After the Storm

My dear friends (if any of you remain). I am so sorry to have been gone so long. I had migraines for 5 days in a row--the last 2 were crippling, and so looking at a computer screen was akin to having my eyeballs fried in olive oil. Okay, not that bad. Add garlic.

Anyway, in case you aren't a migraine sufferer, there are a few exciting things that can happen in response to the usual migraine symptoms. One is that when it's over, you crawl out of bed, expecting to look out on a world gone to shambles. Your body feels like a beach after a wild hurricane--utterly serene, but with debris and jagged edges flung across the shore of your skin, which has been beaten smooth by the torrential winds and rain. If that is too metaphoric, another way of putting it is that you feel utterly beat to shit and fragile.

The other thing that can happen is that you can't sleep at night because the pain is so intense and you've been asleep all day, so you have incredible epiphanies like the one I had on Thursday night. I lay there, absolutely ROCKETED by the realization that life is too short, I need to own up to the fact that I LOVE CRAPPY ROMANTIC COMEDIES. I felt like turning to my beloved, who lay quietly sleeping so deeply (the NERVE of some people), and waking him up to say: BEFORE YOU MARRY ME YOU SHOULD KNOW SOMETHING: I have been secretly wanting to see The Family Stone for a YEAR. Yes I know it stars Sarah Jessica Parker. Yes, I am sure it has no utter REAL MEANING or weight--but I don't care! I want fashion and product placement and attractive people in unbelievably contrived moments of tenderness. And what's more I WANT to see The Holiday, even though Jack Black and Kate Winslet as a couple are about as probable as Queen Elizabeth and Scooby Do. I want to sit back and be enveloped in a world that is as comforting as the interior of a Starbucks--so utterly predictable, commercial, but with great aesthetic color choices. I know it's not emotionally RESONATING or LIFE CHANGING or even remotely COOL, but we are going on being together for nearly THREE YEARS and I am not going to LIVE this DOUBLE LIFE any longer!

It was quite a moment. Graham lay there in his innocence, quietly snoring, and I was writhing with pain and awakening. There might as well have been fireworks illuminating my face, the thoughts were exploding with such bright ferocity. I all but pounded my fist in my other open hand in defiance. No wait, I DID pound my fist into my other open hand. I WILL watch Music and Lyrics. I WILL be both nauseated and charmed by the riddle that is Drew Barrymore. I WILL!

And the next morning, the migraine lingered and I called into work, and I told Graham all that I had come to know of myself during the night. And he said he understood, and he bought me crackers and Coca-Cola (the world's gift to nausea) so I could keep something down. And somehow, like the end of a movie, I just knew that everything was going to be okay.