The Bloody Doors Off

I spent ten minutes sorting through my texts, deleting groceries orders, message from phone numbers no longer active.

That was a judicious use of time.

I also promised myself forty-five minutes ago I’d get ready to walk Auggie at 7pm. Still got fifteen minutes to pull that off.

Headaches have started to return. Low-grade, easily managed. Hoping it stays this way. When I was a kid, up until my early twenties, I suffered from debilitating migraines. I have memories of locking myself away in a blacked-out room, no sound, cold cloth over my eyes. Crying in pain. Vomiting sometimes relieved the pressure. There were trips to the hospital. One emergency room couldn’t qualify my pain and left me to suffer under the harsh lights of the waiting room. Scarborough Grace Hospital whisked me immediately into another room and got me an intravenous of pain medications and gravol for the nausea. A woman suffering a psychotic break flew open the partitioning curtain, stared at me with dead eyes and demanded, “Satan, get out!”

I was so loopy from the pain meds, I concluded. “Cool. I’m the devil.”

That was the last migraine I remember, until recent years. And, as I typed earlier, they’ve been managed.

But the frequency. Makes me uneasy.

You know what else makes me queasy?

They got Dame Helen Fucking Mirren to host a Harry Potter slash Hogwarts-themed game show on TBS.

And I thought I was depressed before.