I have Andre Bocelli crooning in my ear.  My ear buds are connected to my ipod;  they are secured tightly and I am filled with the sound. I am heating up the laptop.  Today as always, the music fills where no thought can go for I have battled another spell.  This spell offered to me no magical charm, or desired arousal. It was not a walk in the park, it was void of any enchanted forest, it promised I will struggle to sustain. 

But yes, I remember the connotation of my title.  Valley Girls are fashionable and affluent, they are teenage girls living in the San Fernando Valley in California.  I do not live in California and affluent, I am not.  I am a Midwesterner.  I am a middle age woman with a husband and a family, yet I am a valley girl just the same.  For valley in my world is reminiscent of days cluttered with old thoughts of unrest.  My hopeless condition can only worsen; I am four months off and on and off a medication that I continue to resist.  Called valproate acid, I have been symptomatic and annoyed  by the side effects, and finally after I coerced she agreed.  The salt of the earth would stand alone.

I have walked this path many times before and as symptoms some and go, or stack one on top of the other; my illness becomes morphed.  But as I change I find a new way of living and when there is pain, I try a new way to survive.  Finally Lamotrigine joins the mix, two days out, three pills on my plate and I am getting some relief.  No longer despondent, could this be cocktail be the one that delivers me from the well of human suffering?  Fighting amid my own stigma, I learn, I forget, but I have learned once again, I have an illness.  It is in my brain not just in their mind.  I am that which shadows me, I am a valley girl. 

Learn more about the "Valley Girl" at  www.LifeIsLikeALine.com.