A quick sketch comic about Jean's recurring cluster headaches bc I get them also.
I think it would definitely affect his ability to work considering how hard it is to function or even speak/see when these take hold for days at a time.
(Also fun fact for those who aren't familiar with cluster headaches, often your eye will turn pink and swell up as it starts to water and you'll start to cry and sniffle and salivate for no reason. Hence why his eye looks like that.)
Hard Truths You Need to Hear: Unhealthy Dependence.
Heads up: These will be raw takes, but this situation has been resolved for some time. The intensity is for emphasis and tongue-in-cheek humor, not drama or emotional escalation. This is just aggressive self-care from a tired adult juggling Pennlaw courses, work-related chaos, familial obligations, and a grand total of two self-care hours a day.
Continued beneath the break.
I had a situation where someone began to exhibit unhealthy dependence. It’s resolved now, but it’s worth highlighting for anyone who might be feeling “off” around someone and can’t quite articulate why.
To start: I am fucking busy.
From five a.m. to midnight.
Like Cyrus from Trailer Park Boys: “Fuck off, I got work to do.”
This isn’t new. It’s been this way for months.
People who’ve asked for beta reads know this.
People I collaborate with know this.
People in my servers know this.
The person I’m describing knew this.
It’s not a secret. I’m extremely open about it.
And if I’m not busy, I’m dealing with a chronic pain attack. Cluster headaches, specifically. These are no joke. They’re one of the most painful conditions known to medical science and are poorly understood.
Seriously, after spending the day in the ER at 14, a doctor burst into the room, plopped his ass unceremoniously onto a rolling stool, and said, “Congratulations, you have cluster headaches, or as we like to call them, suicide headaches. Meet your new best friend!”
My life has been an escalating grab bag of rescue meds ever since.
I’d rather have a migraine ad infinitum than another month-long cluster.
But throughout all this goddamn busyness, this person would message me snippets, world-building notes, lore, ideas, etc. Stuff I genuinely enjoyed seeing, but, ya know, I’m busy. And sometimes, not wanting to leave them unread forever because I cared about them, I’d skim and give them what scraps of energy I had left. Sometimes, that meant a simple “aww, cute!” or something not fully attuned.
Apparently, that meant I was “distant.”
“Walled off.”
“No longer warm like I used to be.”
“No longer interested.”
Surely, I must be rejecting them, right?
Because the reality—that I was simply, predictably fucking busy—wasn’t sufficient.
And just to highlight the hypocrisy: this same person started bulldozing me in conversations, immediately pivoting to themselves the second I shared a win and had the unmitigated audacity to say “same tho” when I brought it up.
This, dear reader, is unhealthy dependence.
And if you are finding yourself in a similar situation, heed the warning: It can become co-dependence if you let them pull you into a caretaker role.
But it doesn’t have to cross over to that if you have firm boundaries.
And yes, sometimes that’s easier said than done.
No good person wants to know their friend is hurting.
I struggled to be firm until far later than I should have. I avoided the caretaker role, but I was still too permissive.
If you find yourself in this situation, the best thing you can do is reiterate your boundaries. Be firm, not harsh.
In my situation, what I should have said was:
“I hear that my perceived distance is impacting you. As we discussed earlier, I have a very full schedule. I am not rejecting you, but I do not have the time right now to give you my full attention.”
Do not apologize here. You’re not doing anything wrong by living your life without orbiting someone else. (I personally am still working on this.)
Remember:
You are allowed to live your life without giving more energy than you have.
So, I've just started increasing my dosulepin to 3, after 14 days on 1 and then 14 days on 2.
I think it's had an okay effect on my migraines (I don't think my neuro will agree), but lately I've been getting these weird headaches
They're always on my left hand side, incidentally the same side I keep getting the supraorbital nerve pain
they're located like an inch above my ear, in the place between the corner of my eye and my ear
they feel like I'm getting a cramp in my brain, like a twist of really deep pain that comes out of nowhere and lasts for 15-30 seconds before releasing and then just leaves an ache
kinda feels like a toothache in my head
It's not a stabbing/piercing pain, so I don't think it's an ice pick headache (I've had those too)
and it's not like the nerve pain, so I don't think it's cluster headaches (surely they'd hurt more? unless I'm just used to it because daily migraines have mucked with my experience of pain?)
But I don't know what else it could be.
I'm still taking sertraline, just in the mornings now and the dosulepin in the evening, and that's the only med change I had before this started happening
Has anyone ever experienced anything like this, and what did it turn out to be?
I thought maybe 'brain zaps' because dosulepin is an antidepressant, but I've never had that coming off an antidepressant before, I'm not coming off any of them, and I've never felt them, so I don't know if this is what they're like?
They make my head ache, they make me feel nauseous and sometime I feel it in my neck/shoulder on the left side, but not enough that I'd think it was a muscle spasm thing
Does ANYONE know what this could be, or has anyone felt anything like it before?
I'm still waiting on an MRI appointment, but it's freaking me the math out, man
It's been nearly a week of me calling and being told they haven't got it and since I've got fucking cyclical episodes I can now spend all day anticipating my pain episode at midnight which comes exactly at midnight every night for weeks now and they just keep getting worse with little hope of relief so its likely that I will have to go to the hospital if the pain is as bad as last night (that's what the phone nurse told me to do) girlies I'm doing bad
Cluster headaches are an incapacitating neurological issue that causes horrendous torment and uneasiness. Often referred to as “suicide headaches” due to their intensity, these headaches belong to a unique category of primary headache disorders. Cluster headaches are known for their distinct pattern of occurring in clusters or groups, typically lasting for weeks or months, followed by periods of…
Cluster headaches are weird. They hit you out of nowhere, put you in blinding, bone-splitting agony for literally 45 minutes (I can set a clock to mine), then vanish without a trace.
Having my first episode of cluster migraines still starting the diamox and my go-to treatment is ginger ale, Excedrin, and a ton of Diet Dr Pepper. I can’t have any of those things right now so instead I’m going to sit at work and DIE ☠️
