Choices, choices

Today is Sunday. In my previous life, I would be getting ready to go to church and yelling out frantic orders to my family to ensure that they were all ready in time to leave. Unfortunately, I've had to learn all my migraine "triggers" and knowing them, I've had to make some hard choices.

 

Last Sunday I woke up feeling great. I didn't have a headache at all, but the longer I sat through church, the worse it felt until suddenly I felt it come crushing down on me and I finally had to just run outside and sit outside in the car in the air conditioning wide open all alone in the silence. Of course then I just felt a big pity party for myself, and I couldn't tell you what church was about.

 

The triggers present at church are all my top three migraine triggers and since I'm still so unstable, it's just as dangerous of a place for me as a theme park.  For starters it's bright in there.  My home is dark, I wear sunglasses in stores. In fact, the only time I don't wear my sunglasses is at work, and some times that's rather tough. I've thought about wearing my sunglasses at church, and my church family would understand, but visitors would think it was strange. Secondly is ODORS. I just can't handle scents anymore, and church is certainly the wrong place for that! It seems that everyone thinks that Sunday's are the time to bathe in their perfume/cologne, and then I go to a very 'huggy' church so I am constantly bombarded by everyone's different scents intertwining. Lastly, my church is very loud. Everything is loud. The music is loud. The speakers are loud. The announcements are loud. The preaching is loud. Everyone claps. It's just loud. I used to love it... But now... Well, now those claps, or the drum beats just stay in my head and I can't hear anything else. And all I can do is smell all those smells and the world starts to spin and get black but bright at the same time. And my stomach starts to turn. And I just want to lay my head down and hide... And what I used to love, I now hate.

 

Ugh.

 

My family, my CHILDREN, have begged and begged me to 'hang out' with them today. Tough choice. I could try to go to church, even though I already woke up with a headache today... Or I could 'hang out' with my family. Really, it's a no brainer, I just want to be able to do it all. Who doesn't? I'm only 30. I want to be a GOOD mom, and wife, and go to church, and work, and maybe even go back to school, and start running, and have friends, and do whatever else I want to do. I don't want to hear that I can't. I always tell my kids not to ever say that they can't. I HATE hearing that. Such a lame excuse to me. And yet... I can't. UGH!!!!!!!