Riding the Wave
Learning to trust in life again.
After a third relapse that lasted nearly a year, I was successfully treated in late 2025 by a doctor who properly diagnosed me and addressed the multiple pathogens I was carrying.
On two separate visits, he took blood samples and examined them under his own microscope.
“You no longer have Lyme disease,” he said after the first examination.
“There’s no Lyme. Congratulations. Call me when you get to India,” he said happily after the second.
Based on 50 years of medical experience, he was confident I was in the clear.
Returning to India
On February 1st, 2026, I successfully returned to India, where I was based before all of this happened.
On one level, it didn’t make sense. Given what I went through, India is probably the last place you’d choose for a post-illness destination. It’s loud, fast-paced, unpredictable, and full of environmental stressors.
On another level, it made perfect sense.
Living with Lyme disease for nearly seven years, and enduring destabilizing relapses, created a side condition — not exactly PTSD, but something I’ve come to understand as “nervous system sensitization.”
I fought a war, and on multiple occasions, when I thought that war was over, it began again, requiring further investigation and treatment.
This harrowing journey taught me I was unsafe, so I began guarding against potential threats, especially those I believed could impact my symptoms or progress.
For stretches, I cut off walking. Working. Talking normally. At one point, I had to wear noise-canceling headphones just to leave the house. I could barely tolerate being around people, and the list goes on.
You’re not safe. That mantra became ingrained in my mind, priming my nervous system for danger even if none existed.
From February 1st to now, I’ve experienced a steady expansion, made possible by leaving my comfort zone and my mom’s home in New York, which had become a safe but limiting cocoon.
That’s why India has been so healing. It has forced me beyond protective mechanisms I couldn’t maintain. By stretching past them and seeing that nothing bad happened, I’ve more or less learned, “I’m safe.”
My capacity has grown in kind to the point where life has resumed a new sense of normalcy.
Expansion — Hiccup — Expansion
With that said, there have been intermittent “hiccups,” as I call them, or contractions along the way.
When things feel off, symptoms spike, or my baseline suddenly changes, it’s like an alarm goes off immediately. My first thought is that I’m relapsing again, and my life is going to collapse.
This brings anxiety, an urgency to fix things, and fearful projections about the future. Though it feels endless in the moment, these episodes do pass sometimes requiring several days.
I’ve learned these swings are part of healing, specifically, my nervous system re-training itself to trust life again.
One started about three days ago after reviewing emails from late 2019 to early 2020, which was one of the darkest periods of my life marked by increasing symptoms, fear, and things slipping beyond my control.
It got to the point where my mom had to start writing emails for me because I couldn’t bear to look at a screen or even be near one. Reading those emails, especially the ones she had to write, opened an emotional door to that time.
Though I was fine in the moment, even curious, later that day it started.
My main symptom spiked (a chronic pain that lives around my right temple) at night, and I woke up in the morning with anxiety that I hadn’t experienced in some time.
Reading the emails triggered me, as I had somewhat anticipated.
This happened to coincide with an extremely hot day here, when it was over 110℉, which made me feel “woozy,” lethargic, headachy, and even a little nauseated.
All of this fueled the sense that something was wrong, as my brain flagged these symptoms as old threats returning.
The intensity of this particular wave reached a point where I found myself saying out loud, “Who will catch me if I fall?” with tears streaming out of my eyes.
At certain points throughout the day, the whole thing would resolve, and it was then that I could recognize that I was not going into descent but, rather, riding a wave.
Up and down it went like this until yesterday evening, when I came back to myself.
“Move On”
Though these episodes are scary and, honestly, unwelcome, I see that they’re helping me relearn to trust life. The threats my mind expects aren’t appearing, so I’m slowly letting my guard down and allowing myself to embrace living again.
They also remind me how intense my Lyme experience was and of all the support I received. This softens me, keeps me humble, and reminds me that the journey, primarily, was a tool to help me serve others.
The last time I spoke with my treating doctor, he said, “Move on with your life.” (I was actually in such an episode of contraction when I called.)
He doesn’t mince words, and he wouldn’t have said that if he wasn’t confident I was OK.
Nevertheless, even now, months after treatment and continuing to expand, I still don’t fully trust that I’m in the clear. The thing is: bad things can happen at any time, and we don’t have the control we think we do.
This understanding is helping me to release further because if something bad does happen, I’m not helpless. I’m not alone. I can and will deal with it.
Despite these fearful loops, I’m moving forward toward my dreams, with a growing sense that this chapter is behind me.
Original artwork by: SarjanArts.com.