Lost most of last night and all of today to an oncoming migraine, which I managed to fend off fairly successfully with tea, coffee, a couple of lattes, and a lot of Vitamin I (sorry, stomach). "Fending off a migraine" means for me enduring headache (moderate to severe), nausea, light sensitivity, and brain fog but WITHOUT it turning into the horrible "someone is stabbing through my skull with an electrified icepick" pain, so it kinda counts as a win. Sorta. It did rain a lot of today, which soothes my sinuses and generally eases headaches for me, but I kept waking up with sleep apnea, which just makes headaches worse (and often brings them on) so for most of today I just dozed on the sofa half-upright and listened to a lot of music. Whee.
For me migraine pain, whether it's terrible or moderate, comes in waves, which is kinda disconcerting, because it makes me wonder WTF is going on in there. (Same thing happens to me with nausea. Maybe it's just a Moi-bodily thing.) When I'm deep in the tunnel I can kind of hang on through the pain and know it'll go away in a couple of minutes, which helps. But I also know it'll be back in a couple of minutes, which bites. But then the ebbs and flows get less violent and it's like eventually I wash up on the beach, and it's like the end of Infinite Jest: you come to flat on your back, it's raining out of a low sky, and the tide of pain is way out. It's a weird feeling. Emptied-out I guess more than anything else, not quite peaceful. Like right now my left temple is still throbbing and I barely managed to keep down some oatmeal and tea and my words aren't all the way back yet, but some things are still good: soft rain. Purring cat. Warm tea. We're too high on the Hill here to hear the tide but you can hear the boats sometimes, horns blowing as they ride past on top of all that cold darkness.
Yes, this: it would look like a floating palace to any poor soul out here on the ocean at night, alone in a dinghy, or not even in a dinghy but simply and terribly floating, treading water, out of sight of land.
descensus Averno facilis est