Thank you all for the advice you have given me about my headaches. I plan to try the essential oils. Many of the conventional cures for cluster headaches, I went with my doctor. I have a type called chronic cluster headaches because while they hurt in the same place as traditional cluster headaches and go in cycles, there is no relief during one of the cycles like in regular episodic cluster headaches. Also, I do take Verapamil every day, which has for the most part, lessened the intensity and frequency of the cluster headaches. I have been under a lot of emotional stress since my friend died and it caused the frequency to be more often.  

I’ve tried Imitrex as an abortive measure, and found that it intensifies the headaches. I think it is because it is a traditional triptan and it raises my blood pressure, thus nullifying the effects of the Verapamil. For the really bad cluster headaches I take a combination of Flexeril and Bupap or Flexeril and Norco (the Norco is much less effective than its predecessor Lortab). Either combination seems to work. The problem is that Flexeril, I need asleep for at least 10 hours or I am groggy and can barely stay awake, so I need time to go to bed and sleep off the cluster headache, which I did last night.

I completely understand why cluster headaches are called suicide headaches. The pain can be so intense that you really think death could be an alternative. While I have felt that way, I know the medications work and when I take my medication, the feeling of about 30 minutes later of the easing of pain is (almost) better than an orgasm.

I know for at least one person this post might seem familiar, but since I had a headache last night, I largely cut and pasted from our email the day before.

  
Last night, just before I started to write my blog for today, I had an intense headache. Without a doubt it is a cluster headache because it has the usual symptoms. The guy in the picture kind of describes it. He’s sitting up because it’s too painful to lay down. He’s covering his eyes with his arm and pressing the back of his head where the other pain is located. I fucking hate these headaches.

I’ve said before on this blog that I’ve been going to therapy. It was a way of trying to deal with the death of my friend. Well, yesterday I told my therapist that I wouldn’t be back. I had begun to dread going to see the therapist. I haven’t gotten over my friend’s death, but I also couldn’t keep dredging up such painful memories. I want to remember the good times we had and the closeness I felt with him. I do not want to continue remembering only his death and the pain I felt afterwards.

In therapy, we had also talked about my hidden pains, which was a realization that I found very helpful. The picture above reminded me of what therapy was like. When I look at this picture, the first thing I see is a nearly naked man. He is the center of the pictures focus. The yellowish light around him focuses your eyes there. Then you notice the darkness and the city lights beyond. That’s how I felt in therapy. It was mostly me talking and the therapist listening, which was what I needed at first. It was completely centered on me, but as I talked more, I didn’t want to keep going over the same difficult memories time and again without knowing of a way to,deal with the pain. I needed someone else in the picture to help me deal with the issues I was dealing with. I know there is a darkness surrounding me, but that there is an abundance of light beyond the class that holds me inside.

Once I realized that I absolutely dreaded going to therapy, I knew it was time to stop. The other thing that I realized is that it was after therapy that I was experiencing panic attacks. Honestly, I didn’t realize that until this afternoon. You see, I haven’t had a panic attack in nearly two weeks, and since I’d skipped therapy last week because of a headache, it had been two weeks since I’d been to therapy. I realized thought that talking about some of these issues and the dark cloud that seems to surround me that was one of the causes of my panic attacks. Last night, I had an attack so bad that I had to take a Xanax just to be able to calm down. Panic attacks are one of the worst things to me. I feel like I have not control when I have one, and they also cause a period of intense depression. The Xanax eases that ever so slightly.

So goodbye therapy. I may seek other types of counseling, but for now, I feel better that I won’t be going back. I needed there to be more than just me doing all the talking. I hate for the focus to be just me.

  
I went to bed early with a backache. 

   
I’m not taking off a day from work, just from blogging. This cold is still kicking my butt, but hopefully it is getting better. So I’m leaving you with some pictures of the beautiful Mr. Colton Haynes.

  
I seem to have come down with a cold. It’s not a bad one. One minute I am able to almost forget about it then I will start coughing or swallow or feel the aching in my body or all of the above. Anyway, it seems to hit in waves and I was so tired when I went home, I basically went to bed. There was no need for that nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, fever, best sleep you ever got with a cold… medicine. I was in the middle of texting a friend while simultaneously writing this post when I fell asleep.

