Dissociated Thoughts

Life Altering Choices

Day 3219: September 6, 2021
Prompt: Choices can change our lives profoundly. The choice to mend a broken relationship, to say "yes" to a difficult assignment, to lay aside some important work to play with a child, to visit some forgotten person--these small choices may affect many lives eternally.
Gloria Gather - Tell us about a choice you made that changed your life.

         Every choice we make in life has the potential to change our lives profoundly, as well as the lives of those with which we interact. But, being human and therefore fallible, we all make some doozies in our lifetimes. I've had a few. The probably worst choice I have made to date affected mainly me, but in the long run has affected my parents, children, my husband, and even some of my friends throughout the years. As a teen, I suffered from undiagnosed Bipolar disorder. Most of the time, I was depressed to the point of not wanting to be alive with some times of feeling invincible surfacing once in a while. I was unhappy. When I considered everything I had to be grateful for, I became even more depressed because there were others that had life much worse than I. I couldn't find a reason to verify why I was so despondent. So one day, I took a bottle of muscle relaxers that a school mate had been prescribed for her back. The whole bottle. I went into seizures during theater class. Everyone saw it. I'm sure the teacher was scared to death. I woke up in the Emergency Room having my stomach pumped. It turned out that the choice I had made to end my life triggered my dormant genetic trait for Epilepsy. The choice to try to end my life just made it worse than I perceived it already was. My parents then had two kids with Epilepsy. Two kids' specialist bills to pay for, and the labs, medicines, etc. They had two of us they had to worry about day and night, never knowing if or when one of us would go into a grand mal seizure. I was teased at school after that, people pretending to have seizures and calling me a freak. I had a few more big ones at school too. It was always so embarrassing. The choice to take my life inadvertently affected my ability to get into the top universities I had been looking into, and the Naval Academy (they wanted me to be seizure free and medication free for at least a year before I would be allowed in - and that never happened). Little did I know then, it would affect me for the rest of my life. I had seizures when I got sick or too stressed, seizures during my monthlies. That choice affected jobs, the quality of life for me and my little family. I tried to hide my Epilepsy from new friends as long as possible. It always ended the same way, with them being witness to a seizure. I his it from my husband too. He found out in the middle of the night when I went into a pretty bad one. He took me to the hospital and when I came out of my post-seizure state and was finally coherent, we both found out I was pregnant. I had seizures while in labor with both of my girls. No amount of medication could keep them away. Then, my daughters had to grow up with a defective Mommy. But they became old hands at dealing with the effects of the seizures. There were a few times when the seizures were so bad they scared everyone. I'd wake up in the hospital with everyone I love taking turns sitting in my hospital room waiting for me to finally wake up. And the kicker, the Status Epilepticus. By the time that one hit, everyone was well used to what to do. When the seizure lasted longer than five minutes and then more came back to back, they knew I might not make it out of that one. I think it scared the bejeezus out of all of them! I don't know, I was incoherent. I think that choice made my life and the lives of my family much worse. All these years, decades later, I still wonder if I hadn't made the choice to try to end my life, how different my life would be. But, then again, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

Word Count: 750