Sunday, February 1, 2015

Blizzard on an Early Sunday Morning

It's snowing outside. Snowing a lot actually. We're supposed to get nearly a foot of snow when it's all over.

Right now I'm sitting in our kitchen typing and listening to some asshole butcher a Beatles song in the bar downstairs. It's karaoke night. Obviously, I can't sleep through this so I thought I'd write instead of sit on the couch, pissed.

I had another seizure since my last post. I've been only having three or so seizures a MONTH instead of three a week on this new medication called Felbatol. There are the depression and aggression side effects that I've mentioned before, but so far I've been able to combat them with other medications and some life tools set before me by my doctors and family.

One tool was to use Twitter to meet new friends who also have Epilepsy. It's been rather interesting talking with some of these people. One person in particular is from London, England, or very close to there... a suburb I would guess. We've been trading emails for months now, and that's why I haven't been writing blog posts as often.

She and I have a similar type of Epilepsy... intractable. Basically, what that means is our condition doesn't respond, or isn't responding well to medications. Even our seizures are similar, so we can trade stories, and otherwise bitch about how much it sucks having to deal with life AND Epilepsy at the same time. The difference is, she works and I'm on disability and am not currently unemployed. All of the hardships she seems to have at work, I've also experienced. She also has the same sort of support system at her job as I did when I was still working.

I think a lot about my time as a designer, and what my life is like now. Yes, I do get very depressed when I think about it, but like I said before, there are tools that I can use to combat these feelings. They don't always work 100%, but at least they're there for me when I need them.

One tool I use a lot is music as a hobby. I find myself spending hours in front of my turntable listening to my favorite bands. I have new music (new music to me), and music from my past, like what I would listen to in college and in high school. I find that these albums always bring back good memories, never bad ones. There's something magical about that. I can't quite understand why looking through old photographs can make me so depressed, but playing the soundtrack of my past can evoke so many good feelings.

I just have to know that while the music is playing, I have to remind myself that I'm a person with a past, but with also a future.

It's still snowing.