There's a peculiar pleasant calmness after a long ugly headache. I woke up with it this morning, and tried to just roll over and sleep with it for a while, hoping the stillness and warmth and quiet would stop the shrieking knife in my head. Stuffed nose, so I could not use the last little blue doctor's handout plunger of Imitrex. Fitful sleep. Not sleep, really; closing eyes and hoping and occasionally looking at the clock and feeling bad about being in bed at 1:30 on a weekday when I should be looking for a job doing my current job reading listening to music making something riding my bike making food cleaning the apartment anything other than tossing and turning in a sweaty overhot bed trying not to breathe wrong and be calm and not increase the blood pressure in my head. The knife seemed to want to punish me: thoughts of last week were greeted by more shrieking from my temples. Finally attacked with three advil and a coke, disgusting first thing in the day but I didn't want to make tea. My head responded by making me nauseous.
I kept it down. And now I sit here reading bones' poetry and stories, searching for the scorched scroll that I found once and have not been able to find since. The brain is very difficult to describe, like everything's been oiled and works better now. I attributed this feeling to the chemical weirdness of Imitrex and Maxalt before; I've never survived a migraine without the drugs before without doing the throw up pass out sleep for hours perhaps wake and do it again, lather rinse repeat, until the headache is gone when I wake. The doctor told me in his folksy way that the current theory of migraine has something to do with neurotransmitters all releasing at once, like a flock of birds taking off from a telephone wire leaving it shaking up and down. My head feels like that, a gently swaying wire after the violence of the flock is gone.
So I'm reading Letters from a Savior, Offer for a Few and want to do a road trip, take all the money out of my rainy day account and spend it pedal to the floor in the golf. Spend it going. Going to the badlands. Going to Chicago. Going to New York. Going through Texas. But this won't solve anything. A month and a half later I'd get back and still be without a job, nearly alone in this city, nine months away from her. It's still tempting. Shed everything. Sell the electronics. Give back the borrowed stuff. Give my computers and books and cds to a friend. Sell everything but a pair of jeans, a pair of shorts, some underwear and a few tshirts. And just go go go.