Definition of a headache

My Definition of a Headache: "Brain Pulled through the Eyes"

I worked a long time to try to describe to my daughter what my latest headache felt like. I hadn't felt anything like it ... ever. I had caught a cold four or five days beforehand and thought it had to do with that, or a cold-covid-menopause-migraine combo thing. 

I left the dinner table early and climbed into bed, wondering about how to describe this weird sensation and also hoping I wouldn't fall asleep before I brushed my teeth. Then my daughter climbed into bed with me. 

"I have a headache", I told her. She looked at me with worry, love, and compassion radiating from her sweet, little, freckled-mini-human face. Little girl love. Searching my face trying to figure out the Mommy Mystery like so many of us have in our lifetimes. Whenever my mom was ill, it was strange; moms can't get sick. Not because they're not allowed, but because ... well, because they're superhuman, right?

Anyway, I wanted to describe to my daughter what this felt like. I wanted to find the most picturesque words. It was a challenge now, like a calculus problem. Ow! That word - calculus, actually caused a twinge. I thought about looking up the symptoms on the internet and OW! Another twinge. A more severe twinge. In fact, even thinking about my phone was making my head twinge.

I thought about it some more, which was in itself a very twinge inducing process. Then it occurred to me.

"Remember how your brother said his eyes hurt last time he had a cold?" I asked her.

"Yeah," she replied.

"Did your eyes hurt, too?" She had the cold, too. In fact, only my husband had been spared this time. 

"Yeah," she said. 

"Okay, do this," I said, and shuffled myself under the blankets to turn toward her. "Look from left to right and back. Do you feel that?" I did it, too, and I felt the eye strain. My eye muscles were still sore from the cold.

"Yeah a little bit," she said.

"Now look up and down."

"Yeah..."

"Now look front to back!"

"WHAT?" She started giggling. 

But I was serious. "That's what it feels like. Like I'm trying to pull something from in front of me using my eyes."

Actually, I had been spending so much time on my phone. I felt like either my phone was trying to pull my brain out through my eyes, or that I was straining to pull information out from the phone. Trying to pull... something out of the phone. Wondering how to defeat Texan abortion policy. Wondering where to find better DAW plug-ins. Worry whether I am I marketing myself well. Wondering if I should post more photos and then looking for the right ones. 

Time to put the phone down and get over my brain-and-eye pulling stress and strains. Feels liberating to close my eyes.