The Spectre of Determinism: A Story of a Life

Just over a year ago, I was diagnosed with epilepsy, something that has the potential to progress to grand mal seizures, meaning I could lose consciousness and convulse on the ground. That is a story of its own, I suppose. But this is a different story. After being diagnosed, I was put on medication, and I had to be switched to a new one after the doctors decided that the previous medication was not sufficient to address the problem.

A few days ago, I experienced a mild seizure, or what you could call an aura, and the doctor increased the dosage of this new one.

A couple days later, seemingly unrelated, I had to print, sign, and scan a document—and then send it to my doctor. I fulfilled this obligation. Or so I thought.

That leads to yesterday.

Yesterday was a completely normal day. I had the morning shift at work. I was not able to work on one of my projects that day, but I planned on working on the other that night, and there were several books that I was reading as well. Basically, my mind was on the usual things. I was not irritable during the work shift, and I am not an irritable person.

But things took a turn when I finally clocked out for the day. I gladly put in my headphones, as I usually did. But I did not start up my music yet. I saw that I had received a notification from my doctor. It informed me that I had sent the wrong document. It was an easy fix. I just had to go home and send another message with the correct one attached. But this was such a nuisance. I'll readily admit that pointless nonsense like this gets on my nerves. It's just bullshit. Why? It just wastes time. It's like it always is with paperwork, trying to iron out all of the crinkles. Think bureaucracy. Except this is my fault.

This was bullshit. This was more than bullshit, apparently. I was plainly more than irritated, as I took the phone and hurled it onto the ground.

I think I remember two things.

One was the shock that I had actually taken it that far. The other was the shock at just how much damage I had inflicted on my phone. I picked it up to see if I had cracked it in spite of the case, and it had been annihilated. The screen was webbed and unusable. And this had only made me angrier. I hurled the phone at the ground again, broke it further. And again. And again. I forget how many times.

I remember realizing I wouldn't be able to listen to music on my walk home anymore.

I remember thinking just how far this had escalated.

When I got home, I immediately set to fixing the problem. I got out my laptop and realized that I simply never saved a copy of the new document that I signed, so I had to rescan it. In the trouble of doing that, I lost my temper again, and I set to punching the printer this time. As before, I don't know how many times I punched the printer, but it was until my knuckles were bleeding. I guess I was lucky that the printer was bulky and old, because it's still not broken . . . somehow. Either way, I did manage to get that document sent along. I'm just waiting for another message informing me of another complication, I guess.

And, all the while, I'm thinking that I'm absolutely losing it. At this point, it's both natural and unnatural. The printer is annoying. I have yelled at it. And the problem that set me to punching it, has set me off before. But this far? Things irritate me, but I don't remember destroying my phone, let alone over something so trivial.

It doesn't matter. I have a problem. I have no phone in a world that lives off them, so I go onto my account, and I start to buy a new one. A massive waste of money, too, as I just bought a new one last year. Throughout, I'm incredibly irritable, yelling at the screen and going off on rants about the options. I think I might destroy my laptop in a fit of rage at various points. But I push that off.

The events start to get fuzzy here. What I do know is that I try to punch my laptop at one point. I remember gripping the screen and throwing the punch, but my grip slips. Instead of breaking the screen, the computer spins free of my hand, and I am left feeling stunned. But I am a stubborn ass. This is another thing that is admittedly a feature of who I am. I do get irritated. When I do get mad at things like paperwork, I tend to doubledown. I want to get it done now. I hate sitting on it, knowing that it's waiting to be done. But this only makes it all worse because I only get more angry. And that night it does get worse. I have everything ready, but I am unable to change the mailing address for my phone, because the only way to do that is by sending a notification to my phone, which is busted. I think this is what pushed me over the edge.

I hurled my laptop into the wall, cutting deep grooves into the drywall. But that wasn't enough. It escalates, and I chase down the computer, thrashing the thing into the ground, stomping on it, ripping it in two, before throwing the pieces across the room. And even that was not enough. I took my insulated water bottle and started to hurl that against the wall. I crush the drywall in multiple places, before lobbing it at the window, crushing two panes of glass.

And then I remember silence.

It was more a silence of emotion. And there was shock. I was panting. I was staring out the window. And then I was looking back at the laptop. And then at my phone. "I can't believe I just did that."

It's winter. The cold is coming in, and I'm still panting. I feel it coming over me, something feeling both right and wrong. It's utterly unlike myself. But I also feel like it could continue. After all, it started with my phone. It started with me mailing the wrong document. And now I had destroyed a thousand dollar computer and a window that would cost god knows how much to fix.

I understand the basics. I get irritated over paperwork like this. But this stuff is easily fixed. I know that. And in over a decade, it's never gone this far; yelling is the worst of it. In fact, in day-to-day life, I consider myself incredibly well-tempered. I work in customer care, and there is never any trouble there. I meditate. I've never been perfect, but I was left floored and outright humiliated by this. This was pathetic.

From there, I was able to salvage most of my things. I lost the data on my laptop, since it is all encrypted. But that does not matter so much, since I switched to cloud-based services. Even then, there could have been trouble, though. I almost destroyed all of my devices at once. I had an old ipad mini I was able to drag out to pull up my accounts and passwords. I might have been able to remember the key passcode without it, but I fear I might have lost everything, because of just how interconnected all the devices are. And when I did manage to fix the problems by contacting support—you know, through the normal routes—it only underscored just how ridiculous my reactions were. Why the hell did I do that? How the hell did I let myself do that? What was I thinking? What is wrong with me?

I closed out the night with those thoughts, dwelling on the blame. I knew that part of what drove the anger was rage over letting it all control me in the first place. So, there was this precarious balancing act of me dwelling on what I did, the humiliation, the frustration, the understanding that I just needed to accept it, and also take responsibility. Truly, what is wrong with me? I took my seizure meds for the night and went to sleep. In retrospect, I'm surprised that I was nowhere near as restless as I could have been.

I woke the next morning feeling somewhat agitated again. I had calmed down the night before, after the worst of it, but I felt like I had been wound back up again. Not only that, but there was this uncanny feeling tied up with it all, like something was just off . . . and even familiar.

It felt like my mind was canted.

It didn't really occur to me until then.

I remember when I first started this new medication, I felt slightly odd. I didn't have anger problems. I had problems focusing, though. Aside from that, there was this strange feeling that slowly went away in the long term, where I wasn't sure if I were just going stir crazy from the hospital or if this were from the meds. After this, it has to be the meds.

I looked up the medication and a side effect is mood swings. Worse, a rare side effect is apparently anger, aggression, and even violence. This is for 1 in 500 people. In fact, as I was writing this, I was finally messaged back by my doctor's office confirming my suspicions. They are lowering my dosage again, are considering the possibility of changing the medication, and they told me to go to the emergency room if I have suicidal or homicidal thoughts.

Last night I told myself I needed to take responsibility for my actions. I was shocked and humiliated at what I had done. I could understand the origins of my behavior. And it was me, in multiple senses. I embodied it, and I also see the roots that are my own tendencies underlying everything. But the sheer degree? I see nothing of myself in that. At the same time, I wonder if I am making excuses. "That's not the person I am." Really? It sounds like one of those aspirational claims. It means that you are that person, but you don't want to be. And now I am a thousand dollars poorer, typing on this unnecessary new laptop that I can't afford to not have, given how pertinent it is to my life's work. Within, I can feel high-strung energy brimming, almost like I could kill something in an instant. I'm afraid I could break this new laptop for no reason whatsoever, and it terrifies me.

Last night I told myself I needed to take responsibility for my actions.

Video: https://youtu.be/nLE8tLI9UIo