Seized by Stillness: Living with Epilepsy.
I’ve lived with epilepsy for close to 15 years now. I no longer call it a disease. I call it a doorway to the self.
The first seizure came after a bout of typhoid — a collapse that no one saw coming, not even me. Since then, the episodes have struck without pattern. In restaurants. At family gatherings. On quiet evenings with friends. And once, curiously, in a moment of stress — right after I helped an old lady who had fallen.
For the longest time, I felt powerless. I would slip, tremble, vanish into unconsciousness. When I came to, I would apologize. Sometimes to others, sometimes to myself.
But something shifted 5–6 years ago.
The Aura as a Gate
Those who live with epilepsy know what an aura is — a strange premonition, a soft shiver through the nerves, a fading of the edges of reality. In earlier years, it would always end the same way — collapse.
But one day, as the aura hit, my mind cried out:
“Varahi Amme… Varahi Amme… Varahi Amme…”
Not a mantra I planned. Not a japa from a textbook. Just a desperate, pure, instinctive cry to the fierce and compassionate goddess I’ve always known in my bones. Varahi Amma is my ancestral deity, the mother-goddess worshipped at my ancestral house.
And something responded.
The seizure didn’t come. The mind returned. Not with full strength, but with presence.
Since that day, the aura has become a signal — not just of danger, but of the possibility of return.
What Is Focus, When the Body Fails?
Some might say I focused. Others might say I prayed. I say: I remembered.
Not an idea. Not a word. But a thread. A name with memory.
“Varahi Amme” wasn’t magic. It was a root I reached for while falling.
Apasmāra and I
In Shaiva mythology, epilepsy is personified as a dwarf demon — Apasmāra — who represents forgetfulness and ignorance. During his cosmic dance, Shiva doesn’t kill Apasmāra. He simply places one foot upon him.
Ignorance, it seems, cannot be destroyed. It can only be held in place.
For me, epilepsy is Apasmāra.
And I — I have learned to place a foot on him.
Sometimes, he escapes. But sometimes, I dance.
What I Want to Say to Others with Epilepsy
You're not broken.
You are not your seizures. You are the one who remembers before them. The one who returns after. The one who one day may reclaim the space between.
And if it helps: find your “Varahi.”
Not as a goddess, necessarily. But as a name. A sound. A rhythm of self that you can hold onto when the rest fades.
A Final Note
In 2013, I wrote this right after a seizure:
"He was moving, not with the deliberate command of the self, but with a fluid sense of owning a body..."
I didn’t know then that the very fluidity I feared would one day become my path to steadiness.
I will keep writing about epilepsy. Not as a survivor’s tale. But as a witness — to what the body teaches, what the mind can remember, and what the spirit never forgets.
The story isn’t over. The dance continues.
And now, I am not alone. You aren't, either.
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