It began on a Tuesday. I remember it vividly because he was supposed to pick up the groceries, yet he forgot. He never forgets. That’s the kind of man he is…was…always two steps ahead, always with a checklist in hand. But that day? He returned home with a dazed look and a bruise on his shoulder. He said he “lost time.” At that moment, I had no idea what he meant. Now, I understand all too well.

I’ve seen what it looks like when the lights are on, but nobody’s home. I’ve heard the sounds my husband makes…guttural, sharp, wrong, noises that I never knew could come from him. I’ve felt the weight of his body as I catch him before he collapses onto the dresser, praying he doesn’t break something else. I’ve learned far too much about seizures, yet I still don’t know who I’m waking up to afterward.

The doctors told us it was the frontal lobe, that it was “brief,” that it would “pass,” and that it wasn’t the kind of epilepsy people worry about.

But I do worry. Every single night. Each time he twitches in his sleep. Whenever he walks too close to the stairs. Every time he stops mid-sentence, his eyes go flat as if the screen has frozen.

He used to be a coach, pacing the sidelines like a storm ready to unleash. Now, he sits in silence, afraid to move too quickly, because the last time he did, he threw a chair and couldn’t recall it afterward. He apologized for weeks, crying in the bathroom, thinking I couldn’t hear him.

No one talks about those seizures, the ones that appear violent, the ones that make others uncomfortable. The ones that get misdiagnosed as rage or psychosis. The ones that turn a familiar body into that of a stranger.

He didn’t disappear when the seizures started, but the way he looks at his own hands now makes it feel like he never fully came back.