By Nat Bickel
The entire morning had been foggy. I knew the cumulative stress from the week was adding up, but today didn’t feel like the three days prior. I still had just as much schoolwork to do—an essay, another exam, and somehow I needed to pass my ceramics class, which meant extended hours at the art studio after yet another day of classes.
But my heart rate didn’t feel as high, and I didn’t feel alert anymore. I felt, in a sense, frozen—my brain unable to retain additional information. Even though I’d been sleeping, “strung out” was the best way I could describe the sensation.
And then it got much worse. As I was talking to my classmate, I started to notice that I couldn’t see his entire face anymore. I could see his eyes, but not his nose or mouth. I darted my eyes away while he was talking and hoped that when I tried to make eye contact again, his face would reappear, but it didn’t.
I told him I could only see half of his face and he looked at me like I was the one missing something. I closed my eyes and noticed that in the middle of the black sea of nothingness was this neon green imperfect oval of light that was shimmering at the edges. I opened my eyes again, and my head started pounding in conjunction with the nausea that flooded my system.
That was the first migraine I experienced, which, unfortunately, wouldn’t be a one-off occurrence. I can’t remember what happened after that, if I sat through the remainder of that class, if I had other classes the rest of the day, who knows. All I remember is the jarring experience of losing partial vision due to a massive headache brought on by overwhelming pressure.
College was the birthing grounds of my bouts with migraines. I tried my best to nap them away, and I got better at recognizing the symptoms warning me I was on the brink of one. If I woke up feeling extra drained with a slight buzzing or underlying feeling of tightness in my head, I knew I needed to slow down or try to push things off to another day. It felt similar to getting my period, inevitable, but a horrifying surprise when unprepared.
When I graduated, I was hopeful migraines would no longer plague my system now that I would be on a different schedule. I didn’t have a full-time job just yet, so I was able to throw myself completely into planning my wedding. I’m a crafty gal, so I insisted on creating every centerpiece, name card, party favor, and piece of decor throughout the entire venue. I had a vision, and it’s like trying to stop a train when I’m that determined.
The week before my wedding, my mom and I went to the gym together. We did a cardio-centric workout, I used the tanning bed (I do not advise this and no longer partake), and then we left. As I shut the passenger side door, I remember trying to ask my mom about her water bottle, and it was as if my brain had decided it was too full to keep that word inside of it. I kept trying to formulate my thoughts, but the word for water bottle was gibberish every single time.
Then, more words were escaping my brain. The letters and sounds were all being switched around and none of my sentences made sense. At first, it was comical, but my mom, a nurse, quickly shifted to thinking I was having a stroke. We got home and she kept asking me what things were. I couldn’t give her the right answer to any of them. I was no longer functioning, and then the pounding hit. I kept waiting for my vision to escape me, too, but it didn’t this time.
My mom advised me to shower and head to bed for the rest of the afternoon. When I woke up, I had a migraine hangover—my eyes hurt, nausea was ever present, and I felt tired from thinking. If another wedding detail flooded my brain, I was going to lose it or throw up.
While extremely unpleasant, I channeled this out-of-body experience to craft the plot for a young adult novel titled, ‘The Catalyst’. The protagonist, Kelynn Sanders, is a recent college graduate with a head full of dreams that’s almost as overwhelming as the mountains surrounding her. When she tries to think about all of the various paths she could take in life, she becomes so overwhelmed that she blacks out.
The only thing that helps her is a mystical opal necklace that’s been passed down through generations through which she can visualize her thoughts entering, removing some of the cloudiness and allowing for more space in her head. Things get quite confusing for her when Clayton Fogerty enters into her world because she doesn’t black out around him, and she can’t figure out why.
Whether I realized it or not, so much of this story is deeply rooted in my battle with migraines and microtraumas. Throughout the editing process, whether it was in the hands of a professional editor or with beta readers in my targeted demographic, I received feedback that some of my protagonist’s reactions were too dramatic based on the situation at hand—that she must have gone through some sort of trauma for it to make sense.
While Kelynn and I are two different people, big parts of her are inspired by me and how I see the world. Sure, I’ve had losses in my life that have affected me deeply, but I believe that we are the sum of all of our traumas—generational, micro, and macro alike. We learn to live and see potential threats differently from how our parents respond, as well as from each situation that makes an impact, whether we welcome it to stay with us or not. I believe that I’ve told my body a story about how to hold these microtraumas that I never wanted to tell it, forcing it to stay in flight or fight.
My migraines are mostly likely a direct result of my body keeping score. While an interaction may look irrelevant to an outsider, each of us assigns different weight to it based on our past. Our emotions and reactions can’t always make perfect sense in the moment, but rather are linked to specific memories trapped in the hard drive of our mind, buried under so many worries of the present.
Writing The Catalyst was an adventure. It encapsulates the feeling of finding real love, and I’m grateful that I went on this journey. But, I’m also incredibly proud of my healing journey that happened after the story was written. Who I am now isn’t fully reflected in Kelynn’s character anymore. By no means am I done yet, but through various therapy modalities, I’m finding it easier to believe that it’s safe to be me and release the fear that my tired body no longer needs to keep in its core.
Nat Bickel is an energetic storyteller and PR specialist who aims to move people to action with her words. She has a bachelor’s in communications with bylines in the LA Times, Glamour, Darling Magazine, and more. She’s also the author of the children’s books, ‘The Christmas Clue’ and ‘The Volcano No One Could See’. Through her journalism experience, Nat has interviewed celebrities, worked with musical artists, and reported on current trends and events—thus, creating a base for the main character in her debut novel, ‘The Catalyst‘. She crafted this story in hopes that others would experience every raw, unsuspecting, sensational, and terrifying emotion surrounding falling in love. When she’s not writing, you can find her taking film photos, pressing flowers, or blazing new trails with her husband. Follow her @natmosfear on all socials and at natmosfear.com.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Sometimes love interrupts life in the most terrifying and unexpected ways. Kelynn Sanders has a head full of dreams as overwhelming as North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. She can’t contain it nor control it. The constant swimming of what ifs, wants, aspirations, and the possible failure of it all causes her to black out. She tries her best to transfer her thoughts into a mystical opal necklace, but it only keeps her episodes temporarily at bay. When she meets Clayton Fogerty, he’s soon the only thing that clears her head—making life bearable again, but Clayton has a secret. He has Kelynn’s opal necklace and accesses her thoughts to boost her confidence by creating “coincidental” scenarios to push her into what he thinks she wants. With Clayton around, Kelynn feels compelled to chase her dreams, but can she ever do it on her own and overcome the all-consuming darkness?
