“There Was Once a Time” by Anonymous Teen

There was once a time. I don't handle stress very well, medically proven PNES or psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, long name if you ask me, it really just means instead of being able to process my emotions or my stress, my body acts out and seizes uncontrollably. At least in my case, PNES is a trauma response; often, people with much bigger problems than I suffer from it, like rape victims and victims of abuse. Mine is the result of one soccer game, one bad pass, one late response.

To clarify, the name doesn't do people with PNES justice. Often, it's preferred to call it functional seizures because having psycho in the name doesn't help people understand what we are going through. I say we because this isn't just about me. This writing is also a reflection of other people suffering from PNES. In a better general description, PNES is a condition caused when stress manifests itself physically; this is not caused by abnormal brain electrical activity, though it does resemble an epileptic seizure. People with PNES do not want to have seizures; it's not done on purpose. People with PNES are not faking their seizures, and they can not control them.

It took me eight months to get diagnosed with PNES. I suffer from PNES on a weekly basis, about two to three times a week. Sometimes, my seizures last a few minutes other times, they last hours. My longest seizure lasted one hour and forty-five minutes. I only stopped seizing because my body gave out from exhaustion. I was completely aware the whole time, just unable to do anything about it. My seizures tend to change depending on how stressed I am sometimes. They resemble a grand mal seizure. Other times, it may resemble an absent seizure. It just depends on how my body acts out. To help stop a PNES seizure, you're supposed to calm down or have someone help you relax, which is easier said than done when you're choking on your saliva and convulsing, but we make do.

Seizures feel different for everyone, epileptic or not. For me, during the seizures, it's this floaty feeling, and I feel almost perplexed. I understand that I'm seizing, I know where I am, but it feels like an out-of-body experience.

My body tingles all over, and my muscles get all tight. Everything tends to slow down like I'm in a fever dream, and after the seizure, I'm left with my mind feeling sluggish, my body aches, and I'm stuck feeling like a little kid with slurred speech. I tend to come off as childish, laughing, smiling, maybe my mind makes me come off that way, too, to protect myself. Maybe in a part of my mind, it goes back to that evening, it goes back to those memories, and it would rather act like a child than have me remember the times I truly felt like one.

I haven't properly mentioned what caused my PNES, it's much easier for me to explain my seizures and information about my condition.PNES isn't the only condition I suffer from, but it deserves to be heard, especially since it's common for teenagers, yet I don't hear about it quite often. But let me stop myself from getting off topic. I used to be an athlete; I played soccer for two years. I wasn't very good, in all honesty, more of a bench warmer. I also didn't like playing soccer that much. I only played because my best friend did it. Not to mention, we got to get McDonald's after away games, which was one of my favorite memories. It's hard to go to McDonald's now. I smashed my head into the ground. That game, I never wore my jersey again after that. It's a rather blunt way for me to put it, but it's what happened for the full extent of my injuries. A girl pushed me in the stomach, and I fell backwards and smashed my head against the ground so hard my head rebounded forward before smashing again. I got a concussion and a sprained neck.

PNES isn't the only thing I'm left with from my injury. I'm still suffering from post-concussion syndrome and the effects it has had on my mental health. I've recently been put on anxiety medication and have been in therapy for the past four months. I've been told by countless people that I'm healthy and I'm healing. They make it sound so easy, like this is a normal part of life that all I have to do is tell myself I'm normal, tell myself I'm completely healthy, and it will all go away. Yet when I'm left unable to move any longer as my body gives out after twisting, turning, contorting my jaw, popping my eyes, rolling back my muscles, tightening and spasming, I'm expected to just calm down and go back to what I was doing because I am a healthy child. To my knowledge, healthy children don't sob in the bathroom when they hear their friends start placing bets on their attendance because of how absent they are. Healthy kids didn't have to leave school in a wheelchair in front of all their friends because my body had started shutting down from stress. Healthy kids don't spend every day wondering what would have happened if they hadn't gotten hurt in that game. They don't relive the feeling of their head hitting the ground every time they close their eyes or drift off replaying that game over and over.

I'm healing, I'm in recovery, I can get better, it won't be the same, but I can adapt and change. But there was once a time. Oh, how there was once a time when I'd be sitting in the back of the bus with my teammates singing poorly to Spanish songs or whatever was on the radio. The time we got home from the away game super late because we ordered absurd amount of chocolate chip cookies from McDonald's and the whole time we just filmed tiktoks in the mcdolands laughing smiling trading food fixing eachothers hair posing in our jersey we only won one game but everyone of those moments where better then any win we could have gotten. I still remember putting blue duct tape on my cleats so the shoe laces didn't come untied. My cleats still have the blue duct tape on from that game. My cleats are still dirty from that game, like a time capsule. It's probably not hygienic to have dirty cleats from October sitting in my closet, but I couldn't part with them quite yet. I recently threw them away a couple of weeks ago, and they still cross my mind. I threw out all my soccer games except for my jersey. Twenty-two is funny if you think about my jersey number being twenty-two, getting injured on October twenty-second, and my birthday being April twenty-second, but everything happens for a reason. I'm sure there's a reason why I'm stuck in this cycle reliving these memories, but that's not enough for me. Being chronically ill is being told you have a life sentence while everyone else tells you to be grateful it's not a death sentence. Being chronically ill makes every sad song not make me think about boys, but of the life I could have had, mourning the person I was. Being chronically ill is being told you're going to come out of this stronger, and you can get better, but no one should have to get stronger at fourteen. I didn't want to get stronger; I just wanted to play soccer with my best friend. I no longer remember what it feels like to be normal, and I've stopped forcing myself to strive for that. My body only knows what it's like to be sick, so I've normalized that about myself. My normalcy is flare-ups and taking breaks, taking Tylenol because it's okay for your normal to not be normal. I have accepted the fact that I have changed, and I hope one day the world will too for others like me and people with other chronic illnesses. But I will always remember there was once a time.