Migraine Medicine

I can’t quite see the computer screen this morning. Is it sleepiness or a migraine coming on? I close my eyes and type anyway.

Relaxing my eyes I notice that I was closing them tightly. I open them again – still the haloes in different parts of my field of vision. I close them again. I should go upstairs and get some migraine medicine but I don’t. These episodes usually don’t last long, but when they are in full swing, I can’t read or drive a car or do things that require clear vision. (I suppose I should not operate heavy machinery either while I am actively in a migraine, but this has never been an issue for me as I have never had the opportunity to operate heavy machinery, even though my mother thought that would be a great way for my brother and I to earn money to put ourselves through college. But we were never heavy machinery kind of guys and we ended up getting scholarships instead.)

I relent and go upstairs and take my medicine. It’s just an over-the-counter combination of caffeine and ibuprofen, but it always seems to help.

On my way back to the glider on the porch, I take a moment and look up at the full moon. Yup, there they are, the pulsating fields in my visual field. They mostly live at the edges but are incredibly distracting. When I try to focus, they move around and letters and words are hard to see. I go on writing and typing with eyes closed.

(My mother also thought my brother and I should learn to type. This was one of her ideas that proved quite valuable—including my capacity to type with eyes closed this morning. At ten or eleven, we were both practicing with ‘aaa’, ‘sss’, ‘ddd’ and ‘asd’, ‘ads’’ and ‘sda’. This was when typing was not considered something that professional men were supposed to be able to do.)

I don’t get pain with my migraines, so I consider myself lucky. I’ve tried to figure out what events or situations might be associated with my migraines. This morning I wonder if it is about dehydration? But my biggest migraine episodes, which have included brief periods of aphasia or not being able to speak, have come after stressful meetings or conversations.

The first time I lost my capacity to speak was after a meeting with two other perople in an organization I was leading. I really didn’t want to be at that meeting and, in retrospect, neither did they. Within two years of that meeting, both of them had left the organization and publically denounced me as a terrible person on their way out. They were two of the closest allies I had and their accusations and departures were very painful. Both had put amazing amounts of time and love and thought into the organization.

Was my migraine some kind of internal wisdom telling me that something was wrong?

For me, I have a problem of sometimes I stay too long. I try to be nicer and wiser than I really am. I overextend myself because I feel I ‘should’ keep going. At that meeting, maybe all of us didn’t want to be there. Maybe we were all being nicer and more responsible than we could be. When we extend ourselves beyond what we are truly able to do, we fall into resentment and irritation.

When I am over-extended, when I am staying and acting responsibly but in my heart I long to be somewhere else, then there are consequences. These consequences happens in me. Sometimes it is physical (the migraines?), sometimes the consequences that are hidden for a long while then suddenly burst forth. But going beyond the limits of your heart and soul is not a kind or wise thing to do, no matter how it looks.

It’s hard to say ‘I’ve had enough. I need to step down.’ But there is an end to everything. Sooner or later, we all leave. Sooner or later we all reach our limits. Honoring our limits and saying ‘No’ is a hard thing for many of us to do.

I’m still out on the porch typing with my eyes closed. Every once in a while I notice that I have squeezed them shut and I try to allow my eyes to soften. The waterfall gurgles below me. I don’t worry about the mistakes I am making as I type. My fingers are still pretty reliable even as my eyes have taken some time off. I’ll go back and correct the mistakes later.

‘Stop working so hard.’ I tell myself, ‘Relax. What if you didn’t have to work so hard? What if everything you have always longed for is right here?’ What if everything I say to everyone else applies to me as well? Of course I know it does, but there are levels and levels of understanding.

Like everyone else, I am still caught in the ancient patterns of trying to fix the world, trying to control the world, trying to please the world. The roots run endlessly deep.

This morning, can I just relax my eyes? Can I ease my trying ways? Maybe I don’t have to be a famous person or a wise person or even a responsible person.

I open my eyes and look around. The green trees of the temple garden fill my visual space. The seven-foot tomato plant I’m growing in a pot on the porch has survived yesterday’s tropical storm quite well. My visual field seems mostly stable.

I’ve vowed to myself to rest after each migraine episode—to take the day off as a medical precaution and mini-vacation. I actually have not minded the aphasia that has come occasionally. After the second trip to the hospital, everyone seems agreed that the condition is not a stroke or a TIA, but still, people around me tend to get worried when my words get jumbled. My internal thought remains clear, I just can’t express myself. The official diagnosis I carry is ‘complicated migraines’. This works for me,

How to take it all seriously but not gravely? The body has limits. Bodies send messages. Not clear-cut or literal, but how to use this migraine to move more closely into alignment with the life that is calling to me—to break free once more from the life of heavy (and irrational) responsibility that is my ancient default?

Eyes open now. Yesterday’s tropical storm has left leaves and small branches littering the parking lot, but otherwise no major damage. The migraine symptoms have passed, now to live this day remembering my proper place a place of ease and release. Perhaps rather than falling into aphasia, I should commit to voluntary aphasia – to say as little as possible for the rest of the day. To be silent in the midst of doing whatever it is that needs to be done. I think I’ll try this.