Carly's Ramblings Blog - Style

Migraines and Critical Life Events

Today's blogs...

I worked today - a full day in grade 4. A really great class - chatty, though. Now I have a headache and I am whipped. I need to do two blogs, write 750 words and write a poem. I am grateful I wrote the beginning of one of my blogs last night. I managed to write my poem on paper to deal with the pain in my head. This is the poem I wrote:

Pain is a miserly beast.
It slinks around and ensnares;
Sliding in where it is not wanted.
It lurks inside my head;
Swirling around my sinuses with menacing delight.
It sneers at the medication I take
And peaks out behind my eyeballs
Pushing at them and pounding them
Like an overly energetic bass drum player.
Its rhythm tripping, prodding, throbbing
Sending my stomach into convulsions.
Holding tight and tense, I fight the beast.
I close my eyes to the shimmering light.
Close myself off into the Darkness
Let sleep take me under
And ease its gut retching reign.

NaPoWriMo - April 2014
16 lines and 98 words.

Blog City – Day 36 – April 8, 2014.

Would you be willing to become extremely ugly physically if it meant you would live for 1,000 years at any physical age you chose?
No. I do not believe living 1000 years would be a great idea, regardless of looks. Having watched the Highlander movies and seeing Connor lose all his loved ones as they aged, but he did, not does not interest me. The loneliness of it does not appeal. Looks would not matter in this case. But to add physical ugliness to the concept is only making it worse – no one would have anything to do with you. Being a social being, that would not work for me.

Welcome To My Reality - Week Sixteen

2. What critical life events have shaped who you are today?

Critical life events. First big thing would be having a male babysitter, my regular babysitter's son, take liberties with me as a seven year old girl. It was inappropriate touch, but that has coloured my world in immense ways. I was already introverted and shy and considered 'odd' by my peers.

The next big thing would be my parents separating when I was seven or eight. I sensed a change in my parent's marriage, even as a child, but nothing was said. My mother first moved to the spare bedroom and then later moved out into her own apartment in town. I went with her, but spent regular weekends at my Dad's house - our family home. Being in a small town, my family was one of the few to be broken - it was the mid seventies. Not the norm as it seems to be these days. My family did not talk about it and I found myself having nightmares and regressing to bed wetting.

At the age of eleven (almost twelve) my mother moved us from that small Northern Ontario town to a small city in Southern Ontario. That was monumental. Northern Ontario is a little slow in terms of pace. Moving to a grade 6 class in Southern Ontario through me - kids were talking about who liked who and so on and I was not there yet - I was still playing with Barbies.
Just as I was trying to adapt to the 'culture shock', my father died of cancer (two months after moving to Guelph) - throwing me further into exile as I pulled into myself. Depression clung to my young skin and my mother could not understand why I was being so solitary and quiet.

Within a month of my father's death, my aunt had her baby making me no longer the youngest grandchild. I was special in my Grandmother's eyes and I did not want to lose that position - the thing was, it was not so bad - my cousin, Mikey was fabulous and being a boy - he left me with the status of youngest granddaughter - that was fine and so was the fact that my grandmother did not love me any less. Her unconditional love was still there for me and for that I was grateful.

After all those things life settled into place. It was not until I reached high school that I began to feel 'normal' again but I survived and I think I am all the more stronger for it. Things were looking up.
I sometimes wonder how my life would be different if these things had not happened, but I am grateful that they did - the good with the bad - that is life. I like who I am today.