Overlap

Chapter 31: Killjoy

<11/09/2010 - 12:39 | Saffrin Middle School (Gym), Austell, GA, USA>

"Can we see more of a jog? Let's get some runnin!" The ear piercing whistle of Ms. Jennifer's device strapped around her neck motivated many to pump the lead out today, many except for one.

Ah, shut up already! I barely kept a pace of a jog at all, running inside the walls of the gymnasium. Today was supposed to be declared a free day, but both coaches wanted to warm everyone up with runs for about ten minutes before allowing us to be on our own. Right now, I couldn't care less for this stupid exercise.

Half of me didn't care either way, about getting to use that free time in the first place once this pointless jog is over. Like every other second of today, it's going to be excruciating agony and suffering beyond anything I could imagine for longevity. It was one of those days that I wished I could have stayed home and loafed in my bed. I'd be about as useful there as I am now.

I of course knew why I was in such a foul mood, why all of my motivation had been crushed into sand, leaving behind only aggravation for every conscious part of today. It's the reason why I can feel my heartbeat all the way through each side of my head, whether I am running or sitting. It's the reason every single noise around me above 30 decibels makes me want to eliminate every source of sound until the world is mute. It's why I'd rather be asleep than awake, in bed than to stand, unconscious instead of conscious. Nothing can be done about this now. I have nothing left to combat this tension headache.

We hear of headaches all the time, and this certainly is not my first, so me having one now is no surprise. The only unknown about my headaches is what causes them in the first place. Unfortunately, I've identified a chaotic pattern for myself; the fact that I suffer from an unusually elevated number of tension headaches compared to what should be average. I hear some people get between one and four every year, how lucky they all are. I get them far too often, at least a few in a month, ever since I turned twelve.

Physical pain like this isn't something easily remembered. No matter how much it might hurt, the brain doesn't bother deeming pain from a headache as necessary information when storing long term memories. As a result, even I forget how horrible these are once in a while, but the blessed ones are those who don't suffer more than four times a year at all. They'll never understand what this is like, how it feels, what it does to the mind, and what it does to people like me and my motivation. It isn't something that hurts for a moment and fades away. It's perpetual pain, on and on and on, lasting for the whole day but feeling like an eternity without relief. There's even a pain scale I can measure it on too, as most people do when they have to get used to this. Zero would be an absence of a headache, while ten would register as the worse pain in your life, or at the very least, lead someone to start screaming from the internal torture. I can say I've had three of these level ten headaches so far, so I know what horror awaits me later.

Of course, plenty also claim they get migraines. There is a difference, since I've had both before. But for me, migraines are rare. I remember their specific symptoms by now, but tension headaches are my unfortunate demon. The noise shift isn't that bad, and there is no nausea associated with my tension headaches, at least not in the beginning. But there is one terrible caveat I must also deal with; the hypertensive parable in each headache.

My headaches do not remain at the same pain level over time, as sweet as that would be. They usually start off small, and quickly grow themselves over time until the same headache evolves into a level ten, by which point I'm screwed. I know why they get worse over time. A migraine is bad enough and usually starts off strong, but a tension headache is aptly named because the pain it invokes causes the entire body to tense up, ever so slightly as to often go unnoticed and in such an involuntary way that we can't control. Of course, when the body becomes tense during a headache, it can cause the pain level to become slightly worse with enough time. When the pain becomes worse, so then does the frequency or strength of the body's own tension. That increased tension leads to increased pain, which leads to even more tension...