Dying fucking sucks.
That’s a hell of an introduction, right? Contrary to what you are probably thinking after reading that apathetic ass sentence, this isn’t supposed to be some sad, feel bad for me type of story. I’m not putting these words on paper so I can feed on your god damn pity. No, it’s more a matter of telling this whole mess from my point of view before I’ve gone completely brain dead and the papers get it all ass backwards.
If you’ve made it this far, you’ve without a doubt noticed my piss poor language. I’m guessing if you had a problem with it you probably would have stopped reading by now. If you don’t have an issue with my filthy fucking mouth, then good for you, and if you do, then put the book down and go fuck yourself. It’s not like I’m going out of my way to talk like a sailor, it’s just a side effect of- well, you’ll see.
In any case, if I don’t cut with the word vomit and get to the fucking point, I’m going to run out of time. Grab some fucking popcorn and let’s start at the source of this shit, the utter beginning of it all, the first time I had a seizure.
Chapter One: On Some Nights You’ll Find Me Falling
Look at me, Leah fucking Swanson, lying in bed on a school night, snuggled into my freshly washed lavender sheets like a little fucking sweetheart. I’m all tucked in nicely in my bed and it isn’t even midnight yet, a fact which is spelled out neatly in large red numbers stamped on my ceiling. The alarm clock beside me, thoughtfully gifted by my father, projecting the time largely on the ceiling so that at night I’m able to easily read the time without the aid of my glasses or contacts, shines a crimson 11:47 on the ceiling above me. America’s #1 Dad, and I don’t say that sarcastically either, like some of these unappreciative little assholes. Really, he’s the fucking best; much better than I ever deserved.
The sweet scent of the Apple Mango Tango laundry detergent fills my freckled nose, causing an ever so gentle twitch, and I roll over, breathing in deeply and pushing past the scent to grasp the smell of Fall riding the breeze through the open window to my flaring nostrils. My mind drifts to thoughts of Halloween, as it so often does at times when I capture this familiarity. Memories of my younger self trick-or-treating with my father skip around within my mind. Against my pale, chubby cheeks lay my soft brown curls. With my curved chin tucked snuggly against my chest, I let out a heavy but happy sigh before drifting swiftly to sleep. Despite a few high school level complaints, my life is pretty perfect, and I fucking know it too. Lucky little fucking Leah. I couldn’t be less worried if I tried.
In a very short time, this perfect little world will be flipped down-side-up on its mother fucking face.
In an instant, my eyelids snap open and the ceiling now reads 3:21, a far leap from the last time I had read. These numbers shine above me in a perfect numerical descent as if this is a countdown, as if they fucking know what is about to happen and the cocksuckers just can’t help themselves from having a little fun with the situation. Sweat pours out on to my forehead in heavy beads despite the fact that there is no alteration to the cool fall breeze blowing in through my still-open bedroom window. I wish for nothing more than to be able to go back to sleep and forget about this sudden uncomfortable feeling that is buzzing underneath my skin but I’m not provided with such a luxury, because I don’t even know it yet, but the horror has already begun to escape me.
I first realize that my eyes refuse to comply with the closing command they are given after feeling the pain they’re in. My line of vision rolls past the time stamped on the ceiling and upwards as my big brown eyes roll unwelcomed into my skull. Pushing their physical limits, they wish to roll further, they want to come back to where they fucking started, but according to them the only route is by doing a full three sixty inside my skull. Since this is obviously impossible, I lie there in pain from the horror that is happening to me. It fucking sucks, and I don’t yet realize how fantastic it would be if this is my only issue, but I’m about to. Of course it’s not my only problem, and soon I find out what else is in store for my body.
I will my left arm to reach upwards, towards the pain brimming within my skull to wipe the pool of sweat soaking my eyebrows, but it refuses to comply with my command. Nothing on my body does, in fact, and this is when I realize the prisoner that I am, trapped inside my puny teenage body.
My head snaps back in a violent threat to break my neck and it’s a wonder how it doesn’t because I have no control to combat this outburst. My neck is pushed to its ultimate limits while somehow managing to remain intact. My vision is painted with the blurry sight of the inside of my skull as my eyes continue to will their way through the back of my head, tugging against the muscles holding on for dear life to prevent their seemingly inevitable lift off. Paralysis commandeers the two hundred and six bones contained within my helpless teenage body, captaining my shattered ship. I lie captive to the epileptic enigma which has now taken full control as I ride shotgun, clutching tightly my ticket to Hell.
