Until It Doesn't

Javeria Sajid

It was the last week of summer, and I was at my cousin's when it happened. Sweat pooled down my back, and the nerves in my right shoulder twitched. Faint pins pricked along my face, but I ignored them. It'll go away soon. They always do. 

With August’s bold sun blooming in the sky, my cousin demanded I make something to cool us down. “But it has to be dessert,” she begged.

“Sure, I have this horribly backwards way of making tiramisu and it honestly shouldn’t even be called tiramisu because the only similar thing about it is the… the…” I paused, my eyebrows furrowing. What… What was I talking about? Shaking my head, I tried again. “You know, the…” The? A rush flew down my right cheek, numbing everything in its path. “G?” a voice called out. Her voice. Whose voice?

I didn’t remember who I was talking to. Staring at her face I tried to put a name to her familiar features… but it wouldn’t come to my tongue. Then it happened. A million little knives stabbed into my face, pinching nerves. Catching on my right cheek bone, they embedded above my eye. Tearing the right side of my face apart from the inside as a pulse of lightning shot up from under my jawbone, straight to my right eye socket. Taking anchor on the right of my face, an invisible pulsing barb came alive under my skin. My soul was stretched out of me, placed on my shoulder like a delicate bird. Or a ghost you couldn’t get rid of. I flashed between being in my body and viewing it from over my—its—shoulder, as my limbs stiffened as if all my blood, muscle, and bones were replaced by metal.

Then I fell.

It’s a strange feeling, a vague unknown state of being where I can see and feel my body and experience everything. Yet simultaneously, I’m an outsider watching as it happens. And once again, like clockwork, I stop being.

It first started in February, but they were always faint—nothing like this. Some would leave me hollow: not being able to hold a single thought, forgetting to see and feel. My “migraines,” I would call them, yet I knew they shouldn’t be so fierce. Electric tingles would flow down my cheek and my head would fill with a rush… I wouldn’t know that the dancing grey was a wall, or that the tick, tick, tick was a clock. Only that weeks later, some would be just bad enough to make me sit still with my eyes closed, while others would be a dull throb I could try to ignore. But this, no, this was something different. It was the worst of them.

I spent four days and four nights slipping in and out of darkness. The constant throbbing in my head and repetitive lashes across my neck, skull, and face were my only company. My eyes were open but my brain couldn't see. I’m not sure what came next. That’s the thing, I never do. I’ll stare at the wall or sky or a blank space before me as if my brain has short circuited leaving me as bleak and murky as the darkest of lakes. My body—an empty shell—reflecting back at me, while my essence is lost in the water’s depths. Not knowing or understanding what is in there, only that something is there. Away from sight and reach. 

I don’t know if my body falls into the lake, or if my essence precipitates back down, but somehow I’m back in me. And I can think. I can be.

When I fully recovered five days later, I would find out that my cousin had rushed me to the ER when I first fainted, but I was awake and speaking throughout the checkup. I can’t remember it. What I do know is that I came back to my body lying on a bed, the doctor stating that I was dehydrated. I had enough strength to tell them that my head was spinning—not the room, my head. Yet, ignoring my mumbled pleas, I was discharged.

I wish I could say that was the last of it all. However, I recently celebrated the first anniversary of my very first “migraine” with one just like it. I find myself being filled with frustration during the episodes, but even more so on the days the aftereffects drag on. It’s not just doctors that I’m frustrated with for not helping me; I’m frustrated with my body: it won’t listen to me. I remember hearing in kindergarten that we should always try to learn something new every day. Now, I’m learning just how much my body was affected, every day.

I had spent the last two years making pancakes from scratch. Having memorized the simple recipe, it was always easy. Until it wasn’t. I had gone months without having to look at the instructions, yet at times I couldn’t remember if flour was used. How much flour? Maybe an egg? Eggs? 

At first I thought it was just my memory, that my words were taken captive. Then I realized it was my brain. 

Standing in front of my mirror, the girl in the glass is frustrated. As my hand grips my eyeliner, it shakes. I know that I’m thinking to move it forward, to angle it to the corner of my eye. But my hand—my arm—won’t shift. A pinch tenses my shoulder. Why won’t you move?

It’s a strange epiphany. Not one that is welcomed warmly either. To have the recognition sink into every cell of my body: my brain is hurting. I can think, I can move, but sometimes I can’t. My brain connects my body and motion.