What a headache

Literally, and figuratively.

My son suffers from chronic migraines and migraine associated vertigo. Despite a very good 12 or 13 months in a row, they returned in mid-December with a vengeance and he's had 13 migraine days in the last 30. That's the literal pain -- in the head for him, and of the heart for me. I once tried to explain to someone that the maternal bond is such that a mother with a child in pain can never be free of that pain herself. When he hurts, I hurt. When he is confined by the pain, I am confined by it as well, literally and figuratively.

Figuratively, this blog is a bit of a headache, too. But I'm determined to play out this experiment. Two years ago when I applied for the professional development leave I wanted to explore narrative journalism, and included in my proposal the writing of a major narrative feature. One of the possible topics I conjectured at that time was a story about children in pain. We were in the middle of a three-year marathon of dealing with the migraines and I longed to write about it but was too physically drained and time stressed to think about it. Now that the leave is here, I find myself struggling to write and no longer longing to. And I have no desire to write about children in pain. Don't want to go there. Spend too much time there. Can't bear the thought of jumping in any deeper than I am.

I do feel a need some days to write about the experiences of this past year -- separation, divorce, single parenting, financial crises, and all the little daily crises that went with them. Through the course of it, many friends asked me if I kept a journal, and I never have -- other than the journal I've kept about the migraines. My emails to and from close friends have been a journal of sorts, and in the past weeks I've gone back and read again many of those missives. Some days I feel no need to write, no desire to write, and I'm mystified that something I've enjoyed and felt confident about throughout my life brings me no solace.

I don't want this to become a journal of my personal traumas -- for one thing that's boring and tedious for everyone, and for another I'm often struck by the personal nature of things some people include in their blogs that just shouldn't be out there for the world in general to read. But a colleague of mine in the English Department who also has an interest in narrative writing did encourage me to write personally, to explore that genre and experience, and so I think this blog will be a melding of my search for narrative, for story, and for a new place of peace in life. You're welcome here.