Dad! I want to scream out, but my cries can only be heard within my head. I am nearing vegetation status, surely, as I lie in the absence of control. I continue to cry for help inside my head while my words refuse me the privilege, offering no quarter to the poor girl who’s lost all control of herself and her facilities. The only thing that my vocal chords do allow is the choking which manages to sputter past my lips. “Kh… ch…” I suffer near inaudibly, begging for a handout, for some shred of mercy, but the only thing which is allowed to me are wishes coming nowhere near fruition.
At my age, kids (mostly boys) always try to act hard. Somewhere along the way someone came along and wrote some fucking invisible rule book and apparently one of the commandments within it states Thou shall not admit to being afraid of any situation, especially if the situation you are in would strike fear into anyone who isn’t a complete psychopath. This is including, but not limited to, dying. Well fuck that rule book and fuck the guy who wrote it because in this moment I’m fucking terrified and it won’t be the last time I am before this is all said and done.
Tears begin to stream out of my eyes (I am now in direct violation of the No Crying rule in the previously mentioned book) and mix with the sweat on my convulsing throat. I start to fear more and more that the raging eyeballs in my head are going to become too much for the ocular muscles fighting against them and I think that if they try hard enough they just might sever themselves to freedom. I am in massive amounts of pain and conscious during the entirety of this horrid event, but I am entirely fucking useless.
I’m under the false impression that this is the extent of my troubles and that things cannot get worse, so naturally, of course, they do. I quickly speed into the brick wall that is realization, because next comes the shaking. No longer limited to only my head, it now spreads out into my entire body. I feel my limbs flailing of their own accord and my body heaving up and down as though trying to correct itself and shake off this fucking nightmare, and it continues to fail me throughout the entirety of this episode.
It’s a real shit show, man. Blood surfaces on my knuckles from where my dainty hand is slapping heavily against my wall and chipping paint from it. If all I have left at this point is my dignity, then I am soon stripped of that as well. Although I can’t see my waist, the feeling of warmth that escapes me and spreads down my legs is unmistakable. It’s obviously piss. As I feel my blue and white pajamas soak with urine, I realize I can’t smell it, the Fall, or the Apple Mango Tango anymore, and what’s more important is that I realize I’m not breathing. If I wasn’t already being forced to cry by the gates of Hell I’m touring, I would be doing so now.
I’m a God damn invalid; a will-less vegetable vibrating within my bed with no means with which to cry for help. I struggle to pull my neck forward and steady myself against this attack, but each time I attempt it my head snaps back harder against the soft pillow growing more soaked by the second from the waterfalls flowing down each of my cheeks.
Struggling to force my eyeballs downward, I attempt to obtain a glimpse of what horrors I am enduring, but it’s no use and they continue to fight their way into the back of my head. Poor little me fights with everything I have in an attempt to get my right arm closer to my cell phone but my body continues to convulse and remind me just how powerless I am.
Through everything I am enduring, I think of my friends and the short life I have lived and the single father who has always been nothing short of perfect to me. I wonder, for a second, if the things I have done mean anything to anyone, and if I’ve even lived the best life that I could. I consider the scary question of whether or not I really matter at all.
The rails on my bed clang as my mind races through every experience I can remember. I think to myself that this must be it, this is what people are talking about when they say your life flashes before your eyes. I think about growing up, and what little I can remember of my mother. I hope that my dad will be alright without me. The one thing that my mind keeps racing back to during the entirety of the seizure, the single most outstanding thought of all, is that I know without a doubt, that this is the end. I can say with no question that this is the bitter fucking end, and I am going to die tonight.
This is about the point where I almost give in to the suffering and accept what comes next. It sounds hella corny, and I’m sure it’s a psychosomatic symptom of imagining you are going to die in a world where your only experience with such a thing throughout a short lifespan is its portrayal in media, but I swear to you that I actually, even if for only but a semi-moment in time, experience the sensation of “seeing the white light.” You know, the one you read about in books not quite unlike the one you are holding (should they be based on something half as true as this tale, of course) and the ones you see in movies; that old played out portrayal of having a near death experience in which the character gets acquainted with all of the reasons they should be alive or living their life differently or just plain out has the answers to all of their problems spelled out to them by some mentor figure such as Dumbledore from Harry Potter. For the possible few of you unfamiliar with that series, then look to Carl Weathers’ character of Chubbs in Happy Gilmore. If the analogy is still lost on you, then you are beyond my help, but when you’ve finished here, pick up Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, and thank me later. In this way I will function as your dead mentor providing you the answer you didn’t realize you were in the market for.
