First and Foremost

If you had told me 5 years ago, 1 year ago - heck - a couple months ago: "You should write a blog", I probably would have agreed politely and taken the compliment, while in my head thinking "yeah right - what a ridiculous idea." And yet, here I am, blurry eyed yet wide awake at 2 AM on an early early Thursday morning, banging out my first blog post on the keyboard.

Why, you may ask? Well honestly, I think all those people telling me I should write a blog has finally gotten to me. Not that all of them have specified "blog", per se, but over the years I've certainly had numerous compliments on my writing, from Facebook posts, to impassioned political writings, to Instagram poetry, to other millennial digital outlets where I get to talk about my feelings like they were something extraordinary and unique (by the way: remember back when Facebook set up the post for you? Like, "Grayson is...", and you would fill it in with whatever you were up to? "Grayson is... cramming for his geometry test tomorrow, but actually isn't because he's been on Facebook for hours on end LOL!"... what a world.) But the compliments have amassed. So much so that my low levels of self confidence - which, as I write this, are telling me "BULLSHIT YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE ANYTHING WORTH READING" - even they have bubbled up and thought "hmm...maybe i can do this".

But again - why now? I've certainly considered writing on a more public platform in the past. But the thing that's always kept me back is the cliche yet still painful notion that I have nothing important to say. And to be frank, most of the time I don't. What I normally have to say is already being said by hundreds of others much more eloquent than I. Not to mention, we live in a society that lauds celebrity and influence so much that you have tens of thousands of kids, young adults, and full grown adults on platforms like Instagram and YouTube showing off what they do every second of every day. You know the type: that one YouTuber who's cute, and that's helped his following, and maybe he's had a couple videos that are unique to his existence as a human being, but for the most part his videos are as follows:

"Hey guys, welcome back to my journey! (side note: anyone who ever says that to me in person - "I'm on a journey" - is getting punched in the nose) So today I'm going to blah blah blah, and you're going to watch as I do the most mundane and ordinary shit you can imagine. In fact, today I'm going to go to Target and get new workout clothes, then instead of working out you'll come along with me to Buffalo Wild Wings where you'll get to watch me eat food - how exciting for you! And then we're gonna meet my friend at Starbucks and the two of us are gonna snap some selfies with the most sugar-fied coffee drinks you can imagine and post them on social media so you can be assured that we leave our house and are social people who have fun, and then maybe I'll do a slow-mo footage of us walking outside and the trees and blue sky, then we'll go putt-putt golfing and I'll do some cool angles where the camera is in the hole or on the green and it'll be sooooooo funny and awesome and then I'll be home again yayyyyy k bye!"

And you'll sit there in bed, watching this ridiculous fucker do all this bullshit for a solid 7 to 9 minutes (if it's longer than 10 min of this shit, throw your phone at the wall. HARD.), and after that video is done you'll browse dozens of others just like it that he's posted. (Here's a novel idea for all you subscribed to and watching these YouTubers: rather than watch someone play putt-putt with friends, GO GET SOME FRIENDS, AND GO PUTT-PUTTING!!!)

Sigh... so as you can see, I'd rather keep myself away from joining my fellow millennials in the herd of "mouth open, nothing coming out" mules. If I ever did something like that, it would have a purpose - a "brief", as we call it in the design world - and be driven by exploring and explaining said purpose to an audience that is there for a reason, and wouldn't need to be 100,000+ subscribers/followers large in order for me to feel like my existence is validated.

Actually, you know what? I did do that for a time. I started a YouTube channel called "007.5" to document my first journey across the Atlantic to England - as a means to visually record moments from the trip so I could go back and watch them later and relive the journey I took (oh shit. I said journey. ***punches self in face***). Sadly, that trip and channel fell through about halfway thanks to my crippling depression and falling out with the good friend who was housing me, resulting in my early return to the USA...

BUT, to answer the question "Why now? What's the purpose this time?", here it is:

I have Lyme Disease. Chronic Lyme Disease.

Or rather, I've had chronic Lyme disease for 10+ years and I just didn't know it until recently when I was diagnosed. Namely because A) my symptoms, however potent, aren't like most chronic Lyme patients, therefore I never thought to link my symptoms back to Lyme, and B) ticks are such a common occurrence where I'm from (Proud Virginian, Born & Raised), and Lyme is so much more likely to happen that, by extension, the people of Virginia and other states like it are pretty blazé when it comes to Lyme's severity if left untreated.

But yeah, there you have it: Lyme Disease. And we're not talking "itchy, red, bulls-eye rash appears at bite-site, then one week after being bitten flu-like symptoms occur, so you treat with month of antibiotics and then it's gone" Lyme.

