Unfortunately I have long suffered from headaches. My mom has had daily headaches since she was a little girl, so I blame her genes. I don't get them as often as her, thankfully, but they do come once every few weeks, or when I'm lucky, every few months; when they do they knock me out for awhile. Sometimes they morph into migraines, in which case they knock me out for an even longer while. Despite tracking food I consume over the years, I've never been able to figure out a trigger, so I live with them.

The other day I woke up around 2:30 am with a headache. In my misery, I wrote the following.

Sometimes I can ignore the headaches enough to fall back asleep, but not this one: this one was bad enough to wake me up and keep me up. I tried to deal with it for awhile, but eventually I resorted to a painkiller. Those aren't good for my body, I know, but when faced with a head screaming in agony, I sometimes just don't have the mental fortitude to withstand the pain. Often the painkiller doesn't work very well. A lifetime of taking them has built up my tolerance and made my body fairly resistent I suppose, but this time it was magic. Unfortunately painkillers in Japan almost always have caffeine in them, even when it isn't listed on the bottle, so even though I was now pain-free, I couldn't get back to bed. Oh well. I laid there for awhile, letting my mind drift to where it would. I figured even if I wasn't asleep, I was resting in a sense so maybe would be able to avoid some of the tiredness of the day.

But before I knew it, it was 5am and I needed to start getting ready for my day. Oh well.

At least I got a haiku from the ordeal, eh?

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.