headaches – thingspeoplelookup.com

My foibles as a blogger and human

It’s been a curiously beautiful holiday weekend here in the upper Midwest. The sort of weather, really, that makes you wonder what sort of tragedy is around the corner. It’s sunny today: will there be a tsunami tomorrow? In the upper Midwest? Sure, why not?

But that’s not the only reason I’ve not been as visible as my start. I’ve turned up my anxiety tenfold, all on my own, by announcing to you, my dear readers, that you should be reading all my posts because there will be something interesting in there.

I’m pretty sure there are few things that can stop a writer faster than saying out loud that you’re good. So it’s back to the drawing board for me, talking about nothing, talking about everything.

It’s also a good time to reflect on what’s been great this week, what’s been less than great, and what’s to come this week.

Awesome!

Diet and exercise: I’d posted earlier that based on the intensity of my workouts, I’ve probably been enormous calorie deficit over I don’t even know how many years.

Like so many I’ve body image problems; I didn’t know how to manage the variability with sorting out the right amount to eat. There were tears! So embarrassing.

Because it turns out that eventually, your body will manage this for you. I found myself starving and migrainous toward the end of the week, even with a higher caloric load; I couldn’t help but eat more. With another 600-700 kcals total – that’s a lot! – I found myself dropping weight.

Fitness friends, I’ll keep you posted.

Women’s World Cup: Turns out that the U.S. won. Who would have guessed?

What this brings up is an interesting discussion of how one is paid by an employer: is it based on value to the company as a part of overall revenue, or individual performance?

Outside of sales, the U.S. doesn’t pay people based on individual performance. Or in this case, team performance. The men’s team gets paid more because the men’s world cup generates more revenue. Nevermind that they’ve never made it past, what, the round of 16, if they make it all?

One wonders if after today, a new compensation model for the women’s team won’t become more necessary. I’d like to hear U.S. Soccer tell the world that the crappy men’s team makes more money because the men’s world cup sells more ads.

By the by, I actually have no idea what happens in a soccer game!

Less awesome

Body image: The opposite end of my diet and exercise win. I’ve never felt so much anxiety over what should just be a matter of basic health.

It’s 2019. In era of body positivity my obsession is antiquated, and I hate myself for that, too.

I found myself crying like a baby first with worry, then with self-loathing. I can’t win for losing.

Ruined chicken: Less horrifying than my inexplicable vanity, pride and downfall from it, is my ruined poached chicken, a recipe I can make with my eyes closed.

Actually, the truth is, I feel ashamedly terrible about this, too. the chicken turned out a bit tough and dry, but it’s not inedible; I tend to think of food as fuel, so what do I care? Somehow I do.

Setting myself up to fail: I’m not sure why I felt compelled to let you know that even if I’m talking about boxing, you’ll want to take a look. As though I can come up with some life lesson every time I start typing.

Today is a great example of not even coming close.

Coming up this week

There are a few topics I’d like to discuss. Whether or not there’s a life lesson in any of it, I don’t know.

Overuse of the word “journey”
Women’s sports
How much work at work is too much work
When are you too old to accomplish what you want?
Can I fix my poached chicken?

Until then, I thank you all for reading! Have a great week!

To dwell or not to dwell

Today is July 3 which, in the U.S., has nearly the same holiday feel as July 4. And yet, with all the gains I feel like I’ve made in just, what, eight days? It doesn’t feel like a holiday to me. It feels like I felt nine days ago.

There’s every reason for me to feel fine:

My migraines have improved
My mood has improved
My workouts have been better
My employer, recently merged, is still pretty terrible, but a little less terrible

But today, I feel:

Unbearably ugly
Out of shape
Uninteresting
Exhausted

The challenge today, or always

One wonders whether spending time spitting this out is a good idea. I’ve read that suppression, the ability to say screw it, is really what serves a person’s mental health. Obviously I’m not so good at that.

There is a particular condition on which I’ve ruminated my whole, 5-foot life, and that’s not being a six-foot supermodel. Having a regular figure. Starving myself to a ludicrous figure. Eating my way back to a spherical figure. Returning to a regular figure.

I don’t know if this is way of seeing is particular to women worldwide, or handed down to some of us no matter where we are. Or both.

