This is an excerpt from my book Grand Mal which is forthcoming. Obviously no obligation to read. Thanks, s.r.p.
Chapter 3
I don’t really know what happens next.
Alice falls down the rabbit hole all in a golden afternoon…
I wander the streets of Provincetown, prowling up and down. It feels like a carnival to me and the crowd seems to swirl around me. I walk like a blind person, arms stretched out before me because I am seeing double right now and am afraid of falling. I seem always to fall to my left, the side Dr. Caviness tells me is the locus of my seizures ~ the point of origin. I feel my way through the air and people move out of my way. I think they are laughing at me. Pointing and laughing.
Whether they are or are not, I do not know.
At last, I pop into a shop and buy a pair of ridiculous heart-shaped sunglasses. As I am being rung up, I realize that I do not understand the concept of currency or money. I cannot even do the simple math, and worse, every word the teller utters echoes in my head and I feel like I am going to be sick. I chalk it up to sunstroke. Or perhaps the gin and tonics I had been drinking were stronger than I had thought. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. Epilepsy never once crosses my mind.
* * *
I somehow make my way back to Ian and to the restaurant where I meet him out front, just as he said he would be. It is nothing short of a miracle that I find him, given everything, but I do. I will not remember about the argument or the mood until he tells me about it later. For now, I meet him and we go inside and order. We are not there for five minutes when I go to the bathroom and catch my reflection. At first, I cannot stop laughing. I mean, hysterical laughing at my own reflection. Then I think I’ll be sick again, and that out of control feeling comes back to me.
Nothing is funny. So why am I laughing? This is epilepsy; everything out of control. Your world spinning beneath your feet, and while everyone else manages to stay glued to the earth, for some reason, you cannot. You are always hovering there, slightly off-balance.
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