I’ll say for now it started with Taylor Swift and that trouble song. There I was, trying to make it home from work before I was in trouble, and my arms were starting to feel strange, so I’m talking to my best friend’s mom’s answering machine, singing, “I knew you were trouble when you walked innnnnn…”
15 minutes. That is all I needed to get home from work, get up the wonky crap stairs of a cheap apartment, snag my pup and my parent’s pup for a quick last out and I could settle into whatever mystery would happen after a “migraine” aura appeared. Typically I had a solid hour and a half before crap hit the fan, but I was pushing the envelope here as closing took close to an hour to do. And, there was the problem that I was new in town & my one friend that I had met just moved, my sister lived in Laos, the other one half-way across the US, and my parents were living in the Republic of Georgia. So, there was my best friend’s mom, who, by all rights called me her bonus daughter, so even though she was an hour and a half away, was available by phone more so than my own mom and thus, was being sarenated at 9:30 in the evening as I tried to keep my brain, which seemed to be potentially about to go bat-shit, under control till I stopped operating a motorized vehicle.
I was 29. Gotta cut me a little slack as this was all new to me. I was assuming all I had were atypical migraines at this point. Aura + unusual response (minus a headache). And so far, there was just a chance shit would hit the fan an hour and a half after an aura. Just a chance. As in, over the past year, about three times extra peculiar happenings would happen. Best to be moderately cautious.
Trouble did hit me. I wasn’t lying on the cold hard ground as was poor Taylor, but rather, parked, in my parking lot, head resting on the steering wheel with the dim light above the coin operated laundry machine my only company, still talking to the answering machine that at this point was not coming up with any good suggestions with what to do. The tingling in my arm had somehow spread and while I was safe, parked, I was not convinced I could move, let along climb those crappy stairs up to my apartment. Oh, and my eyes were leaking. As if I had time for that with limp arms and the consequently dripping snot following the leaky eyes. The injustice of it all.
I guess I calculated right though, as I rotated my head to look at the clock. I had passed an hour and a half sitting in the parking lot and was now pushing two since my aura. Nice quality time sitting in a parking lot.
I’ll call that night the beginning. It was probably more like Chapter 1 with a whole Prelude, Introduction etc. before that. But, Chapter 1: Taylor Swift & the Cold Hard Ground. Or maybe I should call it, “I knew You were Trouble..” except that may be too weird if the you is my brain. My brain is trouble as you’ll learn but seems a bit too meta for a chapter heading. So, Chapter 1: Taylor Swift & the Cold Hard Ground.
*** There will be more chapters, mixed in with the daily, but mostly, I just wanted a place to celebrate my genius manipulation of the world to keep my spirits up and maybe other’s too and have a place to write. My dog doesn’t seem quite as impressed with how awesome I am for pulling the tablecloth towards me as a way to get a napkin without having to move. That, my friends, is NOT lazy, but GENIUS when your body feels like 5000 pounds and your legs don’t work. It’s like mastery of physics, and if I had a chart where I could put stickers, I would totally give myself one for that move. In the disability community it’d be like a whole spoon saved with that one move. (Google Spoons and disability to catch that reference) ***