Today I went to my city's show, which is kind of like a carnival and nothing whatsoever to do with television. I had a lot of fun, but it wasn't the completely carefree type of fun since I had to keep paying attention to all sorts of things, like putting a hat on if it was too sunny or noticing and doing something about when the music is too loud. It was nice to be out with friends, but having to think twice about doing everything was a little bit stressful.
I'd say the best bit of the day was the food. There were so many nice things on offer, with some food booths even handing out free samples! I had a lovely ice-cream after lunch, which had the most awesome smooth texture to go with the taste. I only went on one ride, a roller coaster, mostly because that's the thing that the majority of my friends wanted to go on. Through that ride I've confirmed what I only suspected before: I don't like going on rides anymore. Rides are made to give you weird sensations, like dizziness when you're spinning or that falling feeling for the rides that go up and down. I just find that my brain simulates enough of those without any external aid so rides are hardly going to give me much joy. I think today was fun mostly because I was able to meet up with friends that I haven't seen for ages. The thing is, I can do that anywhere so although it's something different that I don't regret doing, I don't think I'll be going to the show again.
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Is it strange that the small act of remembering/being bothered to take all my pills makes me feel more accomplished than anything else I've done for weeks? I'm finally sick of being sick of how things are, so it's time to start taking a more active approach to the whole taking care of oneself thing. Which means taking all the pills, not just the ones with the 'do not stop suddenly' label on them. I should probably also sleep better. And eat better, and drink lots of water, and not overexert myself, etc, but I figure two things is enough at this point.
I feel as though I should know better than to sleep weirdly or anything else on that list, but for some reason it's all so hard to keep doing. I don't really know why... or maybe I do. I talk to people all the time about sleep. With teenagers it seems to be one of the most important things. We're generally all sleep deprived so lots of conversations revolve around how many hours sleep people have had, or how they're tired and could go to sleep right there. People don't seem to be sleeping longer than 8 hours on weekdays. One girl told me that she regularly has six hours sleep, and I wonder how she does it. If I sleep for only six hours I can barely function through the day. But then I have to remember that my body works differently... that less sleep generally means a bit of sleepiness for people, not an increase in pain... So when I try to sleep regular hours each night, eventually I get tired of noticing the difference between how much sleep I need and how much others seems to get away with. I rebel, thinking 'to hell with all that's healthy, I want to do ____' and decide to stay up late one night. It breaks the cycle, and takes me about a week to recover completely, providing that I go back to sleeping right. Which I generally don't, because there aren't any instant results in the feeling better department. It's something similar with not wanting to take pills. It's been two years since I've started taking preventative medicines for migraine and other than this one medicine that helps enough that I don't spend all the time going around not sure what's going on, there has been no progress. I almost think that there's no point anymore. I don't want to be taking anything, I just want to be better already. I store my pills for the week in a pill box that used to be a sign of hope but now just seems to be a sign of failure. It probably doesn't help that the writing on it is starting to rub off so much that I can barely read the names of the days anymore. Every time I go to take some pills (which is three times a day) I have to be reminded of the way things are (that is, if being awake had somehow not clued me in). So I got sick of how things are, and refused to use the pillbox, only taking the minimum amount of pills to not get withdrawal effects from the 'do not stop suddenly' medicines. This had been going on for the last couple of weeks, until yesterday. Today is the second day of me taking all the pills I should be taking so I think it's fair enough that I should have a small internal celebration. And if that's strange, so be it. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't live near the beach. Every time walk on it, or even just see it as I go by on the bus, it seems to fill me with an inner peace that I haven't felt for years. I think it may just be my happy place.
The beach is full of warm memories. Memories of laughter, mucking around with friends, family, my subconscious may even remember the time when I was a toddler and my parents let me run around on the beach, stopping every now and then to explore that part of the world. The beach speaks to me of happy times, fun times, and all that is good. It just represents happiness and the act of forgetting the world for a while. All that exists is that moment... Last week was Invisible Illness Week, and I was planning to write a post or two for it, but got caught but in the craziness of uni and was too tired to do anything towards it.
