The War Inside My Body (A Poem About Lyme’s Disease)

The War Inside My Body

There is a war inside my body.
My brain explodes with bombshells of pain,
the fog of the frontline never clears.
My muscles fire their artilleries
as the dictator feeds on them.
My blood and my heart beat on, beat on,
passing resources along the supply chain,
hoping they are not stolen
by the marauding enemy.
My immune system is under siege,
surrounded and weakening day by day.

But the dictator doesn’t understand that
if I weaken, so does he,
the more he destroys, destroys, destroys.
The dictator only sees the present.
He only wants to survive NOW—
to see his children flourish
in a ripe and supple landscape
that shrivels and decays the longer he resides here.
Me—my own muscles, my brain, my blood—
overrun and oppressed
subdued and subjected.

This war is painfully intense,
and it feels as if victory will surely be his.
But I will fight for freedom
so that verdant things, healthy things, fertile things
grow in my heart, my flesh, my mind once more.
Someday,
I will run along the pathways of the earth,
and my imagination will fly amongst starlit skies,
and the war inside my body
will be no more.

***

I wrote this poem in a feeble attempt to describe what it going on in my body as I fight Lyme’s Disease right now. The past few months have been really hard. I periodically crash–my body goes into a sort of panic/completely exhausted mode–but I can never predict when that will happen. I do feel like my body is at war right now; it’s screaming and fighting and trying to eradicate the bacteria that is borrelia (Lyme’s Disease). All I can do is support my body as much I can by listening and resting and taking care of myself in healthy ways.

Everything in my life is suffering right now. I used to write and create and found such joy in these things. Even this blog has suffered over the last year, as I’ve had little energy to pour my heart and soul into it as I used to do. Right now, I’m trying desperately to find the energy to do normal everyday things (AKA going to work, cooking, etc), and so anything extra that I actually enjoy doing has gone out the window.

This is me being brutally honest. I hate being this honest. I’m a very independent person, and I absolutely hate the fact that I just can’t normally function.  I see it as a weakness. This disease has been a humbling experience. Often, I look at healthy people in their mid-twenties and think, What is it like? What is it like to feel healthy and energetic and just…a normal person my age? What is it like to wake up in the morning not feeling like you just want to die because you’re so incredibly tired even after 8 hours of sleep? What would it be like to be able to push my body and do things like hike a fourteener or train for a marathon? I seriously have no concept of what healthy feels like, as it’s been so long since I’ve lived a normal existence in this area.

But I HAVE hope that I can beat this (and my doctor does, too)! Thanks for all your prayers as I continue to fight this war inside my body.

Some of you have asked how you can help in practical manners. I created a fundraiser here that can help me cover my medical expenses. Please do not feel any pressure to do so, I’m just throwing it out there.

Photo by momente/Shutterstock.com.