So I guess this is it, the part where I just suffer. Needlessly, hopelessly, suffering for no reason other than a decision I made not to pick up pain medication. A situation I will never find myself in again if I can help it. I have tried tea, yoga, two hot showers, cold rags, hot rags, I even brought my thermarest into the shower to try and sleep on the undoubtable diseased shower floor of room 1A in Arrnott’s Lodge, nothing has worked. So now here I sit, 2:51 in the morning five more hrs before the relief of morning cursing my decisions. Not two days ago I was in the pharmacy isle of Walmart staring my would be relief right in the face and the thought came; “I’ll get it next time when I have a paycheck.” curses.. I whence in pain as my eyes begin to tear and then it comes; the question, "what am I doing?" It has become a slogan, often pair with “and why am I bleeding?” Two questions that seem to be a constant wherever I go.
The answer: I am reeling from the searing pain of a migraine that comes from sever altitude sickness. The type of altitude sickness that only comes from ascending 14,000 vertical feet from sea level to the top of Muana Kea, a dormant volcano on the big island of Hawaii, only to turn around at the top after a mere 30 minutes and ride the treacherous dirt road back down again. For a week I have been at this, training for constellation tours for the aforementioned youth hostel. To tell the story of how I ended up here would take quite some time but the draw of the island is undeniable and for good reason. So much is happening here, everything is new, seconds old in some spaces, 22 miles from my lodge sits Puna on the brink of disaster, any day now the lava flows will cross the road and cut Puna off from civilization houses have already burned and I am hearing the stories first hand and second hand. The president has declared a state of emergency and deployed the national guard. And amidst it all here I sit, weeping on the bathroom floor in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I hug the toilet as the nausea sets in.
I am spent, I am fetal, but this new struggle is home and I am honored.
