Tigers

Almost everybody has a physical curse, something that makes them feel miserable from time to time or on a regular basis. It may be a chronic back pain that makes every step a torture. It may be a burning stomach making it impossible to eat. It may be legs that refuse to take you anywhere, or painful joints that keep you from moving. I'm not talking about a serious illness. I'm more talking about these "little" things that can ruin days but not threaten your life.

My curse is a tiger. A big bad tiger that stalks my brain-village for decades. Medicine calls it migraine. I call it a Tiger, borrowing the expression from my twin friend Amy, who suffers with the same maladie. It's the best way to describe the debilitating pain I feel every time I'm cursed with its visit. I can feel its powerful fangs ripping off my scalp, its claws thrusting deep in my skull, reaching for my gray cells.  It's a stupid, mean beast that makes every inch of my body cringe, and prevents me from enjoying a beautiful sunny day, keeps my son and my love away from me while it's around, and basically wastes my precious time.

Oh, before some sweet soul wants to suggest techniques or natural/non-natural meds to fight this tiger, thank you, but I know them all, and while being careful about what I eat and drink definitely helps a lot on making the visits less often, there's not much I can really do about it. During the crisis I become this 90-year-old vampire lady who can just take her meds and stay motionless in bed, in the dark, avoiding contact with humans, afraid of lights and noises, until she's back to her younger self again. It sucks big time.

And I'm blogging about it because venting is good and I get slightly pissed off when tigers try hard to ruin a beautiful day with my son or my love (like last week). But I almost always manage to kill it before that happens. Because it gotta take much, much more - if anything - than a stupid tiger to ruin my perfect moments with my loves. ;)