The Darker Side Of Epilepsy
“Everybody hurts, sometime, just hold on”. These words from the R.E.M. song Everybody hurts have resonated with me for many years. My Dad played the song often when I was young, it became the soundtrack to the most difficult days of my epilepsy and, it was one of the songs we played at my Dad’s funeral. I find it to be a very truthful song, there is no doubt that everybody will, at some point in their lives, feel a deep and painful hurt. We will all face difficult challenges. That is just part of life and the only option we really have is to hold on. Holding on, however, is not always an easy thing to do. I often talk about the more “difficult” or “darker” days of my epilepsy like those days are a thing of the past. That is not true. Most of the time when I refer to these days I am talking about the first couple of years, which were, without doubt dark and very often I felt there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Those difficult days came again when m...