What surprised me about going through one of my more terrible migraines last night was how part of it pleased me. In some odd way it was slightly a pleasant experience and this just struck me and now I want to explore why.
I think with immense pain, it's never the pain itself that I like. I’m no masochist. Part of it is about the relief afterwards. Seems a microcosm to a whole life. Think of everyday without any kind of suffering or hardship. Everything’s ok, good, perfect even! ...but it would become so banal after awhile…. so unbearably dull. You’d be missing the passion to get better, to thrive, resist, fight, overcome… lacking that is worse than any pain.
I ate some chicken from Wal-Mart yesterday and it tasted fine, but no more than an hour after it went down my stomach was turning and I could feel that sluggy feeling in my blood when I’ve consumed something unhealthy, usually preservatives or chemicals they put in food. I’m very sensitive to that stuff. A lot of it really hurts me and I feel miserable almost always, except when I don’t eat much at all. When I go a whole day without eating is when I feel best, hungry yes, but fucking a lot better than what most food does to me. I think I have an overly sensitive digestive tract. Luckily I don’t get heartburn but sometimes I feel like I swallowed razor blades and it’s dragging along my small intestine. Water helps.
I probably need a highly specialized diet but I guess I don’t want to become that finicky or categorize myself as one of those pain in the ass girls that cant be pleased. Cause I’m not like that. It’s just my body.
I should just eat pure vegetables, all fresh and organic for a month. Nothing prepared in boxes or frozen. Lean fresh meats like fish, tuna, chicken. No fast no food. No eating out. I bet I’d feel way better. But my social life doesn’t fit that nor does a sense of fun or just convenience. It’s easier to just eat less snacks and junk. But once in a while I eat something like that. I don’t think a whole lot about it really. I mean thinking about how I should formulate my diet, though I should be thinking about it. I think about the discomfort and it makes me not want to eat. oh and saltine crackers are my best friend. They always ease upset stomach and indigestion. And they help me go to sleep. That with skim milk. It makes me like a baby. Crackers like that (not Ritz or any other trans fat nightmare) are simple enough that my body likes it. I like the fat free ones because they are so dry and I love that texture to food. Most people would find it to be like cardboard but I think it’s perfect simple staple food. Nothing extravagant or gourmet. Nothing fancy and about palate pleasure. Crackers are about soothing.
Anyway, so that chicken from Wal-Mart must have had preservatives in it or MSG or something. Because I felt sick to my stomach right afterwards. Then I could feel it in my brain, like a tightening restricting feeling inside my skull. I knew a headache was coming. I started drinking lots of water to flush it but it wasn’t going to help. By the time I got home, I felt oddly so exhausted (although I don’t know if the tiredness had anything to do with the chicken) I went to bed at 8. I woke up at midnight after having a series of really fucked up dreams. And my head hurt so bad I honestly think I know what it must feel like to have a screwdriver stabbed into your brain along the eyeball to where it rips through but doesn’t kill you. I lay there exasperated by pain. I think I hallucinated a little to be honest. I was half awake and started lucidly dreaming (where you control the dream and are fully aware that you are dreaming) It was actually pretty creative and it made me start thinking about how the things we think as beautiful in art are really the product of brain damage. It comes from fucked up people who have a mental disorder…which if you break true psychological disorders down they are some sort of brain damage or unbalanced brain chemistry. Not to diminish mental disorders as a genuine medical field or oversimplify them. I meant no offense. But you know…
Crazy people always make the coolest stuff. If you’ve ever read the statement Charlie Manson gave in court you sit there and think, “what the bloody hell is he talking about?” and you keep reading and it seems like such a beautifully put and deeply thoughtful statement, but you never know when you get to the end what it really was about.
Anyway, the dreams I had were really sweet and I wish I had them recorded somehow. And I only have dreams like that… well, on a regular basis my dreams are incredibly vivid and I remember them with minute detail. But they get super intense when I’m on cold medicine or when I sleep with a migraine. It fucks my head all up. My everyday dreams seem like a lot to most people. I think all people have much more to their dreams than they think. They just don’t remember. It takes practice. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my dreams. I used to record them by writing them out every morning. Doing that helps your recall process and changes the way you remember them forever. You have to want it though. It’s interesting exploring your own mind as if it’s not a part of you, like it’s someone else’s.
I think that’s where the pleasure comes in. Though migraines hurt a lot and you have (quite seriously) moments where you would rather just die than feel that shit any longer, pain like that strips you down to your essentials, to the barest sense of you. Something else deeper wants to survive and get better and it’s like that part of yourself comes vibrantly out of its shell and feeling it is nice. It’s so primal and animalistic.
I fell asleep again by 4 and woke up a little after 7, got ready for work. I had taken an Aleve and that usually completely erases my migraines, nothing else ever seems to work, even Excedrin. Anyway, it was gone by morning which put me in a incredibly good mood stemming purely from sheer relief. I like grading my migraines like tornadoes. That one was F4. F5 is worst. At one point I thought I was bleeding inside my head…seriously. I’ve come to terms with the fact that migraines are going to be a regular part of my life. My mom gets them, My grandma gets them. It’s genetic. So I’ve gotten used to the way they feel and know how to manage the pain. I bet if any random everyday person who’s never had a migraine before had the migraine I had last night they would’ve gone to the emergency room. Ha.
No comments:
Post a Comment