Pain, Taking Care of Yourself, and Being

Pain cures nothing, it solves nothing.  Pain is the thing you live through in order to get to live something else.  Pain reminds you that you are limited, you can't have everything, you can't be everything.  Pain contracts, constricts.  Pain hurts like hell.

I hurt right now.  I have a migraine headache.  There are many types of migraines, and this is what mine is like:  One side of my head slowly starts pounding like someone is hitting me with a hammer, and over a period of hours, the pain grows worse and worse until I throw up or go to sleep.  If I sleep for more than a couple of hours, I wake up and the pain is gone.  That waking up sensation is better than anything, better than chocolate, better than sex (and yes I have had some amazing sex).  That relief when you remember living your life with the migraine and realize that now you don't have to - that is the sound of your entire body loosening its grip on staying alive, relaxing, becoming real again.  That is real life.

The person I am has always been sensitive to the world.  There's something in me that bridles like hell at even admitting that, because it's been used as a pejorative to silence me for most of my life.  But these days I can see the patterns in my life.  I have always been sensitive - to light, to heat, to scents, to food, to crowds, to loud noises, to moods and feelings.  And to pain.  My skin itself cannot handle "normal" cleansers or anything harsh.  I glow red after a few minutes of sunlight, and burn easily.  And those are just the physical aspects.  

No one looked out for me when I was a child.  I was expected to take care of everyone else.  When I was growing up, my mother drove me to school every day, and during that trip, I was supposed to talk to her and make her feel better about her life, her day, herself.  That was my job at home as well, and I unconsciously knew that I had to make peace, I had to take the bad energy in the room and make someone laugh, I needed to make everybody happy.  This wasn't something that was ever said, but every family has a dynamic.  This was my job, my value as a family member.  Unfortunately, when someone gets good at that job, those who need it done become resentful against them.  It's a powerful thing, and like a drug.  People start hating their dealer as much as they need them.

My mother hates needing anything.  She has built her entire life on being self-sufficient and never needing anything or anyone.  The few times she has needed to ask for help made huge dents in her psyche, and she still tells those stories.  You can feel the anger and desperation in her voice.  But her inability to ask for anything makes her all the more dangerous.  She will demand what she needs, and never admit that she needed anything ever.  She will turn it around and make you the bad guy for giving her what she needed in the first place, for even thinking that could ever happen.  

So, growing up, I was the fix-it person who was constantly denigrated for being so sensitive, which was exactly what was needed in order to fix the emotional weather, to soothe the hurt feelings and make everyone happier.  

It's like if you called a plumber to fix your toilet, and then after he fixed your toilet, you turned around and yelled at him for carrying tools, for knowing how to fix your toilet, for even thinking you needed your toilet fixed in the first place.  It's his fault, isn't it, for being a plumber in the first place.  What a jerk!  What an overly knowledgeable skilled worker!  Who would want to be one of those?  What an ass.  Then you not only refused to pay, but threatened to report him for billing you.

"Cognitive Dissonance:  A Case Study."  

When I was in fourth grade, I started getting migraine headaches.  They hurt like hell.  I would try, during any annual or otherwise doctor's visit, to mention the headaches.  The doctor would ask me if I felt pain on one side of my head, and I would answer that it felt like my whole head was in complete pain.  I later learned that this was a standard diagnostic question, and I was answering it wrong for a migraine diagnosis.  So the questions stopped there, and they never learned about my nausea and vomiting if the headache went on too long, instead telling me to take an aspirin, probably rolling their eyes, telling me to tough it out. 

I got that a lot.  Tough it out.  We lived on a small hobby farm, just ten acres, enough to raise a few draft horses and cows on.  My siblings and I had a lot of chores, most of them involving physical labor and dealing with animals much bigger than I was.  I liked the horses and cows, but I got the message loud and clear:  Quit crying.  Quit feeling.  It doesn't hurt.  You aren't feeling that pain.  Get over it.  You're bothering me with your emotions.  Knock it off and start taking care of me again, because I won't take care of you.  You're not worth it.  Your only value is how I can use you to help me.

The summer before I left for college, I was working on some landscaping or something with my dad.  We were just wrapping up when he said, "Well, now that you're finally worth something, you're leaving for college."  

The saddest part of that?  I took it as a compliment.  I was so proud of finally being worth something.  These days the thought of that moment brings me to tears, and makes me want to scream at him:  so what were we all along, Dad?  So children had no value to you whatsoever?  Why the hell did you have us in the first place then?  But in those days I didn't have any thought for myself, of valuing myself enough regardless of what I produced for others.

And that's what I really wanted to get to.  The idea of self-care.  I've had a virus of some kind for the last week or so.  I've been sick and pretty non-functional for most of that time, but I've been able to stay home and take care of myself pretty well.  I was thinking about my college years, and how many sinus infections I got during that time.  I used to go to the doctor and get an official diagnosis, and then get a prescription for antibiotics.  They would always talk about self-care, and how I needed to relax and take some time off school to recover.  It sounded great, and I know they meant well.  But if they wanted me to really take care of myself, there was one thing they would need to do first.

They would need to convince me that I deserved to be taken care of.

A recent revelation I needed to scrawl across a whole piece of paper.  YEAH.

Self-care only works if you think you deserve it.  If you don't think you deserve it, no amount of prescribing will help.  It's why people do dangerous things, even though they know they're dangerous, even though they know they shouldn't.  They don't think they deserve to exist, so what difference does it make?  Whatever they're doing has a bigger payoff to their self-worth than taking care of themselves does. 

I am glad that I'm living in my body now, in a world where I know I deserve to take up space, to speak my piece, to be who I am.  I deserve to take care of myself.  I have worth, and that worth is not based on being used for my talents.  My worth is found intrinsically in just being myself.  Being who I am, where I am, with the people I choose.  

It's taken years, but I've finally assembled a squad of Avengers to go back and yell at my old doctors who didn't believe me when I told them I had really bad headaches, and teach them how to listen to patients more effectively.

(So how is it that THIS universe isn't the upside down when THAT'S not the real version of the world??) 

But I have been working with a team of professionals on my migraine treatment, and I've had some great results.  Nothing's perfect, and you may be interested (and saddened) to know that there's a measurable impact to health for anyone who grew up in a crappy family.  It's sad that there's no public fund to pay for our disabilities that we've incurred growing up with their inability to handle being functional parents!  But in the meantime, my headaches have become less frequent, and the treatment has helped the pain when they happen.  

More importantly, I know my value.  I know I'm worth helping.  I know that even if I miss a day of work, my existence is still enough.  I'm enough.  And I can keep holding that inside me the next time someone tries to tell me I'm not.  I can hold my ground and laugh at their ridiculousness.