Werewolves of Lymeland

A change comes over me when the moon is full. It wasn’t a curse that caused my affliction, but a bite.
I try to hide myself away during this phase so no one will see my altered state.
This transformation is painful. I may ache to the point of moaning and groaning. Sometimes a cry, unexpected, will escape my lips as sudden electric jolts shoot through my limbs. My muscles may jump and quiver or lock and cramp. I am taking on a different form and do not look or feel the same.
An invisible weight pulls one half of my body toward the earth making my gait asymmetrical and sluggish. Super strength is not a part of my transformation, instead the opposite. The right side of my body weakens, grows weighty, and numb, except the parts that hurt.
My countenance slips on one side. I am a bright, smiling Jekyl on the left; a drooping, dismal, Hyde on the right. I have not reached the point of drooling, but it isn’t far off, I fear.
My senses of hearing and sight become heightened to the point that I take cover against the light and cringe at high frequencies. In church, the music that I loved is now uncomfortable. When the godly lift their voices in praise, I close my ears and wonder if my sin has caused this physical barrier cutting me off from the songs that once gave me joy. I wonder if peace will ever again wash over me when I hear a familiar melody or if I am always to be a shameful creature marked for all to see by the corrupting effects of the fall of man.
My mind moves in a fog, at times my thoughts are almost feral. I am easily angered and the least infraction can antagonize me to the point I must get away by myself or risk giving someone I care about a verbal slashing. It feels like I am lurking in a graveyard, searching for my own burial site. Surely, there is a headstone with my name on it because this person with sagging expression and stumbling pace is not me. I must have passed from this world at some point. But I can’t think straight; can’t remember. In my head it is a dark night, and the moon only serves to highlight and thicken the murk so I cannot find my way.
I know to claim a moonlight metamorphosis sounds mad to those who have never been bitten. But it doesn’t matter. Those of us who have suffered this fate are accustomed to being accused of mental and emotional instability. We are used to being thought of as attention-seekers, knowing well when we mark our calendars and howl our full moon warnings, we sound a bit delusional. But we have each other. We have formed a pack in this dark place and can bear witness to the truth of one another’s claims.
We see the powerful shining a light on the victims of other diseases. “Look!” they shout, and point, and sympathize, and tell everyone that something must be done to set those poor souls free. They work night and day in their labs, sustained by their sense of urgency and desire to cure those who are suffering. But for the werewolves of Lymeland, they reserve a cage in a dark corner and try to keep us hidden. From the shadows, we see them smiling, proclaiming to the world that our ailment is not as bad as we believe. They assure everyone that it is easy to destroy as if it were a simple, scrawny dog and not a powerful, dominant beast. Their dismissal keeps us locked up and feeds us their “facts” that claim we are fiction.
After all, everyone knows werewolves . . . and Lyme disease . . . are not real.
Lyme feels like this.