I'm crap with headaches - I've taken large bit of metal through the torso, been hit by cars, bricks, book, bottle and once a small child and solider through them all. Even went to work a few hours after being impaled by a crowbar - literally, the thing went through through me, and then there I was folding pants and cursing under my breath. It's in the police report. But headaches lay me right out - I think it comes from the fact that I think my brain, deficient though it is in a great many regards, is the part I like best. I hate hearing people talk about their headaches, but then then I always assume mine are worse because, well, it's my head.
The thing is, though, I don't tend to tell people when I'm in pain. This is because my father's spine is in constant agony - and has been since I was a child - to the point that telling him I have a headache is like telling a blind person the lights are off and you aren't sure where they are. They can pity you, but sympathy is impossible.
So, forgive me when I say this or don't, this is pretty much my reaction to people constantly whining on their websites. I know I'm guilty of this, too - but next to no one reads my blog. On social media sites, though, it's another story - you get mass puling about the various and sundry, usually one tab over from my world news reading about child soldiers in Africa, the U.S./Mexico drug wars, or the Middle East (how sad is it that I don't have to say "or something happening in...", just put the place name and we all nod?). Oh, your significant other left you or yelled at you or your job sucks? Click tab - there's a kid getting peppered by a belt fed chain gun. Yup, "FML" indeed.
Perhaps this is a sign of both our good fortune, and our doom. True, most of us who don't live in Detroit or East St. Louis rarely worry about which type of street sweeper is turning the corner, but we also ignore those who do. Yes, I was fairly well shell shocked when my basement flooded, taking a lot of my childhood (and a few bits of future) with it - then I saw how Vermont, remembered what happened in Nashville (just to name the bits in [very] recent memory), and shut up right quick.
But it won't do to get self-righteous about it - as I said, scroll down a post or two and there's me going on about how life is a disappointment. But that's just it - I'm disappointed and frustrated, not one of the various forms of -cidal over those events, and I know it. I know it's not the end of the world - and even if it was, it would give me a reason to get out of my high school reunion in two years.
I would be fine if it was just my teenage acquaintances, but it isn't - people upwards of forty on my feed are there, acting as though it's the days of fire when their car runs out of gas on the freeway. Well, it's not, it's you missing a day of work - if that. It's all just new information, things meant to aid you the next time life go for the groin with a steel toed boot. Repeatedly broken heart? Maybe it's you. Problems with the family? All families are psychotic. Friends ditch you? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU'RE ONLINE WITH PEOPLE - MAKE NEW PLANS.
Why sit there and sulk? There's a chance that it's all meaningless anyway - go to the fucking movies, and don't think about how odd it is that you're alone, think about the movie. Read a book, take your mind off of the problem so your brain can work it out because: it's not that bad.
Unless you have a headache. Then it is that bad. Just find a nice quiet place and have a lie down.
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