Migraine – Page 4 – Julie Fredrickson

I’ve got a nightmare of a migraine. Ironic that I should right at such length about being available or out of office yesterday only to find myself utterly incapable of being pretending today that I am available. If you want a better essay of the day then I’d click out to yesterday’s as the rest is just an exercise in willpower not quality.

If you’ve never had a migraine consider yourself lucky. I’m prone to about one a month and I’ll let you use your imagination as to why they are so regular on a monthly cadence

For this particular migraine the light and noise sensitivity are debilitating but today it’s the nausea that’s the worst. Somehow the pain and tension can be so bad you literally cannot imagine tolerance for food or smells. I’m struggling to drink water.

I can’t really fathom how I’ll have enough to say to qualify for “write every day” but here I am with the CMS open and typing out sentences that appear to be coherent. I suppose three paragraph with a few links, a title and the proper tagging qualify as showing up for the day. Every day I write. Every day some small creation. Even though at the moment I’m trying to work myself up to the idea of eating some rice in the hopes that I’ll be able to take some medication and settle my stomach. Good enough.

When I committed to writing a long form piece every day I told myself a lie. I told myself It was no big deal to make a daily commitment. I told myself I’d find a way to put fingers to keyboard no matter what.

I told myself this lie knowing full well that willpower was never issue. My addiction to my willpower was the issue.

You see I’m a workaholic. And I made my physical illnesses significantly worse because I tried to exert willpower over them. I tanked my body into a kind of rock bottom that forced me to stop my whole life.

I told myself I physically couldn’t do it anymore. But that was a lie too. Even at my worst physically I had secret. I could still work through it. I could muster up my resources and be “on” for just long enough to get a job done. And then I would crash. Bed ridden. Pain addled. But I could will myself to action. I only began my recovery when I admitted to myself that I wasn’t willing to pay the price anymore. I knew eventually I wouldn’t just crash. I would force myself to perform when weak and I’d kill myself. I knew deep down my sickness was that I had the willpower to kill myself with work. So I decided to turn that willpower towards recovery. I stopped. And I healed.

So I’m a bit sad to see myself caught in the same lies again. That willpower is what matters. That I can always do what needs to be done. That I lied to myself by saying that it was no big deal to write every day. Because some days I won’t feel well. And I’ll be tempted to use my willpower to overcome it in order to keep my promise that I will write every day.

I bring all this up because I have had a migraine for the past 24 hours. It came on as was writing yesterday’s post. I felt it in my forhead building. I crashed out of an important virtual gathering last night crying on the floor as I dumped my dresser drawer searching for an Imitrax. I’ve been struggling with the migraine all day. So the post I had planned to write (media training for normies part 2) has been at the edge of my addled brain all day. It took till 6pm for me to realize I’d relapsed. I was going to use my willpower to power through the lie that that I could do it.

Except I can’t. Noises make me cringe. Bright lights make me shrink back. I’m sick to my stomach. I couldn’t bring myself to go for a hike in the fresh snow today even though I love stomping through undisturbed powder.

So I’m giving myself a pass. I’m admitting the lie to my teller. I won’t write up some advice on media today. Maybe I won’t write it tomorrow either. I’ll do it when I do it. I won’t try to prove to myself what I already know. Willpower isn’t the issue. Willing myself to recognize my limitations is the challenge. One day at a time right?