More recently, on a day in which my head felt like Pangaea splitting apart, I couldn’t stop myself; I ate about 2000 kcals worth of cookies. Fatty, sugary, chunky and huge, they were, and I’d already eaten the day’s food – about 1400 high-fat, low-carb kcals.

Problem or solution

And the next day, I felt amazing. Two-and-a-half pounds heavier, thanks glycogen! but great. As in, my head felt great. My heart felt great.

I spent some time with a number of different calorie calculators. How are the results derived? I gave some thought to just how intense my workouts are really. Are 80 handstands considered intense? Which is to say, are 1400 kcals a day enough?

Probably not. But I feel no worth except at my boniest, my tiniest, my most unsustainable.

I don’t know why I care

I’ve long since given up on dating, but there is still in the back of my mind a reminder that I’m still in fact nobody without a mate, riches, unfathomable thinness.

I could let the mate go. The riches, eh, could still happen. The appropriate thinness?

1700 kcals is what I decided to try. Could I achieve a worthy thinness If I’m not cannibalizing my own body for energy? Can I wait more than another two days to find out?

What about my migraines? The extra kcals could be one of the keys to recovery. For years I’ve labored under the idea that X calories were allowed at Y age.

I honestly do not know if I can let myself eat more, heal my head, and risk weight gain. I already can’t stop staring at these extra two pounds. How pathetic – how first world? – is that?

How pathetic am I?

Missing

I subscribe to a website written by a couple of kids who call themselves soul-workers. There’s stuff about chakras and Solfeggio frequencies and twin flames. At first blush the grownup in you might think you’ve landed at the wrong place; you were looking up “how to stop crying all the time.” But the site has a great deal of good, practical advice and information, crystals notwithstanding.

This includes types of muscle tension, or which emotions get stuck in which parts of the body. I don’t know how true it is that guilt, shame and unworthiness congregate only in the lower back, but I’d believe it because my lower back hurts and I feel all those things.

And I have headaches. I get them all the time.

I wake up with them. If I don’t wake up with them I get them by the middle of the day, end of the day at the latest. I work with them, although I’m not as good at working with a headache as I used to be. I’ve been getting them for nearly 20 years. There’s not much choice in the matter. And it doesn’t matter what kind of headache it is. They all hurt.

I take a cocktail of anticonvulsants and muscle relaxants at night to control – or try to – one source of the daily trauma: TMJ. I have my ex-husband and a car accident to thank for the TMJ. (Thank you!) Some days I don’t know what’s worse: The fear of waking up, painfully, or the struggle to forgive the man and what was a true accident.

I work at mitigating the symptoms. Feverfew, heat, trigger-pointing knots across my back until I’m tearful, sweaty, and nauseous. I’m impatient. I meditate at night. It’s not helping yet. It’s supposed to but it’s not. Is five months enough?

I frequently swallow too many triptans, too many days in a row. These are migraine abortives, in case you didn’t know, and you’re only supposed to take them twice a week, tops. But you try having a migraine every day and see how long you last. They’re expensive and I’ll pay anything to have enough.

The worse part? It’s not the physical pain. It’s missing.

I miss work. Calling in yet again is heartbreaking in its normal abnormality. A frequently deformed workweek, the stress of failure. Talent wasted. No one is as sick as I am.

I miss people. There is an encompassing fear of making a friend then revealing that in fact, there’s something she should know so she can decide if she wants to be friends with someone who, when asked How are you? will probably lie. I’m OK.

I miss love. See above, making friends. Then multiply it times infinity: How could someone ever love a woman who can’t get her head on straight? Who takes a senior citizen-sized handful of pills each night? You can only hide that for so long.

I miss days. Sunshine hurts my eyes. Rain swells my sinuses. My shades are drawn and I wish the days to pass with a singular purpose, like a line of worker ants with their one job. Then like time they’re gone.

This website, with its talk of shamanism and spiritual teachers, would advise me to attack the root and symptoms by being kind to myself in practical ways. It’s in a book I bought from them: Do some yoga, wear bright colors, discuss every day with myself what is good about myself.

But I don’t know what that is anymore.

Many thanks to lonerwolf, a truly lovely site written and run by truly lovely people. It’s full of free and affordable advice anyone can use. Check them out if you’re stuck. Note: I have no affiliation with the site.