The headaches have always been there, slowly growing larger inside of me at the speed of a magnesium burn. I have learned to deal with them. At first, or at least as far back as I can remember, I was convinced that 2 top-heavy but miniscule creatures were holed up in my eye sockets, and, every three seconds, would heave themselves against the sides of my skull, trying to escape. I didn't know WHY they would want to leave the perfect abode of my skull, because A.) it seemed so cozy, and B.) I figured the climate and atmosphere outside of my head would kill them in a few minutes, and all of their focused angst would be for nothing. The larva inside a Mexican jumping bean spends its entire life eating, sleeping, probably fucking itself, and attempting to escape its sole source of life. Once it succeeds, it dies within 2 days. I think it dies from disappointment…
My larva-driven head pain advanced from a pushing feeling to a stretching feeling over the years, and from then moved to a crushing feeling. Sometimes, back at Belshaw, in second and third grade, the pain was too much to even go outside for recess. Instead, I stayed inside and read. However, over the years, like I said, I learned to deal with it, I guess the same way anyone learns to deal with any kind of unstoppable abuse. You just….kinda do.
But the jaw pain, that was brand new. 2 days before that soggy, beaten, mysterious box got left on my stoop like a hated baby, a ferocious pain appeared in my jaw. Rather, not just APPEARED, but a ferocious pain erupted from the imaginary bowels in my jaw, and the only way to describe it is to echo the description of the pain from when I was 5 years old. 2 creatures were nested inside my jaw, throwing themselves against my mandible in opposite directions, hoping to splinter my jaw, and drift the 2 halves apart from each other because perhaps they were participating in forbidden jaw-love and they got caught by their feuding parents. This type of pain is very familiar when you're a 10 year old kid, and you feel it in your legs, or your back. They're growing pains. But THESE growing pains were in the lower half of my FACE, and I was in my mid twenties at this time.
The first day I felt this, I examined myself in my bathroom mirror, gently exploring my jaw with my left hand, motioning like I was making sure my beard met with all personal beard standards. I had no beard. I was simply trying my hardest to pinpoint a spot where I could either feel extreme pain, or extreme relief. But there was nothing. The pain was all interior. The only thing that felt different (though, at the time, I wrote it off as dementia and lack of proper sleep for who knows how long) was that, although I could SEE myself in the mirror rubbing my jaw, my arm was bent in a way that my hand had to be at least a foot and a half from my lower mandible.
I didn't make the connection, or even THINK about this pain again, despite its constant tugging and hammering, until the day after that box arrived…