"But You Don't Look Sick?" (loneliness, the Gospel, and other things…)

“But you don’t look sick?”

If you’ve battled Lyme disease (or any other chronic and/or neurological illness) for a small amount of time you’ve probably heard this phrase posed to you by doctors, family, friends, and strangers a number of times. And my guess is you’re pretty sick of it by now. Yeah, I know the feeling. It’s so funny that no matter who I talk to this always comes up. It’s also funny that when I talk to other “Lymies”, this topic is always mentioned somewhere in our conversation…and it is spoken of with great agitation.

It’s frustrating because as a chronically ill person who’s battled an “invisible illness” for a long period of time you don’t exactly know what to say when someone comments, “Oh but you look so good!” I know I should be glad that people think I look “so good” even after being sick for…