Am I Okay?

Last night I kissed my date goodnight on the steps to my building. Feeling a little fluttery with that sort of giddy feeling inside I took the elevator to my apartment. I grabbed my doorknob and a business card tucked inside fell to my feet. "Police Department City of New York Special Victims Squad Manhattan" It all comes rushing back.

A month ago I woke up naked in the back of a cab surrounded by cops asking where my clothes were.  I didn't know. I didn't know where I was, how I got there, what time it was, or if I was okay. The cops asked questions while we waited for an ambulance. I could remember what I had done earlier that evening and what I was wearing. Then the next thing I remember is that I was standing in the street and a guy was trying to kiss my face and telling me not to go. I ran for a cab. The cab driver thought I was crazy and wanted me to get out but I refused and rambled something about needing to get away. He drove a few blocks and the next thing I know cops are asking questions.

So I took the ambulance to the hospital and slowly started regaining full clarity. My doctor and counselor were wonderful and kept me calm. Everyone assumed I had been drugged and attacked. They started testing me for everything and administering a rape kit. It was 1:30 in the morning when everything happened and something wasn't adding up.  The last thing I remembered was hanging out at my local pub where there weren't a lot of people. I was talking to a friend and I knew the bartender. I only had a couple drinks and then went home. I was fine.

The officer helping me in the cab showed up at the hospital with the clothes I had been wearing. He was very happy to tell me that they broke into my apartment and my clothes were on the floor. Everything appeared to be normal so he brought my clothes, phone, keys, and purse to the hospital and that was it. They talked to the bartender and it appeared I had left and gone directly home before 11. Two and a half hours were missing.  The tests didn't show any drugs or anything that indicated I had been hurt. I was released from the hospital at 8am.

It's a strange experience to walk in your front door with no memory of leaving and knowing the cops were the last people inside. My TV and fan were on. All the lights were on. My lunch takeout from the previous day was gone but the container and fork were on the table. It was pretty obvious that I had been home the night before and did my usual routine of stripping out of all my clothes, having a little dinner while watching TV, and probably passed out.  Suddenly other memories come back.  I once woke up standing in the hall outside of my apartment and because the door locks behind me, I had to pound on the door of my super for the key. I once woke up at my old apartment knocking on my own door and my ex Sky opened it. "BABY! What are you doing outside?" Am I a sleepwalker? 

Since the incident I've talked to detectives, counselors, several police officers, several doctors. What we believe happened is that I probably had a seizure or due to my neurological issues started sleepwalking and wandered my way down the elevator, outside of my apartment, and down the avenue several blocks. The thing that triggered me to start waking up was a man trying to take advantage of a naked woman in the street that he probably assumed was on drugs. When he made contact by trying to kiss my face while putting his penis in my hand, I realized the danger and ran for a cab. It could have been so much worse.

I still can't believe this happened.

I'm okay.

Integrity vs Time

I’m really trying to focus on integrity. I want to be able to say that I’m filled to capacity with it. This means I do what I say I will do when I say I will do it.  I don’t struggle with this in a general sense so I didn’t think it would be so hard. Wrong.

Day 1) I woke up early so I knew I could get out of the door 10 minutes early so there would be no way I would be late to work. Integrity means being at your desk ready to start your job the minute the clock hits your start time. Turns out, Times Square was shut down and I had to take the train to a different station farther away and walk back. I was five minutes late. Attempting to work this through in my brain has been difficult. It’s the very first action of my new attempts with integrity focus and the failure was beyond my control. What now? Continue moving forward is all I can think of. 

Now I’m going to look through my work and really push to make sure I’ve done everything I said I would and have no guilt for being behind. DEEP BREATH.

Day 2) I took a cab because I was leaving a couple minutes late. Got caught in traffic and a 15 minute cab ride took 40 minutes leaving me both late and with $25 less.

Day 3) I left early again. The train was delayed due to a sick passenger. WHAT THE F*CK UNIVERSE?  What are you teaching me?

Time is so important in my life and it’s awful.

FIRST KISS

I suddenly just remembered my real first kiss.

I don't know how I forgot. Maybe because it was so awkward. I have no idea how old I was. Possibly twelve?  I was dating the cutest boy, Tyler. I remember how he smelled. I remember it disturbingly well. One of our friends was having a birthday party at the local Holiday Inn. We had all been in the hot tub and I was wearing a really hot little patriotic bikini with blue sparkles and white stars. The boys were leaving and somehow it got psyched up amongst our friends that we were going to kiss. I have no idea how this happened.  Next thing I know I'm standing in the Holiday Inn parking lot dripping wet in a bikini while my adorable boyfriend awkwardly leans in and all of our friends watch from the windows. We kissed on the lips and I was completely mortified by the show of it all. According to Facebook, now Tyler lives in Japan with his wife and baby. Interestingly he still looks 12.

