Happy New Year?

Today, ostensibly, begins a new year. But apart from having to remember to change the date on any odd check or form I may fill out, I can’t say I feel any different. No big resolutions this year for me; those came a couple of months ago when I decided to take a short break from working full time and move in different, more aggressive, direction with my treatment.

As long as the spirochetes run rampant through my body, I don’t know that I’ll feel any different no matter what year it is. These past twelve months (my first in treatment) have flown past, a blur of symptoms, pain, frustration, guilt. The next twelve, I expect, will do the same—though at the time the hours do pass with a torturous languor that marks a life equally void of momentum.

My family would disagree about the momentum, especially as they all look forward to and embrace the impending antibiotic treatment that still makes my gut knot when I think of it. But from my perspective, I’m exactly where I was a year ago—starting treatment, full of anxiety, but unable to sustain my current condition as is. Except this January 1, I’m nowhere near as healthy as I was 365 days ago. At least I don’t feel like it.

Still, I’m fortunate to have family and friends to support me. At least I think I do still have friends somewhere out there. Not having the energy to reach out much let alone go out to meet friends, I’ll have to trust that those connections I valued before I became more homebound will remain when I am better. I doubt it, else why aren’t they here?

Aside from the neighbors with whom we are close, and who have very little choice about withdrawing from the situation unless they want to try to unload their property in a hostile marketplace, my wife and I have only one set of friends who have stayed in contact with us and understood that we have the heart to be with others but we don’t have the time or perhaps the initiative to be the ones to make the calls and set up plans.

This isn’t to suggest I’ve ever been one to surround myself with gaggles of friends. Most people either fear me or dislike me for instinctive, unexamined reasons. And I don’t mind; I lack the social skills for high maintenance friendships, which I loosely define as anyone requiring contact more than once a month in order to feel secure in our relationship. Still, I am sorry that a few people have receded, even stopped returning emails and such, once I stopped working and getting out and about.

So whoever you are, be you stranger or acquaintance, whether you’re struggling with Lyme or just browsing the web and finding the tedium interesting, I wish you good health and good friends throughout the coming year. For myself, I am going to fetch some more coffee and see if my dear friends (who wisely stayed over last night) are ready for some too. Maybe after a couple of cups they can answer for me, is it really a new year if the next twelve months are going to be filled with same crap as the last twelve?