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“Jesus Christ,” he choked, and his head dropped. “Jesus Christ, Anna, I didn’t know. I’d never have left you there like that if I’d have known.”
“You wanted to know about the epilepsy,” I said, “You asked me to tell you about the seizures and I’ll tell you about them now.”
I did tell him.
I told him how they started with me going so blank at random points I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. How I got so scared of having them I wouldn’t go out on my own. How I became such a state before I was diagnosed that I lost my job and ended up back in my room at my parents’ house too afraid to look for another.
I told him how the daytime ones turned into night time convulsions that had me chewing my tongue so bad I couldn’t speak in the morning, and how I’d wake up in my own soaked sheets from where I’d pissed myself.
I told him how my temporal lobe got so asymmetrical that they picked it up on the EEG reading without me even having a seizure, and how, when I was waiting for them to give me a diagnosis, Sebastian first came into my life and said he loved me regardless.
I told him how I lost so much of myself when my mind was that fucked that I forgot just who I used to be, and Sebastian helped me find myself again so slowly it was an uphill battle that lasted years to truly find my feet again.
I carried on and told him how everyone was so worried about me there was a constant fear in their eyes every time I stopped speaking for five seconds straight.
How that fear turned to sympathy.
And that sympathy turned to pity.
And I stopped being Anna and started becoming the invalid who needed to take care of herself and stop taking any risks or living any kind of life for herself.
“But it wasn’t just that,” I said. “It wasn’t just the epilepsy that hurt so bad. It was more than that. The seizures had already started before you left me, they were in the sickness and those weird feelings of déjà vu and everything they told me was stress. It was more than my brain and the bullshit it sparks when it feels like it, it was the pain of losing you. And everyone knew that. Everyone knew what you did to me. Everyone knew how much I loved you and how much you’d broken me into the mess of who I was before.”
“You’ve been having seizures that long?” he asked, and his voice was as broken as mine.
I nodded. “Yeah. They’ve been better and worse, but they’ve always been there. They helped loads with the lamotrigine, and Sebastian tried to help by controlling everything I did, but they never went away. Not completely.”
We sat for another round of silence, both of us staring at the carpet between us and trying to find our thoughts. We were both lost and knew it. Both broken and knew it.
I had no idea how the hell we would ever find the way up from that spot on the floor, both of us stuck in this pit of pain. Neither of us tried to attempt it, just sat and breathed.
Sat and breathed and cried.
Sat and breathed and remembered just how hard the whole sorry wreck of our life was in the aftermath.
“Did you love him?” he asked me. “Did you love Sebastian? I thought you were happy. People said so.”
“I was trying to love him,” I said. “I thought I did, and I wanted to, and I was so grateful for everything he was being to me.”
“That’s what I was doing with Maya,” he said. “I was trying to love her, and wanted to love her to at least drag some scrap of good from the carnage. And she was trying so hard. Trying so hard to make me love her.”
I nodded. “Sebastian was good to me. If I had any sense, I’d love him back and would still be there.”
“That’s what my mother is telling me about Maya.”
“But I can’t,” I choked. “I can’t love him, because he’s not you. I’ve never loved him like I loved you.”
“And that’s what was happening with me,” he choked back. “I can’t love her, because she’s not you. I love Millie. I love Millie more than life, but I can’t love Maya, and she knows it. That’s why the trying so hard turned into so much spite. Because she knows I don’t love her, and she wants to punish me for it, and I don’t blame her, not really.”
I gave up at that point and let myself fall to the floor. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling, cried out of tears. And he joined me there, at my side, staring up at the ceiling along with me.
