Member-only story
Migraine Evolution
The problem is all inside your head she said to me
I don’t remember precisely the first time I had a migraine headache. I was young, definitely in my pre-teen years. I remember seeing a strange wavering light around people and objects. The space surrounding them appeared slightly blurry, like the special effects in an old horror movie as the psycho killer nears the camera with a knife.
I felt strange. I couldn’t get a grasp on what was happening. You know how when someone tries to tell you about a dream they had and they say things like, “Then a dog ran up to me, but sometimes it wasn’t a dog, but I knew it was a dog.” I felt a bit like that, as if I were caught in a slightly warped world, trying to make sense of things.
I felt metallic and hollow, like a broken robot. The overhead light glared. It hurt my eyes. The entire left side of my head began to hurt. Then the pain quickly escalated. This was not the dull stuffy ache of a cold or mild fever. I felt as if my swollen brain bumped against the jagged bones of my skull.
I retreated to my bed. With eyes squeezed closed I tried to escape the light that pummled my pupils. It wasn’t dark enough. I pulled the sheets up over my head but the imagined smell of dead skin trapped between the cotton threads made me nauseous. The din of family talking, clanking…
