Migraines and Empowerment

For years, I have felt like the victim of my headaches, crushed under the pain, nausea, and overall feeling of frailty. On a sometimes daily basis, I would soldier on, willing myself to ignore the knotting in my stomach or the twisting in my brain. The truth is, no matter how well I looked (and often I didn’t look well at all), it is impossible to ignore. I am still only giving a percentage of myself, and for that day, a piece of me is dead somewhere in the depths of my body, and it is always unknown when that piece will return. Sometimes it is after a good night’s sleep. Sometimes it takes a week, even more.

I have drugs, and good ones. A well known preventative which has greatly increased my quality of life, but isn’t doing the full trick. An expensive abortive, a triptan-NSAID combo, that really does wonders when the full-blown migraines come on. The abortive is really excellent, and I would rely on it heavily if I could, but the insurance companies severely limit the amount of these pills that you get every month (I get 12) and they are incredibly expensive. So if I’m running low and I still have some time before I can refill, I just let myself suffer in fear that I’ll get a worse migraine later. The worst feeling is knowing that I only have 1 pill left. It is such a desperate feeling, because I often imagine a situation, either at work or enjoying spending time with loved ones, and my hands begin to tingle as if they are waking up from a deep numb sleep. The next step is pins and needles, the kind that feels like thousands of needle pricks breaking skin, and I forcefully hit my hands on my desk or a hard surface in an attempt to wake up my hand and make the pain stop. But my hand isn’t going to wake up, because it isn’t asleep. My body is telling me that a migraine is coming, and these are usually the worst ones.

I already have the headache, it doesn’t often go away, but it is bearable. This time, accompanying the slight dull pain in my temples, is an aching in the base of my skull, and a strange sensation that I can only describe as nausea in my brain. I am nauseous in my stomach too… it seems to travel from my abdomen, up through my chest, my throat, and into the very top of my neck where my muscles are beginning to tense and ache. The pain in my temples spreads down and back towards my ears, behind my eyes, both sides of my head are now engulfed in a dull pain that just won’t go away. Halfway down the back of my skull begins to burn as if a hot syringe were just inserted. The burning descends slowly down my skull, like molten lava oozing through my blood stream. It makes its way to the base of my neck, splits off at my shoulders and continues down my arms.

The desperation for the abortive medication comes about this time. If the lava makes it to my neck and I don’t have this medicine, I don’t know what would happen. I don’t really care to find out. Would my entire body be engulfed in fire? Would it ooze out of every orifice until there is nothing left of me but… well.. nothing?

It’s dramatic, I know. But if you felt it, you would understand that feeling of desperation. I downplay it by calling it a “headache”, it’s my way of challenging its power over me.

I’m realizing lately, as everything else is crumbling around me, that my health shouldn’t control me like that. Migraine is not something that can be cured, or even that greatly controlled, but in doing the research that I’ve done, I know that I’m not doing everything I can to keep it from affecting me as often as it does. I have a new found sense of empowerment over my body, my incredibly unique brain, and this Migraine disease.

What does that mean for me? I’m not sure yet, I’m still working on it, but I won’t keep quiet about it.

Ready for the End

Okay, the life lesson can be over now. Even I can grow tired of the constant irritation of a dog-eat-dog environment, frustration of giving your all to a job that no longer exists, exhaustion over constantly blocking out and backing down the negativity that surrounds me every day.

The days are rapidly counting down and sanity is wearing thin in almost everyone. The very few that get to keep their jobs are seeing more and more stress, and those of us that are actually helping in the transition are feeling the effects as well. I don’t know what gets everyone else out of bed every day… for me it is pride in my work, the desire to do my best in everything I do, and I would like to come home at the end of every day and be able to say that I did what I could.

Right now, though, I would like to just stay home. The candle is close to burning right to the end and no progress has been made – not in this transition, not in my job search, not in anything. I have worked so hard and so far I see no end product. The only thing that keeps playing over and over in my mind is “wait a little longer, wait a little longer, wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait………..”

Remain patient and positive. I remind myself this several times a day.

