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.

While writing this, I thought about Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist who wrote about his epileptic experiences in 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 briefly spoke about the hallucinations I experienced, but the truth is I shared them with no one. The culture around speaking openly has changed, and so here I share 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 was in an alien landscape with large pieces of land suspended in space. The creatures stood on separate pieces. The colors were indescribable, something I haven’t ever seen with waking eyes. There was no speech, just a peaceful swaying.

As time went on they changed. The experiences faded away and were instead replaced by confusion and loss of speech.