It's all relative. Is it a good day? A bad day? I feel...depressed? But I don't know if I would call it that, because I know everything is going to be fine. Better than fine. I know this is important for me, this experience. One part of me is actually grateful for the challenges, knowing my job is to let go and float down stream, follow my bliss, see where I go. On some other level, I just feel...tired. And not just toomah tired, but some kind of emotional hangover of sorts. I feel like my vulnerabilities have been exposed, like the ground I stand on is shaky. And intellectually, I know that's okay and even good...but I'm having a hard time moving, because I just feel a little, I guess, beat down? It just is what it is.
I'm not at work. I'm working out things that make part of me sad, like setting up what to do if I need to take a leave of absence (which is heart breaking to me!), going to the doctor, making more appointments, figuring out how to get my insurance company back on my good side, and catching up on a lot of the work-related things I simply did not do last week when I was in my pharmaceutical daze.
This moment is the perfect teacher. This moment is the perfect teacher. This moments is the...
How, how, how, after FOUR weeks of predictable debilitating headaches, do I not have one right now? And did not have one last night? (And last night would have been the debilitating one...the morning/afternoon ones are like a light migraine; the night one, I cannot describe.)
EXACTLY at the point in which I honestly felt like I had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO.
These things go in cycles, and I am thinking my "cycle" might be over. I am in disbelief over the timing.
Sometimes I wonder if all this is happening because I keep saying I want to grow personally, spiritually...It's like one gut check after another. I really and truly do wonder this.
I'm headed off to the zoo, medication-free, which means I'll have real actual emotions and be more of a person than a zombie!!
How's that for ironic. Right after all of my whining and admitting defeat, this is my first night in WEEKS (I'm thinking 4) that I have not had a headache right on schedule, starting at around 5:30- 5:45. I started to get it. I drank a lot of water and some caffeine. I took no medicine; it's gone. I just can't believe it. I had been starting to get a little afraid, too, because of how they had been gaining in intensity. I am terrified of having attacks like what I've head about; who wouldn't be?!
Anyways, now I'm wondering: Is the cycle over?
A cluster headache is one of the most painful types of headache. A striking feature of cluster headache is that the attacks occur in cyclical patterns, or clusters — which gives the condition its name.
Bouts of frequent attacks — known as cluster periods — may last from weeks to months, usually followed by remission periods when the headache attacks stop completely. The pattern varies from one person to another, but most people have one or two cluster periods a year. During remission, no headaches occur for months, and sometimes even years.
Me to me: This moment is the perfect teacher. This whole cluster headache thing and toomah thing, it's good for your soul. Thank the universe for reminding you that there is not real ground in this world, that everything in it and all the perceived "ground" is impermanent. Pain is inevitable. Suffering comes when we resist.
Me back to me: You're right, me. Everything is perfect just the way it is; this is exactly where I am supposed to be and exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Do you want to light the campfire, or should I? Kumbaya, my...
Later today, B calls Walgreen's to get my prescription filled. I tend to need 3 to 4 pills a day to be functional, which ends up costing about $20/day; Yes, that's a lot for us!:
B to me: Did you hear me talking to Walgreen's? Your insurance will only approve 9 pills every 28 days. It's $230 for 9 pills. (About $100 a day)
Me to myself: Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
So the gist is this: Things just keep undoing more and more. Overall, I've gained some kind of inner spiritual-ish strength with each little piece of ground that disappears, but every now and then I want to throw a tantrum. So here it goes.
I have to admit that I can't complain too much about the tumor. I am afraid of the surgery (if it even needs to happen--we could still luck out with meds, people, or even watch and wait if it's not the big causal thing happening), because, really, I'm just like that. I'm actually more secretly afraid of the procedure that's often done before the surgery, in which they take a little balloon thingy and thread it up from your leg to under your brain to take a hormone sample. While you're awake. The hell?
My thinking has gotten so cloudy- I think that's close to the top of the list. All of this crap, and I really try to learn from it. Not to squash down my inner cry baby, but to emerge at some point with an answer deeper than a tantrum.
But, now I start to get these cluster headaches. Cluster headaches. Are you kidding me? Cluster headaches are like migraines, but more severe. They are called cluster headaches because you'll go through cycles in which you'll get 'clusters' of these headaches every day at the same times; then, you have a remission for awhile. I got some medicine, and even with it, I wondered what I was going to do. Just to function (as in show up), I needed to take about 20 dollars a day in pills. B and I have had conversations lately about what will happen if I'm not able to work.
And that's what really makes me feel resentful.