Patient and positive.

Engaged and in the Clouds

Wow, has it been a wild few weeks. I am still trying to wrap my mind around all of the things that are happening in my life, and it is almost impossible. At some point I will come down from cloud nine, but for right now I’m resting comfortably up there.

Life always has its way of throwing me a balancing act. I have to balance the stress of finding another job with the sheer excitement of marrying the love of my life. All I can seem to focus on is the wedding even though it isn’t for a while. I think once I can figure out where we’re having the ceremony I will be able to slow down. I am so nervous about not being able to find the right ceremony site that I just need to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

All that aside, Jeff’s proposal was perfect and I’m so proud of him for pulling it off without leaving me suspicious of anything (aside from misplaced scissors, but I didn’t automatically make the jump from misplaced scissors to oh-my-god-he’s-going-to-propose.)

As most people know, we’re not the most conventional of couples, so the bended knee proposal doesn’t necessarily fit our style. It wouldn’t have Jeff’s mark on it if it didn’t have some clever twist.

I should start this story by saying that Jeff and I stopped giving each other gifts a long time ago. We’ve been together for six years, and somewhere in that amount of time we grew so sappy in love with each other that we realized being with each other was all we really needed or wanted.

I should also mention that for several years I have been telling Jeff, and with much sadness, that he would never be able to surprise me with a proposal like most couples. I pick up on things too quickly, our lives are too intertwined, I ask too many questions, and aside from all of that, I can read his mind. He always agreed.

That said, we were celebrating my birthday in style with a mini-vacation from work and lots of fun trips planned. I was shocked when he suddenly pulled a card from behind his back.

The card was sweet, but it was just a typical birthday card saying “To know you is to like you” with a few other sweet words. He signed “This starts to sum it up. Barely…” and his name, and I thought the giving was over. Boy, was I wrong.

He pulled another card from behind his back, this one had a heart on the front and was blank on the inside… before he wrote on the entire thing, ran out of space, and even wrote on the back.  They were the most beautiful words he’d ever written to me, and even now I cry when reading them. For a moment I thought that the card alone was the greatest birthday gift that he could have given me.

He didn’t give me much time to think that, though. He pulled out a very large gift bag. It was brown, looked old and heavily used. On the front of the bag was a note:

Inside the bag was a brown, ripped box. On the box was a second note:

Inside the box was another smaller brown gift bag, looking as old and used as the first. The note on the gift bag was:

At this point, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Jeff didn’t have any money, which is why I was surprised to be getting a gift in the first place. Did he make me something? He’s not usually very artistic or crafty. Is this an elaborate joke? Surely, the only thing that could be inside this gift bag would have no monetary value, but could still be a very thoughtful gift. I was prepared for anything… or at least I thought I was. Inside the gift bag was a small jewelry box with, you guessed it, a note:

This is a cute jewelry box! He knew I was getting really upset about not being engaged. Maybe he got me a pretty $20 Cubic Zirconia ring as a placeholder? No, he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t settle for less than the real thing. The idea of this being an engagement ring was so fleeting and outside the realm of possibility, that I still didn’t believe it when I saw this:

I stared at this little note for too long. What could be on the other side? A real ring? No way. No way he could pull that off. No way no way no way no way.

But he did! I moved the note, flipped over the little flap, and revealed a gorgeous 1.2 ct black diamond ring with .25 ct black diamond accents. I didn’t think it was real at first, my eyes must have popped out of my head. With shaky hands and blurry vision I pulled the ring out of the box and just held it, crying and shaking so hard I couldn’t even put the ring on my finger if I tried. It must have been 2 minutes of me shaking and crying before I handed the ring to Jeff, said an emphatic “Yes!”, and he slipped the ring on my finger.

And here we are! I can’t begin to describe how happy I am.

Joyfully Participating

Life can be a terrible thing, bringing endless pain, confusion, and heartbreak. You work so hard towards something that all comes tumbling down at a moment’s notice. Or you spend years cultivating relationships that seem to go nowhere, and no matter how hard you try to move forward, it seems that something is always holding you back.

