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While I was grateful for the progress made and the blessings I had received, there was no gratitude toward this enemy. This was war. I didn't want this to define me, to color how I saw the world, but it was not easy. It literally cloaked me like Peter Pan's wayward shadow. I felt it's presence with every step, with the electrical currents that stabbed occasionally through my feet, with ripping-like pain in my tendons, with every glass that I dropped, with every quiet moment that now rang in my ears. On days when the walls closed in, I was aware. Even in sleep, it frequently tormented me. My dreams were filled with situations in which I couldn't walk, I couldn't function. Unconscious reminders that reinforced loss and an unknown future thereby undoing the day's progress and gratitude work. I was different. And so was my world.
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Rhonda Jean Bolton (Praying Through Plies: Living With Lupus and Surviving An Antibiotic Called Levaquin)