Personal Essay Exercise

We called it “Monday-itis”.

It was a migraine that slowly crept from the back of my head up to the arch of my eyebrow and sent me to the nurse’s office several times a month. It always hit just before lunch, prompting me to stuff my face with whatever I could reach in hopes that something would make it go away. By the end of school, I was either already asleep in the nurses office/at home or close to vomiting.

After a while, I learned to hide the symptoms, retire to bed early or hide myself in my room for the strict four hours of sleep that would cure me. I hated the way people treated me, pitied me. Some time in fourth or fifth grade, my parents told one of my teachers about the migraines in order to explain why I might not participate or have to leave early some days. A few days later a headache hit and when I asked for permission to go to the nurse's office, my teacher looked at me. His mouth turned down into a deep frown and his eyebrows wrinkled together.

"Headache?" he asked, looking down at me like i was the most pathetic creature he'd ever seen.

All I could so was nod.

…

I had failed this time, the migraine won, and I threw up all over Katie’s new orange colored converse shoes. We went outside and she used the hose to rinse me off like a dog. I felt worse about covering her shoes in throw-up than I did about the stain on my clothes. 

After, I called my dad. I never called him to pick me up. It felt like I was going against the rules of parenting by calling him instead of my mother. I gave him the only directions I knew to Katie’s house: the way the bus went before it dropped me off. Me and Katie sat on the porch, her shoeless and me with a big wet spot on the front of my shirt. 

I heard my dad’s car in the driveway, and I prepared myself for the new pile of guilt and shame. I was sure he would be mad and annoyed that I'd made him come all the way back from work, given him terrible directions, and gotten sick again. 

He came up to me, eyebrows knitted together in concern.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

...

One day when I was in middle school, after I'd learned how to get through  day of school with my Monday-itis, my mother came home hours before she usually did.  I had just crawled into bed when she came into my room without knocking. At first I was ready to send her back out with typical teenager vocab. But then I saw her face. 

She came in and sat down on the edge of my bed. Her eyes were watery. I was silent. She explained that Scotty, her cousin, had died. She told me that if I ever felt so sad, so lonely and desperate, that I could talk to her. She never wanted to see me hurt like Scotty did. Typical for my mother, she even threatened to kill me herself if I ever tried to hurt myself. I nodded, understanding for the moment, but not really knowing.