Salvage

I can feel you falling away-
A broken empty slate,
Halfway erased -
Dimly showing the outlines
Of who you thought you were.
What's left?
What's usable?

Come home with me this time.
Forgive yourself this once
For the future you never had and cannot forfeit.
Come home.
Be at ease.
Recognize your face in the mirror,
Gaunt sunken cheeks
But eyes with fire left to burn.
Come home this time.

Answers aren't prescribed.
They aren't buried in a name.
They can't be written out in pencil,
Proof in the bottom line -
Only algebra's so simple.
Please don't blame yourself,
Lock the solution inside your head,
And tell me it cannot exist.

Come home this time.
Forgive yourself this once
For the future you never had -
You cannot forfeit.
Come home.
Be at ease.
Recognize your face in the mirror,
Gaunt sunken cheeks
But eyes with fire left to burn.

You're on the ledge and leaning forward -
The wind won't push you back,
Even as thin as you have gotten -
Gravity may win.
I'm far away and cannot reach you!
Please hear me now.

The battle's hard and it's far from over;
I know how tired you've been.
The answer's hiding somewhere,
But the solution can be found.

Come home with me this time.
Forgive yourself for once,
For the future you never had and cannot forfeit.
Come home.
Be at ease.
Recognize your face in the mirror,
Gaunt sunken cheeks
But eyes with fire left to burn.

Ask now:
What's left?
What's usable?

In Honor of My Three Year Anniversary with my Migraine

I've lived in this house forever, but there's a hole in the middle of the staircase.

It wasn't always there, of course, but now it is. It's been there for three years now. Exactly. To the day.

At first it was hard. I stood on the landing, on the stair just before where the steps had rotten away and fallen through. I was stumped. I could see the shadows of wooden teeth at the bottom, waiting for me to jump and fall and be chewed up and swallowed. So, I sat down. And I waited.

Eventually I worked up my nerve. There were things upstairs I desperately needed. I took a running leap, and managed to make it across, barely. My feet slipped out from under me, and for a moment, I slid, my feet dangling into the crevasse. But I caught hold of the railing, and pulled myself upright. My knees were weak and covered in carpet burn, but I'd made it. I was across.

After a while, I got comfortable. I leaped across the gap like it was nothing, like it was a lifelong fact, like that hole in the middle of the staircase had always been there.

There were even days when I could forget about it, even as I leaped over it.

But it's been three years. It is very, very hard to live for three years with a hole in the middle of the staircase, and to jump across a dangerous broken gap as easily and thoughtlessly as kids straddle the state lines at Carowinds.

Days started to come when I became tired. I would miss my footing as I jumped the break, and slide and nearly fall in, to be broken and ground to bits by the teeth below. They looked no less sharp for the passing of time. My knees were carpet burned, more and more frequently.

One day, I looked at the gap, backed up to make the running leap - and then stopped. I couldn't bring myself to try to cross.

The next day I managed the feat, but I was shaken. I was shaking.

More and more days came when I stared at the gap and shook and shivered, and eyed those foreboding teeth at the bottom. Were they coming closer? Were they becoming darker, more eager, impatiently gnashing at me with hunger?

Then came a week when I just couldn't jump. I couldn't do it. I sat on the landing below the break and I sobbed and I cried. I hated myself, cursed myself for being too weak or to afraid to try. I must've made it to the other side hundreds - thousands! - of times before. Why couldn't I do it now?

I've lived in this house forever, but there's a hole in the middle of the staircase.

I don't know if I will ever make it upstairs again.

Worse, I don't know if I will ever try to make it upstairs again.

~*~

"When my mom has migraines, it's like she disappears," he said wonderingly. "You don't do that."

You are silent.

How do you explain that you've already disappeared?

You are a shadow of what you could be. You're muted. You're like Metallica S&M played through crappy earbuds, tinny and cracking at the highs, with only the barest outlines of the melodies audible, with the harmonies completely indistinguishable. The music in all its grand subtlety is there, though, somewhere, but the vast majority is lost in translation.

Your migraine keeps the world from hearing your music in all its symphonic nuances.

How do you explain that you've already disappeared?