At this point you’ve noticed my rambling. If you want to understand me, understand my mind, which you are going to have to get a grasp on should you expect to sympathize with my character or fully grasp the story you’ve begun to tread through. If you want to feel a fraction of what is happening inside my cranium as a result of the event, then you will just have to roll with me here, and try to follow me from point A to point K to point Q and eventually back to point B. Simply have a little bit of mother fucking faith in me, people, and I promise you that we will get through this and it will all make sense before you know it. Or it won’t, and you’ll have just wasted a lot of God damn time, but to Hell with it, we got as close to breaking the fourth wall as we were ever going to so let’s just roll with it. Now that we’ve covered that, those of you who are still accompanying me on this shaky (get it?) ride should buckle up because we’re moving forward.
Let’s get the fuck back to the subject at hand. Where was I? Oh yeah, the light. It can’t be death, death can’t look like the movies portray it to, it just isn’t a possibility. Even for near-death it seemed like a hell of a stretch to be so spot on. So, just as you assuredly are, I chuck it up to a possible neurological side effect of what is happening to me or I tell myself maybe it’s just my own way of dealing and blocking out the seven layers of Hell that I am currently taking a field trip through whilst never having to leave my bedroom. “Field trip” is a hell of a term for what is happening to me, it almost makes it sound like this is not the absolute worst experience I’ve ever had the pleasure of living through in my entire life. “Come one, come all to the Spectacular Seizure! See the Enigmatic Epilepsy for yourself! You just won a (most likely) one-way trip to the Carnival of Convulsions!” I have a hell of a way with words, don’t I? I’m a total shaky fucking Shakespeare.
The “light” as I will so originally be referring to it henceforth is more than just something I see. It is a sensation that surrounds me and engulfs me in its comfort. It isn’t so much warm, but it is assuring, almost as if to say, “Come with me you stupid bitch, I’ll take care of you. You’re safe now.” Imagine how you feel right now, almost definitely sitting there in your “house clothes” which probably consist of a holey t-shirt and your skivvies, and maybe a pair of gym shorts (because fuck it, its laundry day. When you pay to live someplace it quickly becomes laundry day whenever the Hell you say it does.) Imagine that sense of comfort you have sunken into that couch- half on, half off settled into the wrinkled fabric which has memorized your body figure and gladly welcomes back when it should see you approach with this, or any, book and the comforter you are most likely snuggled up with as well. Don’t apologize for that feeling you have right now, because it feels fucking great to not exert any energy, to not have to feel any discomfort, to have nothing to fear and to escape into the pages before you without actually getting your (at least) slightly overweight lard ass out of the home inside your home you have named after yourself in the form of a battle-worn couch (the battle, of course, being the fight to hold a lazy asshole in place time after time; the crusade of your utmost comfort.)
Imagine that feeling.
And then imagine that feeling wrapping itself around you like the softest fabric you can recall ever having touch your skin. Imagine being engulfed in pleasantness. Imagine knowing that you can just continue to be, to exist in this perfect form of stasis for what is likely forever, never having to do any of those stupid fucking things you thrust yourself into as an adult, never having to follow the routines that are a necessity as a result of your poor life choices or the cruel hand you’ve been dealt. Imagine just knowing that even though you don’t have words to describe the thing you can’t fathom at the moment that you just know. You have been shown the only path any sane individual would take. Leaving everything behind you does not seem like a sacrifice when it is weighed against what you’ve been shown, what you feel, the resonance in your bones sustaining your being now has proven that to you, and it has no reason to break its promise. If it had the need to wish, it’s only desire would be to sustain you in this permanent trance, but it holds no such mortal weakness. The light is omnipotence. And you just fucking know.
In contrast to the Hell on Earth I have been suffering through during the attack that led up to this, things are black and white. It is essentially an offer to remove me from this tribulation, to fucking cleanse me from the filth I am suffering through. I just fucking know.
So what then? What is it that makes me fight back against the only perfection that might exist in this life (using that word loosely for obvious reasons) and try to survive it? I’m a teenage girl, I’m still in high school. Sure, I have my whole life ahead of me, but I’m not so strong willed that I can willingly walk back into the torture I was beginning to escape. I might be a little sweetheart now, but I’m still not some selfless fucking hero who would toss away their chance at something they can’t even put a name to, the only thing that has ever felt right because it trumps all other rights, for just anything.
“Lee? Lee baby… wake up.”
That’s it. Somewhere between the words baby and wake is a crack in my father’s voice, and boy if it just doesn’t break my God damn heart. And at this point, not knowing exactly what it is I am about to fight back against, my heart may just as well be as God damned as my soul assuredly will be.
This man, this beautiful fucking man walking into my bedroom in his nightly ritual cotton long johns is the closest thing to a reason I was ever going to get. The slight stubble on his round face catches the streams of sorrow as they pour from his weeping eyes. If my body could muster more tears, then it would but my tear ducts are working overtime to supply as much production in that department as they can muster already, so I have to settle for sobbing internally.