I have chosen to joyfully participate in all of the sorrows of life, taking them one blow at a time, and never losing hope that one day, all will work out in the way that it is meant to.  Three weeks ago, I wrote a blog expressing my pleasure with my professional growth and my frustration with the painstakingly slow growth of my relationship with Jeff.

A week later, I was told that I would be losing my job in a couple of months.

Last week, Jeff proposed to me. He started planning it even before I wrote the blog, before I lost my job, and we talked about it long before then. (I will save that wonderful story for a blog all to itself, because it certainly deserves one.)

I have to believe that all of these things have been woven into my life by some strange twist of fate, and not by coincidence. When I was laid off, I was sad. I worked very hard to get there, and was working even harder to get further. I became attached to my coworkers, my job, and the company. But when I found out that I would soon be marrying the man I love, my best friend, my soulmate, I was ecstatic, and the happiness bubbled over into every facet of my life. Suddenly, the pain of losing my job no longer mattered. My job is not my life, my love is, and it is so important to remember that when we feel the worst. As my grandmother so wisely said at her own funeral, “Let love be your constant companion.” Those words echo in my mind every day.

I struggled with the need to write two blogs – one about the need for a positive outlook on life, and one about getting engaged. As excited and thrilled as I am about the latter, there is someone in my life who is in desperate need of a life outlook overhaul. I don’t know if they read this, but if by chance they do, I feel like it needs to be said.

Everyday I have to remind myself that life is sorrowful, there is no way to avoid it. Joyfully participating in the sorrows of the world doesn’t get rid of the sorrows, it just allows you to appreciate those sorrows for what they are and move on to the positive things in your life.

When I met Jeff, he was an extreme pessimist. I annoyed him with my optimism, and he often thought I was just being naive. I constantly told him that he was wasting his energy on negative energy, being depressed or angry. He didn’t have any energy left to be happy, or even healthy.

Now that he has come over to my side of the fence, he understands what I mean. Life hasn’t really changed, his outlook has. Bad things still happen, they just don’t feel as bad. He has more energy to spend on being happier and healthier, instead of negative and depressed. As a result, it feels like his luck has changed. It may sound very new age, but I’ve gone through the same thing. You expend a lot of energy being unhappy all of the time, you can almost feel the dark emotions rotting you from the inside out. You lose sleep, become antisocial, turn on the ones you love. If only you can change your outlook on life and suddenly the bad things won’t seem so bad anymore. You’ll start to sleep better, enjoy other’s company, over all be happier and healthier.

Believe it or not, it doesn’t start with the people around you. It starts with you. You are the authority of your life, once you give that power to someone else you have given up on yourself.

Laid Off

“Through the bitterness and pain, the primary experience at the core of life is a sweet, wonderful thing.” – Joseph Campbell

It’s too early in the morning, and I have spent the majority of the night either dreaming about something that I can’t remember or tossing and turning in bed, thinking. It has been an interesting week.

I can say that I now have one more life experience to add to the list, and as life experiences go, this is one that definitely calls for some inner searching. The company I work for has outsourced the department I work in and my position will be eliminated in a little over two months, and so the long road to a new job begins. It has been just under a week since I was notified and the wealth of knowledge that I have already learned from this experience has been overwhelming, to say the least.

My first reaction was that of heartbreak. I had grown attached to my job, loving it for all of its flaws and challenges, and I was reminded most closely of being a teenager and being dumped by my boyfriend, minus the feeling of doom and “how will I go on without you,” because, well, I’ve grown out of that.

The days to follow have been eye opening. Everyone has advice to impart, whether I want it or not. Most of the time I don’t because their advice is generally stemming from years of negativity and a complete misunderstanding of who I am. A few of my coworkers have been trying to have a sense of humor about the situation when, to me at least, it is just painfully obvious that they are hurting inside and don’t know how else to let it out. I’m choosing to ignore what they have to say,  they aren’t going to suck me into their black holes of negativity.

