Pins and Needles

listen to me crying
louder than a thimble
listen to the words
you'd give everything to say
watch me sew my lips shut
damn that needle's eye
for his jealousy
will not make me
a pincushion of a bride

Migraines

A few months ago, I wrote about my migraines and my first "aura" and I thought I should do some clarification. If you are researching migraines and my blog pops up, please keep reading to hear my experience.  You can even look back at the post titled "Aura" for my first discussion.  A lot of that advice is still pretty good, but I just want to add some updates.  Read on for more.  I've bold-ed parts of the post so you can skim and find things that you relate to :)

Necessity

I'm about to ragequit the internet.  Well, not really.  I'm just immensely frustrated that I've been forced to join two, maybe three different websites in the last 20 minutes because of my classes.  One of which I had no intention of ever joining in the first place: tumblr.  I have this association with tumblr of my friends posting pictures of kittens, half naked men, and angry posts about how fat they feel today over and over again.  I know I should give it the benefit of the doubt because nearly everyone I know has a tumblr.  I really didn't want to join.  It's another site I have to maintain (this one is enough as-is, plus my youtube account and facebook) and I have the feeling that once the project I'm required to have it for is over, it's going to sit there and gather dust.  Unless, of course, it becomes extremely useful (but I doubt it, since blogger can barely host a video over 240p).
I'm trying to stay open about this whole thing.  Hell, if it hosts video really well in comparison to blogger, then I'll make it into my dance portfolio.

The other site is just a wiki page, which  I had to join with the email my professor signed up for me.  So I'm stuck using my school email, which is slightly less accessible to me on my phone as it takes about three or four more steps to get to, and is nearly impossible to send emails when I'm using my phone browser.  Changing it to my Gmail might be a better option, so that way it's available to me after I lose my school email in the future.  I just don't like having all my memberships registered under an email that won't be there forever.

So you won't see me posting pictures of kittens or half naked men here, although you will hear me whine about life frequently.  Whining about life is SO MUCH BETTER ONLINE.  Not.

"Reset"

Well! I thought I should start posting some choreography, since I'm a dancer and all that.  I've had problems with Blogger's video upload, so I've been using Youtube to do these.  So there's actually a first in this series, which I will be posting shortly.

This one is entitled "Reset" and involves the ballet barres at the back of the dance studio at my college.  The concept movement of hanging on the barres came from the warm-up improvisation that I do in one of my rehearsals.  It's helped me generate A LOT of really great movement.

The music in this piece is from freemusicarchive.org.  Composer details are at the end of the video as well, but it's "Low Level Flight" by Christoph Schindling.

Choreography came from The Postal Service's "This Place is a Prison" but was placed to new music in order to make it youtube friendly.

72 Hours Overthought.

I spend way too much time on the computer.  Not just doing homework, but reading, watching people play video games on YouTube, looking up my favorite bands, searching for interesting facts, obsessively checking my email and Facebook.  Obsessively checking my email and Facebook.  Obsessively checking my email and Facebook. Obsessively checking to see if the internet has changed or someone has written me a message that could change my life.  Obsessively waiting to feel important.  Obsessively waiting for disappointment.
I can't seem to get my head around the fact that I'm not always necessary.  I'm not always important.  I'm not always what everyone wants to look at.
Those are the days I'm so close to deleting my Facebook, putting up a permanent out-of-town reply on my email, and forwarding all calls to my voice mail.  Those are the days I want to disappear and pretend that the world really would be fine without me.  Because it would.
During the week I do a fairly good job of disappearing.  My friends don't really see much of me unless they have class with me, and in all honesty, I'm perfectly fine with that.  I've been rather antisocial in the past, and I like my quiet time.  Sure, I love my friends, I like people, but I'm a loner most days and need that quiet and personal space that you can't always find in college.

And then I write for a blog that rarely gets read.  That's when I feel really insignificant.  In a way, it's good, though.  I can write whatever the heck I want and know that the people who I write about or write for aren't actually reading any of it and are completely in the dark.
This all sort of links back to wanting and validation. There isn't any importance or desirability in my blog.  I write about the things I want to write about, and they tend to be somewhat moody or useless (we can thank my Bad  Mood for this entry) but they are usually interesting, provide something stimulating, and I get at least one view from someone in Germany or Texas a month.

It's the curse of Overthinking.  It's in a woman's nature to overthink everything.  We let one little thing escalate until it completely destroys self-confidence and a Good Mood and throws everything into the toilet.  That's basically what's happened in the last 72 hours for me.  So one little happenstance last night which I have been overthinking since its occurrence has turned my mood sour after a pretty damn good day on Friday.  It's now left me feeling very drained, depressed, and lethargic.

Ladies, when something happens...let it be.  Overthinking does absolutely no good whatsoever.  You just need to hear it from someone else before you realize how much you're blowing everything out of proportion.

I would

I would love to tell you

“Your hand on my skin makes me weak”

I would love to tell you

Just how breathtaking it is

To watch you dance

I would love

To tell you

There’s something not quite wrong about this

I would love

To sit and talk

For awhile

About nothing in particular

With you

I would

tell you how I feel

if it didn’t scare me

I would

ask you if

you feel

Something

when I put my hand

on the hand

you put on me?

