Behind My Eyes

It might be expected that my awareness would be immediate, the slightest breath caught or tension triggering the internal shift. But it’s not this way.

It sneaks up on me, a gradual discomfort. A slow creep of intensity that climbs without alarms until an unmapped threshold is crossed.

It may be that the constant low hum of ache just above the place where my neck meets my skull inures me to the change. There is always discomfort – but it’s small, manageable.  The pain is mostly static – sitting in one place, hovering at the same number on the dial; a background noise that registers no more than the dishwasher or the brittle buzz of a fluorescent light. It pulses slowly within a clearly defined wavelength, a period of hours or even days. Easy to tune out, modest enough to dispel with small doses of America’s most trusted pain reliever. I could ignore the hum and surge if I chose, but that’s tiring, so I let the pain medicine silence the ache for me.

The ever present hum of mild pain lulls me and it takes a pinprick through my awareness before I realize that something is different. But once the change makes itself known I am instantly in a heightened state of alertness, taking an internal inventory.

When the pain climbs above the curve of my skull in the back, I shift my posture. When it moves from the back to the front, my breathing quickens. And if the discomfort settles over my nose and eyes, not so much pain as tightness, like a blindfold aggressively bound, my heart rate climbs at alarming speed. I sit perfectly still, sending my sensory awareness into a sphere that intersects my head at the lips, ears, and crown: a reservoir, a rain gauge.  I assess the size of the ball-shaped pain – how much space does it take in the reservoir? A small amount, surely, I tell myself.

What color is the pain? I look into the reservoir. Not blue. Never blue. Blue doesn’t register on the gauge. Blue is comfort and coolness. It is never blue. But yellow, perhaps, tinged with orange.

But here is the reason for the stillness, why I won’t move, am terrified to move. I have to watch closely, finding the edges of the pain, memorizing its color, so I can appreciate change. I have to know if the ball floating in the reservoir is getting larger or more vibrant.

It swells slowly, modulating subtle colors. The slowness itself is reassuring, in contrast to the lightening strike. I never lose track of the perimeter, the color moves only modestly along the spectrum.

And then it is static again.  A larger, brighter ball, but locked in size and color. The ache at the top of my head makes me anxious, the pressure over my nose scratches angrily at my reassuring words.  They sneer at my courage and threaten me with panic and tears. They laugh at how my iron will is truly made of spiderweb silk and taunt me with memories.

I refuse to engage with them, although I could not ever say I ignore them, until the ball shrinks again, and the color fades to a dull mustard. The barbed imps retreat, for however long, and I am alone behind my eyes again.