Cliches
Being buried alive
Drowning
Hanging by a thread
At the end of my rope
Clawing my way up
Gasping for breath
Every writer knows to avoid cliches. They are trite and boring and rarely describe a situation effectively. However, these cliches don’t come to mind when I am writing, but when I am living—living with chronic migraine. Every one of these overused phrases has felt like literal truth at some point.
What cliches feel like truth in your struggle with migraine or headache?
My husband used to make jokes at me (lovingly, but still!) because I used a lot of these. Then one day I described living with CM as being in a maze. He thought that sounded like an attitude change, because in a maze you can at least, maybe someday, find a way out…
Pain in the neck (but like an evil, nano-demon burrowing up through my neck to my head)
Running on fumes
Hitting rock bottom (now if I could just claw my way back up)
Whittling my life away
Getting on by the skin of my teeth