Do you remember your first?

Life Updates

I don't remember writing that last post. I realize it was months ago but re-reading it was a little scary. I must block things out quite a bit.  It did, however, make me realize I need to get my ass back here more frequently in order to keep track of my life. So, here are some updates:

My job is fucking awesome. I love these people. As a lot of friends and New York family get engaged, married, knocked up, or move to other cities, I find I need more stability here and I have found some at my workplace. Who would have thought that was possible?

I mention my job because it's a huge part of my life and it segues into my epilepsy update. My last seizure was at a work retreat. December 7th we were all staying at a house upstate and enjoying a few days off together. Night one I chose to stay in a room downstairs by myself away from everyone else because I was the last to go to sleep and it was warmer.  I woke up in a totally different section of the house in an attic type space that was much warmer. I was the first up and went to take a shower. Upon entering the bathroom I saw my face in the mirror. It was covered in rug burns.  I started to realize what was going on.  I went back to the room I had fallen asleep in. The lamp was on the floor and the nightstand was thrown over.  To get to the room I woke up in I had to travel up very narrow carpeted stairs. I had a seizure somewhere and then fell down those carpeted stairs trying to get to the bathroom thus causing pretty gross facial injury that I'm still recovering from a month later.  That's all I remember.  I told everyone what happened. Later that afternoon I woke up from a nap on the couch and some coworkers were around. I could tell something was wrong. I had another seizure while napping. They must have been mild because I was fine and had a great time for the rest of the retreat. I remember nothing about them and I'm thankful for that.

Other than that shit, life is pretty good. I'm alive. That's nice. I've been reading and learning and trying to get better in general.   I've been thinking a lot recently about energy, neurology, and different planes of vibration. I think I might be a little off from normal in general. That might explain my last paragraph of my last post. Sometimes I feel I'm connected to something I don't understand but I hope to discover it eventually. Whatever the fuck it is. Ha, while writing this I remembered that in the beginning I used to refer to seizures as demons. Now I feel the complete opposite. I think that says something about where I am in life.

Must get back to that whole living thing now!

Latest Sparks

Hey blog, it has been awhile. I've had a lot of changes happen since we last saw each other. The biggest being that I hit the job lottery and life is pretty fuckin' awesome in that capacity. I'll come back to elaborate later because that's a cult post in itself.  I'm here now because, I miss you.  You're like an old lover. I miss you most when something bad happens and I don't know who to talk it through with. You will let me talk about it as much as I need without getting sick of me. Thank you for that.

So let's get right to it. I had another seizure. It had been about eight months since my last one and I was probably getting a little careless. Eight months is the longest I've gone since developing epilepsy in my twenties. It happened last Friday night. I think it was probably around 11pm because I was still up and walking around my apartment. I remember standing in front of my door, looking at my hands, and thinking "oh shit this is really a seizure this time" before blacking out. I usually am able to get to bed or the floor or something. Not this time. I usually remember most of the seizure and the pain. This time I only know that when I started to regain awareness I was cleaning a puddle up off of my floor and then going to bed. I don't know if that puddle was urine or blood.

When I was up again a little while later I was talking to my boyfriend very lighthearted. I think he thought I was okay but I was still out of it. I don't even know if we were texting or Skyping. At some point I felt my head and realized it was covered in blood. The hair was clumping up in scabs. I fell asleep again. The next day I got up, showered and cleaned my head, then went to rehearsal for the band. I know I thought I was okay at the time. I was having some sort of adrenaline rush. It was so strange. I went home that night and fell asleep early. Slept all Sunday. Monday I finally asked someone to look at my head. It looks like I collapsed on to the corner baseboard and scraped from my ear up my scalp. Then there are several other scrapes where I apparently beat it into the corner. Lot's of bruising all over my body and a strange numbness under my tongue due to nerve damage in my head. Frankly the recovery this time wasn't so bad. It's the emotional shit that creeps up on me days later that is torturing me.

What is wrong with my brain? I'm FREAKED out by my own weird behavior and things I talk about before the seizure. Why was I bringing it up out of nowhere with my coworkers? Why do people suddenly seem really familiar like I've known them before somehow even though we've clearly never met? Total strangers whose faces I know better than my family members. Why does it feel like my life is overlapping with other storylines and I'm getting caught in the deja vu blips? WHAT THE CRAP IS HAPPENING? Do you have any idea what it's like to lose large pieces of memory? What am I supposed to do when out of nowhere I get overwhelmed with panic and emotion but I'm not able to explain myself to anyone? I need to feel grounded and this is not the pathway.

