| Current mood: | weird |
| Current music: | Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive |
Jamais vu
Why is it that the French actually have words for this stuff? Is the wine? Napolean? The Sun King? It's something I wonder on an irregular basis. Then I go read my saved copy of the military history of France to make myself feel better. If that doesn't work, I blame Jean Claude Van Damme on them, even though he's Belgian or Dutch or something. What? I got yelled at for like two hours once for telling a French chick that she needs to take him home with her when her tour of duty as an exchange student is up. Apparently the French are embarrassed by him, too.
Deja vu is such a part of the English language now that pretty much everyone knows what it means, but jamais vu? It literally means "never seen", I believe, but the translation is the feeling of experiencing familiar events for the first time. It's like walking into your house and feeling like you've never been there before. Jamais vu is one of my least favorite, actually, it is my least favorite seizure. I hate it more than deja vu, more than a full blown bite my tongue in half tonic-clonic, more than the time I got lost on the treadmill, even more than my regular seizure-induced trips to Pennsylvania. Deja vu is no big, because at least everything is "known". You know? I know who I am, where I am, who I'm with, what's going on, what's going to happen (hey, I'm psychic), and all of that. Sure, I'm incapacitated, but I know and I can work with that to emotionally stabilize myself until my brain has slipped back into gear and I'm back with the program. Jamais vu is different. It turns everything into the unknown. Usually, I have a strong sense of who "myself" is, even if I don't remember my name, but that's about it. I don't know where I am, who I am with, what I'm supposed to be doing, where I'm supposed to be going, how to get there if I wanted to. I am completely lost and, intellectually at least, I know I shouldn't be, but I am.
As terrifying as it is to experience an almost instant immersion from the known to the completely unknown, what's worse are the consequences of not knowing. Lost, I'm something of a docile, brainless dog. I wander around, looking for the familiar, which can never be found. I don't speak. I can't tell the difference between the sidewalk and the street. I can't even read. I am fully capable of wandering for miles whilst post ictal. That's a fancy term for after the seizure itself, the recovery period between seizure and normal brain functioning. At least, that's what I use it for. I have gotten myself literally lost, nearly. It's not so bad, because I can usually retrace my path. I don't forget what I was doing while post ictal, but the residue of fear and surreality just don't leave. It's why I have a cell phone, I get lost, I find a landmark and call the StudMuffin. "Honey, I don't know where I am, come get me. Please don't panic and don't call the cops. I'm fine. It's Kansas, dammit. I see grass and cows." It's why I thought about getting a seizure dog. I don't need something to predict my seizures so I don't hurt myself, I need something to keep me from wandering around in traffic until I'm back to myself.
It's weird how these things clump up for me, especially after a tonic-clonic (that's the one where you fall and jerk a lot). It's like daisy chains of deja vu-normal vu-jamais vu all swirling around my temporal path in CinemaScope technicolor accompanied by sore muscles and this horrid pain in the tongue.
Of course, the Bratchild wandered in while I was reading about CinemaScope at Wikipedia and somehow it ended up turning into a lesson on Linnean Taxonomy. Ergo, if I had a point to this, I completely forgot what it was, though I do know what a khaan mckennai is now and the Fourth Grader Bratchild can now use the Linnean taxon system better than most high school graduates. Of course, he can't spell. Grr.
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