I remember the first time I got physically hurt really bad. Mark and I were playing football in the dinky park outside the apartment complex when he hit a really high ball. I jumped, tried to head it down, but lost balance and fell on my back. I got up, walked one pace when piercing pain shot up my leg. I looked down to see a small pool of blood around the ball of my feet. There was a geometry compass needle sticking out. About an inch of it had gone inside. My first reaction was “Shit, of all days to get hurt?”. I hadn’t worn shoes that evening.
I didn’t panic at all and besides the initial shock of experiencing something like it, I felt minimal pain. I kept saying to myself that it didn’t hurt. It should not hurt.
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Fast forward some 23 years. I am pain. Serious pain.
Three months ago, I started developing intense migraines. Initially I thought they would go away, but after a week or two of almost non-stop headaches, I went to see a doctor. A flurry of scans later, they had found what was causing it. I won’t go into the details, but the migraines were a symptom of what was going on inside my head.
They said it will be a long drawn battle. And so it has been. Almost everyday, I wake up with my head feeling like a sumo wrestler’s been using it as part of his sitting arrangements. I wake up feeling nauseous and gaggy. Almost everyday I feel like shit.
This is the problem with things like migraine. The constant pain wears you down. Wears you down physically and emotionally. You are caught up in your own struggles to survive that you forget to acknowledge the world around you. People are tossed aside, work gets postponed, relationships are strained. Every pound of strength left is spent in fighting your pain. None left for anything else.
Broken.
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