Butterfly Days

    Did you ever want to change something about yourself? I did. I couldn’t tell you exactly when it started...      As a little girl, my parents and my grandma told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I believed them. I don’t remember ever doubting it for a minute!      When I became a teenager, though, something changed. I was suddenly hyper-aware of what others thought of me. Ok, I mainly cared what the guys thought of me. My little brother Benny calls it, “the awkward age.” I looked at myself and saw someone dumb and uninteresting. It didn’t seem to matter that I was a straight-A student. When I compared myself to my friends and, oh yes, to my crush, I just knew they were so smart, and I was so dumb.         By the time I was 19, I had already been rejected twice. My crushes had chosen girls who were very different than me. Now I knew what was wrong! If I could just be skinnier, (I only weighed 120), or ...

      If you were to walk into my house on an average day off, you would see me bouncing through life, singing random songs, working on multiple projects, and having a wonderful time. It’s a very different picture than the withdrawn person you would’ve met years ago. She would’ve been huddled on a chair in the corner on the verge of tears.       I didn’t know I had Lyme Disease. All I knew was that I hated to work. Twenty to twenty-five hours of work per week would completely exhaust me, leaving my emotions raw and very near the surface. I watched everyone around me working forty-plus hours a week, and co ncluded that my problem must be psychological. I must be lazy.      Then the fevers started. Every day my temperature would be just slightly elevated…around 99.5 degrees. A doctor tested me for lupus, and having ruled out that possibility, gave up.      In the summer of 2018 it finally dawned on me. I was in pain every day. I ...