Tag: headaches

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.