Preface To Swoon: A Short History Of Fainting

This is true: I am a fainter.  I faint.  I am not sure why I faint but I do.

The first time I remember fainting was in sixth grade health class.  We were talking about intravenous drugs.  I passed out.  I had been focusing on putting a needle in my arm & my brain short-circuited.  This happened again in eighth grade.  I apparently collapsed in health class again & caused a stir.  I was taken to the school nurse.

You probably haven't read much Dostoyevsky but one of the things he talks about, since he was epileptic, is the profound peace one feels in an epileptic fit.  I am not epileptic so I can't speak to that, but as someone who had fainted many times, I can tell you that in the strange state of unconsciousness within the faint, it's extraordinarily peaceful.  It's like a dream of calm.  When consciousness comes to bring you back, you go in protest.  Waking up from a faint is a violent thing.

In my first or second semester of college, I fainted in a large psychology class.  The professor was talking about the brain, & - these were pre-computer days - he had a transparency on the overhead projector which simulated the layers of the brain.  As he went deeper, lifting each transparency to reveal things underneath, I felt that my brain was being peeled open, & I fainted.  I woke to a frat boy type slapping my face saying in a whisper - because the professor was lecturing - "Dude, wake up.  Are you okay, dude?"

Your eyes stay open when you faint.  Did you know that?

Cataloging my faints would be tedious.  I fainted just last year because of a drug situation that I won't go into.  I will say that once I learned my particular symptoms of a possible faint, I learned how to waylay it - usually by putting my head between my legs so my brain didn't lose blood or oxygen.

If I could change anything about myself, well, that's a long list, but one of those things would be that I would be able to turn myself off like a machine.  I had a friend who told me of a boy she was dating who would say, "I'm going to sleep now," & then fall asleep.  I was envious of him.  Imagine being able to initiate sleep mode so readily!

Swooning is not, however, merely fainting.  I can't say if I've ever actually swooned.  Let me think about that.  I've fainted, oh how I've fainted.  But swooned?  Hm.  I don't know.