And I do, too. It breaks me down something drastic inside to watch him shatter all over again. I’ve seen this before, with the one who used to call herself my mother. I couldn’t let this happen to him, not again. The truth be told, I don’t know if his heart could handle another break. This pinnacle of a man making his way around the foot of my bed is more than I can ever fathom. The love inside him is something I can’t begin to comprehend let alone spread myself, not in a fraction of the way he has despite the tragedy he has faced already. I know from experience that when he falls there is no catching him along the way, he will tumble to the bottom until he crashes at the center of the Earth and I will be damned if I am going to allow him to make his way back down there, let alone be the reason he plummets to begin with.
I’m coming back down now snapping back from the light but still in full seizure mode, and I can see him only in my peripherals due to my eyes’ ever-constant rolling backward into my skull, but I know the man and the scene is clear to me. The mountain of a man kneels beside my bed, half tumbling, distraught and unsure of what to do, he places a large but soft palm on my forehead. I have always been surprised by the awkwardly surprising tenderness to my father’s touch for his size. I knew he was a gentle man, especially when it came to me, but physically his palms were nearly as soft as mine and it was a bit abnormal, though I imagine his career path had never involved too much manual labor and that was a reflection of that fact.
The loving Insurance Salesman doesn’t know what to do. He isn’t prepared for this. And I am helpless to take the pain away from him. I am now aching on the inside as well as feeling the pain my body is physically unleashing on me. My head feels like it is filled with rocks now, and the back of my neck is near its breaking point. I could swear it will be ready to snap at any second.
Dad must notice my neck’s strain because he places his left hand underneath it to help support my head much like he did when I was his baby girl and he held me in his arms. He holds me in his arms now, and to him I’m still his baby girl. He sobs softly on my chest, and I’m certain his mind is racing to think of what he can do, but all he can do in the moment is cry. He hasn’t called 911 yet, but he has only entered my room seconds earlier, he is clearly still in shock.
I feel his embrace. I feel the warmth. I feel the promise and I feel his love and I think about how much he needs me and how much I need him and how it’s always been that way. And how we never needed my mother because we had each other, and we both survived together, and I think of what he would do without me. And I think that I need to be here for him. And I think, fuck that light. The light has nothing on this moment. His love drowns out my pain. I pick him any day of the fucking week.
He stands up and he is sobbing, he can barely pull himself together. He grabs a hold of my cell phone on the night stand. It’s times like these that I’m glad I never password protected the thing. What would I have to hide anyways? I really am rather innocent, at least at this point. Besides, my father and I have one of those really, really rare relationships in which we are both entirely honest with one another. If I ever loved anything or anyone in this world, it was this wonderful fucking guy. Him with his selflessness and his amazingly large heart- and that’s when I consider his heart. Can his heart handle this? It scares me as much as the rest of the situation does, and I would be petrified of what I feared to happen next, if I wasn’t being forced to convulse.
“Y-yes,” he sobbed, clutching his chest. He cried into the phone but managed to get the message across the line. “422 Valley Hill Road… my daughter… I think she’s d…dying. She’s having a seizure, we need help.”
“Frank!” I screamed inside my head, but nothing escaped me but muffled choking. Frank was what I called him, and it wasn’t even his name, not really. I mean, his middle name was Franklin, and I guess that’s probably where it originated but I had been doing it for as long as I could remember so I wouldn’t be surprised if it had come out of my mouth completely at random. In any case, it started somehow and it stuck. He calls me Lee and I call him Frank. And we’re basically best friends. We’re weird. Get the fuck over it and move on, this is kind of a touching scene.
I want to help him, to hold him, to be okay, more for him than for me anymore. Even as a teenager my worry for his heart has somehow eclipsed my own fear of death. I push with everything I have to try to pull myself up from the bed, to show him that I’m okay, to laugh and to cry and to love with him and to go downstairs and tell the cops that everything is okay and to watch old monster movies for the rest of the night and to call in sick to work and school respectively to stay home and enjoy the fact that I am going to be okay, that we are going to be okay. I try and I try and I will it into existence, but unfortunately I have no such luck. I ripped myself from the light but I can’t manage to rip myself from this bedspread. I lay there, shaking, and I remain completely useless.
And that’s when it happens.
At first I don’t even really realize what is going on. I push with all of my might and I finally am moving forward, and my vision returns, and I’m up and then I’m at the edge of my bed and I’m moving towards my father to make him understand but things don’t seem right and I feel like I’m floating forward and I think to myself that I must be numb from the attack and that things are going to be weird for a while but that I need to hug my father. And then, before I know it, I am floating at the edge of my bed, the same bed that still contains my body.