Four years ago I transferred the migraine condition I had carried for twenty-two years. The receiver was a professional, someone who holds transferred conditions for clinical study and transfers them on when the research is complete. It's legal. The paperwork was simple.
I felt the absence immediately. That same evening I lay down in the dark out of habit, waiting, and there was nothing to wait for. I got up and turned the lights on. I stood in the kitchen for a while not knowing what to do with myself.
The migraine had started behind my left eye, always. I knew this the way you know where a door is in the dark. Afterward the location was still legible to me, I could identify the precise spot, could describe the quality of the absence there. Not pain. Something like the shape of the space where a pain had been.
I still check it sometimes. Not because I expect anything. More the way you reach for a glass that's no longer on the table. The hand knows where the glass was. The hand goes there anyway.
Twenty-two years is a long time. The migraine was there through three apartments, two relationships, the death of my father, a job I left badly, a job I left well. It had its own rhythms that I had organized my life around. I knew which lights were too much and which were fine. I knew which positions to sleep in and which would cost me the next morning. I no longer need any of that knowledge.
People ask if I regret it. I don't. That's not what this is.
It's more that I am slightly different in its absence than I expected to be. Something I had understood about myself was also, apparently, the migraine. I am still finding out which parts.
Tonight I lie down in the dark. The pillow is cool. The location behind my left eye is quiet, the way a room is quiet after someone has moved out of it. I lie there for a while. Then I go to sleep.