I recently coined a new term for my migraines and I like it. I was exercising the other day when I realized that a migraine was brewing. My mind thought of the yellow on a traffic light, and I declared to myself that my ‘Hazard Lights’ were on.

Anyway, over the next few days I rode through the symptoms I’ve grown accustomed to. And finally, today during my class where my camera was on (required because it was a foreign language class and the teacher needed to see if we had the right mouth movements etc) the dreaded yawning commenced. I was officially an hour or less away from the storm. Like usual it hit me. My head is killing me, my eyeballs feel as though someone is plucking at the veins like a guitar, and my stomach is preparing to eject. The nausea is the worst especially because I have emetophobia. One having chronic migraines has taught me is the skill to be completely poker faced while dying. I’d usually skip painkillers because I always ‘save em for later when pain is unbearable’. Tonight is unbearable. I walked into my parents room and asked for them as they have the medicine cabinet in their bedroom. They looked at me wondering what on earth I’d want with those painkillers at almost 12am because I looked perfectly fine. I just pointed to the top of my head and calmly took the painkillers and tripped on the way out of the room and dropping the medicine on the way, typical migraine clumsiness. I just picked myself back up and endured the excruciating pain of the sudden movement and calmly went on my way. I just realized how desensitized I had become to the pain and symptoms. It’s just an inconvenience.