Other people’s words about … headaches

One of the things I love about reading is the sense of kinship
you can find in another person’s words.
Sometimes, the smallest phrases from a book sing true.

Since he left, a headache had followed Laura, the kind like a bird that settles and soars.

from ‘Questions of Travel’
by Michelle de Kretser

(p. 177)

Sometimes I, like Laura, get headaches that come over me, varying in intensity —
for a few hours, or days, or weeks.
Medication doesn’t help:
and I’ve learned just to sit the headache out.

… she could feel a headache coming on, the close-fitting, all-over kind like a swimming cap made of lead.

(p. 498)

So I find solace and companionship in these words of Michelle de Kretser.
I may never meet her.
But I know how her world is coloured,
and I know that she is kin.