Migraines, Mojo and Moments

Last Saturday, I got a migraine for the first time in about fourteen years. It started as a lingering headache, which stayed at bay while my husband and I went out on a rare dinner date. The moment we got back home, a small squiggly, clear worm floated into my field of vision, and I knew the headache was about to get worse. I went to bed at 7:30 PM and slept and slept and slept. The next day, the headache felt like it was resting in the nape of my neck, ready to uncoil and spring back into action at any minute. I felt spacey all day, like I probably shouldn’t be driving and what the hell am I doing at the gym? and there is no way I can go to the potluck for my kid’s classroom. I handed the kids off to my husband and slept for most of the day.

When I woke up on Monday, the headache had retreated a bit more, but I still felt spacey. In fact, I felt spacey all week. I started googling things like migraine brain tumor and sleepy aneurysm head. I finally went to my doctor on Thursday, who theorized that my body was just all freaked out from the migraine, and I probably wasn’t dying. This was good, relaxing news, and I felt ready to re-enter my life and start writing and exercising again.

That night, my daughter came down with a fever and was home from daycare with me the next day, so my plans for writing and running were replaced with incessant reading (“Elmo book! Elmo book!”) and naps and lying on the couch while my daughter watched Thomas movies on Netflix.

I don’t like it much when things don’t go the way I plan them to. I complain and I pray and I try to go with the flow and then I complain some more. Despite the fact that so much of life consists of things not going how we plan them to, I still fight it.

Yesterday, I heard a man say, “Around every corner is another spiritual experience.” And I thought, Oh.

Things had felt good lately. Writing has helped me circle back around to myself. When I’m really in the flow, it feels like a spiritual experience. Like I’m doing no more than just sitting here, letting the words stream through my fingertips.  And running, or yoga or dancing brings much needed endorphins my way. So when I miss these things, for even a handful of days, I feel bereft. I feel like I’ve lost my mojo. Instead of not being able to wait to sit down and write, I want to avoid it. Same with exercise.  

Maybe the spiritual experience of this unplanned week is that life is about moments. That despite the crappiness of that headache, damned if it didn’t feel good to sleep. That in between being grumpy that my daughter was home sick, we nuzzled up to each other, and I felt like a mama cat with my little kitten, close and warm and right. And maybe getting my mojo back is as simple as sitting down and writing even when I don’t feel like it, even when the words are trickling instead of flowing, and running that eleven minute mile even when it feels like slogging through mud.