pinch me

Today begins Day 6 of my third migraine since New Year's eve. One could say that for me, 2010 has so far certainly been a tiger -- a tiger with my head in its mouth.

So... I post this for two reasons. First, it is in lieu of toiling longer on all the e-mails I owe, for the light of the computer is not advisable, something recently proven by science. And also, to stir hearts, evoke empathy, draw warm tender thoughts from afar.

'Afar' being the key word, since those around me have trouble feeling empathetic towards the irritable, sunglasses-sporting ogre that I am. Colleagues cringe in my presence and Aran... well, though I am not an easy chore for certain, he is failing gravely in the pained brain-side manner department.

Let me tell a little story as an example of not just his shortfall, but of my state of mind as well, I suppose. How fitting a time to revisit my cheery childhood memories of abandonment and mistreatment! The latter is incidentally also now suspected as a formative cause to the development of migraines.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my heartless witch of a foster mother took me along on a visit to another foster mother's house. As the two beasts chatted (no doubt commiserating about how little they were paid for the "care" of the children they were housing, or how these kids couldn't do household chores at a fast enough rate), I was dispatched to play with the wards of the house.

Somehow, one of my rascally counterparts decided to cartwheel a little too close to where I stood and a foot impacted my mouth. Blood flowed copiously from the socket of my now extremely wobbly right upper eye tooth.

"It's far from your heart," the evil one declared after I was brought to her, bawling. "You'll live."

Since that tooth grew crooked, causing my smile to be forever lopsided, making young me quite self-conscious, I have always remembered that simple dismissal that spoke such volumes.

I suspect she uttered something equally icy a year or so before that when I, hanging upside down on a jungle-gym, fell. I recall not being able to move my head for days and I also remember that we did not go to the doctor. However, though x-rays show that the impact of that fall permanently contorted my neck, I can allow that the root of her carelessness may have also involved (aside from her true cold-hearted nature) ignorance. For there was no blood that time, only invisible damage to soft tissue and spine.

Well, this true-life fable has meandered on and I have lost the ability to articulate the moral. Suffice to say, A's all I've got in the support and affection department and he seems at a loss, frequently uttering pat phrases that strike me as thoughtless and evoke that disgusting woman from the past.

Perhaps also I hope to alleviate as much of the ignorance out there as possible, for the sake of other migraineurs who might need empathy and understanding as they struggle with this beast of a neurological syndrome.