This afternoon I went for a walk and run. I head over to Struve Slough and walk until I feel like running. Then I run until I feel like walking. And back and forth until I reach the other end of the slough and turn around to do the same on the way home.
I ran a little more than last time and walked a little less.
I was lying on my bed coiling for Bartonella and feeling pretty cold. I was thinking about how to warm up as I read 1493 by Charles C. Mann. I’m at the part where he talks about maroon communities and about how history is written, at least the kind available to most Americans, as though only Europeans had agency, and Africans and indigenous Americans did not. Then he goes on to explain all the stuff we never learned about in high school: about how enslaved Africans did not accept their fate and escaped Spanish settlements when they arrived in New Spain, built their own communities in cooperation and struggle with the people already living in the places they escaped to and fought against European expansion. How they ran away to a better life than what “fate” (and oppressive economic systems) had handed them.
So I got up and went running.
I ran because I was cold
and because it is a beautiful day outside, sunny and 65 deg F,
and because my hair looks more gray today than it did last week,
and because 40 is just around the corner,
and because I want to build my bones so I can have my body back,
and because I want to be able to run an ultramarathon someday, and today is a good day to get started,
and because I want the option of having a child when I’m done with these infections, so I’d better get strong,
and because my body has gotten bigger in all the right places, but I want to influence how they are shaped,
and because coiling is not enough,
and because there are athletes out there who have more or less recovered from tick-borne disease, so I know this can be done,
and because millions of human beings around the globe have run to escape their “fate,”
and because running is fun, especially when there are birds flying in front of me, and the slough is gorgeous at this time of the year,
and because I have agency in my healing process,
and because I’m the only one who decides what I do to get better (at least at this point when I don’t have a medical advisor),
and because this is my life and I get to enjoy it,
and because I have enough energy to run today,
and because yesterday sucked and today I don’t feel so bad,
and because I can, finally I can.
There are moments when I can see the future in front of me. I’m running towards it.
Categories: healing process
Tags: bartonella, lyme
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Coiling for Lyme 
Wow. you just made me cry. Thank you.