my work and I kept beating myself up about it because two of my classes were retakes after failing them the first semester. At the same time, I was also trying to learn to drive and had unintentionally discovered that one of the people who knew me pre-amnesia was also attending that school. Despite all of that, I decided I needed to put my emotions aside and focus on my studies so I didn't fail again. That's when it happened. That's when I had a seizure, just out of the blue. Of course I didn't take that lightly, but I was hoping it was just some weird kind of fluke of my body. I pretty much tried to ignore it and go on...
Then it happened again, only worse. It was about a day or two later, I was in the cold and dark top floor of the school library, just about to walk down the stairs when I suddenly got this really had feeling that told me I needed to turn around and sit down instead. At this point I know better than to ignore my hunches, so I did exactly that. I was still walking to the chair when I felt my body starting to seize. As soon as I fell back into the chair, I blacked out. I woke up with two or three other students around me and a police woman asking me questions that I couldn't answer. She told me that I was caught having a seizure, and when that word sunk in I suddenly felt a sense of dread like I've never felt before. She kept asking me questions, but by that point I didn't care enough to listen to her. I just wanted to cry.
After that the only thing going through my mind was "End it now before the seizures can," and "I don't want to die slowly again, but I don't want to have surgery again either." I was so scared and desperate, but I had no one to turn to for support. The only person I had managed to become legitimate friends with since the surgery happened to be away at the time, and my parents still didn't believe I had PTSD and thought I just needed to get over myself. People at school weren't an option either, because I'd started having panic attacks every time I stepped on campus and dropped out without warning.
That's about when I found this site. I don't recall if I posted something right away or not, but I do recall that somewhere down the line I discovered a condition called Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures, PNES or NES for short. I didn't really have any proof, but after doing some research I was certain that was the real source of my newfound seizures. I knew at the time that I might have been wrong, merely fooling myself out of desperation for any kind of hope that meant I didn't have to die. But I stuck with it. I believed it, and I said something about it here on the forums. I was hoping to get support, but I was only met with people telling me that it might not be true or worse yet, that it probably wasn't true. I know nobody meant any harm by saying these things, they were only trying to be realistic, but hearing those things at a time like that was crushing. To keep myself from losing it any worse than I already had, I decided to reject these claims and in turn wound up hating this site. I deleted my account and condemned this place. The account you see now is a second one I made some span of time later, when all of my panic had died down and I decided I wanted to try again.
So here I am. Since then I've confirmed that these seizures are in fact NES, which means they are controlled by my emotions, and I have learned how to avoid having them. The crazy thing about all of this? I think developing these seizures helped me. I do still have those negative memories of this place, but overall these seizures put the power back in my hands. I control when or if I have these seizures, and these seizures can't kill me. They're not the same as my old seizures, actually when I do have them they're worse, but... because of these seizures, I believe the PTSD itself is gone. You might not believe it given how I feel toward this site, but as far as I'm concerned these feelings are just remnants, part of the mess left over after the war has ended. I do keep in mind that there is a chance that I'm wrong, but most of the evidence I've found points in the more positive direction.
If you've read this all the way to the end then... thanks. I just needed to get that off my chest.
I hate this site. I hate this site because when I first made my account here, I was in a very dark place and I was met with a seemingly cold reception. Now every time I think about this place, and especially every time I visit this place I get a bad taste in my mouth. It reminds me of that time, when I felt like my life hung in the balance for a second time. It reminds me so much of that time that I can even smell the scent of the cinnamon candle I was burning two years ago when I spend at least twenty minutes staring at the black, blue, and white of these pages. I come back to this site because it hurts, and I know I have to heal the wound.
