Chronic Migraines

Knock knock on the door, I try to ignore it. Bang bang against the frame, I lock it in place.

Because I know what will come if I let it in. I’ll fall apart.

Its claws scratching at the door handle, unable to open it. Each nick at the door brings fatigue.

Nausea hits the stomach, I kneel over the floor. Hearing the door jingling, its fur as sharp as knives.

This happens every other day. This is the normal.

I flinch and fight it, pricking my fingers like Arizona cactus as I try to reach it. I fall to the floor, hopelessly hiding in open vision.

No where to hide, nothing to fight when you’re fighting your own mind. Self medicate as much as you can.

Drown yourself in acetaminophen, swim in ibuprofen. The beast will still show up everyday.

Tin bathtub, metal and tingly, my body freezes up as the cold water runs. Brace yourself for shivering, taste the metal across your teeth.

It’s the only place the beast can’t seem to reach. I watch as it paces back and forth impatiently, seething as it waits for me.

As I climb out of the tub, my fingers like raisins, pruned and wrinkly. My limbs wet and hair sticking to my face; the beast doesn’t even have to touch me with its claws to make me want to scream in pain.

Sharp in just one spot I cannot reach, did it manage to stab me while I was asleep? This didn’t happen over night, it built up accumulatively from when it was the normal.

Knock knock on the door, bang bang on the frame. I don’t fight it anymore, I open the door.

I lay out a plate for it to eat, I expect it’s arrival every other day. Sometimes it stays overnight, those are hard nights.

I treat it like a neighbor, if it’s never going to leave it might as well be. I still drown myself in pills, swim in my frigid bathtub, cry at night when it’s all too much.

But something has changed, my mind seems a less painful place these days. I learned the beast likes the dark, it soothes it.

I turn off the lights lay on the couch and suddenly my mind seem a much more vibrant place. Murals of love lines every wall, it’s moving constantly.

The chaos is something I’m fond of, colors that don’t make sense. Helical patterns that break the rules, they open like staircases into some place I can’t go.

My mind is a place that could make anyone go insane. Yet the beast returns anyway.

The beast makes it hard to think, everything becomes a puzzle I can’t solve. So I think in solutions, in patterns, in what already happened.

There are times I wish my mind was a different place, that it worked like the rest. The hardwiring is hard to figure out but you couldn’t find these patterns anywhere else.