I

intentionally

let it linger there

so you’ll feel something

I

hope it scares

you

just as much

as

it scares

me.

Aura

I guess I should explain something prominent in my life.  It's kind of like a monster in the closet I don't want to look at, sense, feel, touch, smell, or remember.  It's been around for years, it's not unique to me, but it's become more and more of a problem in the last five years.  It's that word that explains everything and nothing at the same time.

Headache.


When I was young, they'd go away in an hour with two ibuprofen and a glass of milk.  I got them from watching TV or when I was tired and cranky.  As  I passed through puberty, something about my headaches changed.  I developed light sensitivity.  Shortly after I entered high school, I started having sound sensitivity.  Then sitting up, lying down, or standing would cause a surge in pain.  And when I was a sophomore in high school, they stopped responding to any sort of medication.  I'd be stuck for hours, curled up in the dark, almost in tears.  Four or five hours after the headache started, it would subside and I could get on with the evening.  It wasn't always that nice, though.  After a long rehearsal for a play, I'd come home with the headache, unable to do any work, and just go to bed.  I would wake up early and scramble to half-ass my homework.

The pressure was in all different places.  Sometimes it was a crown of thorns, like a band pulling into my scalp with prongs gouging through my skull.  It was a hot spoon burning my temple.  It was a blow to the side of the head.  It was pain shooting through my neck and jaw.  It was a metal rod through my brain.

Three years ago, I noticed that my vision blurred when the pain got bad, so much so that I needed to wear reading glasses in order to see anything in close proximity.

Two years ago, the nausea began.  I had no appetite, I didn't want to eat or drink, and I learned that the nausea is caused by the headache cutting off the signal that allows the stomach and intestines to absorb nutrients.  Which was why the medication never worked.  You've got to catch it at the very start to have any chance at keeping the headache at bay.

Last year, I discovered that ice packs provide some relief when you're already down.

Eleven hours ago, I experienced my first real aura.  After an entire day of a mild headache (triggered two nights ago from getting something in my eye), I woke up this morning feeling good.  No pressure, no blurry vision, just an excessive amount of sleep. I went to visit my grandparents with my mother around 1.  While I was there, I glanced at a light on the wall and had the image of the light "burned" into my vision, so when I blinked, the silhouette of the light appeared.  But something was funny about it.  It looked like a tiny drop of water in my vision.  Surrounding it were zig-zagging yellow, pink, green, and blue lines, kind of like a VCR tape with a bad pause.  The lines were vibrating and the spot grew over the span of 10 minutes.  The direct center stayed in focus, but everything else on the outside of that spot was unfocused, humming, and uncomfortable to see.  I was struck with a subtle pinprick of pain on the left side of my head and took a tylenol, and right after I sat down it became very difficult to see.  Disoriented, I shut my eyes and saw those zig-zagging lines all around the circle of my vision.

Then came the pain.  After having a headache almost consescutively for 36 hours, I am seriously hoping that I'm headache free the rest of the week.

Here's my advice for anyone who has frequent headaches :)

• The darkness is your friend, eliminating light, sound, smells, or any other sensations that could be unpleasant (such as hair being pulled back, wearing a bra, socks, underpants, jewelry, makeup, etc. is the best way to make yourself comfortable.
• The first 20 minutes are crucial, if you can take an Excedrin, Tylenol, Advil, Aleve, etc. in that amount of time, you may be able to fight it off.  I do advise against the Excedrin, only because it has caffeine, and that tends to make headaches worse if you're already a caffeine consumer (such as coffee, tea, or soda), but the caffeine just gets the tylenol-type medicine through your system faster.  That's the only difference.  If you don't take something at the onset of the headache, you're going to be in pain for awhile.
• An ice pack is a wonderful invention.  Like any other pain, it can be treated with ice.  I like to get the ice pack as close to my skin as possible (like with a thin towel or old shirt) so that the sensation of cold is stronger than the pain of the headache.  It kind of functions like Icy-Hot, the nerves in your skin pick up the sensation of cold faster than the sensation of pain, so it tricks your brain into thinking that the cold needs to be addressed before sending more pain signals.
• Sleep it off.  If you can afford the time, hit the hay earlier than you normally would.  But wake up at a reasonable hour.  This is the only surefire way I've found to get rid of a headache.
• This kind of comes from a summer spent battling insomnia: keep a regular schedule.  Go to bed around the same time every night, wake up around the same time every morning.  If you drink coffee, don't skip one morning--you can end up with a nasty headache from caffeine withdrawal.  Don't drink soda after 6 in the evening, that can mess up your sleep schedule as well.  
• Try and identify what could have caused your headache.  The Android market has a good free app for keeping track of your headaches.  I've been using it since February 2011, and it's been really helpful.  The trick is remembering to use it (and when you've got a headache, looking at a screen is the last thing you want to be doing) but if you keep track for a couple of months and have something to show your doctor, it gives them a pretty good idea of what your headaches are.

I don't know if I'm going to have another aura anytime soon, but websites tell me that when you have an aura, a migraine usually follows.  I know the anxiety of going back to school is probably getting to me.  And the numerous amount of classes and assignments I'll have will send me through the roof with tension headaches.  Wish me luck, folks.