This past week was one of those weeks that shouldn’t have been difficult but was.  I woke up on Monday morning with a sharp pain in my left eye which I first feared was an internal stye (to which I am, unfortunately, prone), but realized by the time I got to school that it was, in fact, a rapidly developing migraine.  Those of you who suffer from migraines will know that it is not just a headache, but an entire syndrome that can take anywhere from hours to days to run its course.  I feel as though I jinxed myself because just last week I uttered the words “I haven’t had a migraine in a while.”  Kiss of death.

I began developing migraines in college, and their symptoms have evolved over the years.  The actual headache used to be my worst symptom, and when a bad one would hit, I would feel like I had an ax wedged just below my left ear for days.  By the time I started teaching, nausea became my nemesis, and I’d be unable to stand the smell of food, drinks, perfume, or air fresheners.  About two years ago, I had my first migraine with aura, which are particularly creepy.  I was monitoring a study hall while reading Hamlet, and suddenly Horatio’s lines were blotted out by a star-shaped hole in the middle of the page.  Anywhere I looked, there was a shimmering phantasm in the center of my vision, but no pain.  My vision cleared after about twenty minutes and I’ve never been so relieved to feel a headache hit – this time lodged behind my left eye.  Then I knew it was a migraine and not a stroke. The evolution of my migraines is not linear, and this week’s migraine involved throbbing pain in my left eye that gradually migrated behind my left ear, profound fatigue, aching joints, and constant nausea that sent me running from co-workers who’d spritzed on extra perfume.

While migraines have many triggers (food, smells, weather, hormones), mine generally present only after I have wracked up a “perfect storm” of factors.  In this case – a late Friday night, the chance I took on two glasses of red wine (always a no-no), changing weather patterns, and a rapid drop in hormone levels.  While I couldn’t see it coming until it hit me – this raging b*tch of a migraine was inevitable.  When I’m suffering from a migraine, I’m reminded of how lucky I am to have my health.  Functioning while in pain is brutal; my temper is short, my tone sharp, and my brain slow and foggy.  Tasks that would otherwise take me ten minutes require a half-hour to complete, and I find myself mired in tremendous inertia. I eat what I can tolerate to quell the nausea, take frequent naps, and try not to bite the heads off my students, coworkers, family, and friends.  As awful as they are, migraines pass.  One day, you wake up and your vision is clear, the brain fog has lifted, the pain has subsided, and the nausea has abated.  The storm has passed.

What does my battle with a migraine have to do with talking to strangers? Ahhhhhh, you didn’t think I’d just whine about a headache without lobbing a metaphor your way, did you?  I’ve been thinking lately about inevitability and the unexpected – about the individual choices we make, and the singular moments in our lives that combine with forces beyond our control to lead us to conclusions that masquerade as inevitable.  There were contributing factors to my migraine that I could not change – the weather, and low hormone levels, for example, but I also made choices – a late Friday night and two glasses of red wine.  Change just one thing, and my week likely would have begun sans a splitting headache and crippling nausea.

Just over three months ago, I committed to talking to strangers, to taking chances, and to sharpening the people skills I felt my time behind a screen had dulled.  It’s been, to say the least, transformative.  My specific choice to open myself up, and the daily choices that have followed, have begun to shift my perspective and break open my understanding of what is possible in my life.

I’ve been going on actual dates with the date-not-date I met in the Lyft. Getting to know him has been a beautiful and unexpected surprise that absolutely would not have been possible but for our individual choices combined with universal forces beyond our control.  He’s proven to be kind and thoughtful, emotive and communicative, spontaneous and generous.  He is also leaving a week from tomorrow to travel the world for the next eight to ten months on a sabbatical from his job. Life is bizarre.

Life is bizarre, but it’s also overwhelming, surprising, terrifying, inscrutable, and altogether beautiful.  It is a gift, and so are the people who slip into our lives – seemingly out of nowhere, but at the same time, meant to be there all along. Their presence feels at once unexpected and inevitable.  If these last three and a half months have taught me anything – it’s that I have to accept the gifts I encounter on my path with open arms, weather the storms, make left turns, and greet the future with all the joy and openness I can possibly muster.  At the moment, I don’t have any answers, but I have a clear head and an open heart. That’ll have to do.

Until next time…