For as long as I can remember, I’ve gotten headaches. I remember being a little kid and telling my mom that I had a “headick.” She never believed me because “kids don’t get headaches.” But I did. As I got older they turned into migraines. I never really thought much about them. Just hoped that they didn’t get in the way of important or fun stuff in my day to day life.
They’ve continued to get worse and more frequent as the stress of life increased. I had kids, started my own business, changed jobs, changed careers. I just chalked it up to stress mostly. But over the past few weeks, the headaches have changed. Now I get shooting pain that makes my vision go blurry. And the room starts spinning if I’m walking and look down. And I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eyes that aren’t really there. So all that along with the fact that I’ve woken up and gone to sleep with a headache for almost 2 weeks finally got me in to see my doctor.
I went in expecting him to say that it’s all stress and to go get a massage. Which he said, but he also recommended that I have an MRI. Which shocked me a bit. I mean, really? An MRI is really necessary? It’s just headaches.
Over the last couple of days of thinking though, I’ve developed two distinct theories about what they are going to find when they do the MRI (and you will notice also distinctly crazy). The first is that they are going to look at my brain and see nothing. They are going to see a perfectly normal female human brain, tell me I’m crazy and shove me out the door. Or they are going to see nothing (here’s where the real crazy comes in), like seriously, nothing. What if the super cool, high tech image pops up on their screens and they see holes. Holes that were carved out by fear and lack of self confidence and crazy. Maybe there’s nothing where there was once the ability to cure cancer or write the next great American novel. Maybe there’s nothing where there should be the intelligence to be the perfect mom or friend or wife. Or maybe there’s just nothing because nothing was ever there.
Now I know, rationally, that MRI’s actually only look at the brain itself. The blood and the structure of it. Not the emotions or aptitude or abilities. But what if? What if they look at my brain and go, well that explains why she’s 31 with no real career or direction. Why she’s crazy.
Or maybe they’ll find a brain tumor or some wires crossed and that will explain the crazy and the headaches. Bonus.
Or maybe, and more realistically, they’ll find that I’m a perfectly normal, woman with migraines. They will write me a prescription for some kind of heavy duty medication and send me home with a smile and a “see that wasn’t so bad” pat on the back.
And I will have to find another reason why I’m crazy. But at least I’ll know I don’t have holes where my potential should be.
