"IT'S MY HEAD!" - John Malkovich

     When I was younger, I used to get cluster headaches. From wikipedia:
"The pain of cluster headaches is remarkably greater than in other headache conditions, including severe migraines; experts have suggested that it may be the most painful condition known to medical science. Female patients have reported it as being more severe than childbirth. Peter Goadsby, a neurologist and headache specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, has commented:
      Cluster headache is probably the worst pain that humans experience. I know that's quite a strong remark to make, but if you ask a cluster headache patient if they've had a worse experience, they'll universally say they haven't. ... Women with cluster headache will tell you that an attack is worse than giving birth. So you can imagine that these people give birth without anaesthetic once or twice a day, for six, eight or ten weeks at a time, and then have a break."

     I wasn't aware of this condition until much later in life, years after I had stopped getting them. I'm glad I found out about it, because it helps me to put some things into perspective. I'm also glad I didn't know about it at the time, as that probably made it easier to deal with. I always thought they were migraines, but that's only because I thought migraines were the worst headache a person could get. I told the doctor I had migraines and he took me at my word. Both kinds of headache can be localized behind the eye. That's how it was for me: I felt it right behind my right eye.
     Cluster headaches are sometimes called "suicide headaches" because some people who have them commit suicide. That's what I mean about being glad I didn't know about cluster headache back when I had them; a lot of people get migraines, and while it's awful, you just kind of deal with it. I figured if everybody else was, I could. If I knew this was the kind of pain that drove people to suicide, I might have considered it, particularly since I had no reason to believe they were ever going to stop. I got them about once every two or three days, and they lasted from forty minutes to an hour. Sometimes I'd go as long as week without. A very small percentage of people with cluster headache have a permanent headache. If that had happened, there's no question I'd have killed myself, and rightfully so.
     When I read about the cluster headache symptoms, everything matched. When I'd get my attacks, I'd rock back and forth (like Mankind used to do), my face would start to sweat, and my nose would run. As to the feeling, allow me a literary allusion. When I read A Million Little Pieces, the notorious root canal passage really hit home, because it was what my headaches felt like. Since James Frey actually didn't have a root canal without anesthesia, I give him credit as a writer, because this is what I tried to convey and never got across quite so well:

"The electric pain shoots and it shoots at a trillion volts and it is white and burning. The bayonet is twenty feet long and red hot and razor sharp. The pain is greater than anything I've ever felt and it is greater than anything I could have imagined. It overwhelms every muscle and every fiber and every cell of my body...
At the point of penetration, a current shoots through my body that is not pain, or even close to pain, but something infinitely greater. ... My brain is white and it feels as if it's fucking melting. I cannot breath. Agony. ... I give up and I give in and I am consumed by the whiteness and the agony and I am there for what seems to be eternity. The whiteness and the agony. The whiteness and the agony. The whiteness and the agony.
If there was a God, I would spit in his face for subjecting me to this. If there was a Devil, I would sell him my soul to make it end. If there was something Higher that controlled our individual fates, I would tell it to take my fate and shove it up its fucking ass. Shove it hard and far, you Motherfucker. Please end. Please end. Please end."

     That's pretty much how I felt, every other day or so. The problem with thinking these were just migraines was that I really felt like I was overreacting. Knowing that it has been said "That actually is the worst pain anyone can feel." is really so gratifying. I'm not going to break down and cry Will Hunting style, but no, it wasn't my fault.  
     The line about spitting in God's face is spot on. I became first an atheist, then a nihilist, largely because of the experience of those headaches. I still had this nagging fear of Hell (which I escaped by reading The Selfish Gene, as detailed in an earlier post), but, not for nothing, the worst Hell could do is just not give me a break between my headaches. They were that bad.
     And then they went away. I don't remember when it happened. I don't remember the last one, or if they tapered off gradually or all at once. I just know that one day I realized I didn't get them anymore. Today, ask anyone who knows me what I'm like, and you will invariably hear some variation of "laid back". And why not? I was given respite. I almost don't think it would be too dramatic to say a second chance.
     I have experienced a lot of pain in my life, of all kinds. Just limiting it to physical pain, though, besides the cluster headaches, I've gotten migraines too, really intense tension headaches, burns, broken bones, a torn ACL. Some others. Honestly though, after the cluster headaches, probably the worst I've felt was during some of my more intense hangovers. For a heavy drinker such as myself, who wouldn't shy away from cheap brown liquor, they were a perfect storm of headache, nausea, disorientation and self loathing. Still, it's empowering to be able to say you've taken the worst.
     I think this may be taking a left turn, but I don't always know where these are going to end up. A lot of my life has been spent trying to prove things. I wanted a lot from life. I wanted to be important, or, failing that, at least notorious. I failed at a lot of things, and I went through a lot of hardships. I couldn't be a good person, so I set out to be the best bad person I could be. Nothing new. I dove headlong into the abyss. I couldn't have the dizzying highs, so I settled for all terrifying lows. It's a sad cliche, but when I look back on it, I never realized how well I did it. I wanted to do the most drugs, have the most sex, play the loudest rock and roll. We were all just losers trying to outdo each other, see who could be the craziest, be the sickest.
     And now, I'm reminded of what David Foster Wallace said while talking about Kafka. I'm going to apply it to myself. You spend your whole life pounding on a door, trying desperately to get in, clawing at the frame, screaming to be let in. And then, before you die, the door opens... but it opens inward, and you realize you've been inside the whole time. My door has opened. I'm glad it wasn't right before I die. I see now that I have nothing to prove. I have no pride in what I've done, but I have no shame either. I can't, and what would the point be? Fun is fun, and done is done.
     I guess how I'm connecting that with the headaches is this: when you've taken the worst pain, there's not much left to fear. You can put some perspective on things. There's nowhere to go but up. And when you've gazed into the abyss and you don't have anything to prove, you can start living. I did what I was trying to do a long, long time ago, and it almost killed me. I got the downside. I can cross that off the bucket list. I need the upside now. I think it's rare that a person can have both, but I think you need both to truly be free. I have never been able to be myself. Now, I don't have to prove anything or do anything or explain anything. I can just be me.

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself. ”- Heidegger