08 Sep Migraine

How you experience landscape changes through the filter of your own perception. Through the last year, I have had increasing migraines. They change how I respond to a landscape – I dislike the sea in the sun because it’s sparkly, I like the rain, the mist, it’s soft, Being kept inside, at a computer, sitting down, looking at various screens triggered almost a migraine a week at one point. The heightened anxiety of the pandemic buzzes and flits with electricity. Inflating on a held breath.

Migraines are a flurry of activity, of busyness. Things started and lists ticked off. In an enclosed space it feels like panic. Then shimmering. Sharp catches of déjà vu and a buzz of connections, looking for patterns. The patterns multiply and become fragments. Everything is fabulously bright, loud and sparkly, and then its overwhelmingly bright, loud and sparkly. Sometimes a swarm of lights shimmers across my vision. Everything is too much. My vision starts disintegrating. There are holes in the crucial points. No faces. The clock is there but the time is not. It starts to smell metallic, like blood. There’s still disbelief. I’m just tired, it could be smoky in here, I’ve got something in my eye. I feel too good to not be well. I walk into things, my body doesn’t end where I think it does. A sharp pain starts on one side of my face and one eye wants to be shut. There’s a rush for medication once I’m convinced its happening.

Sleep, the dark, the quiet, the relief of painkillers. A soft, thick fog. In some ways, it is welcome as the productivity and endless lists were exhausting and in a way its nice to stop. The days after are slow and soft. My memory isn’t very good, connections are slow. Maybe I used them all up beforehand. My words aren’t right. I say butterfly instead of book, green instead of orange.