At the beginning and at the end of my reproductive years, when my hormones were most active, most troublesome, most unpredictable, least helpful to my daily life, I had migraine headaches. I don't remember the course or treatment of them at puberty -- except that my mother was so concerned that she insisted I be given an EEG. I don't know the results of it, but I do distinctly remember the excruciating pain, the degree of which -- other than in childbirth -- I did not experience again until menopause.
Those latter migraines, which I endured almost weekly for three or four years, were simply dreadful. Each lasted exactly 56 hours, during which I puked -- or wanted to puke -- constantly whenever awake. I was told that my color was almost a cartoonish green, except for brilliant yellow around my eyes. The pain was hollow yet penetrating, circling around my right eye/temple/ear/TMJ. It was only close to the end of the four year siege that a drug was released that relieved the worst of the symptoms; it was of course hideously expensive, and those were the days when I simply could not afford health insurance, much less the individual injection packages which cost $40 apiece. (In 2023 dollars, that's $88, or $350/month. Impossible for someone barely making the rent of a California house.) For the period during which I was unemployed, two of my sons paid for the drugs. I'm not ashamed to say that I begged for it. Had either of them actually witnessed one of my attacks, I wouldn't have had to beg.
At some point, I taught myself to leave my body for a few hours at a time, just to get some rest and a brief reprieve. It was a useful trick, and one which I can invoke to this day, should circumstances require it, which they don't very often. Nothing -- nothing at all -- since then has approached the extent of the agony of those migraines.
The frequency of the attacks decreased over time, down to once a month or so. At the same time, living in California had become entirely unaffordable, and we decided to leave it, moving to Atlanta. The reasons we did so, while possibly capricious, seemed reasonable at the time: the definitive earthquake (Loma Prieta) had rattled us down to the soles of our poorly shod feet; the children were gone into what we could technically call their adulthoods; the love of my life had finally behaved like the rat he had always wanted to be and left the household; jobs were hard to find; Mary's true professional love Robert Shaw was still alive and directing the Atlanta Symphony; I had some odds and ends (mostly odds) to clear up with my Deep Southern heritage; and living was distinctly cheaper -- at that time -- in the greater Atlanta area.
We packed up all our worldly possessions into a huge rented truck whom we named Rocinante (thank you, John Steinbeck and Miguel de Cervantes), herded two cats and one dying dog into an un-air conditioned Honda (who needs air conditioning in a car in Northern California? nobody, that's who -- MY GOD what awaited our naïve little hearts in the Deep South, indeed in the Midwest leg as well) and took off on a harrowing, high-summer eight day odyssey across the country.
That trip deserves its own blog chapter; somewhere in the detritus of my previous writing stabs, using one of my old computers there's the beginnings of one. If/when I can find it, I intend to edit it within an inch of its life and post it here; it's a story every bit as peculiar and episodic as those of the Ancients. It deserves better treatment. Suffice it to say that it was a hellish experience, but clearly, and in more ways than this one, AFOG. (See: Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth.)
One of those hellish days greeted me at six in the morning with the familiar and dreaded eye-stabbing precursor of what would be a good old-fashioned migraine. Terrible timing. We had not an extra penny to spend on the truck sitting idle of two and a half days, much less pay for those days in a motel -- handy for puking but certainly not otherwise commodious; I could hardly go through with my familiar body-leaving trick while driving a massive truck across country (I think it was at the time godforsaken Kansas); and of course I had none of the drugs that had kept the worst symptoms of the headaches at bay. (It had been a couple of months without an attack, and I thought they were over. Besides, the begging on my aging knees to my haughty sons was wearing on me, so I decided to go without. This is just one of my many, many poor decisions in those times.)
**
Obviously I made it through that day because I needed to. Perhaps I discovered a different way to leave my body: to separate myself, my reasonable ego, from the pain, and get in the truck, drive it all day, check in to the next motel, etc. I have no memory whatsoever of that Day One of Migraine; I don't know Who or What was in charge, but the "I" that I know, or thought I knew, definitely was not.
I do know that "I" started to return to the scene when I pulled my little old Mac (you know the one: It was a character in Berke Breathed's comic strip "Bloom County"; look it up) out of the car, put it on the desk in the motel, plugged it into the phone line (remember those?) and started typing. I didn't go to bed and alternately puke and moan, or even leave my body in the way I usually did at such times. It's rather that I went INTO my body, past the pain ("Excuse me, Monster Migraine, but I'm going to take care of some business here....") and into whatever mode it is that allows me to write, to set down my thoughts, occasionally say something brilliant, or report from a channelled Source. (Yes, Source is yet another blog chapter, but not now, I'm Concentrating!)
By the time I had finished writing -- I don't know what I wrote, can't find it, don't know how I knew it was finished -- my migraine had relented. I didn't need to puke, I was not in unbearable pain. I did need to go to bed, and soon -- I was exhausted from whatever wrestling had taken place in my Self -- and so I did. I woke up the next morning fairly normal, and proceeded with the exercise of getting us across the country.
I wrote myself out of hell. And now, today, twenty-eight years and three months later, it's a massive No, duh! Exactly who was running my show is the question. Margaret Mead said that anthropology, all human existence on the survival level, has to answer only two questions: 1 -- How much do you love me? and 2 -- Who's in charge? I have to love Me first and foremost, and I'm in charge insofar as whether I listen to (and obey) the shrieking and whining of my body, which is merely doing what its timetable tells it to, or get out of its way and live my Real Life.
Writing is Real Life, for me. For Mary, Music is Real Life. For a couple of dear friends, spiritual children of mine, Art is Real Life. See what I'm getting at? JULIA PRESCOTT CRESSWELL (this is my mother's voice, making itself clear and present) Do you see what YOU are getting at?
I think I do. I think I'm on to something.
***
Here's a start: Ego is what has been blocking my writing -- Ego is not at all interested in art, all Ego wants is control, and is willing to sacrifice its own vehicle to keep it. Hell, the Ego of the Collective Unconscious is ready to sacrifice the planet and everything in it to keep that control.
