I tend to go with worst case scenarios, so it might be brain cancer. Or maybe I need a new pillow again. I am constantly (and I mean years and years now) searching for a comfortable pillow. I wake up often with neck and shoulder soreness and the realization that I have been tensing my head, neck and facial muscles. So that's maybe where the headache thing is coming from. A new pillow, I tell myself, will remedy that.
Hub thinks I should do a sleep study and see if I have the sleep apnea, so en vogue these days. I am resisting that, since I know for sure I'd be very non-compliant with the whole whooshing, white-noise, panic-inducing mask apparatus over my face at night. Plus, he's the one who snores like a locomotive, not me. And I might have to to move to the guest room even if HE were to don the Elephant Man nocturnal noise maker.
Maybe the headaches are from trying again to go off Estrogen replacement. I've been on the lowest possible dose since my hysterectomy back in the day -- like nearly 15 years ago -- and at various times I've tried going off, but the docs always put me back on due to having outrageously persistent hot flashes that cause chills, nausea, interrupted sleep and supreme discomfort. I have taken to tracking them again. Hitting about 15 episodes per day. Better than last time I tried to go off -- that was more like 24 (once/hour). No one believes me about that but that's because they weren't living in my hot bod. It was hellish. So maybe this is hormonal headache territory.
I might also be struggling with Demon Depression again. I wrote a poem last week, when my writer's group summer writing project had one prompt in the form of he word "Hope", about an acquaintance's suicide 20 years ago Yes, I got from "hope" to "suicide" in a few well placed lines of poetry. And today is the seventh anniversary of my mother's death from a stroke after years of living with increasing dementia. That can't possibly be a contributor to my state of mind, can it?
When I'm not feeling jolly, I get a little testy. At midnight last night I went out on the porch off our bedroom, switched on the bright lights, and politely, but firmly told the neighborhood teen boys it was time to stop their oh-so-entertaining-and-guffaw-inducing game of "kick the can" under the streetlight in front of our house. I'd already endured Round 1 of their World Cup run last Sunday night. Round 2 on Thursday, which resumed at 11:00 p.m. was enough after an hour of trying to ignore them. It's hot and closing my bedroom window in a bid to screen their voices ended up being very uncomfortable. But, boy did I feel like "the grouchy old lady across the street", even though I acknowledged they were having fun and I was sorry to ask them to stop. They mumbled, "sorry", and scuffled into the house of one of the boys across the street. Six 16 year olds, just having some good clean fun. No swearing, no drinking, no girls, no throwing stuff, or breaking things...just literally playing a child's game with great hilarity. I'm sorry; now I feel badly. But damn, I was I tired last night and really? Midnight? (I guess teen boys don't get sleepy by 10 p.m.).
On top of that we had a bit of a family emergency yesterday and while all is well, it moved us all off our emotional ground. It was like when I had my car accident last September. One minute everything is fine and the next, in a flash, it isn't, and no amount of "It's going to be OK-ness" seems to return my psyche to a place of equilibrium. So this afternoon when I looked out the window and saw a white chicken walking down the middle of our city neighborhood street, I just stared at it, and thought, "Yep. That's a chicken. Wonder where it's going?"
Which is when I wondered if The Crazy was back. The Crazy that makes me shut down, take to my sofa, my books, my TV, my self-help library, my inner landscape of rumination and dread of all things awful, where no amount of rainbows and unicorns can break through the existential aloneness that results in a despair that paints everything with a slate gray "what's the point?"brushstroke.
But not to worry. This is familiar territory and in some ways a time of renewal for me. And I'll publicly smile through it. Because even in this state of mind -- headache, angst, and all -- I get that my life is one of incredible bounty and privilege and no one is more grateful than I for the grace of all my blessings.
Nope, not going anywhere except to switch on AmazonPrime and watch another episode of "Catastrophe". Ironically, it's pretty funny.
At least, that's the view from here...©
