Dark and silent...

I have said many a time that I was surprised, really, at how poorly I have handled migraines.  After all, I do have a rather high threshold of pain.  Over the past decade, I have also become rather used to pain of many sorts.  But, oh my, is the pain of a migraine so incredibly different and nearly unbearable.  In the midst of one, the pain is seemingly unbearable.

It has been a year, give or take a week or two, since my first migraine.  Would that it were I still had one of those early ones.  Just as my weakness has grown, the memory loss, the confusion, all of those things, so have the magnitude of the migraines.  To deal with them now, not only do I have to take the medications, but I also have to turn off all the lights, put on my sleeping mask (my blinders), and turn off all sound.  Doing so, it seems, adds t the misery at first.  By this I mean that, in cutting off all other input, all I am left with is the pain and nausea.

I have this index card that I started holding during the migraines.  In increasingly strong language are a series of sentences telling me the same thing:  This will end.

In the throes of a migraine, it is difficult for me to remember this.

For someone who has come to need, more and more, the external in her life, being so isolated from everything save the misery and my own thoughts is as difficult as the actual migraine.  Hence, the card.  Only when I am wearing the blinders to block out all the light, all I can do is clutch the index card and try to remember what it says.  I wish Amos could talk.  I wish he could murmur softly that the pain and nausea will end.  I wish he could tell me that life on the other side of the migraine is still something I want to have.  I wish he could assure me that I can and will leave the place where I am trapped and find freedom once more.

All Amos can do is curl up at my side and press his back against me.

I am truing to learn to embrace the darkness and the stillness instead of fearing it. I am trying to be as thankful to it as I am to Immitrex, Toradol, and Zofran.  As with many things these days, I am failing rather miserably at it.  Would that it were I had less opportunity to practice.

I am trying to learn to embrace the sensation of Amos' body against mine.  I am trying to learn to remain present for the good instead of fleeing because of the bad.  The latter is a lesson I learned too early, too well.  In the midst of pain that is ineffable to me, in the midst of nausea that is magnified ten-fold,  I struggle to focus on the warmth of his small body, of the weight of him against me, of the sound of his breathing or, better yet, his snores.

Right now, Amos is lying on my feet as I sit in the GREEN chair typing.  His snores are tickling my feet and raising the corners of my mouth.  But my head is beginning to hurt. I am not sure if it is because I am typing, reading, using my eyes.  I have not done so all day.  Today, I have merely existed, floating in nothingness, twisting Amos' curls with my finger tips.  Perhaps I should get back to that.

But is that life?
Difficult not to be discouraged, difficult not to be despairing.


Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.