My pain attack hit a 10 on the pain scale, and my first instinct was to climb into the back of my dad’s Jeep in the garage. I let my body take over during these attacks because I cannot control it any longer. It does whatever it needs to do. I’ve told people before that I sometimes wake up in strange places in my house after a trigeminal neuralgia attack.

Lying on the dirty carpet in the back of the Jeep, curled up in between the wheel wells, I said to myself, “Rust is always reliable.”

My dad in his Jeep.

It’s moments like this that I feel most alone, and maybe that’s why my body chose the Jeep to take refuge in. My therapist might have commented that these rusty old vehicles take the place of the people I wish were in my life– or maybe I would have said that, and my therapist would have nodded in understanding.

My mother kept popping into the garage, distraught: “What can I do? What can I do?” She’s been asking that ever since I was a kid and having the pain attacks, and it’s frustrating because I can’t talk– it hurts too much –and I keep telling her there’s nothing she can do, nothing anyone can do.

Later, I woke up on my bathroom floor covered in rust and dirt from the Jeep.

Time is the only worthwhile medication. You just wait for the pain to stop. And you hope that it does, at least for a little while.