I wake up, on any given morning, to soft sounds or loud alarms.  For a moment, one brief moment as sleep leaves me, I am free of pain.  That minute between sleep and wakefulness is a peaceful, blissful, break.  Then in a slow but steady wash it begins.

My nape begins to pulse, a slow throbbing that spreads up the back of the left side of my head into my temples. A sharp stabbing hits my right temple, jarring any remaining sleepiness away and the villain I live with comes to life.  It roars into my ears, seeps into my skull, pounding more loudly with each moment. Before too long I have no choice but to get up, sleep will not come back, lying here will do nothing but hurt.

I get up. Movement makes me dizzy as the pain moves around, front to back, side to side.  I stumble downstairs, brush my teeth, use the bathroom. The light is too bright, the sounds are too much.  I breathe.  Moving my head from side to side trying to pop my neck, stretch the muscles. Each step brings stronger pulses of discomfort.
Distraction time. Something, anything to give me a chance to push the villain behind something else in my mind.  A book, a blog post, a t.v. show. Anything.

Some days it simply will not be ignored.  On those days I struggle not to snap at my children when they hug and touch me.  Every time they jar me my head pounds, every happy laugh is a sharp stab.  I hate the kind of mother this villain tries to make me into.  I breathe.

I know they can see it in my face if I am not careful, so I do my best to mask the discomfort they cause.  They deserve a mother who loves their touch, they deserve praise and kind responses when they notice I have a headache and lovingly pat my head, unaware that the very gesture of love they give makes it hurt more.

I want to be the mother who wakes up and make pancakes, laughing and smiling in my froggy apron, joking around and bringing them smiles.  Instead I head for the coffee, and sometimes, an illicit cigarette.  The combination brings some measure of comfort, reducing the villain to a manageable background roar.  Other times I try the Cephaly, it’s electric medicine slowly spreading the sensation of thousands of ants across my head as I sit and pray this time it will work and bring relief.

I don’t take pain killers.  While they bring me an hour, maybe two of rest, the resulting kickback headache will be so much worse than the one they were meant to fix.  I drink water.  I breathe.

I eat something, as my stomach protests the coffee.

I remind myself, as my forehead demands attention, that the day will have work or play, family or friends, rest or peace, and that I can focus on those things, use my mind and strength of will to drive the villain into the background where it can just sit and be quieter.  Other days I despair, wishing I had a different morning experience. Wishing a cure could be found.  Wishing I could keep that one moment of waking pain free and stretch it out to last the day.

I’m bugging out!

I went to a favorite standby bar with my boss last night for a margarita.  We ordered what we always order;

• Rocks/Salt Marg’s
• Queso
• Steak Quesadilla with Corn Tortillas

Our food arrived and I began munching.  We were talking about all things serious and silly and I was enjoying myself.  Somewhere near the end of my third slice of quesadilla my brain recognized the fact that this was waaaaay to flaky to be a corn tortilla.

I looked at it.  Closely.

By boss stopped talking and said “Is everything ok?”

I stared at the tiny little flakes of dough in my hand.

“Nope.” I said calmly “This is a flour tortilla. Please excuse me for a moment.”

I went into the bar bathroom and made myself throw up everything I could.  Again and again I stuck my finger down my throat and forced myself to get rid of as much of the gluten filled tortilla as possible.

When I got back to the table my boss informed me the restaurant had taken my info, offered to pay any medical bills, and comped our meal.  There were bringing out new, actually GF quesadillas for us. Our waitress was mortified and if she could have crawled under the floor boards right then I am sure she would have.

I sat and waited to see what would happen.  Within 45 minutes my boss told me I didn’t look so good.  I didn’t feel so good either.  My head had started to pound, the lights had auras and star points making all the world seem burning bright, the sounds in the bar were clamouring ever louder, streaming together into an impossible flurry of sound around my head. I asked my boss to drive me home, I couldn’t risk driving with such large auras.  He did.

I fell asleep within an hour. At about 8:30 and slept until about 8:30.  When I woke up I was swollen all over, my head was killing me, and I was pale as death.  I took a Benadryl and the swelling went down a little.

I am not angry at the restaurant. I know they have a good system in place because I eat there often.  Also, they did all they could to fix the mistake.  They can’t, I will be sick on some level for days until this ends, but they tried, immediately, to make reparations.

What angers me is that after five years of avoiding gluten at all costs I was poisoned by a quesadilla.  If I had known I was going to be poisoned, I would have gotten a long john, or tried a Voodoo Doughnut just once.  Instead, the days of swollen aching and itching are the result of a damned flour tortilla.

It was a high anxiety week for me, an emotional one filled with real and imagined slights and struggles.

I was cropped out of a family photo.  I announced my decision to leave Facebook.  I felt less alone and more connected than I had in years when I got requests for real addresses and contact information from people who didn’t want to lose touch. Thank you to all who did so.

Still, the anxiety increased, my decision to leave the platform of modern communication convinced my insecure inner demon that I would lose everyone the moment I hit the delete button.

Then messages starting coming.

Ann Patchett’s “The Sacrament of Divorce” gave me a heartbreaking peek into her own divorce, into the power of the loss of that relationship, the sorrow of the ending of a promise, the sense of loneliness, separation, and distance that comes into the life of a divorced person.  This unexpected gift poured from my Audible account as I felt the power of her words sink into my soul.  Tears dripped onto the Christmas gifts I was making, tears of release long repressed. The story ended and I felt lighter.

I found “A Simple Act of Gratitude” when looking for something new to read on my Kindle.  This story is one of a lawyer, recently divorced from his second marriage, estranged from his children, losing his practice, who decides to write a thank you note each day for one year.  The story is one of growth and progression as he learns to let go of his long held onto grievances and open himself up to the good things he has in his life.  He sends a thank you note to the barrista at the Starbucks who always remembers his name, he sends a note to his ex-wife, thanking her for being a good mother.  He doesn’t change overnight, he isn’t magically transformed like Scrooge in a Christmas story.  He still struggles to overcome his own sense of failure, sorrow, desertion.

I wrote a thank you note this morning.  I doubt I will try to match his daily note sending, but I am going to try to be grateful for something in my life every day, counting my blessings, playing Pollyanna’s “Glad Game”, until I feel the fullness of my life as surely as I feel the losses.

Then Carole, a friend of a friend of a friend I met on Facebook sent me the following video.  Just as I was beginning to seriously doubt my commitment to a life lived with less constant technological interaction, just when I was thinking I would keep my account and simply try to be more disciplined in using it, just when I needed this message the most.  Thank you Carole.  I cannot express how my anxiety and stress lifted away when I saw this.