I know my head is trying to tell me something. But I don’t know what it is. But why not? My head is me; I am it. Why can’t I tell what I am trying to say to myself? Why should it be that one part is cut off from the other? What is going on?
I know my head is trying to tell me something because in the early hours of this morning a slap-bang-wallop headache woke me up. I know these headaches of old and I could tell at once this was no ordinary headache. It wasn’t a fatigue headache or a dehydration headache. It wasn’t a tense, nervous headache. It was a slap-bang sit-up-and-pay-attention, I’m-trying-to-tell-you-something headache.
OK. I got that message; you are trying to tell me something. I also get that the pain won’t go away until I figure it out. But what the hell are you trying to tell me? That’s the problem; I just don’t know.
If you’re unfamiliar with this kind of headache let me describe it. Not everyone gets a headache of course; some people get backaches or stomach aches, some people feel nauseous and other poor souls get psychosis (I’ve been there too and it’s not nice.) The early hours of the morning are a favourite time for these to pounce as I’ve usually had a reasonable amount of sleep but the day hasn’t started yet. so what happens is that I wake up and feel as if a cold, dead hand is squeezing the back of my neck as though it would squeeze the life out of it. At the same time the front of my head is banging like a set of steel drums all out of time with each other. It’s horrid – and even though I know this is something I must pay attention to, it hurts – so I fumble around for paracetamol, gratefully swallowing my last two and making a mental note to get more. I don’t get back to sleep but the pain eases. I try to pay attention to what the headache is saying but it’s not very clear.
Fast-forward to 7 am and OH bringing in the tea, whereupon I ask for my bag which I know is downstairs and which may or may not contain more pain-killers. ‘It’s in my rucksack,’ I say, ‘under the coats. Or it might be on the chair.’ OH brings up my rucksack which is empty of all but a few carrier bags, and claims that there was ‘nothing’ on the chair. Sighing, I go down to ask Daniel for a couple of tabs and on the way I notice my bag hanging from the chair – under a cardigan. Now, I accept that the bag wasn’t visible but what is it about the brain of OH that never, ever looks under things? It doesn’t look behind things or over things – in fact the entire prepositional world is closed to it.
Anyway, the tabs in my bag proved to be extra strong ones so I downed a couple and now the headache is reduced to a dull roar. But I still don’t know what the hell it’s saying.
*sigh*
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 