Friends

I am a woman with two faces.

The face I will show you carries a serious expression that is prone to breaking into a catching smile at the smallest things. Even my own thoughts can cause me to have the most telling smile stretch my lips upward toward the sun. The face I will show you has had years of acting lessons. I will hide my disappointments from you when you say hurtful things, and I will not laugh at your shocking comments. The face I will show you, it hides my other face.

The face I am hiding is held hostage by a wild beast I am still trying to tame. There is a dragon inside me full of fire and rage. There is a beast that claws at half of my face, the right half, and every day it tries to get loose, to break out and take control of the face I will let you see.

I will not let it take control.

The name of this dragon, this beast, is trigeminal neuralgia.

For eight years I have tried to subdue it. I have had it stabbed with botox injections, and nerve blocks. I have tried anticonvulsants, anti-depressants, and narcotics to pacify it. I have tried meditation, chiropractics, and reiki to calm it. I have even tried to reach inside my brain to find it and set it free. None of these things have worked so it lives with me, and I with it. It occupies the face that I try not to let you notice.

Every day I dance with the beast inside me. It scorches me with fire until the face that you do not set eyes on is burning with numb agony. It brings me to full awareness with lightening bolts that shock me to the core. This dragon, this beast, it controls what I eat, whom I can kiss, when I can speak, how much I can smile, what songs I can sing, and how hard I must try to hide the face which lives inside.

I know if I let others catch a glimpse of the beast that is hiding inside me they will pity me, or lord me above all others for my strength. As soon as they learn that I’m carrying this dragon around inside me they never view me quite the same again. So I try to hide the dragon from everyone, but even at this I fail. I can only hold on so long, so tightly. Eventually the dragon breaks free and leaves me in too much pain to speak or smile or eat, and then I’m forced into telling people about its presence, because it’s wrong to lie, and because the unseen face has become the one that is seen. The right side of my face, the pained one, takes over the left, and neither can smile or frown, and the agony is so great that the dragon takes me inside, tearing at the essence of who I am. At these times I struggle to keep what is mine as the dragon claws and rages on.

A wise man once told me that everyone has a dragon to slay. I have found my dragon and I know him well. I meet new dragons every day and I work hard to conquer them, but it is the one that lives inside me that I struggle with the most. Over time I have learned that it is not in slaying the dragon that I am healed, but in taking him in as a part of myself that I am made whole again. For to fight the dragon is to rage against my own self. To give into the dragon is to give up all emotion toward my own self.

So every day I dance with the dragon, in the fire and the lightning’s truest and brightest glow. Every day I walk forward with two faces, the one you see, and the one I will hesitate to show you. As I walk I learn that neither is the better one, both the dragon and the actor have a place inside me, both serve a purpose. Both are me, yet not me. As I dance with the dragon I am reminded that to slay him I must honor him even as I strive to subdue and calm him.

I am a woman with two faces. Can you see them both?




Author's Note:
trigeminal neuralgia is often known as one of the most painful afflictions known to medical practice and is sometimes called the suicide disease. In 2006 I had a microvascular decompression surgery which has since failed. Thanks for reading and allowing me to share a part of who I am with you.