So many things are invisible. The world is full of people pretending to be completely fine when maybe in reality they are sad, depressed, in pain or feel lost because they have something going on in their life and have no idea what to do. And it's almost completely impossible to know who these people are unless they tell you. I have an invisible illness. But I doubt that anyone looking at me would guess. To most people in the world I'm a completely healthy 19 year old girl, which in a way is completely true. My immune system is awesome. I almost never get sick in the regular way, with the flu or something other virus. I don't even have any allergies. My immune system may be awesome, but my nervous system definitely is not. Migraines are basically the nervous system gone weird. Nobody's quite sure exactly how the nervous system goes weird, so the theory keeps changing. I won't got into it now but in essence, people are pretty ignorant about how migraines work. If medical people aren't entirely sure what's going on, how can everyone else? There are so many misconceptions and judgments made about migraines that in the end people don't talk about it. I don't. Telling people opens yourself up to lots of criticism and/or ignorance. And knowing that, I have no idea how to start that conversation, even with people that I trust to not judge me on that. I think it's similar for other invisible illnesses. If people can't see it, they tend to have doubts. It's hard to doubt someone with a cast on their arm that they injured it, but if after the cast comes off and it's long healed the person says they still have pain, I bet that even if no one said so, they'd doubt that the person was telling the truth. It doesn't follow expectations. Once the cast is off and the doctor says they're healed they have to be, don't they? It's the same with so many other illnesses. People doubt because they're invisible. "Think positively and you'll feel better." "But you don't look like you're in pain..." "Why are you taking so many pills?" "You're young, you don't have to worry about that." "Have you heard about/tried...?" "Can't they give you something for that?" I've had variations of the above said to me at some point in the 2ish years I've had frequent migraines. Usually by people that should have known better. They decided at the time that expressing their disbelief was more important than my feelings. I believe people should learn to look outside the small view they see of another person and think of the possibilities. The next time you judge someone negatively, pause to think that perhaps they're having a horrible day with many bad things happening to lead up to that moment, or perhaps having to deal with something, day to day, that you can't even begin to imagine. People need to realise this for everyone's sake, because maybe they'll be in a position that's hard to understand one day. Wow, I didn't know that was all there. All these words that want to come out, after so long of refusing to talk about the topic. And to think that all that was preventing me from saying this was fear of being judged. At least on the internet I can't see people's reactions... Last year, a girl in my school asked me why I liked physics, and I couldn't tell her a reason other than 'I just do' or 'I find it really interesting'. Like sure, those are true, but I find many things interesting so it hardly explains this drive that seems to only be getting stronger as I learn more and more about it.
A year was a while ago, but I guess my subconscious may have been wondering about it ever since then, because a few days ago I realised the answer. I'm using physics to try and work out the world. It's like every new thing I learn adds a new piece to the puzzle that I never thought existed, and it broadens my view of the world in ways I didn't know were possible. It's about knowing exactly where you are in the world, and how everything around you works at the most fundamental level. Like, I now know now the basics of how car gears work, which cleared up a lot of worries about me destroying the car if I do this or that while changing gears. But when I talk about broadening my view of the world, I don't mean just basic things like knowing how things work, although that's useful enough. When I learn a bit of relativity it was extremely hard to understand. Not the maths, the maths was easy, but the meaning of the things the maths was saying. How is it possible for the time to be different depending on how fast something is going compared to the speed of light? Or that the length of something contracts as it goes faster (measuring in the reference frame that is at rest)? Like, it quite literally gets shorter. At least according to the theory (which is well proven). I'm still not sure if I believe it. The thing that I'm currently (since 2010) fascinated by quantum physics. It's probably because I don't understand it in the slightest. Quantum physics is complex and confusing, and I'm yet to formally study it. Physics goes weird when it goes quantum, and it's going to be really interesting to see how what I learn about quantum physics will fit in with how I view the world at the moment. So, apparently I think too much. At least according to this personality questionnaire that I did as part of a leadership workshop at uni. It's supposed to be a 3D assessment which gives a better picture than most quizzes that are a 2D assessment, or at least that's what they said.
According to this workshop, to be a good leader you have to understand yourself first, hence the quiz. My results told me that my main motivation in life was supposed to be Wisdom, I have an extremely optimistic outlook on life, and apparently my IQ is way stronger if you compare it in ratio with the other intelligences. We spent quite a few hours learning some of the theory behind this stuff which I won't go into here, but the website is here and there is a free version of the questionnaire there although it does take a bit of effort to fill out. For the Wisdom motivation, the strengths were supposed to be being able to understand the full situation and get the best outcome for all others in the long term. This sounds awesome. Apparently overdoing it may make me 'appear too hypothetical'. I wasn't sure what it meant at first, but discussed it with the guy I was sitting next to (who happened to get the exact same results as me for this section) and we came to the conclusion that it means that we think too much. So then we thought about how to think less and realised that this was probably not going to work out... Another thing I found out, is that contrary to what people have been telling me for a while, I am actually really really optimistic. Optimism isn't about 'looking on the bright side' or anything like that, although positive thinking like that is probably quite good for your mental health. Optimism is all about the way you approach a hard situation. It's not about ignoring the bad, but accepting it and doing everything you can to change it into something that suits you better. I suppose in that regard I've had a lot of practice recently... I guess that explains the high score in that area because it's supposed to be one of those things you can improved with training. The thing that I really find strange is that the ratio of my IQ score was a lot higher than my EQ score. I always thought I was reasonably good at reading people although I have been feeling that that ability has been slowly diminishing over the years, probably ever since I decided in year 7 that I couldn't just keep being overly sensitive and reacting to everyone else's emotions. So now I'm starting to realise that I never actually solved that problem (assuming it was a 'problem' that needed solving) and to have any improvements in that area I'll probably need to start all over again. I get the feeling that I'm just thinking too much about everything. They say that ignorance is bliss and I completely agree, but somehow I just can't help thinking and learning and reaching for knowledge about things that I probably would be happier not knowing about. I can't help wondering if maybe ignorance may not be worth the temporary bliss it produces, because things keep changing and there's always something to shatter your bliss in the end, and what're you going to do if you're not prepared? Wow, this post has been all over the place. It's strange how my thoughts can feel so clear and I can see the big picture when I apply it to something external, like uni or other people, even if there are unanswered questioned and I don't completely understand it, yet when I try to puzzle out what's happening in my own life that I'm actually living I come up lost and confused in the maze of my own thoughts. It never used to happen. When I was younger I could see the 'big picture' in my life. Things were so simple then. *sigh* I suppose with external things I don't have to factor in any thoughts and wonder in depth about a variety of thoughts and feelings. I guess that makes it official Today's prompt is 'How does humor help you cope?'
