Migraine Madness- A Series of Oil Paintings Portraying Migraines

For several years I have battled with debilitating migraines, sometimes causing me to blackout. I was in and out of the hospital. I couldn't work. Even on the days that I didn't have a migraine I felt haunted by them. Not knowing when the next one would show up basically had me trapped. I didn't want to go out and do things for fear of getting stranded somewhere. I was on all types of prescriptions that didn't work and had horrible side effects. I felt like a guinea pig with the way the switched out my medications constantly.

It is something that has really changed my outlook on life, my perspective on the personal battles of others, and given me a sense of gratitude for even the days where I just feel decent. This series often serves as a reminder that most days aren’t so bad in comparison and that all things are temporary. In this series I tried to capture different layers of the migraine experience.

All of the paintings are available to purchase in my store Curious Observation

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The Pain is Yours Alone

Something I have realized about the subjective nature of chronic pain is that while others are aware that you deal with it constantly they do not really understand the way it takes hold of your life. It is a natural response. We all go throughout life with the general thoughtless notion that everyone has an existence that is basically like our own. The gap between one another’s subjective experience is like knowing there is a book, but never being able to open it and look through it. People’s baseline, or reference for what someone tells them they are experiencing is their own experience and most often the two are not accurate comparisons.

When you are in pain, others may know that you are in pain, but it is outside of their experience. Sure they might have some degree of empathy, but even then it sometimes falls completely to the back of their minds. When someone isn’t experiencing something within themselves it is easy to add to that pain or misunderstand the actions of the person in that pain. It is even worse for those that manage or hide the pain well. People will see them getting along seemingly decent and forget that they are going through an agonizing situation. This is not only the case with physical pain, but emotional pain, and “hidden” disorders.

Seemingly Endless Nightmare

There was a period of about a year when I was having a blackout migraine almost every other day and it really messed with my life and distorted my perception of reality. I became very dissociative. It was like living in a tormented fog. I couldn’t keep a job and I was agitated about everything when I wasn’t balled up in a dark room. The people around me didn’t understand my behavior, like this was some thought out direction I was steering my life. They could only see I was not living in a way that made sense to them. It is easy to use a narrow view to look through some distorted lens at someone else and say how they are not falling in line with a certain set of standards, but there is a difference in witnessing the battle from afar and being in the battle.

Thinking about the way this had effected my abilities, thoughts, personality, and relationships really opened my mind to the struggles of others. In what ways was I allowing my experience to effect my relationships with others? How many times had I let my situation change who I was as a person? How often had I said something, acted in a way, or made judgements about someone without being aware or considering their situation? These finally became important questions in my life because of this experience.

It also really made me thankful for the days of just feeling decent. It seems to be human nature to always want to improve our situations. So much so that if everything in our life is perfect we will still find something to complain about. Now when I find myself upset by petty little things I redirect to the experience of being trapped in a prison of migraines. When things aren’t going my way I look at the paintings in this series and remind myself that not only are people all over the world suffering from actual problems, I was once in a position where everyday things seemed quite impossible, and it seemed their was no escaping.

Relief in a Leaf

For the past few years I have been drinking Kratom to combat my problem with migraines and it has really been a miracle plant. Along with my migraine battle I have had a problem with sleep which only added to my migraines. Kratom has helped me regulate my sleep and dramatically reduced the number of migraines I have had. Where they were once days apart they are now months apart. I was able to get off of all of migraine medications, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills that I was once on. It is incredible to me that I was able to trade all of that in for a cup of tea that is more effective than all of those pharmaceuticals. There was a time that I was skeptical about going out and doing things for fear of a migraine attacking and being stranded away from home in pain, which was really hard for others to understand, but now I don’t worry about this so much. In October of last year the DEA made a move to temporarily ban Kratom, which I am glad they were not able to pull off, but it prompted this series of Oil Paintings.

Migraine Madness Series

I wanted people to see the experience, to get drawn into the feeling that I would have forced back on me along with the many others that are using this medicinal plant for other ailments. I wanted them to see what would be taken away by the DEA and the greed of the pharmaceutical companies for me and many others, which is hope. They would be ensuring a life of uncertainty. It is a hanging feeling of not knowing when you will be taken hold by the grips of pain and slung out of control. The intense agony, the disorientation, sensitivity to stimuli, nausea, dissociation are seemingly endless. I believe the paintings in this series explain it better than my words can, and isn’t that a lot of what art is about? Transfer of experience, presenting the ineffable?

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