The First Signs

In our hyper-connected world, fear of judgment runs deep. It’s 2025, and despite extraordinary medical progress, epilepsy still carries a stigma. I stayed silent for years, and I don’t regret that. It was self-protection.

While writing this, I found myself thinking about Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist who wove his epileptic experiences into his work. He once said, “For several moments, I would experience such joy as would be inconceivable in ordinary life.” His friend, Nikolay Strakhov, described watching him speak with a sense that “a revelation of some kind” was coming.

When I read those accounts, I recognized something of myself.

I’ve spoken about the hallucinations I experienced, but only on the surface. The truth is, I shared them with no one. Life has changed since then, and the culture around speaking openly has changed too, so I’m choosing honesty now.

Here is something I’ve never told anyone:

At times, a seizure would pull me into a different world entirely. It felt as though I was no longer in my body. I found myself in an alien landscape, fragments of land suspended in space, creatures standing on separate planes. The colors were unlike anything I’ve ever seen with waking eyes. There was no speech, just a peaceful swaying, as if the whole scene was breathing.

As the years passed, they changed. The vivid worlds faded, replaced by confusion, silence, and my inability to speak. The loss of that “beauty” frightened me, and it frightened the people who loved me.