Adjusting

I came to a realization last week. I have epilepsy. (okay, I didn't realize that part last week) But I have two options: I can fight against it, or I can live with it. I realized if I fight against it, I'm just kicking a brick wall. I'm just increasing my likelihood of having a big seizure and inconveniencing myself and everyone else around me. If I live with it, I can survive.
When I was diagnosed last year, I didn't realize how much it affected my life. I just knew that I would have to worry about things when I got pregnant, like whether or not to take my medicine and risk birth defects, or not take my medicine and risk seizures. But that's ages away. But there's the fact that I am now protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. I am "handicapped." Will it affect me if I ever date anyone seriously and we're considering marriage? Because I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with my health problems. But then again, I'm amazing, and it's not genetic, and if they're that shallow...
I have seizures all the time. Not just big ones (tonic-clonic), little ones all the time, and more often when I'm tired. My neurologist asked me if raising my medication made the little seizures stop, and I told him yes. It's not true. When I'm tired, I still have myoclonic seizures (where I twitch), sometimes they wake me up in the middle of the night, sometimes when I'm just sitting around, whatever. I'm not going to tell him the medicine isn't working. I don't want to take more medicine. It works most of the time.
Then there is the absense seizure. This is when I just kind of zone out, body or mind, for ten or fifteen seconds. I've done this pretty much my whole life, but it happens more often now than it used to, and once again, more often when I am tired. These are great because I just look like a space case. It's not that I am completely unaware of what's going on. Sometimes I feel like I am having deja vu, or I feel really really weird, like tunnel vision in my body, or really heavy, or just really really weird. Sometimes they last for a few minutes even. In fact, I feel like I am having a tiny one right now. Not enough to keep me from typing, but the back right part of my brain feels funny, and my arms feel heavy, and I feel sort of tingly, but not quite to the point of pins and needles. And my forehead feels like something is very lightly pressed against it. And my upper chest feels heavy, right on my clavicles. I don't want to move. This is really weird, typing about this.
Okay, better now.
I have to adjust my life. I can't just go hang out until four in the morning every weekend. If I did, no matter how much I might want to, for my health, it's impossible. Unless I want to have another seizure. Going to see Harry Potter at midnight was a big deal for me, I had to get the morning off of work and spend more than a week recovering. While my friends are out late most nights and definitely every weekend, I can't do it. I can do it maybe once a semester, with advance planning, including planning for naps before and recovery after, which have to be worked around my 8-5 work schedule.
I have to be responsible and take my medicine or the state will take away my license. However much I wish I could just go back to the way things were before, when they were easier, and try to ignore them like I did last year, and the beginning of this year, I can't do that anymore. It's like trying to deal with diabetes by just not eating candy. It's not that simple.