the spotless mind...

due to my inexplicable fascination with elijah wood (by the way, newest celebrity crush? mark ruffalo--brain tumor survivor), i've been wanting to see _eternal sunshine of the spotless mind_ for months now, regularly checking it's imdb.com listing for release date information and reviews (although i couldn't care less for the charlie kaufman hype). tonight we went to see it, stean and i and our friend jenn. we sat about 2/3rds of the way back in a relatively empty theater. i got a headache pretty early on, par for the course with these anti-seizure meds. but then about 40 minutes in, the aura started. it happened during a sequence in the movie in which the music had a lot of squeaky stringy instrument sounds, combined with a lot of flashing edit cuts and the screen seemed to get really big and imposing. i covered my eyes, hoping that whatever was being triggered would be evaded, and i reached for the carbamazepine, thinking that if i could get some drugs in my system it could keep things from getting to seizure point. (i kept thinking about all those stories about kids seizing because of the flashing lights in video games.) there was no seizure, thankfully. between the meds and the eye covering and the getting up and leaving the theater, things settled down. i did feel confused and upset for a while, but that subsided, too.

the pre-seizure. it's the strangest feeling, the most difficult-to-articulate feeling. i tried to describe it to stean (my hero, who paid for our movie tickets and who left with me without the slightest complaint even though for once he was actually enjoying a movie i wanted to see), and i can think of only one thing that comes close, something from my younger, more foolish days, back when i thought i was invincible, a feeling that has been completely eradicated from my understanding of life in the past few weeks--it's like a bad drug experience. everything feels immediate and crippling, as if you can feel yourself sliding away, but you're powerless to stop it. it ain't fun.

we walked home. i cried a lot. the randomness of disease leaves me reeling. i grew this thing--this tumor happened in me. call it a mutation or a fluke or just plain bad luck, but its cells are derived from my cells. how unfair... my entire life i've been this nerdy smart kid. gifted classes in grade school, skipped 5th grade because of high IQ, good at standardized tests, hell-bent college bound as a teenager, have toyed with the idea of joining mensa. i feel as if my greatest attribute, the part of me of which i have always been most proud, is now betraying me.