Nuh Uh.

This is ..."you got bit by a tick with Lyme, and the rash never showed up, nor did the flu-like symptoms, so instead all the Lyme bacteria that got into you have been left untreated, and as a result over the course of a decade the Lyme bacteria have been multiplying like hyperhorny rabbits and spreading by the millions throughout all of the systems of your body - brain, heart, lungs, muscles, joints, skin, intestines, liver, etc. - encasing themselves in fat stores (which they then harden up so don't even think about trying to lose that baby fat cause it's not gonna happen) and letting loose all manner of bacteria and poison into said systems, so now every aspect of you as a creature with physicality, mentality, cognitive ability, and psychological ability, has been weakened or deteriorated in varying degrees of severity"... Lyme.

....Figures.

My whole life I've been trying to understand why life seems to have put me in seemingly random situations that have ended up defining me. Instances as simple as being a kid and thinking "why don't I have enough energy to stack chairs after the Boy Scouts meeting" (note: Lyme causes massive fatigue) would turn into the adults and other kids perceiving me as weak, and by extension they'd write me off as snobbish or lazy, ostracizing me and leaving me alone to question "what's wrong with me? why can't I do what these other boys can do?".

Or being a student and realizing "I really love the violin, and I love playing it, but I never seem to have the energy or focus to practice, and when I do sit down and try to practice the notes all jumble together in my mind and I can't read them on the page, and I can't seem to move my fingers fast enough and holding the violin upright for longer than 5 minutes really hurts my arm", resulting in your parents, grandparents, teacher, and fellow orchestra members to think - you guessed it - that you don't care, that you're snobbish, you're lazy, and all sorts of other negative, mean, ostracizing things they whisper to each other under their breath.

Suffice to say, Lyme has ruined my life. I won't get into all the examples and details here and now - heck, I'd be up until dawn writing and wouldn't even be halfway done - I'll save that for another post.

But think back through your own life, and all the shortcomings you've ever faced that have steered your life in one way or another. Maybe you weren't strong enough, fast enough, or had enough energy to try out for sports, or maybe you weren't smart enough to study all those different topics in school that interested you but you couldn't remember any of the facts or focus on the paragraphs of text, or maybe you weren't creative enough and felt like anything you made came up short compared to other people's artwork or music or writing. Or maybe, worst of all, maybe you were simply never happy enough, sociable enough, energetic enough, or confident enough to make friends or enjoy a night out or be able to believe in your own worth as a human being.

Then, imagine that all of your impediments - your "stupidity" and/or inability to learn, your depression, your anxiety, your fatigue, your physical incapability, your low self esteem, your difficulty focusing or remembering the simplest things... Imagine that one day you were told that 10+ years of all that pain was caused by one thing. That it all rooted back to a single disease that had been silently poisoning your existence. All caused by one single, tiny twat of a tick. A tick that looked at you, thought "..yum.", took a bite, and from there your life was changed forever. Your fate was changed forever. A childhood that could have been free from all manner of pain and hurt, robbed from you. From one tick bite.

As you can imagine, it's a very jarring, and upsetting thing to discover. That, for example, you're not actually a depressed person - you're actually probably a rather happy-go-lucky guy by default - except this Lyme bacteria has eaten away at your brain and destroyed your serotonin receptors along with all the other chemicals that keep most people balanced emotionally, psychologically, mentally, etc. And so on and so forth with your physicality, your cognitive ability; all these things that you thought you had just happened to get the short end of the stick on for so much of your life - all of it could have been avoided if not for ONE FUCKING TICK BITE.

Well, guess what. I'm done. I've had it. No more.

With this blog, I'm gonna get all my thoughts out. On everything. I figure since my mind has been consumed by Lyme for over a decade, most of what I have to say or think or feel is somehow impacted by it. I may only be 24 years old, but I've endured some legitimately smelly shit in my quarter of a century. Shit that, while I didn't notice it at the time, bore the stench of Lyme. That, and I hope to use this blog as a means to talk about Lyme as a disease and the science behind it, while tracking my treatment and road to recovery. I'll be damned to the iciest ring of hell if I'm going to let this bullshit dictate how my life is going to go from here on out. It may have stolen a better, easier, and happier childhood, youth, and young adulthood from me, but I've got the heart and spirit of an old Celt in me and - lemme tell ya - we Celts have some deep deep DEEP anger issues, and can be as determined as a (***look away mom***) motherfucker when it comes to settling scores.

Heads up, Lyme. You've got a 24-foot claymore swinging your way.

You may have taken a bite out of me.

But now - I'm Biting Back.