jessie alvarez

Had a seizure at work around 9:40. It built slowly, almost felt like a migraine before suddenly feeling exactly like one for a brief moment before becoming something else entirely. I, for some reason, told myself this was not a seizure. I began to get auras; colors and lights were off, everything lighter and ghostlier, the world at odd angles with itself and my sense of balance off in multiple ways at once. It became more difficult to move. I decided to put the Chromebooks back in their charging station as an excuse to leave class and considered staying in the Chromebook closet before going back to class because a coworker asked if I was ok. I nodded and she told me it was a hard job. I smiled and walked away awkwardly because I couldn't think of what to say, I knew that it was not the job causing this but I didn't want to admit what it was. I hoped that it would just go away. The noise of the classroom made it worse. It was coming. Something was about to happen but I had forgotten what. It didn't matter; I just needed to be safe. I was exhilarated and scared and confused. I was going to throw up or perhaps emit something entirely new. I asked my coworker if he had done attendance or lunch count and when he said no I went to go do them so I had an excuse to sit down. Sitting behind the computer was easy but logging on was difficult. Taking attendance and opening up my email became exponentially more difficult tasks as time went on. Complicated and confusing and labyrinthine structures lay before me and attempting to type out the needed information was impossible. I slowly lost motor control followed by a decline in verbal reasoning. I still thought to myself that I was faking it, that it wasn't real. I was sweating and nauseated, felt as if I was being massaged on new flesh or extruded out through myself. And I couldn't move and looked at the computer. All I could manage was slow controlled breathing and trying to click the mouse. Time crawled to a stop. Every moment became intimate and stretched out. And it was white and there were shapes and it was bright and orange and loud and children were yelling and laughing and moving and the shapes, the shapes were moving and they coalesced into something small, glyphs unrecognizable except for the feeling that they meant something and that I was trying to do something though what it was wasn't clear. Despite not knowing, this purpose subsumed me and I became one with it. I slipped away rapidly losing myself in a stream of sensation, fully pushed out of my own head and now existing autonomously from myself. Trying to think felt like a silent gasp and endless howl and an empty wind blowing hard through me. There was nothing but awareness and there wasn't a me until I could make sure there was again, there was an awareness this was bad, there was an awareness that this shouldn't go on, but that it felt good, and that it was true, there was an awareness that that was an awareness and an awareness that something was aware, that I was gone, that I had been gone that there was an I that I was that I and that suddenly I was not myself that I was in danger and that I had to rescue myself. I had to regain control and I knew that I had to move my hands and so my right hand clicked the mouse pointlessly while the left glided over the keyboard without pressing down. Sensory information kept pouring in but it was raw and unprocessed, irrelevant to my new goal of seizing the reins of my own consciousness. I couldn't move and I couldn't not move. And then I could but not well or with all parts at once. I attempted to write an email but the words were coming out wrong, I couldn't tell what I was writing exactly but there were red lines under everything I wrote so I gave up. I scooted back on my desk chair but didn't focus on anything in particular, letting my eyes and ears take everything in rather than expend energy on filtering it. I could stand but had to lean on my desk for support. My left hand wasn't working and I couldn't do much. I tried to do things but couldn't talk and I couldn't pick up my pen. I wanted to ask for help but I couldn't and was embarrassed by my inability. I was scared. I sat back down and stared off into space as my class left the room to go outside for recess. Eventually my co-teacher asked me what was happening. I stood up and mumbled at her for a minute. I couldn't talk very well but I said "seizure". Eye contact became intolerable. I was ashamed. I was taken to a dark room in the front office to lay down and cry. The nurse asked me questions about my condition and how I was feeling, slowly it became easier to explain myself. I was nauseous and sweaty and starving. The thought of food disgusted me. It still seemed made up. Sitting down I felt fine but standing or moving rendered the world around me odd again, things drawing near or falling away at inappropriate speeds and angles. Three hours later the lights were overwhelming and movement was bizarre. I was picked up and taken home by a friend. It was like moving through the world via dolly zoom. Everything was too large and small. Everything was unbearably crisp and bright. Everything was still off-kilter in an unbearably flat and level way. I wanted to break the world to resolve the tension. Colors were desaturated. Derealization but very personalized. White noise was so loud. I felt like I was on the come up to a trip. I was so hungry. I was being driven home and the cars were like little toys on the road. It felt like the come up of a trip. Things got smaller as they moved away far too fast, as if depth was exaggerated and there was some inflection point about fifteen feet ahead of me where this reversed and instead everything was too large and near. Speech was stuttery and chunky, not smooth and articulate like it often is. I had to use my phone to text my friend to communicate as, even though my thoughts were perfectly structured, my words came out in a confusing order with garbled semantics. This should have been frustrating but instead it amused me quite a bit. It felt a little like being pushed around a bouncy house while drunk. At 2:23 PM I was completely fine. Except I was, and am, very tired.

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