Today.

Before you start reading this, I need you to know that I am not writing this for pity. I am not writing this because I want you to feel bad for what I'm about to tell you. I'm writing this because I want you to know this part of the Lyme world too. I told you from the beginning of this blogging adventure that it was going to be raw and real. I told you I wasn't going to hold back the ugly stuff. And that's what today is. Today is a hard one. Today is a real one.

If you asked me what I did today, I would tell you I cried.

Yesterday I took my dog to dog fest, I got some work done, I hung out with my friend, you know--normal stuff. Today, I cried.

I woke up this morning crying because I had an anxiety attack in the middle of the night. And, after an anxiety attack in the middle of the night, sometimes you just wake up crying. Out of your control. You wake up with tears falling down your face without knowing they are happening. They're just there. Because that's what anxiety does.

Then I cried because I felt like I was actively being eaten alive by my Lyme from the inside out. I'm so swollen I can barely fit in my clothes, my hands are so swollen they can barely bend, my face is so swollen it has indents in it from my glasses. My bones feel like they are on fire. I feel like I have red ants crawling through the fibers that hold my body together into a human.

Then I cried because I went to the store and forgot what I was there for by the time I got there.  My brain was completely blank. Nothing. No idea why I was there.

Then I cried because the reality that I can't save someone from this hell that I'm living in hit me again today. And sometimes that reality is the hardest to swallow. Especially when I would have given anything for someone else to be standing in front of me offering to help me. When I would have given anything to be in the opposite position that l am in now.

Then I cried because I was crying. And I realized that all I had been doing today was crying.

I am not a sad person. I'm happy. I completely appreciate all the beautiful things in my life. I have more beautiful people in my life than I know what to do with. But this Lyme life has a way of pulling you to a place sometimes where all you can do is cry. Sometimes it's because the bacteria is in the crying part of your brain. Sometimes it's because you have a lot going on. But regardless, it's unrelenting and it's exhausting. And that's what it did to me today.

Today I cried.