I have to say it is very difficult to wake up and go to work knowing that you aren’t working toward anything but unemployment. For me it’s business as usual at my job, except now instead of making training materials for new hires, it is for our replacements, which makes me even less motivated. But it is still my work, and it still has my name attached to it, and I still have the same work ethic I always had… now it’s just harder.

If there is ever a situation to understand your own emotions, this would be one of them. I’m not running from the pain of losing my job, and I have absolutely no problem with saying it hurts. I don’t feel rejected, because I know it’s not my fault. But, I do know that the job search is going to be difficult. Even so, I chose a career path, I educated myself in something that makes me valuable, and someday I will be a really kick ass asset to a company, once I accrue enough experience. The really painful part is the fact that I couldn’t do it all in one place.

But life goes on, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Waiting

It’s been a long time – and I’m worried that this post will sound a lot like a bitch fest. But it’s not, really it’s not. My days at work have become too busy to think about myself or the world around me, and my weekends are generally equally busy either attempting to get rid of a headache/some other illness or running around doing all the things I couldn’t do during the week. I appreciate the new challenges that work has to offer, I am no longer sitting still waiting for something to happen. At least not in my professional life.

My personal life is another story. I’ve been living in the same crappy duplex for a couple of years now, and the itch to move to something bigger and better is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. This place is cheap and easy, for the most part, and moving is such a hassle. I’ve grown to loathe my car, which I have to pour massive amounts of money into every few years just to keep it functional. In the amount of time that Jeff was out of work, whether it was for surgeries or to make a career change, we haven’t had the chance to move forward anywhere. Haven’t been able to make any considerable dent in my credit cards, which I very responsibly got at an early age just to establish credit. Unfortunately, other bills piled up while interest rates increased, and like every other credit story, even though I paid them on time and haven’t charged anything in years, minimum payments just haven’t been enough to make them go away and I find myself in the same situation as everyone else.

I always dreamt of graduating from school, getting a nice job, congratulating myself with a new car, and in a few years, buying a starter home with Jeff. Instead, I’m sitting in this same old situation – renting homes, driving the same old car, practically shoving money into an endless pit, and trying to calculate how long I have to do this before my credit is back on track enough to buy a car or a house. In this economic state, who knows. Fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. My frustration is just in how long the tunnel is going be.

Those things really are the least of my concerns, though. I don’t bother myself much with needing material objects like new cars and houses, but there are times when it hits me like a ton of bricks and right now is one of them. I just feel like my personal life has grown so stagnant. You constantly move yourself forward, constantly seek progress, keep the ball rolling, the wheel turning. Otherwise, what are you doing? You aren’t going anywhere, not experiencing life, and how much longer am I going to be here? I have no way of knowing.

I’m sure I’m going somewhere with this, I’m just not sure where. I’m just letting my fingers do the typing, to let it all out. For 6 years, Jeff and I have been waiting on each other to move forward in our relationship. We waited on each other to move in together, and that was an amazing step forward for us. He waited for me to be done with school while I waited for him to get a divorce. Then, I waited for him to get his life in order and choose the career path that would actually make him happy. He found it, finally got a job in the field after months and months of searching, and he’s very happy and successful. Now… I’m feeling incredibly impatient.

When is the next step?? And that is what really matters to me! Forget the house, the car! Those stupid material things could all wash away, I just don’t want to wait anymore to take the next step in a relationship that is 6 years in the making! I don’t even know why it matters so much to me, we’re together, committed, we have all the mutual love and adoration for each other that we could ever need. It just matters. Because it’s time, and there are no more reasons to be waiting.

The Purpose

Lately I have been thinking about my purpose for keeping this blog. I know I’ve touched on it a few times in a few of my previous posts, but I don’t think I’ve really explained it in depth, and I haven’t really thought about it with much clarity. I’ve kept a personal diary since I was 11, and it has been in a primarily public medium since I was 14 years old. Back then, I’m not sure there was a clear reason to keep it public. Most of my writing was in poetic form, very difficult to decipher, and unless you were in the middle of what I was going through, there is no way you could know for sure what I was talking about. I started off using writing to keep track of my days, then my insecurities as I started learning about life and becoming a teenager, and as I found myself full swing in a tangle of emotion and confusion, I just didn’t know where else to turn but myself and my own thoughts.

