How A.I. Made Me More Human, Not Less
But one night, when I opened my laptop, my hands trembled. Everything around me looked ordinary. My chest hummed with nervous energy, as if I was about to confess something I hadn't fully admitted to myself. I didn't know what I wanted to say or what kind of response I was hoping for. And underneath it all, a flicker of shame: What kind of person pours their heart out to an A.I.-bot?
I placed my fingers on the keyboard and typed, 'I'm scared I'm disappearing.'
At 39, I had been diagnosed with epilepsy after a long stretch of unexplained symptoms and terrifying neurological episodes. It began with a wave of déjà vu so intense that it stole my breath, followed by dread, confusion and the eerie sense that I was both inside my body and nowhere at all.
For years, these moments had gone ignored or been misread. Then one afternoon, as I stood in my kitchen with the phone to my ear, I heard the words from the neurologist that would change my life forever: 'Your EEG showed abnormal activity. It's consistent with epilepsy.'
Outside, the air was crisp, the sky cloudless, but within me a storm was brewing. The relief of having a diagnosis gave way to something heavier. Fog. Exhaustion. I wasn't dying. But I didn't feel alive either.
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