Not so long ago, an acquaintance who works with me in the book business informed me that "everyone is a liar." At first, I strongly disagreed. Thought, Sure, maybe you are, maybe he is, but I - no, I am not a liar. But the comment stuck with me for months, and for months afterward, as I went about my business, I took stock. Every thing that I did or felt or experienced (or did not do, for that matter), I consciously noticed whether or not I told anyone about these things.
One stands out more than others: the night I felt the tell-tale aura that I always get before a big seizure; the way my eyes became dark and heavy and the air filled with bright phosphenes and I felt like I had a heavy weight on my shoulders and was pushed to the floor. I groped along the walls of the apartment and did what I knew to do, and lay down on the carpeted floor, away from sharp edges and a long fall. Then I felt the waves move through me like a current, and I smelled wet roses and then felt light was floating upward, like I was dying, and I was sure I was (as I am every time this happens), and when I awoke, my head felt like a heavy magnet and the floor beneath me was wet with piss.
I never told about this, or any of the other secrets that inhabit the long and dark corridors of my temporal lobe. I didn't even tell my neurologist, who really needs to know these things. My husband has seen me shake and convulse in spastic fits, as have people in restaurants, my university when I was there, passengers on trains. At some point, if you know me long enough, I will fall down, convulse, gasp, piss myself, and not remember a thing about it other than how it starts. After, we ride the ambulance to the hospital - but after so many years, one gets tired. I don't want to talk about it anymore, and that is a lie of sorts.
Not long after, I was at a local bookstore and caught site of Lying by Lauren Slater. With such a provocative title and the subject matter, which was about temporal lobe epilepsy, I found it hard to resist. But what I soon found out was that where I was shining the light away from my seizures and epilepsy (and the medic alert that I should but don't wear, among other noncompliant behaviors), author Lauren Slater was practically bragging about it, playing games with what she said, then withdrew, was epilepsy, and I could not understand why.
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