Reading back through my own diaries, it starts with Christmas lists, days full of silly games with my best friends, simple wishes for boys to like me. Suddenly I plunged into a world much darker, where I forced myself to learn who I was through terrible emotional struggles that I could only express, at the time, in obscure poetry and artwork. If I hadn’t, I would be in the same position that my dearest friends at the time are currently in. I would be lost in a vast world, unsure of myself, stuck in bad relationships with my friends, my family, floundering through jobs, school, who knows what else.

Back to the original reason I am writing this particular installment: the purpose of this blog. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I can think of a few things that I wish to show the vast population. I know my readers are few and far between. I don’t expect to reach many. But if I can reach just one person who takes anything away from what I write, then I’ve accomplished something.

The first thing I want to do is show my readers that it doesn’t have to be too scary to embrace your own emotions. Learn your happiness, sadness, fear, etc., and celebrate every single one of them. The more you know about them, the more you can control them, the more you can call upon each one when they are necessary. Trust me. Each one is necessary in given situations, and each one is necessary to appreciate the other.

Also, I don’t write too often about my identity, but honestly, that is what this blog is all about. I know who I am and I love every part of myself, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to dig into my feelings every single day and rip them apart and put myself out there for anyone to read and judge. I want to encourage everyone to seek who they are. Find out what they love, what they hate. Find out their passions. Fight for what makes them happy and rid themselves of the things in their lives that bring them down.

You want to know who I am? I’m a bleeding heart, constantly wanting to help others see the truth in themselves and the world around them. I love animals with a true passion, somewhat a narcissist but modest enough that I don’t make it obvious to most people. I’m pretty much a pervert but keep it to myself because I’m also pretty shy. I’m a vegetarian with a love for all cheeses and most vegetables. I’m giddy about electronics. I studied a little bit of graphic design and a lot of computer networking and security and now work in IT where I laugh my butt off at stupid people all day long, and truly love every day of it. I suffer from chronic headaches and migraines on almost a daily basis, controlled pretty successfully by preventative seizure medication, but just because I’m smiling and in a good mood doesn’t mean my head isn’t pounding or my arms and legs aren’t numb because I really don’t see any reason why my misery should spill over into anyone else’s world unless you have explicitly told me that you have a desire to know that much about me. I consider my family to be my best friends and I believe that my childhood was essential to who I am today – I was able to harbor my creativity and my individuality from the time I was toddler to an adult and for that I am eternally grateful to my parents. I’m kind of a clairevoyant/telepath/empath, but very rarely controlled and it shocks me every time it happens. I pay attention to politics on a daily basis but will never engage in a political discussion because, let’s face it, your political views are probably different than mine and I don’t like to debate. I am afraid of social interaction but I’m really good at hiding it and actually enjoy pushing myself to the limit – I know that if I don’t push myself to do the things that scare me, I will never grow. I’m still with the man I love despite the negative reactions from friends and family in the beginning, and I don’t regret a single second of it because I know I made the right choice. I followed my heart and no one else’s. I believe that happiness should come first and foremost in life. Be with who you love, follow your dreams, don’t let anyone else but you dictate your life. Yet, most people look at me like I’m insane and probably a little bit naive for feeling that way.

Many people will travel through life ignoring themselves, worrying about their bank accounts, their fancy cars, their high profile jobs. Wondering how to get the fancy phones, pay for the big house, get the pretty girl in bed. If only those people could follow my advice. Figure out who you are. Follow your happiness. And listen to what my grandmother so wisely said, “Let love be your constant companion.”

I suppose that is my purpose. To spread that wealth of knowledge. I know so few people will ever  be interested in knowing the demons that they have hidden within, but I am sure that if they can release them, they will live a life one thousand times better than they have ever imagined for themselves.

If only. Good thing I am also a dreamer.