So I come back to Priscilla Long's article "My Brain on My Mind"--particularly because I happen to hit a sudden memory of reading about migraines. I had underlined and circled and densely annotated the part about it--for its scientific information and the poetry behind it, how Long also shares this "profound despair" with me.
When we have a migraine, three hundred times the normal amount of blood rushes to the brain in order to fire neurons in the chaotic electrical brainstorm. This firing neurons secrete an excitatory neurotransmitter called norepinephrine, which constricts cranial blood vessels. But we migraineurs generally have an insufficient supply of norepinephrine, and when it sadly diminishes, dopamine, which counterbalances norepinephrine, distends blood vessels, activating trigeminal nerves. And alas begins the great and overriding despondency of migraine.
I think there is something else in that hour of excruciating pain besides all this. When I'm not suffering a migraine, I am thinking. I try to do the things I won't be able to do when I'm struck by that mean inconvenience. I am thinking about David--the person I am in love with while I sing JRB's "I'm Not Afraid of Anything" although thinking about him might induce a migraine. I can forfeit a fraction of my time for him--because I am trying to find out the history of my character she carries while she sings. Or I think of my own history and my own song I am living.
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