Dual Citizenship

September, my head was so good. I had days and days of zero headache. Zero. And almost every day the pain was at least tolerable enough to function.

At first, I freaked out. I was so desperate to cram in everything I don't get to do when I'm a blob. I worked my tail off and felt like  it wasn't good enough, like I wasn't getting enough done, like there was so much more to do and any moment I wasn't doing something visibly productive was a waste of my precious healthy time.
Then there were my friends. When the migraines are bad, I have trouble maintaining friendships. I have to cancel plans all the time and then we stop making plans. I can do things spontaneously, but few other people are available at my healthy whims. Then when we do get together, what do I have to talk about? My life is fairly limited, and if you don't find my present occupation or the ethereal and observational shit I like to spew interesting, I will bore you. Illness is incredibly isolating, and with a healthy dose of narcissism (I'm a writer, for fuck's sake), the Bad Days go by as all about me. My pain. My struggle. Pain is loud and makes me strongly aware of myself, everything else just background and things that might add or detract from pain. I'm like an infant, entirely corporal and needy. I kick and scream at pain, hunger, loneliness, frustration, and when these base things are quieted I marvel at my own two feet and the way light and color exist in and out of my dreams.
When September was good, I barely started relearning how to go out and be outside of myself, try to rediscover those friendships I care about. I went out to dinner with Possible Girl. I went back to the bar. I went to a party. Just getting my feet wet.

My neurologist says that my brain thinks pain is very important. We find something new to confuse it for as along as possible but it's trying to get back to the pain. When it finds it again, we go to something new. I like him better than the migraine clinic. The clinic is more aggressive, which was great short-term, but now that they've kind of blown their wad, he still has lots of ideas and worries about things like my long-term health and if my medications are killing my kidneys. But the point is, we'll keep working on finding things to trick my brain and keep getting chunks of time without pain. And each chunk of time I'm not in pain, I'll keep learning how to live a double life. And maybe I can take some of my this-is-just-how-it-is migraine-life acceptance into the bright places, and maybe I can take some of my human contacts and friends with me back into the dark.

Because October, thus far, sucked. I've gotten some good days. But more than half the days have been bad with some really bad. Today was particularly rotten with light and sound kicking my ass and logic evading me at every corner. When I curl up into myself, I want it to be about someone else for a change. I've had enough of me. I'm reading, looking for contact on the internet, but obviously it's not the same. I may call a friend tonight and deal with the pain of mechanised cell phone sound. Tell me a story of you.