How do you tell him that it's only through sheer will - will that seems to be flagging - that you are not just like his mother when she has migraines, tucked up in bed, blankets thrown over the drawn curtains for good measure, staring at the wall and thinking in white noise?

You smile at him, lips tight.

"No," you say. "I'm used to it."

~*~

On a day she actually makes it to class, they are discussing the philosophies of St. Augustine.

She can't stand his writing. She summarizes it simply, through the lens of a post-feminist Witch: "Blah blah misogyny blah blah."

He hated women, he hated sex, and in a lot of ways, St. Augustine hated himself.

During the discussion, she observes that one section of The City of God seems to be about the trials of erectile dysfunction.

"He can't stand that there's a part of his body that he can't control." Her tone implies that he is silly for this, bearing the full weight of condescension that only hypocrisy can maneuver. The backlash of her tone startles her.

The discussion moves on, but she is thinking.

Minutes pass.

A pause. The other students seem to have run out of things to say about silly, dead, misogynist St. Augustine.

"You know," she muses, not really looking at anyone. "I kind of get it - why he would have thought that human bodies were the sources of all evil in the world. I mean, we live in a time of modern medicine. Largely, our bodies can keep up with our minds. But back then, they got sick - deadly sick or injured or crippled. To him, bodies must have seemed like prisons, like the only things keeping human beings from achieving their potential."

She glances up at her professor.

He gives her a long, sad look from behind his glasses, fidgets uncomfortably in his seat, and looks away.

She can't stand St. Augustine's writing, but maybe she understands a little bit of where he was coming from.

~*~

Visiting doctors seems to be an exercise in futility. I go, I sit in the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, I fill out the endless paperwork, I put in the phone calls to have records transferred. I go through the motions.

My mother seems to think that maybe they'll find something this time, that maybe since the last time we went to this type of doctor (allergist, neurologist, acupuncturist, etc.) they'll have discovered some new treatment. Or maybe, just maybe, they'll try something they've tried before, only this time it will work, because my body has changed.

My mother hopes.

I go through the motions. I go, sit in the waiting room chairs, fill out the endless paperwork, put in the phone calls to have records transferred, and I watch the new doctor as he talks at me, telling me about this migraine I've been living with for three years. I watch the doctor as he talks at me, and I pray simply:

"Please don't give me any more pills that do nothing and force me to become nothing. Please don't prescribe me out of living what little scraps of life I have left."

~*~

You don't get much sleep at night. It doesn't seem to matter how many pills you take.

You are so very, very tired. The world spins around you, and you are acutely aware of every pulse of pain in your head. You stare at your ceiling and make a game of ranking each individual pain spike.

"That one was a 4. That one was a 6. That - an 8. This - a 7. A 9. A 5. A 4. 4. 7. 8...."

You hope that you will wake up on time tomorrow. You hope that you will be able to get out of bed, get dressed, and go to class. You dare to hope that you will even feel good, and will be able to pay attention to class.

The clock marches on steadily. As the numbers begin to approach three AM, your hopes for the next day steadily diminish. You hope that you will be able to drag your sorry carcass out of bed at all.

You turn over onto your side. You shut your eyes. You try imagining that your boyfriend is curled up next to you, warm and reassuring.

Your fingers are cold. You press them to your temples. The relief is small, but it is, as you might have said during the stats class you took last semester (took, but never went to, and had the highest grade in the class before absences were factored in) statistically significant. The relief is statistically significant.

You turn onto your other side. You wonder, as you almost always do in the dark of the night when you can't sleep, alone with your migraine, how the hell you're going to be able to continue like this. This thought is familiar, like a childhood enemy who now works with you, whom you have to see everyday. 

How the hell are you going to live your life? What in the world are you going to be able to accomplish?

You remember what your AP Calculus teacher said. You'd been absent, out with the migraine, and had just returned to school.

"Your wits will get you by for now," she said, tone disdainful. "But what are you going to do after high school? College students who can't attend class are not successful. And if you have a job and can't show up for work, then you're going to be fired."

You know, staring at your wall in your college dorm room, exactly how right she was. 

It is not your boyfriend who curls up next to you, but your migraine.

When you finally fall asleep, it is only because you are too exhausted to do anything else.

When you wake up, you are still so very, very tired.