My narrative is not a neat one. Which version of the story of my illness I tell depends on what month, what day, even what hour I do so, and whether my symptoms are in the background or the foreground. I am luckier than I thought I would be when I got acutely sick in 2012. After years of suffering, being treated for a tick-borne illness got me partly better, transforming me from a bedridden person who could not recall basic words like “spring” to a functioning and often energetic thirty-eight-year-old. I have recovered, and yet—though I try not to focus on it—I am still sick. I live with
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