This is a fantasy story . . . But it is also my story.
My name is Dan. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’m a writer. It’s what I wanted to be, as far as I can remember. I lived the shy and sheltered life of the introvert, my nose in books, yearning to create. To be recognized.
I had troubles, as most anxious children do. But my troubles did not truly begin until 2004, when I first fell ill—headaches, muscle spasms, strange flashing lights. I was in college, a drama major with a grueling schedule and massive fears of missing out on a social life. As such, I attributed my symptoms to chronic sleep deprivation, alcohol, and cannabis use. I’d always had a weak constitution, plagued by migraines I inherited from my mother, and due to years of low self-esteem, I was more apt to blame myself for my problems than seek an outside answer.
It was in early 2007 that I had my first truly debilitating spasm—a terrifying night where I woke with my neck locked in an excruciating Charley horse. I spent the next week in bed, on painkillers. In 2008, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, an incurable but manageable chronic pain syndrome—a phantom disease, with no discernible cause or cure.
I gave up on acting. I returned to my first love: the empty page. I wrote screenplays for several years, and then finally moved back to writing fiction. I’d still never managed to write a novel, never actually followed through to the end. So I wrote one book, and then another.
I finally put down in novel form a story I’d dreamed about since childhood, of a world unknowingly teetering on the edge of apocalypse, where ordinary humans become imbued with extraordinary abilities. That story became Fires of Man, and its sequel, Shadows Collide.
When the first book released in 2014, I should have been happy. Instead, I couldn’t feel much of anything, anymore. My book launch was an overwhelming experience, sensory input and adrenaline, coursing through my damaged nervous system like tidal waves which literally left me shaking. I felt so ill that I could only detach from the experience and put myself on autopilot.
Two and a half years of guilt ensued, because at this point I could barely do anything more than write. As an author at an independent publisher, I was expected to handle the lion’s share of my publicity and scheduling, on top of meeting manuscript deadlines. But I felt less and less functional by the day. I thought, at thirty years old, that my life was practically over—I was far too sick to ever travel the world, signing books, the way I’d dreamed. Nor would I ever find success when pain and neurological dysfunction stole away so many of my productive hours.
I saw many medical professionals over the years—from a rheumatologist, neurologist, endocrinologist, to pain management specialists like a chiropractor, physical therapist, and an acupuncturist. None of them questioned my diagnosis. So, neither did I. Perhaps on some subconscious level I was committed to the pain. I was committed to staying the same sheltered child, cooped up by himself with his nose in a story.
Imagine my shock when, in search of new pain solutions, a new rheumatologist said to me, “I don’t think you have fibromyalgia.”
One blood test and phone call later, I was correctly diagnosed with Lyme disease.
Fast forward a most torturous year and two months of healing, and you’ll find a new version of me, writing this today. A changed me, even now not yet fully restored, but more awake and alive than ever. A person who no longer wishes to live behind closed doors, under sick blankets. I have seen where that path leads, have had my body, my mind, my senses, my very emotions robbed from me as the price for that wisdom. I can only give thanks that I’ve been given a chance to have them returned.
And yet there’s much I lost, that can never return. Family that passed away while I was still hollow, unable to mourn. The entire vital decade of my twenties, lost in the mists of illness and time. There is so much left for me to process.
And so, this is my story, my catharsis on the page, to share with all of you. However, if I do my job correctly, if I can somehow convey all I’ve learned through this experience, or even a fraction of it, to you, my dear friends, my readers . . .
Then I hope, with my full being, that the inner journeys of the heart encompassed here might inspire you, too, to reach, to dream, and to never, ever surrender.
Thank you.
Dan Levinson
Author
February 27, 2017