In my opinion humour is the best coping tool you could possibly have. If you can laugh at a situation that is the best possible perspective you can view it in. Also, taking notice of the entertaining things in life can be really quite fun. I’ve found that for a year or two now I automatically interpreted things and situations (provided they aren’t something serious) in the most humorous way possible. Sometimes I actually crave comedies. Laughter releases endorphins which are natural pain killers, and helps relax the body. I can feel that this is true, because some days I’d laugh for whatever reason and realise for the first time that I’m extremely tense and actually in a lot of pain. Then usually what would happen is that I’d want to keep laughing for quite a while, longer than appropriate if I’m with people, so I guess my body really knows what’s good for it! Laughter may not be the absolute best medicine but it’s pretty damn close. Some websites/pages that I find funny: - Damn You Auto Correct (though I should warn that it does have swearing on it) - Post about subtitles on Harry Potter video (need to be familiar with movie to understand it) I think I'll gradually add to the list when I find websites worthy enough to be added. Prompt 25 is 'Lincoln: Who's your favorite historical figure who lived with Migraine or another Headache Disorder?'
I don’t have a favourite historical figure as much as I just like the idea of people taking their experience with migraine and using it to help inspire the creation of something that people will look at and enjoy for a long time. Two well known people who did this are Lewis Carroll and Vincent Van Gogh. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland. There is a part in the book that describes Alice becoming suddenly large then suddenly small. This is thought to be inspired by a certain type of migraine aura, Todd’s syndrome, which is also called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. Vincent Van Gogh is thought to most likely have had migraine and that the auras caused by his migraines may have inspired some of his painting. Their work is well known and as popular as ever. I suppose it’s why I’m mentioning them in particular, but there are many more out there. I found a list of visuals artists, writers and musicians online which were quite interesting. I had no idea there were so many people out there. Prompt 15 is 'Harry Potter: Write & name a spell for getting rid of a Migraine/Headache attack.'
Harry Potter is awesome :D I've read all the books multiple times, seen all the movies, multiple times, and got a beta account on Pottermore. Just today my dad was watching a show and a character said 'The Ministry' so I thought 'Ministry of Magic?'. So given this Harry Potter background a spell for migraine didn't really seem right to me. A little bit like taking a pain killer, a temporary fix. If you want it to go away properly, you need a potion. So here's the Cephalea Auferet potion: Ingredients: - 3 small moonstones - essence of dittany - Honeywater - Ginger root - 3 medium sized peppermint leaves - a handful of lavender petals 1) Grind the moonstones into powder and place into cauldron. 2) Add 5 drops of dittany and 3 of honeywater. 3) Lightly heat potion until it turns a light pink. 4) Slowly add finely chopped ginger root until potion turns deep pink. 5) Grind peppermint leaves and lavender petals together with a mortar and pestle and add to potion. 6) Leave potion to sit overnight. It should be a deep purple colour in the morning. This potion would fix everything for a single migraine attack and make it all better. If it was real... As if I needed another reason to want to go to Hogwarts... Prompt 12 is 'The Box: You are the experiment: What situation in your Migraine/Headache Disorders treatment has made you feel most like a
guinea pig or lab rat?' I have always hated trial and error. In primary school maths we’d have these puzzles where we’d have to try out different numbers until we get the right combination and I always found them so boring and pointless. I mean, that’s hardly a practical way to get the answer, right? So now it’s a weird twist of fate that I seem to be doing the exact same thing, except now with medicines. At least numbers were pretty harmless; it’s a pity the same can’t be said for drugs. Medicines for migraine are tricky in that no one can say, ‘Here, this will definitely work,’ so the only way to move forward is to try some medicines out that have worked for other people and see what happens from there. It’s like I’m playing trial and error with my body, and I hated trial and error enough just on principle when it was a no risk thing with numbers. So my answer to this prompt is simple: ALL OF IT. Everything has been, ‘try this and when you come back tell me if it worked’. And then it hasn’t worked so I get told to try something else and come back later. It’s really quite frustrating. The fact that the risks of trying the medicines, even if they’re small, exist, make it even worse. But as long as there is a chance of an improvement I have to try it out even if I don't like it. |