I'm sitting in my room in my parents' home for the last day; tomorrow I drive back to my own home in PA, my father along for the rather long drive. I have yet to pack at all, though we're doing it fairly simply and not worrying too much as long as nothing like a medication gets left behind.

I should be sleeping now, as insomnia--a symptom of my bartonella--has been hitting me hard for the past few months, and yet I'm curled up on my beautiful teal mini-sofa (mini, and yet too large to get up the stairs to my DEFINITELY mini-apartment, more's the shame) and looking at wooden boxes and plastic containers. I have been digging specific items out of them, but I cannot bring myself to really go through the entirety of their contents as I should.

They contain my many art supplies, of all types, you see. I still due various types of jewelery work, and I work with yarn and fiber in as many ways as I can think of--but I can no longer draw no paint. My hands shake too badly, and my fingers are far too stiff from arthritis while simultaneously inflamed from the toxins of the disease.

I am getting better, and I know it. I will be cured before another decade is up, and I know that too. In many, many ways, I am lucky.

But there have been costs every step of the way. Huge financial costs, of course, but those aren't the ones that hurt, and I think we all know that. I've paid more than my dues in many areas since I was infected with Lyme and the two co-infections, bartonella and babesia. And I try to not complain too often about it, because no one wants to be around a whiner, for one, and for another...it just doesn't do any good.

But right now I'm curled up in my chair, staring at my art supplies and my cat who is lolling on her back near them.

And I would give almost anything, in this moment, just to be able to draw her like I know I could have a decade ago.