Much to my detriment and at times a flaw in my character when I am upset, ill, hurt I will always try to put a face on things. I have lost count of the number of times that I have gone out with friends with a cracking headache perhaps to a noisy bar or even the cinema ( a headache where even the noise of the fridge motor annoys you and so why I punish myself by doing this so as not to let people who matter down or to try in vain to be the social person I am minus my headaches, I don’t know). I will sit nursing a drink I don’t really want, wiping the occasional tear as quickly as I can off my face in the hope that nobody notices my brain has declared war and seems to be winning. I smile as other people laugh at the stories and jokes being exchanged. I’m not really following the conversation enough to fully appreciate how funny whatever is happening around me is, I’m just trying to blend into the background and excuse myself to the bathroom politely at times when I feel I may be sick, or the room is spinning and I need to close my eyes and put my head between knees or even let the tears flow and allow the pain to be embraced for a few more moments. The reality is you can’t hide it, they might not say anything to you but they realize your quieter than usual or appear moody or keep disappearing or your just not having fun.
My advice stop fighting. I know what it feels like to waken daily with a headache to have the pleasure zapped from day to day living. That the hobbies and company you enjoy are clouded by a world experienced with a side helping of pain. It’s not always a sharp debilitating intense pain but its always there. Particularly being young it’s hard to realize you are slowly becoming a hermit that your definition of a good time would just be to experience a day without this cloudy feeling hanging over your head. Don’t do what I did, don’t hope that they will go away. Don’t travel the optimistic loop of experiencing a few days headache free, thinking you’ve seen the last of them and questioning how bad they really were and thinking you can go without treatment. They won’t go away, they will keep coming back and if you have those optimistic thoughts make sure that somebody close to you pushes you to go see somebody when you are feeling the worst of it and when you are better don’t cancel the appointment. I lived with the headaches for almost a year thinking that they would go away. GP’s told me it was blood pressure or stress or it was easier to say what a headache wasn’t than what was causing it.
But without digressing too much. If your head hurts, you feel sick and your body is begging you to give in to this then whoever they are and however much they matter to you, if they knew the personal hell you were forcing yourself into by going out feeling like that, chances are they would frogmarch you home in an instant anyway. So do yourself a favour and stay in and look after yourself. You will fix your headaches and trust me when I say that once you fix them you will feel the soul restoring feeling like you are “you” again and that all those alien character traits you seem to have adopted were not actually who you had become but they truelly did belong to a parasite that lived inside you . A parasite called pain.
