I don’t know where you all live, but where I live the mosquitoes are out for blood.. literally. There seem to be a lot more of them this year and they seem to all be very hungry. Yes, I have heard the theory that Bill Gates released a bunch of technologically altered mosquitoes in the last 3 months, but I think the increase has far more to do with climate change than technology merging with insects to create some super mosquito.

If you’ve read my blog at all, you know that I love being outside. I ground myself in nature. Find myself in nature. Don’t have to deal with traffic and stupid people in nature. Can hear myself think in nature. Basically, nature is my emotional support place. Well right now my emotional support place is filled with winged creatures who enjoy biting me. I spent time outside a couple different times last week and walked away with about 25 bug bites. This was after dousing myself in enough Off spray that if that stuff was flammable I was sure to go up in flames if anyone lit a match anywhere near me.

Besides the fact that mosquito bites register at the top of the annoying scale, they also caused my body to go into a flare. Yes, you read that right. The annoying winged blood suckers caused my body to flare up. Apparently, when a mosquito bites you your body responds by creating an immune response. Most people’s body’s create an appropriate immune response. My body responds to a mosquito bite like it’s being invaded by some deadly foreign species and must sound the red alert alarm bells in every system of my body. Three days later the alarm bells are still ringing, but they don’t seem to be on red alert anymore, for which I am thankful.

It was yet another reminder of how unpredictable my body is and with that reminder came a whole host of emotions. Let me tell you ugly crying while itching swollen red bug bites and listening to sad lesbian songwriters on repeating is quite a look and a vibe. As I had snot running down my nose and the lesbian songwriter was singing about “learning to breathe through the ugliness you see”, I realized that life will bring ugly moments, hard moments, heartbreaking, soul crushing moments our way. Sometimes we can see them coming and sometimes they smack us or bite us out of nowhere. I am not unique in having life smack me with things that I could have never seen coming. Every person has a moment, experience, season, etc of their life that feels completely unpredictable and like life is taking a bite out of them.

Unfortunately, there’s no spray to ward off the bites of life.. even if there was there’s no guarantee it would actually work. I speak from experience as I had on the “Deep Woods/Heavy Duty” Off spray last week and it did nothing to keep me from being breakfast, lunch, and dinner to several local mosquito families. All we can do is take the bites from life as they come, apply whatever medicine works best to heal our souls and bodies, and keep breathing through it all.