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Hello! My name is Regina Sën. This drawing represents the Gift of Emily, my hope for the future, and the joy I felt after twelve long years of relating to what Avril Lavigne shared in her song, "Head Above Water,” (https://youtu.be/v686vG5PSac) …followed by a beautiful human being, a complete stranger, becoming my angel! Now, I’m paying her gift forward.
She rescued me from the clutches of a Longhaul illness so catastrophic that it strips you of your identity, hopes, and dreams. (It’s worth mentioning that Longhaul Lyme and Longhaul Covid have much in common.) The afflictions caused by Lyme creates a mega storm in which you battle every day to survive living. So many tears. So much loss. So much Pain. I will always remember the day I received the gift of relief from torture for the first time! The torture felt like a live-wire that comes loose and thrashes around inside of you. You desperately want to escape your own body, but you can't. It becomes a merciless prison. And this is just one of the symptoms.
Lyme is so torturous that many, like Wren Sparrow attempt to take their lives, only she suffers from Lyme as well as a spinal injury with intractable pain. In the extremity of her suffering, before arriving here, Wren fantasized about unzipping her prison of a body and so she could finally break free from the torture inside of her. Anthropologist Aaron Jackson, who also tried to take his life relates, "I know how fragile life is in the throes of illness and how easily it can be clipped with the shears of [physician] domination and misunderstanding."
Like Aaron, I almost took my life fifteen years ago for the same reason. We both thought that our families would be better off without us. This is primarily due to lack of access to medical care, misdiagnoses, and skepticism among doctors and family members as you become a mere shell of yourself.
When Avril Lavigne's song, "Head Above Water" came out, it was everything I needed; she gave me a voice. If you watch this video, you'll get a feel for the desperation and the consequent elation that comes when your head is lifted above water.