Rest Assured
There I was, in the fetal position, resigned to being curled in a slightly-too-hot knot under the covers because I knew I'd be too cold if I was on top of them. The pain had taken up permanent residence on the top of my head — the textbook location for stress headache — and I spent each day in an undulating dance with it. The closer I was to having taken a dose of an extra-strength painkiller, it was a slow waltz with a steady aching thud. The farther away I was from a dose, it was an outright violent slam dance.
Even if I took a final dose in early evening, lying down always made the pain worse. Sleep became such a losing battleground with the incessant throbbing that I could feel my anxiety start to rise as soon as the last bit of light bled out from the horizon. My body needed extended time in a calm, restorative space in order to re-regulate itself. But there I lay, eyes closed, trying to deep-breathe myself into a state of relaxation while it felt like a stake was being driven into my skull.
In utter frustration one night, I grabbed a fistful of hair in each of my clenched hands and shouted "How do I fix this?" at the ceiling. The sharp pain of the pull on the surface of my scalp gave momentary relief from the torment happening just below, and was somehow more bearable. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and for a few nights I tried using referred pain in my favour — pulling my own hair to distract from the worse condition of the permanent headache. It gave enough relief that I actually would start to get drowsy. Which left me unable to sustain the pulling tension, and I'd be jolted back to reality as my hands went slack on the top of my head.
The unrelenting vice grip of the headache was accompanied by muscle pain. I woke up that first morning feeling like I had been hit by a truck — the classic all-over achiness that often indicates a virus has set in. My first thought was that I had COVID again. But the rapid test was negative and remained so for three days in a row despite no easing of the symptoms. I found it hard to sit for more than an hour at a time. Taking a shower and getting dressed was a monumental physical task. Walking short distances taxed me. Baffled and scared, I walked over to my kettlebells and picked up the lightest one I own, which I only use if I need to add a little extra something to a bodyweight warmup sequence. It felt like I was trying to pick up an entire planet.
I was broken.
The doctor at the clinic knew immediately what was wrong. The longest part of the appointment was my answer to the question, "Tell me what the stressors in your life look like right now." When you tackle midlife solo and as an only child to divorced, single parents to boot, where to begin? There is, of course, the last year I've spent travelling back-and-forth to Windsor to navigate my mom's journey with an aggressive neurodegenerative disease and eventual diagnosis of PSP, while my dad grapples with the aftermath of spending 8 weeks in hospital after fracturing his hip and sustaining a head injury in a fall. I lost my beloved 13-1/2-year-old dog to suspected cancer early in the new year, and mere weeks later received my 90 days' notice from my landlord, setting me adrift in a punishing Toronto housing market that has become wildly unaffordable since the last time I moved 8 years ago. Plunged into a state of panic about where I will be living come June 1, I responded to a too-good-to-be-true rental listing and got taken by one of the now-rampant fraud schemes that prey on desperate Toronto renters. The fraud fiasco is what pushed me over the edge.
"Your body simply hit its capacity for processing stress," the doctor said. "The persistent headache, the muscle pain, is a somatic response to the overload. Your nervous system needs some time and space to regulate itself."
Time and space? I immediately started throwing out the objections: I need to find a new place to live sooner than later, and it might have to be outside of Toronto. I work full time. Who will deal with my parents? Can you resurrect my dead dog?
The doctor looked at me sympathetically, but was firm: If I proceeded business as usual, the pain would persist. I needed to create some space to allow myself to step out of the fray and come back to centre. It was just that simple. Which is to say, hard.
At least at first. I made a list of all things I was tending to in a day and thought about what I could eliminate. "Are you crazy? Nothing!" the part of me indentured to late-stage capitalism shouted. Reduce productivity? Step away from familial expectations? Abdicate from my training routine? Stop posting, stop cooking, stop striving? I wondered who I was without all these things taking up the space of my life. I blinked in confusion looking at myself in the mirror one morning. I watched as my fingers tucked some hair behind my ear and then traced the dark circles under my eyes. How did this happen?
I let the pain itself guide me. If I got quiet enough and listened really carefully, the choices became pretty obvious. When I opened social media and began the daily task of scrolling through the onslaught of multilevel marketing and cloned content in search of nuggets of meaning, the throbbing on the top of my head intensified. It was the first thing to go. Certain names and certain tasks hit my inbox and I could feel the fires burning in my muscle fibres flare. I became good at prioritizing the five most important things I had to accomplish in a work day and letting the rest wait their turn. Just the thought of pushing myself through a kettlebell training session — a part of the day I normally love and look forward to — made every cell in my body cry out in protest. So I stopped cold turkey.
Perhaps the most important decision of all was to put the hunt for a new place to live on hold. I know from experience that relevant listings start appearing 60 days out from a desired lease date, so I gave myself 30 days of grace: I set the raw fear of my housing crisis to the side and trusted that when I returned to it in a month, the search for a home would unfold as it should.
My life this last month has been simple and small. I've eaten the same thing for dinner over and over: miso broth with udon noodles, a handful of cubed tofu, and a bunch of greens that I can make in 10 minutes. I've taken a lot of epsom salts baths, imagining the worry and grief and anxiety stored in my muscles leaching away and being sucked down the drain. I've let Nick Cave's Faith, Hope and Carnage break me open in the evenings, his exquisite wisdom on the fragility and enduring resilience of the human experience being the most potent medicine I ever could have hoped for. I've turned down invitations. I've sometimes taken days to respond to messages. I've said "I can't deal with this right now" in response to parental requests.
I gave myself the space I needed to re-regulate. And nothing fell apart. Life went on.
As I write this I'm entering my third day free of ibuprofen or acetaminophen — I'm either pain-free or the pain is low-level enough that I can manage in other ways. Which isn't to say that I'm in the clear. But it does mean I'm feeling a little more like myself and ready to start easing into some of my old routine. And make smarter choices about some of it.
And while I was off healing, the Universe sprouted some seeds I had scattered before I left. I don't yet know how they will grow or if they will survive, but just seeing their tiny green heads poking up from the dark earth has reminded me of a lesson it is so easy to forget — or ignore: Rest is productive.
