Chronic Lyme is tricky.  It's such an inner battle that half of my symptoms I have I thought were totally normal for the longest time.  I suppose that eventually you just numb yourself to what you're feeling and pretend it's normal.  It's easier to do that than it is to face it, and endure to then end.  With that said, there are so many people that are uneducated and naive as to how bad this illness can get.  This is why I feel it is extremely important to educate ourselves and be aware of the horror that can take place simply because of a bacteria born infection.  

Chronic Lyme disease is a bacteria born infection that primarily comes from the bite of what's referred to as a deer tick.  With that said it can also be transmitted through the bite of a spider, mosquito, or any bug that just happens to carry the infection.  Studies have also shown that pregnant women who are infected can pass Lyme disease down to their unborn children.  That would be how I obtained it.  My mother got bit by a tick when she was only nine, and the scary thing about Lyme disease is that sometimes symptoms don't begin to show until days, weeks, months, or even years later. (Which just happened to be my mom's case.) 

Lyme is directly caused by a bacteria referred to as a spirochete- a spiral shaped bacteria that is capable of drilling into literally any part of the body.  This is what makes Lyme so scary.  Lyme can affect anything in your body and lead to problems in your brain, nervous system, muscles, joints, heart, etc.  The symptoms are never ending.  And depending on the severity of it all, it can dull your quality of life to almost nothing.  
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Here's the thing about Lyme that most people don't get.  Something that I hope with all my heart that I can get the point across.  Chronic Lyme IS REAL.  It's as real as chicken pox, and as tragic as any other disease that people are actually aware of.  It's painful, it's exhausting, and it's discouraging.  Yeah, we look fine, but that's beside the point.  When you have a chronic illness, you learn to numb yourself to the pain.  You numb yourself to the exhaustion.  You numb yourself to what's going on in your body and you keep moving forward because if you don't than your quality of life is reduced to almost no life at all.  It's not just "all in our head." It's not all psychosomatic. It's not something we make up just to get attention.  It's REAL.  I've experienced it, and I've seen first hand how bad it can get.  I can only hope that people understand that.  And with that said, I can only hope that the people who fight this know that they are not alone.  

For more information on Chronic Lyme you can visit: ​https://www.lymedisease.org/

Welcome to my blog! :D  I'm Claire, and, I have Chronic Lyme Disease.  My journey with Lyme began when my mother contracted the disease a couple of years ago.  After a year of painfully horrific nights, long days, and many misdiagnoses, my mom was finally diagnosed with Chronic Lyme disease.  Memories of those nights and days will always stay ingrained in the darkest regions of my heart and mind, and they will rightfully serve their purpose as I now have to face this illness myself.  It never occurred to me when I was helping my mom that I might one day get diagnosed with this disease as well.  Ironically enough here I am two years later graduated from high school, living on my own, and attending college.  With that said, I'm not just any girl attending college.

 I'm a girl that struggles every day just to have the motivation to get out of bed in the morning because I'm so incredibly exhausted and sleeping is my way of disappearing from life for a brief moment in time.  I'm a girl that struggles through my classes and has to think twice as hard just to swallow a concept simply because I have cognitive dysfunction due to the bacteria eating away at my body.  I'm a girl who suffers from anxiety and depression not because I have a mental disorder, and not because I just have a bad attitude, but because sometimes the bacteria that's eating away at my body sometimes feels like it's eating away at my soul.  I'm a girl that goes home and cries every day because it takes so much energy just to walk across campus to get to class.  I'm a girl who is in a lot of pain sometimes.  And I'm a girl who is finally beginning to understand a small piece of what my mom had to suffer through.

With that said, I am also a girl who loves to love.  I'm a girl who loves with all my heart, even when I know the circumstance is destined to end in heartbreak.  I'm a girl who strives for joy in all of the little things in life.  I'm a girl who gets excited about little insignificant things that I just happen to be passionate about.  I'm a girl who believes that life is absolutely beautiful and that every little piece of substance in nature is a tender mercy given to us as a gift from God.  

There is an incredible amount of beauty that surrounds each an every one of us every day.  We simply just have to open our eyes, look up, and respire the moment.  I believe that just because I have a chronic illness, does not mean that I am a chronic illness.  I believe that God will not inflict anything upon me that I cannot overcome.  Which means that I can overcome this, and I can endure to the end.

There are a few reasons why I started this blog.  The first being that writing is my coping mechanism.  Excessive sleeping, OCD tendencies, and anxiety attacks are not healthy coping mechanisms and I've come to know that none of those things actually help me.  Writing deepens my understanding of my own heart and mind, and gives me a method of transforming my feelings into tangible substance.

Second, I feel like part of my journey in life is simply to educate people.  Chronic Lyme is not something to take lightly.  Chronic Lyme isn't something funny.  And Chronic Lyme isn't something to conveniently shrug off because it's not well known.  I've seen first hand what Lyme can do to the quality of a persons life.  I've seen it literally incapacitate a person to the reduction of almost no life at all.  If more people were aware of this, people with Lyme would not be left to suffer alone like so many of us currently do.  

Finally, I want people with Lyme to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  I get it.  You trudge to work or school hardly functioning and you're expected to live and function normally.  You're a single soul screaming for compassion, understanding, and love.  It's almost physically impossible to survive Lyme alone.  And when you're fighting an inner battle that nobody can see but yourself and God, life can feel incredibly lonely.  But you are never alone.  There is always someone.  Someone who knows and someone who cares.  If I can get that point across to just one person through this blog, then I'm doing this for the right reason.  There is always light on the other side of the tunnel.  There is always peace and happiness ahead.

I hope that I can inspire anyone that comes across my inner most thoughts that will be posted in this blog.  Inspiration has an incredible power to heal.  Seeing the beauty in life can really set you free even at your worst of times.  I hope that I can help people to see that. Even a flickering spark of hope can lead to the realization that chronic illness can make you chronically beautiful.