Who Am I? Discovering the Authentic Self: Seizure

Let me be clear, I went to Mass when I was in high school, not because I really wanted to, but because I was mostly habituated into the practice. The last time I probably received the Eucharist when I was a teenager was maybe 8^th grade, at my Confirmation. Even though I didn’t go to Communion, I still went to Mass. I think the habit helped me to keep my teenager idiot brain open to the possibility that there was more going on at Mass than just automatic ritual. Still, as a teenager, I was convinced that if I could not prove something with material evidence, then it cannot be True. If God was outside of provability, then God can’t exist. To be fair, I was balanced with my judgment; I equally proclaimed that until I went to California, California did not exist…to me. Mid-1990’s teenager relativism at its finest. To this day, though, I have no idea why I decided to receive the Eucharist at Mass that Sunday morning of my first seizure. Maybe it was in response following a day and a half of being bed-ridden. Maybe there was some sort of mystical knowledge I had gained in my sickly stupor. Maybe I was still delirious. I do not know. But I do remember coming home after that Mass and being excited about having received the Eucharist. I spoke to one of my classmates, a fellow Catholic, partly to say goodbye before she left on a month-long trip to France, but mostly I wanted to talk to her about having gone to Mass and having received the Eucharist. I also called my girlfriend, a non-Catholic and Truly Beautiful person, to let her know that I was feeling much better than I had felt the last few days, and to tell her about the Mass. I was on the porch outside my house, talking on the phone when my hand began to tremor. I remember telling my girlfriend over the phone that my hand was shaking. I was laughing because it was something I had never experienced. Everything went black.

I remember bits and pieces from that week. I remember being loaded onto an ambulance in front of my house. I remember trying to explain to a group of doctors what happened to me and not being able to make sense (the trauma caused severe aphasia). I remember a doctor attempting to give me a lumbar puncture (a spinal tap) and missing seven times while my mother looked on. (I was so high on Dilantin that I felt nothing and only laughed). I remember being visited by a few priests and a ton of friends. But what I remember the most, ironically, is forgetting so much. I forgot names and phone numbers. I forgot how I knew people. I forgot how to do some simple math. I forgot how to spell names. I forgot so many things that I had taken for granted. Simple things.
            I don’t mean to brag, but I had a GPA of 4.1 my Junior year in high school. And that was probably the hardest year, academically, that I have ever had in my school career. I’m totally kidding! I do like to brag about that! I’m proud of how smart I was. Everything came easy for me in school. I barely studied, but I could get good grades. Finishing my Junior year, I was just hitting my stride as a student. I got an “A” in pre-Calculus, the first time I ever did that well in a math class (and the last time, as it would turn out). I did well on my SAT’s, and I was somewhere in the top 3% on the list of National Merit Scholars. I was an athlete, a boy scout, and I was popular. I had a Beautiful girlfriend, and everything was going perfectly form me. Then I had the seizure.

(I have never known a dog to Love pillows so much.)