A Meditation on Pain

“And once it comes, now that I am wise in its ways, I no longer fight it. I lie down and let it happen. At first every small apprehension is magnified, every anxiety a pounding terror. Then the pain comes, and I concentrate only on that.”

–Joan Didion, “In Bed”

It’s happening, says the woman I love to someone in the other room. The someone is most likely her sister, and I hear the shuffle of clogs on the ruined carpet, the swish and swirl of her turquoise dress. I feel the shadow of her body in the doorway. I hear her breathing, tiny bursts of air through the nose and mouth. I feel and hear everything, but I am not a body. And because I am no longer a body, I do not register sound or voice. I do not register anything. Even my presence on the scratchy carpet. I do not know that I have been lying in the lap of the woman I love as she soothes my sweat-drenched hair, as she whispers that this will pass. I do not hear her because I do not have ears. I do not have eyes. I do not see the hazy outline of her humid-frizzed hair or the worry etched in her face or how she looks down at me and then out the window, out past the dilapidated houses of this rundown block in Lafayette, Colorado, past the Rockies rising in jagged edges to snowy peaks, past logical explanation. Because right now, I do not register logic. Because this pain is not logical. This pain makes me whimper, makes me produce a noise that is octaves higher and sharper than I can otherwise make. I become a supplicant to its needs. I have a mouth. Of this I am sure. I have a mouth but it acts without my guidance. Saliva seeps from corners. Lips chapped as cracked earth. The woman I love feeds me water. I sip from a straw, but all of it dribbles out from the corners of my mouth. All of it wetting my cheeks and chin, like a child sloppy with food. I am a child. I am helpless. I am without strength. I am without will. I believe I might die. That this might be the end of me, this moment. I believe that death would be a relief from it all.

Hang on, she says. It’s almost over, she says. The end is in sight, she says.

I want to tell you about a headache. I want to tell you when someone says they are having a headache we never take it seriously. We say go get some sleep. We say relax. We say it’s only a headache. I want to say there are seven different types of pain medication in my medicine cabinet right now, and I’ve used all of them. Two of them are prescribed. One can knock me out for twenty-four hours and leave my mouth sandpaper dry. I want to tell you that a headache made me overdose on pain medication once, and all I remember was lurching up my lunch at the student health clinic in Carbondale, Illinois, and a beautiful nurse patting my back because I was crying at the same time, crying and lurching, crying and lurching, because the pain didn’t go away, the one in my head, the one pulsating like a heart about to explode. I want to tell you that I know someone who had a headache and the only way he got rid of it was he shot himself. I want to tell you that I’ve thought about shooting myself.

Testimonial from clusterheadaches.com

“I keep telling myself that I am strong enough to deal with it. I’ve been doing it for a long time now. But then the next one hits, and I become a w[h]impering little baby with no strength what-so-ever.”

– Marcus

Q:

How did it start?

A:

It started like fairy tales do: once there was a peaceful land, and...