Writing that last paragraph gave me a bit of a panic attack. I'm glad I still have this venue to release my insanity in. If I find out I'm in a sci-fi movie I'll let you know.

Change

We are all changing all of the time. We don’t actually have the option. Most of the time we aren't aware of it or we are avoiding it. People fear change. This is understandable because sometimes change means losing a sense of comfort. It might mean more work. It might mean losing sight of who you are. It could also be the opposite of all of these things.

Right now I’m feeling really good about the idea of a drastic change inside of me. I’m gaining a new outlook on myself as well as everyone and everything out there. I’m excited to hit the ground running in a million different ways and see what I might discover. Sure, it’s still scary but sometimes when you realize your life isn’t going the way you planned, it’s best to change direction. Take a road you didn't even see on the map before.

I’m screaming this out to the UNIVERSE! Give me whatever you've got to show me. I’m ready to learn and I’m ready to change the way I think. I’m changing the channel from reality television and I’m listening to the static white noise. The white noise has more to offer if I listen to it carefully. I've been somewhat successful in making positive changes for myself but maybe it’s time to implement a lot at once. It’s time for a big shift. Perhaps the planets have aligned in my benefit or maybe it’s just that my head is clear for once.  Get off the mule and saddle up on a jaguar!

About the Photo:

N49's Cosmic Blast 

Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA), Y. Chu (UIUC) et al., NASA Explanation: Scattered debris from a cosmic supernova explosion lights up the sky in this gorgeous composited image based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Cataloged as N49, these glowing filaments of shocked gas span about 30 light-years in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Light from the original exploding star reached Earth thousands of years ago, but N49 also marks the location of another energetic outburst -- an extremely intense blast of gamma-rays detected by satellites only twenty-five years ago on March 5, 1979. That date was the beginning of an exciting journey in astrophysics which led researchers to the understanding of an exotic new class of stars. The source of the March 5th Event is now attributed to a magnetar - a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star also born in the ancient stellar explosion which created supernova remnant N49. The magnetar hurtles through the supernova debris cloud at over 1,200 kilometers per second.

I'm Yours, for Now

I’m playing my lovely Pandora playlist while working my glorious ass off and on comes a song that fills me with so many conflicting emotions I realize I need to investigate and get over it. So, here I am writing at my self- therapy blog trying to figure out what just happened. Join me in my insanity.

The song “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz

Why on earth would I give a shit about this song? *Sigh*

I know why. This particular song became popular around the time I traveled to the Bahamas with Casey. Casey and I were very much in love back then. He used to play me this song and tell me it reminded him of me. I think he forgot about that by now since five years have passed. I hope he forgot about it because he still sings it every time we go to karaoke and if he is doing it on purpose that’s just cruel. It really was a good time but I can’t help the fact that this song comes on and memories come rushing in.

The Bahamas trip was beautiful. We had an amazing time on the perfect beach with jet skis and snorkeling. We went to dinner every night and enjoyed every moment. Unless we were in the hotel room, that is. During that trip I realized we were very different. He wanted to be seen with me in public and have someone on his arm but when it came to being in the room we might as well have slept in separate beds. Actually, I think we did a few times thanks to sunburns. It wasn't that there was an issue or anything. We were just different people. I personally want a lot more physical affection if you get what I mean. That wasn't something that mattered much to him. At one point we were sitting out on our balcony with the cool breeze and quiet. We were talking about what we wanted in life and what mattered to us individually. I thought this was a person I might marry but at this specific moment in time I realized we had an expiration date. That moment has always haunted me. It has a dark place in my heart that still gives me nausea.  We stayed together for some time after that but eventually it had to end for both of us to have the lives we want.

A couple weeks ago Casey and his wife had a baby boy.  I would say his life is exactly what he told me he always wanted. I’m really happy for him. I would say my life is going swimmingly because I’m doing the things I wanted. However, my biggest fear is that I keep repeating the same mistakes.  If insanity is making the same mistake over and over again expecting a different result, I’m clearly insane. I somehow take the most painful things that happen to me and then fall the hardest for the first person I find that contains all of those painful qualities or risks. See? Clearly insane.

How can a song popping up on Pandora totally wreck my mind so quickly? God I hold on to a lot of pointless shit. No wonder my brain malfunctions.Now I'm tearing up. Damnit. 

I’m only posting this here because nobody actually in my life reads my blog anymore so I don’t have to sugarcoat shit. Thank you online self-therapy.