My Deep Dark Fear

We didn't get home til late. If you can call nine thirty late, that is, which I suppose you can't, but I was tired anyway. And thirsty. Full and thirsty. An empty water glass stood used next to the sink. I picked it up but immediately dropped it as if it had burned me, white hot as it clanged to the counter. No, I thought, no, no, no. A familiar sensation melted through my right hand, pulsing twice like a heartbeat threatening to stir back to life. My legs turned to rubber and I lowered myself to the floor. Maybe my face went pale, the horror within myself etched on its features, maybe a "no" escaped my lips or maybe it was that I'd collapsed, but John came over to me, crouching with his hand on my shoulder, concern bordering on panic in his eyes. "What happened? Are you okay?"

I wasn't sure. I clutched my right hand in my left like I had so many times before and I waited for the shaking. But it never came. I felt frozen, as if any movement I made would cause me to break into a seizure. What was that? "Water," I asked, "can you hand me some water?" I didn't want the glass I'd just dropped. I didn't want to touch it, worried that a bad energy lingered in it still; a demon of Christmases past.

"It felt like a seizure," I answered to John's waiting form, now handing me water and soothingly rubbing my back, "but not a seizure. It had the feeling sort of, but really weak, and my hand didn't move or twitch or anything." I'd been seizure free for ten months, twenty five days and about eight hours. But it wasn't a seizure. So then what the hell was it?

Psychosomatic seizures are essentially your body remembering what a seizure feels like but without the actual electricity surge. They're often brought on by stress. Is that what it was? Did anything even happen or was it all in my head? My always nervous, ever vigilant, still healing head? Having a seizure is my deep dark fear; it creeps around the edges of my mind every time I startle, or sneeze, or drop something or am tired. It's as if my life since the afternoon of January 24th has been lived on borrowed faith and I'm waiting for my luck to run out. Please, God, don't let it run out. This can't be too good to be true.