Migraine

Saturday, the first day of my four day weekend off, was a day off in name only. After all, I worked Saturday from its birth at midnight until seven a.m. Then I slept until two P.M. My day off was ten hours long. I planned to do all sorts of things Sunday. Walk the dogs at the park. Work on my book. Work on new posts. See a friend in the afternoon-

It was not to be. I woke with one of the worst of time thieves waiting for me. Now, fourteen hours later, the migraine has left and taken my Sunday off with it.

I had my first migraine during my eighth birthday party. I have had them every month since, and sometimes more often. They are the prevailing weather in my life. And anyone who thinks a migraine is merely a headache has never known the moods and miasma that come in the days before and linger into the days after.

Let us not talk about seratonin and migraine personalities and triggers, for what is the point since these headaches are so entrenched. So inevitable and unavoidable. Let me ask a question instead. Do these headaches have a purpose, whether existential or practical?

In her "The White Album", the essayist and novelist Joan Didion writes of her headaches that " The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact". Oliver Sachs , the neurologist, in his "Migraine-Understanding A Common Disorder ", writes of "the major strategic roles that migraine may play in the economy of the individual".

I believe Didion and Sachs are right. I believe that migraines can serve as a time-out for the overtaxed soul. Is a day off a day off when it is stuffed with must-do and need-to-do and want to do ? When it becomes just another work day?

"Enough!", cries the over-burdened body and spirit, "If you refuse to rest, if you will not slow down- I will recruit a migraine to make you do it".

And now the headache is gone. I feel new. Energy is seeping back. I walk out to see a full moon. I think of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said " If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well".