I'm not sure why I haven't chosen to write about this before. It's a
sob story I find myself having to rehash and revisit with surprising
frequency, but never in full. It only ever comes up in the kind of situations when you find you would never want to explain the whole situation.
I frequently write about things that I
do, but I very rarely write about things that I
am.
What I am is someone who has a monster sitting on my shoulders. My
migraines are not just something that show up every once in a while,
they are a disease. Every disease has a unique personality, like beasts
in a menagerie. Migraine is a creature, a black, hairy, hulking golem
that sits, literally, on your shoulder and waits for any misstep.
There
are all kinds of ways to make all kinds of diseases rancorous and
spiteful against you. Arthritis hates the common movement of your
joints. Epilepsy sometimes hates the flickering lights of movies and
clubs. Heartburn and diabetes hate to see you let down your guard about
what and when you eat.
Migraine is incredibly touchy, and
almost completely unpredictable. It's triggers change and keep
snowballing over time. And it's unbiased in its hatred. It becomes angry
if you get too much or not enough sleep, if you are dehydrated, if the
air is too humid or too dry, too hot or too cold, if the light is too
bright or the sound too loud. It lashes out if you have too much
caffeine, MSG, or aspartame. If you have been on an airplane. If you're
stressed out. If it's been too long since you've eaten or if you eat too
much. If your hormones are off balance. If you sit in one position for
too long. If you exercise too hard. If you stand up too fast. If you
smell natural gas. If you cry.
And perhaps predictably, the evil little bastard becomes completely enraged when I drink.
I, and many, many other people like me, spend thousands of
dollars a year trying to soothe and tame this disease. Once every couple
of months I commute about an hour out to my neurologist's office to
tell her how things are going and see what's working and what we can
try, and to get refills on the five or six prescriptions I have to keep
things in line. Though I am fortunate to live near one of the only clinics specializing in migraines in the entire United States,
I'm not always happy with how my visit goes, because basically, there's
still not a lot that people know about migraines. It's a disease of the
nervous system and most of the available drugs were actually designed
for other uses. The usual advice is, in general, be vigilant. Watch
everything your body does vigilantly.
And the thing I find it most difficult to be vigilant about is not drinking.
The problem is, I love drinking. I love it passionately.
As I said, the things that set the creature snapping and snarling change
and evolve over time. I've never been able to drink red wine. Many
people can't. And it's no sacrifice. It's not
the sacrifice. But I
would, if given the chance, be the sort of person who had a couple of
gin and tonics every other night with dinner. I had been waiting to get a
big enough apartment to start brewing my own cider. Mimosas and good bloody marys make brunch
brunch. Tequila is... there aren't even words for what tequila is. It's beautiful.
But beyond the fact that a rum and coke without rum is just... coke: alcohol is social.
And to not drink on principle is fine and noble, but to not drink out
of physical coercion, because of this alien presence in my brain,
is utter and complete misery. I don't
always
want to drink. But when I do want to drink, I am left not just sober in
the physical sense, but sobered in that I'm constantly reminded that my
body is somehow
broken.
I don't want to tell people, "I don't drink." Because it's not true. But I also don't want to tell people, "I
can't drink," because it begs the inevitable question,
why?
I have had people ask if I'm pregnant, and been tempted to tell them
"yes," because it's much more pleasant than explaining: "I have a demon
in my brain."
Worse are the times when I say, "I can't drink," but the temptation to do so is overwhelming.
About a year and a half ago I began to notice that beer, which
has always made me sniffle after two or three, had begun to give me
violent allergic reactions. Now, when I drink beer, my sinuses shut down
and I become incredibly dehydrated, which leads to, of course, a
migraine. Allergy pills have no effect, but the fact that I can't breath
is very convincing for other people who weren't sure what I meant when I
said, "I'm allergic to beer."
It's true that I can drink clear liquor occasionally, if it's
mixed, and if it's proceeded and followed by copious amounts of water
and food. Anything else but the smallest glass of white wine is out of
the question. It's like playing roulette: if I chose to play and land on
black, that's all she wrote. For anyone who has ever experienced the
pain of a migraine, you know that you would do almost anything to avoid
it.
I feel like an orchid. I always thought of myself as
rather hale and hardy, but instead it turns out that my body is much
more capricious than I imagined.
There are far worse diseases that I could have, with far worse
side effects, and I have no desire for sympathy. In general, I try to
live my life as though it were only me that occupies my body, and not
myself and also this foreign usurper. But I find myself making a lot of
excuses for it, needing to explain some aspect of my behavior, most
days, because of its presence. More than anything, I am simply tired of
explaining and asking to be excused from life.
Some days I imagine going on a glorious and dramatic
raging bender: sitting in a sauna, getting piss drunk, staying up for 48
hours, eating all the chow mein I can, crying, screaming, and bungee
jumping, drinking nothing but diet Mountain Dew--doing all of the things
my migraine hates and bringing on the worst headache in the history of
the world, causing an epic battle, until one of us comes out dead. It
would be the ultimate struggle, with either victory--a life free from
headaches and this constant vigilance, or defeat--pain and darkness
forever.
Most days I don't know if it would be worth it, but every time someone offers me a drink I am tempted to find out.
You may be wondering why no information on Machu Picchu has been forthcoming. 
