I never used to get headaches. Ever. Not even the smallest pangs would arise, despite hockey or soccer mishaps. I never got headaches, and I always took it for granted.
However, as my life tumbled into it’s most unsteady and self-indulgent phase my freshman year of college, everthing changed. It could have been the odd sleep patters (up til 5am, 3 hour naps daily) or the constant exposure to chemicals in the print studio. I could have been my diet or lack of exercise. Nonetheless, I hit a wall.
I reluctantly trucked home for the summer to Toledo-armpit-of-the-midwest-Ohio. I got a big-boy job at Xerox’s only graphic design division, but was mostly happy that I wasn’t hauling drywall for a third straight summer. As the oppresively warm days of summer decended, I had my first migraine. Or at least I assume it was. A pain unknown to me in any other capacity hit me in my temporal region. I was completely incapacitated, and for those that know me, that is quite a feat. Accompanied by visual fuzziness and severe nausea, I was on the verge of declaring that I had, in fact, an inflatible innertube in my head that was expanding at an alarming rate.
A few hours passed, and it faded. I thought that I’d rather die than go through that again. Little did I know.
That summer I began to experience the most blindingly painful and debilitating headaches ever. Regardless of where I was, what time of day, or just about every other possible factor…I was having 2-3 full-blown migraines a week. Sometimes twice a day.
Trips to the doctors yielded little but shrugging shoulders and pointless (yet terrifying) MRIs. The only meds I got were trial-sized migraine pills and a presciprtion for an anti-depressant (to help regulate my sleep?). While they didn’t alleviate my headaches, they effectively knocked me into a catatonic state for a few hours, which usually when I awoke seemed to have fixed the problem. The self-injections did nothing either, except provide an awesome display of instantaneous vomiting.
No one knows why I had these. The lasted a year and a half, and then they slowly left. I haven’t had one in three years.
No one can ever understand the pain and ugliness of migraines until they have them. Even as someone who has empathetic abilities…I just never got it until it happened to me. There’s something about an uncontrollable event “inside your head” that frightens me to the core. Break my bones, punch my face but the inside of my head (which is how it loosely feels) is sacred to me. An unknown and intangible force acting in my head makes me feel like I’m certifiably insane, like I’ve lost control. It’s like having a room with no doors, yet knowing that somehow, someway someone else broke in, and there’s no way to kick them out. You’re stuck hovering in the corner, praying for them to leave. My heart aches for people who have mental diseases where this is common. I truly cannot fathom living a life with this strange companion in your conscience.
So a note to myself: today, as I internally bitch and/or moan about a bruised muscle, a cut on my hand or being overtired, let me not forget the lesson that I learned all to well three years ago.
