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Sleepy Childhood Confessions

By Whitney Theresa JunePublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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Sleepy Childhood Confessions
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Mother of mine,

As I was growing up, our entire family teased me about how often I would sleep in your room before I became a teenager. To this day, the "because you were the baby and her favourite" comments will still be launched at me like a sibling-guided missile.

How kicking our snoring father out of his rightful spot, more often than was warranted, made me a whiny attention-seeking sibling.

The spot next to you had only ever been designated worthy of paternal removal for the 'sick' child. The one you would want to keep an eye on throughout the night. You always held this irrational fear that you needed to constantly check on us to make sure we continued breathing.

There were definitely times where I was not the definition of 'sick' my siblings ascribed worthy of relocation.

But what I never told you, nor anyone else in our family is how there was a number of fever-less factors which often led to my bedtime eviction of my father. The catalyst, in part, your nocturnal epilepsy.

How, of the nightmares you all knew I suffered from, I never dared tell any of you about one recurring nightmare I had. One which always took place at the lake we visited in the summer and during it, because of your seizures, you would have to go away for long periods of time. How you would hold me and tell me that I would be alright without you, promising that you would only be gone for a little while. But in the dreams a little while always felt like years. And how before you left, I would be clutching onto you and have to be pulled away.

Or how when you would have a seizure, I could easily hear it from wherever my room was at the time, in whichever house we currently resided. Be it upstairs or down. As if I was attuned to the specific frequency of the sound you might make. Often a repetitive murmur, oddly like you were choking.

How I would come into your room and have to wake up my father, who was laying soundly asleep beside you, unaware what had happened. And how often if I placed my hand on your shoulder and whispered, "It's okay, mom. You're okay, mom," it would calm you somehow.

There were the comments that always went along the lines of, "How do you always hear her?" And it annoyed me to no end. Because it was like I could sense the possibility of an oncoming seizure and if they just took a moment to see you, to see how tirelessly you were working to support us all. That they might be able to see when you were so stressed or exhausted and holding everything in, that that was the night the seizure might strike.

So, sometimes it was those moments where I could sense you were carrying too much emotionally, physically, and/or psychologically. When I felt like there was a probability you might have a seizure and I would feign "sickness," hoping to get relocated to watch over your sleep. To try to be the comfort you were to us at the moments when our body's were at their breaking point.

I wanted to be the solace to you, that you were and continue to be for me.

Confessing to this, makes me realize how much I dislike the term 'sick'. And I found myself looking up its definition in the dictionary (which just so happened to be dictionary.com).

I found that one of the thirteen definitions for 'sick' as an adjective is "deeply affected with some unpleasant feeling, as of sorrow, disgust, or boredom: sick at heart..."

Looking at that particular definition, maybe I was 'sick', but just not the kind of 'sick' everyone else believed I should be.

Because in a way I held my own irrational fear. A need to check and make sure you were breathing, not because I believed your epilepsy made you sick. But because in those times, it gave me solace when waking, that you were still there, still breathing.

With all my love,

Your Youngest (aka the baby and your favourite)

Childhood
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