To explain a little more about what's going on, when I first joined this site, I was in a panicked state. You see, I used to have Epilepsy. I wasn't born with it, but I developed it in early childhood. We didn't know at the time, but my Epilepsy was caused by a brain tumor. It got worse and worse over the years, and with it came the degradation of my mind and to some degree, my heath. Years went by, and by the time I was fourteen there was practically nothing left of me. It was bad enough to where I could only seem to hold a thought for a few seconds. Just in the nick of time though, we got me checked into a hospital where they performed brain surgery and saved my life. Of course I walked away with a few scars; I went half blind, lost all of my conscious memories, and developed PTSD (though it was never actually diagnosed)... but that's not really the point here. I had been putting my heart and soul into my emotional recovery, fighting all day every day and even in my dreams. I had to go so far as to completely rebuild my self-confidence, and since the trauma was the only thing I knew I had to rebuild it on the idea that the seizures were never coming back.
But they did. It had been a few years after the surgery, I thought I'd come far enough in my recovery to start making something of my life. I got my GED and went to college. It was the second semester in my first year, and I was getting really stressed out. I was behind on some of my work and I kept beating myself up about it because two of my classes were retakes after failing them the first semester. At the same time, I was also trying to learn to drive and had unintentionally discovered that one of the people who knew me pre-amnesia was also attending that school. Despite all of that, I decided I needed to put my emotions aside and focus on my studies so I didn't fail again. That's when it happened. That's when I had a seizure, just out of the blue. Of course I didn't take that lightly, but I was hoping it was just some weird kind of fluke of my body. I pretty much tried to ignore it and go on...
Then it happened again, only worse. It was about a day or two later, I was in the cold and dark top floor of the school library, just about to walk down the stairs when I suddenly got this really had feeling that told me I needed to turn around and sit down instead. At this point I know better than to ignore my hunches, so I did exactly that. I was still walking to the chair when I felt my body starting to seize. As soon as I fell back into the chair, I blacked out. I woke up with two or three other students around me and a police woman asking me questions that I couldn't answer. She told me that I was caught having a seizure, and when that word sunk in I suddenly felt a sense of dread like I've never felt before. She kept asking me questions, but by that point I didn't care enough to listen to her. I just wanted to cry.
After that the only thing going through my mind was "End it now before the seizures can," and "I don't want to die slowly again, but I don't want to have surgery again either." I was so scared and desperate, but I had no one to turn to for support. The only person I had managed to become legitimate friends with since the surgery happened to be away at the time, and my parents still didn't believe I had PTSD and thought I just needed to get over myself. People at school weren't an option either, because I'd started having panic attacks every time I stepped on campus and dropped out without warning.
That's about when I found this site. I don't recall if I posted something right away or not, but I do recall that somewhere down the line I discovered a condition called Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures, PNES or NES for short. I didn't really have any proof, but after doing some research I was certain that was the real source of my newfound seizures. I knew at the time that I might have been wrong, merely fooling myself out of desperation for any kind of hope that meant I didn't have to die. But I stuck with it. I believed it, and I said something about it here on the forums. I was hoping to get support, but I was only met with people telling me that it might not be true or worse yet, that it probably wasn't true. I know nobody meant any harm by saying these things, they were only trying to be realistic, but hearing those things at a time like that was crushing. To keep myself from losing it any worse than I already had, I decided to reject these claims and in turn wound up hating this site. I deleted my account and condemned this place. The account you see now is a second one I made some span of time later, when all of my panic had died down and I decided I wanted to try again.
So here I am. Since then I've confirmed that these seizures are in fact NES, which means they are controlled by my emotions, and I have learned how to avoid having them. The crazy thing about all of this? I think developing these seizures helped me. I do still have those negative memories of this place, but overall these seizures put the power back in my hands. I control when or if I have these seizures, and these seizures can't kill me. They're not the same as my old seizures, actually when I do have them they're worse, but... because of these seizures, I believe the PTSD itself is gone. You might not believe it given how I feel toward this site, but as far as I'm concerned these feelings are just remnants, part of the mess left over after the war has ended. I do keep in mind that there is a chance that I'm wrong, but most of the evidence I've found points in the more positive direction.
If you've read this all the way to the end then... thanks. I just needed to get that off my chest.
