As a kid, I was constantly hearing about people who had recently been diagnosed with Lyme disease — parents, cousins, siblings, pets — and in almost every case, the stories I heard were short. When I was first diagnosed with Lyme disease at age seven in 1998, everyone assumed my story would be short, too.

As weird as it sounds, I always knew I would be sick. Even as a child, I felt like something was off. When I was growing up, I was definitely sick more often than other kids. I got pneumonia and strep throat a few too many times and missed a lot of school. It didn’t cause too much alarm until December of my sophomore year of high school when I suddenly found myself constantly exhausted, ridden with joint pain, fevers, and extreme weakness.

It starts with a pain so sharp and slight, it might not even be real. Then the pain builds, as if it has its own personal volume knob, until it’s screaming at me: aching, throbbing, begging to be soothed. My muscles tighten. I resist. I know if I ease this particular pain, I’ll pay for it.

“Step up on the scale there, sweetie – yup, we just have to record your weight... Got it, 138, okay, you can hop down.” 138. Not bad. I walk back to my seat at the meeting and slide the cardstock containing my start weight back to my mother who is sitting beside me. My mother flips the paper over and makes an audible gasp—“138!! I didn’t weigh that much when I was pregnant with you!” Clearly, my mother was not there for moral support: the meeting was her idea and, well, I needed a ride since I was only eleven years old.

The first time I remember being deeply depressed was when I was 17 and went away to college. Every time my mom would call me I would dissolve into tears. I didn’t know exactly why I was sad. I knew I didn’t want to be there and that I didn’t feel in control of my life. Adult me knows now that I had just removed myself far enough away from the culture of my family and was beginning to start separating out what was me and what was them.

“Prepared with Love and Magic by House of Intuition” claimed the bottle of “Money Magic” bubble bath, half-empty and sitting on the edge of my almost-too-small-to-lie-in bathtub.

I had bought the bubble bath from a local Los Angeles boutique, House of Intuition (a self-described “metaphysical shop dedicated to helping people achieve healing, transformation, empowerment, and personal growth”), along with a space-cleansing powder called “Cascarilla” and a small, pretty bottle of calming Rose Water. At the register, I pushed my boyfriend’s voice out of my head (“Money Magic bubble bath? Please tell me you’re joking”) and handed over my debit card.

When I was growing up in a middle-class town on Long Island in the 1990s, we didn’t do much to celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. There were no brunches, no breakfasts in bed, and no family gatherings. It wasn’t just that “brunch” wasn’t part of the vernacular of West Hempstead back then—my parents just weren’t the kind to celebrate anything other than major holidays and birthdays.

I was baptized for the second time when I was in middle school. I was an infant the first time, which was fine, but the problem, according to the churches I found myself in later in life, was that babies don’t know what they’re doing; they can’t make a decision about something as important as their souls.

Listen now to the soothing sounds by Jamie Ford

Listen now to the soothing sounds by Torkom Ji