I dare you to find ten other people who love teaching as much as I do. It is such an incredible privilege to me, and here I am, wondering if I can at least make it through the year. I feel bitter about teachers who don't appreciate their profession; I feel incredibly and increasingly judgmental about it. I find myself hoping and praying someone will make an unlucky comment to me so I can feel justified in saying what I really feel.
Now, without the medicine, I just don't know. I know I'll have to accept whatever happens. I know it'll be okay. I don't always feel okay about it. The lesser me (egoic me?) feels like I'm missing out on life. Missing out on being there 100% for the best job in the world, for kids that deserve someone to actually be present for them.
I'm trying to hard to keep swimming, and when do I say I'm doing great, I really mean it. I know I'm learning from this. I know this is important for me, otherwise it wouldn't be happening. But I feel like two people right now. There is the wiser self, who sees the perspective in it all, the greater purpose. The other thoughts are there, too. And I'm not going to try and make them go away, because I've finally realized we aren't our thoughts. Our thoughts just are.
+If you wanna look at the bright side of things, sleep every night with a Preston next to you. No matter what happens any other time of the day, you've got that and it's pretty great. One of those small pleasures that adds up to a whole lot.
+Preston makes everything better.
+If you want to look at all sides, listen to Pema. She would say to lean into the pain, the groundlessness. Be grateful for pain and losses, a reminder of the inherent impermanence of things, of the groundlessness that is our true reality. You know, I've tried to visualize myself in groundlessness, and it was not at all comforting; I had really thought it would be. But, when I visualize myself in a river or creek, letting go completely and flowing with the current of the stream, I do feel comforted and at home. And I do want to let go, and I am, kind of; but it's also so easy to grab a branch here and there, or to think you've let go and not even notice your legs are exhausted from trying to kick their way upstream. This moment is the perfect teacher. Even the kicking. And the grasping.
+Today at work, I did some inner grasping. I had a reaction to some new medicine, yet another new. All in all, not that big of a deal in and of itself, but of course I let it all add up. I felt so out of control about things these days, just like, "I can't control what I'm doing right now in life. I want to, and I can't." I had this awareness that all the control I used to have, over my body, had just been escaping me, little by little, and now it seems to be escaping in ever-expanding chunks-- and there I was, not being able to do my job (which I tend to identify with), and really having to face that it's harder to do my job the way I'd like...knowing that what I was so excited and relieved might help me was doing the opposite. I really did want to panic a little bit, because having no control has been a recurring theme as of late. It's very humbling.
+And, in the humility was finally the reminder that I was never in control anyways. "This is where I am," I thought. And I just kept saying it to myself. "I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing." And, when I went back to my class and watched a bunch of 6 year olds just so into their creative little works, I thought about how sad I felt to not be "with it" enough these days to really engage with them like I should. I mean, I'm doing my job, but not with the same passion. But I remembered again, "This is exactly where I am supposed to be." And really, although so much of me hates, hates, hates this, it is. Exactly.
+The meds, by the way, I was given yesterday for these chronic, debilitating headaches I've been having. I've had a handful of migraines in the past, but have never gotten medicine because I've never had a consistent issue. Then, I started getting "migraines" that wouldn't go away, that were really kicking my youknowwhat. Thought it was a migraine from the hormonal changes of said toomah or something to do with sinuses, but the dr said it sounded a lot like cluster headaches. Huh. I had heard those, but thought they were only the ones you hear about that are supposed to be unspeakably painful (think: screaming in public). Some say it's the most severe pain known to medicine; mine are not like tickles, but man, it is nothing like what I've heard. I did a little reading, and there is a correlation between tumors like mine and these kinds of migraines.
+Maybe this will get me motivated if I end up needing what shall henceforth be referred to the "what the hell?" surgery.
+Maybe Preston needs to come lay with me.
+Or, maybe I should just be still with the drama, the uncertainty. The uncertainty was there all along. Now, my life circumstances have just highlighted what is a universal truth already; why do I act surprised?
+-says one part of me.
+The other part is feeling pretty shaken; accepting impermanence can be a b&*%$.
Why, yes, that is chicken wire and a bicycle chain.
Phone booth in creek. Used to be on our side until a big rain. Now, it's our neighbor's phone booth. Gah, are they trashy, having a phone booth in their creek.
Trash waterfall. This is my favorite trashy thing about our back yard. When we first moved in, there was sometimes a waterfall sound...After some good trash build up, there is always a waterfall. It's fabulous resort-style living.
Jonathan Swift said,
"May you live all the days of your life." I hope I do. I like to write here sometimes, a very impermanent, electronic reflection of my constantly changing path. I find writing and photography to be practices in presence as well as mediums for organizing thought. Some of the connections I've made here are more important to me than I could have imagined.
