When Ambition Meets Fragility: Living with Epilepsy

Yildiz Skoppeck

Yildiz Skoppeck is a 29-year-old artist based in Germany with German-Turkish roots. Starting out as a professional graphic designer in her early twenties, she quickly discovered her passion for the fine arts as well. Always focusing on the philosophical aspects of justice, she has recently become a student again, this time in tax law. Her paintings create visual worlds of the surreal, sometimes dark spaces in between perceived reality and subjective identity. 

When Ambition Meets Fragility: Living with Epilepsy

So imagine you are living your regular life, e.g. you apply for a new job and you receive some invitations to job interviews. What do you do? I bet you’d listen to both offers and decide which one fits your imagined career path best. 

What do I do? I start to guess which one will come along with which unhealthy expectations of performance. Working overtime, never needing days off, staying highly focused while running on no food and five coffees – basically being on top of the game (and best case even happy about all of that) all the time. 

Sadly even in my twenties and on the verge of thirty, which is considered young and healthy and fine by any older generation, I cannot invest that kind of energy. Some maybe, sometimes. But after that I will have to rest, at least if the price I am willing to pay doesn’t extend to giving up my healthy habits: enough sleep, enough food, enough relaxed movement.

I know there is a pill. But a pill will fix nothing for you if you don’t also adjust your lifestyle.

So what do I do? 

I struggle. I struggle with a decision that can never fully satisfy my need for fairness and clarity. I struggle in between what is best for my high expectations about myself, for nourishing my creative and curious mind and a successful and financially appealing career – and what my body can actually sustain. 

I rage. I rage because of the injustice of being talented in so many ways and at the same time being blocked and restricted by my own body. I rage because I can see people my age being less qualified or talented but going further because their bodies can hold any employer’s expectations. 

I cry. I cry about lost opportunities and the pain of self-hatred. 

And then I forgive. I move on. I accept. I breathe. I accept again. 

And then I take life as it comes. I see beauty in what I’ve already accomplished. I experience gratitude. 

And then I allow myself to move slowly. I start seeing the beauty of moving slowly. I can even say “thank you” to my body for forcing me again and again to live life from my own perspective. To not rush, but to experience it. To enjoy it in my own way, my own timeline, my own accomplishments. To define success on my own terms and to allow myself to create a life according to those values and not to all of those around me. 

To stand tall in my own life, in my own body.