nccotus

…and all along I was a seizure patient. Diagnosed but I couldn’t follow up. My parents wouldn’t permit it and my ex listened to them. It suited them to follow a vague diagnosis of schizophrenia: it covered it over about sexual abuse and incest.

so, I couldn’t get treatment that I vitally needed. I had lived with it all my life and knew how to but it was arduous agony to have to shortchange my son in this regard. I continued to pursue that diagnosis of partial complex seizures but nobody believed me. In the end I pushed it to the back of my mind and called it spells or “seizuregasms.” I used to lay on the couch for an hour and Ian would sit with me with his hand on my back where there was a curvature in my spine. As energy pulsed through me. I remember being at the K-Mart when all of a sudden the lights seemed to get really bright and twinkly and I had to return the cart and somehow drive home. The seizures were likely brought on by the crotch injury at age 5. Or 6 or 7–I can’t validate the age I was when it happened.

I used to describe it as a problem with gestalt: I would lose my “total picture” and then I would be “off” in the most painful and unpleasant way for weeks at a time. That was when I was driving around the Berks County byways back in the 80’s before I met Dad.

He used to say that he liked to keep a woman “off balance “ in a relationship. He didn’t realize that he was bringing on seizures!

My condition got so extreme. I called it being “stuck.” I just couldn’t move.

As a Canadian immigrant Alex was bound to honor my British immigrant parents in so many ways. He respected authority and he understand their language better than mine where they had rendered me speechless. I was using words in crazy ways in attempt to communicate at any cost, as I had become desperate for the relationship. I had also become frustrated and frantic with him. An unreal personality had developed in me and he really never got to know me and I have been stuck in this regard ever since. Stuck in being stuck and when I wasn’t “stuck” it wasn’t really me. It is unthinkable what my parents did to me in this regard. They were blocking me from the relationship at any cost. As a recent Canadian immigrant he had no power to see any of this and he had his own serious issues at this time, he was about to lose his job in a bad economy. And needed to hold on to me. Somehow a weird relationship was forged there that held on through many phases for 21 years. He knew that I had a problem and I think he even knew it was seizures but he couldn’t go there to help. It was so confusing. The history of psych incarceration and suicide attempts would have been daunting and confusing to anybody. He loved the Harvard Advocate President and dismissed the rest. It was such a benefit to me to be a girlfriend in all these regards instead of an older daughter. And, it was starting to be too late for me to marry.

Lord, please bring the help of Heaven to Alex and me in regard to this relationship and marriage to clear the ill and misapprehension on both sides and clear the massive misunderstanding to make it better for the two kids we lost, wherever they may be; and lead Ian to whole, holy, and complete healing in heart, mind, body, and soul in every regard; to stay living well, happy, and good for a good long time.

Amen.