I found a physical therapist who had expertise in headaches. I’m still processing the conflict of feeling that adrenaline, excitement, and gratitude during what turned out to be the most physically difficult time in my life.Īt that point, I realized I needed to transform my relationship to my body. I had put my writing, my ambition, and my success over not just my health but my experience of life. Medication didn’t work, which was terrifying. Days went by when I didn’t even open my computer because I couldn’t tolerate screens at all. Just after the publication of the paperback, my pain became daily, which lasted almost a year. It was the best time in my life professionally, and I felt so lucky for that. I reluctantly canceled the next day’s event but continued doing them through the end of the year. Once I get home, I’ll be able to rest. Then my migraines escalated to an incredibly intense pain level - a 14-day migraine during a short tour in California landed me in the ER for the first time in my life. My migraines were getting worse and worse, but I just thought, I have to push through. After publication, I did something like 60 events in 14 months. I was given the kind of publicity and touring opportunities I’d dreamed of even before the book actually came out. My new publisher had taken a chance on me, and I desperately wanted the book to do well. My first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, hadn’t found a wide readership or sold many copies. When my second novel, The Immortalists, sold to a publisher at a level that allowed me to leave my day job in social services and write full time - a rare and extraordinary privilege in the arts - I was wildly grateful. By grad school, they were worsening but still manageable. I started experiencing them in my early teens, though they weren’t frequent then, and I dealt with them begrudgingly but not proactively. I’ve probably had thousands of migraines. Photo-Illustration: by The Cut Photos: Getty Images

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin