Lymeland City Center

Yesterday afternoon I needed to call my mother in law to double check my father in law’s middle name. I would have called him, but after he retired he found he wanted a part-time job, and what he does sometimes calls for him to work very early in the morning. So he often naps during the day. Much like me. So I didn’t want to wake him, and I’ve been meaning to check in on how she’s doing anyway. I just keep forgetting.

I’d been paying bills and needed to get into one of the accounts still left in only my wife’s name. The site didn’t recognize my laptop, so one of those security questions popped up. I was fairly confident that I remembered the answer, since it’s the same as my own dad’s, but ended up second-guessing myself into a phone call with my mil.

At the risk of publicizing what is not mine to share, she has been struggling with physical pain lately, as well as the depression that comes from being homebound, in pain, and unable to sleep. I’ve been too wrapped up in my own worst herx ever to have checked in until now, so after I confirmed my Lyme brain did actually remember the middle name, we chatted for quite a while about how she’s doing and what it’s like for me with the Lyme.

Unable to multi-task these days, I pushed the bills aside and described the emotional rollercoaster of life in Lymeland—where, like the tides on Earth, the tides of my own energies rise and fall in sync with the moon. Four days before the full moon, my mood dips, I struggle to see the positive side of things, and generally try to keep to myself. As we draw closer to the full moon, I become emotional (lots of tears), then flat-out crabby (grumbling about the lack of positivity in a world full of a-holes and idiots), and finally the day before the full moon, the Lyme rage express pulls into Lymeland city-center and I fly off the handle and lose my head over the smallest things.

Throughout this period, I lose most of my physical energy and find it almost impossible to concentrate on any one given subject for more than a few minutes at a time. Sleep becomes elusive as my physical pain ramps up just after the full moon and remains unmanageable for the next four days.

As I explained to my mil, and I probably heard this from someone else so I’m not taking credit for the idea, I think my body’s war with the spirochetes rises and falls with the moon’s pull, with bloody battles waged most ferociously as the moon becomes full. Thus the exhaustion and rage—maybe I need it to fight the little buggers, or maybe it’s their own since I certainly don’t recognize it as mine. And then, in the days following the full moon, my body struggles to rid itself of all those fallen casualties, both Team Spiro’s and my own. Thus the muscles and joints filled to stiffness and agony with biotoxins.

At least she listened without doubting the veracity of my story. I may not always tell the whole truth in my personal life—I value privacy and discretion a great deal and am careful to avoid pointed questions or, if pressed, to provide vague half-answers that don’t qualify as lies. But neither do I go around making stuff up, nor do I exaggerate existing conditions. I have Lyme. The truth is horrific enough.

I don’t want to get onto my soapbox about all of the doubting Thomases out in the world who are dead certain that Lyme doesn’t exist, even though they themselves have not walked a minute in my shoes. I don’t want to rant about my impotent fury at having my integrity questioned when I take care to be honest, avoid lies, and honor the points of views of others even if they don’t agree with my own. Crap, I ended up on the box anyway.

And I lost track of what it was I did want to say. Something about fiction—ah yes. I wanted to end on a positive note. Last night my wife and I sat on the porch, and I was rambling on about an idea for a longer work of fiction I’d remembered that afternoon. We were laughing and the story was becoming increasingly outrageous. And she called me a goober. Affectionately, of course. She hasn’t called me that in a long time. I haven’t been silly like that in a long time. I know I have a long long way to go still, but I think I’m starting to feel a little better. It may be temporary, a calm before the next herx storm, but I’ll take it. I’d be proud to be Goober, Mayor of Lymeland. As long as those negatives have been destroyed. . . .