The Girl of Before and After

My life feels like it’s been a series of “befores” and “afters”. Before that first flare up—before PANS—and after it. Before my worst flare at age eleven, and after.

I feel like I was a different person in each of those time frames. I was someone, a girl I no longer remember, when at four, PANS twisted me into someone unrecognizable. I was learning to be someone new, someone who was some semblance of the girl I used to be, when it came again, breaking me and building me back together with all the wrong pieces, into the person I am today. And now, I feel like I’m stuck rearranging the pieces into their proper places, and trying to reconcile who I’ve been with who I am.

Am I the fearless child, who hadn’t a care in the world? Am I the elementary schooler who didn’t quite fit in, who spent her days in school and at recess with friends and her evenings crashed and lashing out? Am I the eleven-year-old who took to books as if they were her only escape from the torture chamber of her own mind? Am I the fourteen-year-old who sat and listened as her so-called friends tore her to pieces with words for knives? Or am I someone else—someone who is a part of all those girls, but also none of them. Someone broken and repaired, shattered and rebuilt.

I don’t know the answer; I’m still trying to find out who I am, especially in relation to who I was. I’ve been through a lot because of PANS. Pain, depression, anxiety, OCD, and more.

And all the while, I was growing up. I never got the chance to find out who I am; I was too busy trying to find out what was wrong with me.

There were ways I was forced to grow up too fast and things I never got a chance to mature in at all. I’ve got a better understanding of pain and hardships, of suffering and the way it can be so completely hidden from others’ view, than most kids my age. But in friendships, relationships, and social cues, I’m hopelessly lost. Because while other teens were out shopping, out on dates, or just hanging out, I was curled in a ball on the couch, whether in pain or fear. Or I was at some appointment, with a needle in my arm and crimson in a vial.

PANS has shaped aspects of my life I would never have thought an autoimmune disorder would affect. There isn’t a single part of who I am that hasn’t been touched, bent, and rearranged by this disorder.

Who are you, if not your mind?

Who are you, if not you words?

Who are you, if not your deeds?

Because PANS affects all of those things. It controls and twists your thoughts, your mind, which in turn changes your actions and words accordingly. I am PANS, but I am someone outside of PANS, too. I am a girl, broken and rebuilt. I am a girl, who can choose who she wants to be.

I am the three-year-old of unbroken dreams and fearlessness. I am the five-year-old of pain and temper tantrums. I am the eight-year-old of happy school days and tear-filled nights. I am the eleven-year-old of demons and a spiraling mind. I am the fourteen-year-old of backstabbing friends and disappearances. I am all of those people, and I am the almost sixteen-year old of learning to put the broken pieces back together like a puzzle.

I am who I was, and who I am. I am the girl of before and after.