Woe Is Me

What is it about this year that is keeping me from feeling festive? It could be a lot of things. I'm not certain which has more influence. Last Friday we decorated our tree, and I felt that old familiar melancholy deep down through my bones. As I looked through the old ornaments, I feigned interest for the sake of the kids and Greg, but the excitement of the season was missing for me. I felt empty. Then on Saturday we decorated gingerbread houses. The kids had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed watching them. My grandfather and his wife came out for dinner. It's always nice to see Pap, but with his wife present, the absence of my grandmother is even more apparent. Jean is a nice woman. She has always been kind to us, always tried to fit in. Unfortunately, the odds have been stacked against her. She married into a position that was impossible to fill. There has always been and always will be an underlying discomfort with each strained conversation between Jean and one of us. I find myself watching her, analyzing her speech and movements, observing her interactions with my grandfather or with my children, wondering what my grandmother would be like at that age. It's not fair to Jean. I try not to make it obvious, but I also know that I am not the only family member who does these things. I find it hard to believe that Jean herself doesn't sense the tension.

My grandfather and Jean attended the children's mass with us on Saturday evening. Sitting in the church next to her at first, and then next to him following communion, brought back memories of my own childhood masses. I recalled sitting in the Altoona Cathedral, with it's daunting ceilings and massive altar, cold marble pillars and floors, feeling quite overtaken by the enormity of the church. I remembered how my grandfather used to pinch the sides of our knees if we weren't paying attention. I remembered my Aunt Betsy’s wedding to her first husband with military flare, done during the last month of my grandmother's life. Gram was so thin and frail. We buried her in the dress she wore to Betsy's wedding. Thinking of the dress made me think of her burial, and how beautiful it was that August day. I remembered the dress that I wore too. It was the same dress I wore in my parent's wedding the summer prior. The whole weekend felt like an overflow of sad recollections and their corresponding emotions.

Then there are the headaches. Oh my, headaches, headaches, headaches. I began having headaches again in July, the week we went to the beach, to be precise. They have been slowly escalating since then and are now at a point much worse than they were when I initially began treatment almost 3 years ago. At first they were easily corrected by a trip to the chiropractor. I also reinstituted healthier eating habits, which seemed to help a little. But still, they continued. Then, about 3 weeks ago, I was struck with a nasty cold. My head began to pound. My whole face hurt, even my teeth. I attributed that round of headaches to a sinus infection, for which I eventually got antibiotics. After 5 days on the antibiotics, all cold symptoms were mostly gone. The headaches, however, were no better.

I called the chiropractor and visited him yesterday. My jaw was extremely out of alignment, which could cause facial headaches. He adjusted it, but unfortunately it did not correct the pain. I have been awakened most nights by throbbing head pain, and I carry it with me through the day. I try very hard not to complain too much about it. I also try very hard not to be grumpy or irritable, but it is difficult with such discomfort. I almost feel like people should be able to see the pain, it’s that bad. I can’t sleep through it. It’s killing me during the day, and my thoughts now are “how on earth am I going to host a New Year’s Eve party, which will inevitably go until all hours of the night, with a head that feels this bad?”

Needless to say, the fact that my head is so bad is more than discouraging. It’s downright depressing. I wonder why after several months of success I have regressed so much, and I am fearful that I will never get it under control. I know people who have gone decades, their entire lives, with uncontrolled migraines. That is a club I do not want to join.

I plan to go through the purification program again in January and hopefully the doctor will be able to reassess my needs and get me back on track. I have also upped the number of chiropractic visits again, in hopes of correcting muscular-skeletal misalignments. I don’t want to take a daily medication again. It never helped all that much in the first place. But I would like to find something that could erase the pain on an as-needed level. Right now, even after umpteen prescriptions and OTC attempts, I have yet to find a single medication that alleviates the pain even slightly. That unresponsiveness makes me wonder too. Why? Why does my body not respond to medication therapy? It’s not normal. In fact, it’s very odd.

I am looking forward to doing the purification program again. I’m hopeful that it will help my head, but I am also hopeful that it will help with this unspecified sadness that seems to plague me. Of all the improvements I noticed from the purification last year, the improvement in my mood was the most remarkable. Honestly, I stayed relatively happy until just recently. For now, it is just a matter of trudging through the next few weeks and getting myself back on track. Until then, I will simply take life minute by minute and get by the best I can, because even in the midst of sadness and discomfort, I am surrounded by loved ones and a multitude of opportunities to celebrate my blessings and the joy they bring. Life doesn’t stop for headaches or whining, so why should I?