  
In my counseling session yesterday, my therapist brought up something that I found quite intriguing. I’d woken up with a headache yesterday. It should come as no surprise that I have been having them more frequently in the last two weeks. When I mentioned my headache, we talked about the causes of them, and I explained that they are caused by different factors: environmental, emotional, and dietary. I talked about how long I’ve been suffering from headaches, and he asked me how I handled them. I told him that for the most part, I just carried on and tried not to let them ruin my life. He brought up that I have a lot of “hidden pains.” My headaches are just one example of it. Rarely can someone look at me and tell that I have a headache. Only people who know me very well can tell on even rare occasions. You see, I try not to make a big deal over them. Yes, I have mentioned them on this blog more than once (an understatement), but I don’t want it to be something that defines me. I also don’t like to show weakness, so many times when I have a headache I don’t mention it. I go about my day and then when I’m alone and away from everyone that’s when I can deal with the pain.

My headaches aren’t my only hidden pain. I hid my sexuality for a very long time. My sexuality wasn’t something I wanted to be defined by either. While you hope that people will react kindly to finding out you’re gay, it’s not always the case. Someone that I’d always thought of as a friend (he is married to a friend of mine), once said to me after I made some offhand comment about a guy being sexy, “I don’t care if you’re that way, I just don’t want to hear about it.” As a whole this group of people knew I was gay and didn’t care, and it was one of the few times in Alabama that I could be my true self. After he said that, what I’d thought of as my safe zone shattered. I eventually stopped hanging out with this group because I realized that while they’d all acted like they accepted me, no one called him out on him calling me out. All the people I work with now know that I am gay. I never made it a secret, but at some point you do have to come out. To me that’s the worst thing about being gay, you have to continue to come out all your life.

I also hide my emotions. Southern boys/men aren’t supposed to be emotional. You can’t talk about your accomplishments because then you are bragging, unless it’s something manly like hunting or athletics. Accomplishments in academics and the arts just makes you a weakling and a braggart. Men, of course, no matter where you are must hide weaknesses. You most certainly have to hide emotional pain. I “fail” at this one too often. While I can usually keep my emotional pain hidden, sometimes the sadness bubbles over. With the death of my friend, it was hard to keep that sadness hidden, but I’ve suffered from depression for years, and I do my best to keep it hidden. My anxiety is the same way. I hide the magnitude of it often by making a joke of it. I always say that I fly Air Xanax because I have to take Xanax to be able to fly. If I don’t, then I have full blown panic attacks and generally burst into tears. So it becomes anoher pain that I hide, but with anxiety I just make a joke out of it so that no one realizes the magnitude of my anxiety at times.

Even though I may look fine on the outside, it doesn’t mean that everything is great. Often I feel ashamed if I can’t maintain poise and self-control at all times, even when I am alone. I hate the loss of control over my emotions or other pains. I have to begin to understand that it is human to break or to feel that I just can’t take another hit. It is okay to lose it once in a while. That is when I need my friends and family the most. My friend that I’d lost was one of the few people who I could be completely myself with. I didn’t have to hide my pains. The sharing of vulnerabilities, mess-ups, weak moments and despair with my friend who was a trusted listener helped. No matter what the problem was, I could get past hellish happenings, cease downward spirals and emerge from an abyss because he made me feel understood. Being understood is empowering. It’s right up there with being loved or respected. With my friend, I had all three. He understood me, he loved me, and he respected me. Now I have to learn to deal with these hidden pains by myself, without the tremendous help of my friend.

  
I only got out of bed a few times yesterday. I had one of my bad headaches. It started Saturday night, so I took some medicine which relieved it for a while and let me sleep, but then I woke again in the very early hours of the morning and took some more medicine. Again that helped for a few hours but when I woke again, the headache was back, so I tried a different medicine. The other medicine did nothing, so I waited and then took the strongest medicine I had available. It wasn’t long before I was once again sound asleep. When I woke I was feeling better, but the feeling didn’t last long. I’m hoping that by the time this posts this morning, I will be feeling much better.