Lost and Found

Looking for light implies that you are consumed by a total state of darkness…that not only is light lacking, but it is so scarce you sacrifice all energy looking for it until you’re so sapped that even when it appears–a glimmer, a ray, a peek–you can’t perceive it.

This migraine life I’m living feels a bit like that these days. Dramatic? Maybe, but also maybe not today.

Today, I see clearly how, over ten years, chronic vertigo and migraine complicated by long covid have uprooted former me and have transformed her into current me–a living, breathing paradox.

I am an avid reader and writer; migraine clouds my brain, blurring the edges of observation and memory just enough to abbreviate my thoughts and to lend discomfort to previously joyful acts.

So, too often I refrain.

The grocery store is a happy space of imagining all that I might create in my kitchen; the store lights evoke fear as they hold the power to trigger, to send me home empty handed and sick.

So, I frequently just avoid.

I am driven to push the limits of my endurance through exercise and weightlifting; regular pain, dizziness, nausea keep me from meeting my potential, from being as strong as I could be.

So, I hold back out of necessity.

I love to travel, to eat out, to go on adventures with my family; balance challenges and noise/visual triggers abound unexpectedly making even a mundane road trip or dinner with friends risky endeavors.

So, I fearfully eschew more than I should.

I am patient; migraine incites irritability, creating an unrecognizable version of myself.

So, I withdraw.

As a mom and a principal and an English teacher, I live a life that requires endless energy; and yet, I have had to learn to live inside of what my doctors call “the energy envelope” because exceeding its bounds is not worth the outcome.

So, I sit more than I care to.

I eat well in hopes it will help; it does not (though, healthy nourishment is still relevant, but man do I miss chocolate!).

So, I persist. Good health matters even for the body who appears to hate its embodiment.

I worked hard to avoid scary meds, but have realized I have to take them to regain some semblance of life; my body refuses them all (for true, the one thing that has worked is an injection that also creates a reaction)

So, I endure and take them anyway.

I smile; it is a cover.

I live into this shadow life as fully as I can yet always aware of what it could be, of how it could be, of who I could be. I know that I could be a better mom, wife, sister, daughter, principal, teacher, friend, human, reader, writer…were it not for this debilitation. But I’ve learned not to question the why. That is not a healthy spiral–it leads to unsafe spaces pronged with doubt, acquiescence, and hopelessness.

I have learned that despite the bewildering darkness that haunts the wilderness of this invisible illness there must be light. It may be a shadow life right now, but shadows don’t happen in total darkness. Even if I cannot see it, light has not quit me. I need to make peace with where I am right now to be able to recognize any kind of good that is present. Looking back wondering what if, only renders me lost as I cannot recognize my now. It is time to be intentional, to pause, to honor the difficulty, to speak the exhaustion, and then to allow myself to be found by the light that is already present.