What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

It's been a couple of months since 9/11 and I still do not quite feel right. I don't know what the exact problem is. I feel exhausted, weak and unable to pull myself out of bed in the mornings. I am missing at least one day of the workweek and I feel real bad about it. What compounds my feelings of guilt is the fact that the people at work are not really saying much about it at all. If I did not know better I would conclude that no one notices that I am almost never at work on Thursdays and/or Fridays.

I have no substance abuse problems; I do not drink, I do not smoke, I have never used drugs recreationally, I don't binge eat; I don't go for days without sleep. I have a regular schedule, I get exercise, and I also watch what I eat. After this entire set of precautions, why then do I feel so horrible? I am 27 I feel 50. My energy levels keep fluctuating, some days I am crazy and bouncing off the walls, others I might as well die and be put underground. My migraines are hitting me almost every other day with increasing intensity. I have recently even started seeing colors during my migraines. I have been told that seeing visual artifacts is the sign of a severe migraine.

The strange thing is back in Austin I did not even have so much as a headache. Ever since I moved to NYC, migraines have greeted me like a welcome bandwagon and have never left my side to this day. After another Thursday away from work, I came in on Friday morning. I was on a mission. I was going to fix this migraine and fatigue thing once and for all. So I started searching the web. As usual there were the miracle cures, the unheard of diseases, and several questionnaires that conclude that you're bipolar even before you begin answering the questions. After a few hours of searching something caught my eye on our intranet page: An advertisement for nutritional counseling. The ad listed all of the symptoms I was suffering from and offered one free trial session. I felt I had nothing to lose; plus because this advertisement was on our company site, I thought my company was somewhat endorsing this person.

I sent an e-mail to the given address detailing some of my symptoms and what I am planning to get out of the consulting sessions. I received a prompt reply the next day. When I called the number in the e-mail, a very soft-spoken person answered. Her name was Sohyoung and although she did not have an official degree she was taking well-being counseling classes. The credentials were on the weak side but just like any other New Yorker I was lured by the free offerings --the free session. We agreed to meet that Saturday at her building on the Upper East Side.

I took the subway, the 4-5-6 (the JLo Line as my cousin and I called it) line up to Upper East Side. I took an express train that got me to her station within 3 stops. This is very convenient I thought to myself. I got off the train and when I exited the station it felt like I had been transported to a completely different part of the country. I assumed 14th street's unending buzzing action to be the norm for NYC. Whenever I traveled to these northern neighborhoods, the calm of the street always hit me when I climbed up the subway station steps. Sohyoung's neighborhood was beautiful, but not glitzy. This was where the normal people lived on the Upper East Side; it was a mix of tall high-rise building with 30-40 storey condos and shorter 4-5 storey buildings of old New York City.

Sohyoung greeted me at her building's entrance hall. They had a security desk with three attendants and everything. I don't want to sound like I have never seen a residential building with porters before but still this was more impressive than I expected.

She was an average height lady of Asian origin. I could not tell for sure which part of the world she was from. She was cute, and endearing; definitely one of those people you just warm up to right away although you know nothing about them. We went upstairs to this very nice lounge area at the top floor of her building. There was a gym next to the area we sat but there was no one there. I thought to myself, if I had 24-hour access to a nice gym like this I would be using it and it would not sit there empty.

The conversation mostly ranged from question answer to just darn right confessions of a new economy child. I gave her as much information as possible about my lifestyle, my eating, sleeping habits and my work situation. Although throughout this time she asked occasional questions and mostly listened, she was already doing a lot of good to me. I was finally getting a lot of things off of my chest. At the end of the hour, she wrapped up the conversation and offered me a seated massage.

While this was a very nice offering, as weird as I am about human touch from strangers, I did not quite know how to respond to the offer. It seemed at the time, it would be rude to say no, so I said yes. The massage was amazing, partially because I do not let anyone touch me for so long in the first place. I was getting warm and flushed, and I could feel underneath my clothes my skin was sweating like crazy in response to Sohyoung's massage. She definitely knew how to give a great massage.

I hate to say this but the massage was the final dealmaker for me. So I signed the dotted line for 6 months of sessions, 4 sessions per month totaling up to $600. I would pay her monthly but if we skipped a session, I would not lose it as long as I gave her advance notice.

So we began working through the rubble trying to patch my nutrition and my soul. The second work area came as a surprise to me. Sohyoung was not only counseling me on nutrition but she was more than willing if not more interested in hearing me talk about my life, my ordeals with my family, my relationship, my background. At times she would be so engrossed at my monologue that two hours would go by and we would still be sitting there. She was very helpful because she was a very good listener and that's what I needed at the time: someone who would listen to me and not judge me, at least not openly.

On the nutrition front, she added several leafy green vegetables to my diet, helped me increase my water intake, and banned all diet sodas out of my diet. Believe it or not, her recommendations seemed to be helping. My migraines were becoming weaker and far apart and I felt more energetic than usual. I am sure the tweaks in my nutrition were helpful but I cannot help but believe that I mostly benefited from the heart-to-heart conversations that helped me shed the bile that had been building inside me ever since I moved to NYC.

Here I was becoming a true New Yorker, unable to find any dedicated friends who can listen to me babble for 3 hours about quite unsubstantial matters, I rented my own friend who would listen to me no matter what. Perhaps it was true, in NYC you could get anything you wanted / needed if you knew where to get it from and how much to pay for it.

Sohyoung and I met all spring, even after my layoff. After the layoff she proved to be an invaluable source of comfort and wisdom. As the summer months progressed, while I enjoyed our weekly conversations, I had started to feel a little strange about paying for them. So my pocketbook was finally catching up with my emotional side. I was not planning to renew our engagement once the first six months were over but our sessions had to stop before then.

She traveled to Korea in mid-summer and mysteriously never came back. She sent me a cryptic message about how she had discovered in Seoul that she had a medical problem and she intended to stay there until it was completely cured. We exchanged a few e-mails after that but I never heard from her again after I moved back to Austin Texas.