Dollars Well Deserved

Today was the Strides for Epilepsy 5K walk that the Epilepsy Foundation of CO puts on every year. With the support of all of you, I was able to raise $1,271 for the Foundation's programs and epilepsy research. It means so, so much to me. I am truly touched.

This year I put together a team of me and seven of my close friends and named it after this blog, and together we made the 3.2ish mile walk in a convoluted path around City Park in Denver. The weather was beautiful, all sunshine and not too hot - though by the half-way point I was sweating through my bright green t-shirt. I was very glad that I hadn't forgotten to wear deodorant like I did yesterday...

As usual, I packed too much stuff that we didn't need or use, like a light sweatshirt and sunscreen, but at least we used all the water! (It also helped that I didn't have to carry the backpack myself, but instead gave the heavy purple bag with the sweaty straps to the Boyfriend of the Year.) There were hydration stands giving out bottles of water and Gatorade, which was good because we hadn't thought to bring water for the four-legged ninth member of our team! It took the all but one of us who walked about an hour to complete the trek, and toward the end, as my muscles started to ache and I felt like I was sweating all the way through my running shoes, I decided that every dollar we'd raised was absolutely earned. But then we passed a little girl of maybe three or four who clearly had serious mental development deficiencies, sitting in the back of an SUV with its trunk open and her legs dangling off the edge, crying while her mom looked through a bag for water and snacks. On the back of her mom's shirt was a picture of the girl and the heading, "Team Lily-bug". As I turned my eyes back to the black pavement ahead of me, they started to fill with tears. She was so young. She has so much life ahead of her, but seizures stole so much of that away from her. Throughout the next ten minutes or so, we passed a ton of kids and adults with the same picture on their backs of the smiling girl. I feel like I've been crying too easily at memories of my own seizures and surgeries as well as stories of other people's experiences, the differences between us and the comfort I feel in the things we share. I swallowed my tears, pushing them from my eyes, because I don't know her; I haven't had enough generalized seizures to cause the brain damage that happens too often; I haven't earned the right to cry. It just breaks my heart, though. My boyfriend squeezed my hand as we walked by the girl, and every time we saw t-shirts with, "In memory of", or, "We miss you", or birth and death dates under a smiling picture. My friends separately mentioned to me how surprised they were at how many of those shirts we saw. I was surprised, too. I realized that every dollar we'd raised was deserved; so well deserved.