I used to get headaches a lot. They were never crippling, but they used to occur with what I now see was alarming frequency - for about six months, I could expect them daily. I never thought this particularly weird. In fact, I’m fairly sure I thought that everyone got what I got, but that they were better at dealing with it than me.
I don’t know what brought them on, only that they occur a lot less these days. I have my ideas, but that’s all they are. On the one hand, there was a point in high school where I was going through a lot of emotional stress - less than a great number more unfortunate than me, but more than a lot of others, too. Some of it was more developmental, though. This coming from one of two people who had the gall to try sketch comedy in front of the entire school: sometimes, I just couldn’t take a joke. I was a very serious kid. I can always tell when I have a headache coming on, because my eyebrows are narrowed by default. That’s always the first thing.
The thing that’s remained consistent is that it’s always in reaction to something that I perceive as mean-spirited behaviour or righteous indignation with no sense of progress in sight - essentially, negativity either for its own sake or for the sake of demonstrating our utter powerlessness. There was a lot of that surrounding the recent mass shooting in Newtown. First, the coverage of the shooting itself; then, the despair that the United States has completely absurd laws; then, the angry reaction of those condemning the gun control advocates for seizing an opportunity; then, the completely justified comments on Barack Obama, a man who sheds tears for the deaths of innocent American children, yet has been steadily escalating a drone campaign that has killed thousands of innocent men, women and children while coldly branding them “militants”; a whole maelstrom of anger and grief that has no tidy narrative resolution.
I used to throw myself into storms like that. I can’t anymore. If I find something I disagree with, or something that upsets me, I can’t publicly react until I know that I’m calm - and once I am, then I can decide if what I want to say will make any positive difference. I have been in too many fights to think that simply getting angry achieves something. I have had too much vitriol turned on me instead of the real subject to think that it’s easy - or even possible - to quell someone’s anger when it’s beginning to rise. The one time I’ve ever been on the receiving end of another person’s character assassination was for something I wrote about a cause to which I wasn’t particularly attached. Other people do anger better than me, and if you’re frustrated or upset, with no chance of making an impact, it’s easy to transfer your hate onto the quietest person in the room.
It still gives me headaches, though. Not as much, of course. A lot of the reasons I used to knit my brow were selfish ones, or emotional concerns that simply don’t apply anymore, and maturity and a sense of perspective account for a lot. I have improved as a person, and that’s improved my physical reactions to the world around me. I still flare up sometimes, though. The world isn’t perfect, and there’s still room to feel helpless if you look hard enough.