What is more callous? Shooting someone in the head with an AR-15 or allowing them to slowly and painfully waste away without access to proper medical care? I am no gun expert, so there is no way I could tell you for certain. The only thing I can say for certain is that there were many times, as I crossed a dark street to get to yet another lonely bus station, that I wished for the first to occur. I wasn't suicidal. I didn't attempt to kill myself at all, at least I didn't think I had. Looking back on it now, it is difficult to know exactly how far I would have gone for jesus christ. I was willing to stop taking epilepsy medication for jesus; i had received what I thought was a revelation from god (I never saw god visibly, but I certainly felt inspired by messages from the bible), and that medicine was an evil vice promoted by man to manipulate the masses. You see, back then suffering made perfect sense. Indeed, christians are taught that suffering, pain and mockery are a way of life, mere precursors to eternal bliss that only the weak cannot endure. This culture of flippancy when it comes to struggle causes the good christians of America to leave those with epilepsy for dead. They cast us out of their homes, and leave us to wander in the night with no access to proper education. However, we are, simultaneously, expected to maintain successful careers or die. Those are the only two options. There is no in between. Americans have no place in their hearts for people with epilepsy. Epilepsy is a joke to America, often featured on lame ass sitcoms or in two-bit stand up comedy routuines. Americans would love nothing more than to gas people with epilepsy in one foul swoop and finally be done with us, but it's currently busying itself trying to kill every unarmed black man who is outdoors near a white person in uniform. I don't give a damn about these so called christians that are now being "persecuted" by whoever the hell they are being persecuted by this week; it's different every time you speak to them. The reality is that faith has ruined any real chance that a person with epilepsy has at living a normal life in this country. America is already a huge safety hazard, ranking dangerously low in everything from education to infrastructure (the number one killer of Americans is preventable accidents, often related to improperly built or outdated infrastructure). But that isn't enough. We have to give a huge middle finger to people who are ill, kick them in the nuts by making laws that will make it difficult for them to get around, and then do nothing to make amends for that in any way. It's a brilliant scam. You trick everyone into hating people with epilepsy, their friends and loved ones ignore them, and then they die a slow and painful death. That is the only charity this nation has for people like me. Yet they would love to call me evil, as their bible repeatedly calls me evil. They want you to think I am some demon, the scum the earth, the lowest form of being, the evil "other" who disobeyed god, and so must be punished. That is my lot in life. I will not be ashamed when you call me a demon or a devil oh non-judgemental one. I marvel at your indignant piety, your insistence that you are somehow better than nazis, who also reviled at the sight of people with epilepsy. I applaud your feigning of interest in those who are afflicted with medical conditions. You have done well in your quest to convert the heathen; that is all you are good for, oh pious one. America has fooled the world into believing health is not life. Now, if that is not a rallying call for genocide, I do not know what is. America left me for dead because I have epilepsy. There will be no trials, no interest from the press, no civil rights bills. America does not care about me. And so I am standing up for the children of epilepsy who do not know that they must fight for themselves because everyone else is too much of coward to do so. Photo: Kenrick Mills