Note: After weeks of not writing much, I finally broke through my creativity block somehow! Well, sort of.

Well, this last year or so has been a mixed bag for all of us. Like always, we’ve had our ups and downs, good times and bad times, although I suspect this last year (and perhaps the near future) has had more intense ups and downs than previous years. At least it has for me. 

Unfortunately, I've been deep in a miserable rut for over a year. Hell, I may even argue that I've spent my whole life feeling miserable over all. I'm sure many people can unfortunately relate to that, especially since this last year or so has been an absolute clusterfuck. I spent the first part of 2020 dealing with the most intense anxiety attacks I have ever experienced. Like, they were so bad that I seriously thought about calling an ambulance, fearing that my Pulmonary Atresia had come back to bite me in the ass (which has gone completely untreated since I was a toddler since my heart miraculously healed itself, or more accurately, God got involved). But, within a couple weeks of having these intense anxiety attacks at least once, if not twice a day, I realized that they weren't actually dangerous. I just felt like I was dying whenever I had them, but the truth was, they were harmless (so long as I wasn't driving. Unfortunately, I often had them while I was driving, forcing me to pull over as soon as possible to let the anxiety pass). 

Thankfully, my doctors and I both knew that these anxiety attacks could be brought to heel using anti-anxiety medications, specifically Sertraline and Propanol. I started on the smallest doses of both medications, and gradually worked my way up to the maximum dose over the rest of the year. I was very, very cautious when using the medications. I didn't want to get on anything that would be hard to get off of, since I never planned to permanently need antidepressants. My doctors understood, and we worked together to find what worked for me that I was also comfortable with. 

But, those anti-anxiety meds had an unintended side-effect: depression. I've seriously been dealing with the worst depression I've had since middle school, especially since I've mostly blamed myself for it (and we've been in an isolating pandemic since March 2020). After all, in December of 2019, I got the best Christmas present ever, which was the life-saving medication called Trikafta. Why was I so miserable? I literally got the medicine I've always dreamed of getting but never expected to actually get it. I shouldn't be deprived of serotonin or overflooded with cortisol. I should be grateful (and I was and am), yet despite having my whole life suddenly ahead of me, I felt the future was bleak. And, when the pandemic hit, that just further fucked things up for me. 

It has now been over a year since I started Trikafta. Physically, I'm healthy. At least, my numbers look incredible. But, I still feel like the bloated, dead deer I saw on the side of a wet and busy road I was driving down the other day. My anxiety and depression hasn't gone away. While my numbers look amazing, I no longer really feel like them. I'm tired, yet very restless all the time. I have a hard time going to sleep, and a hard time getting out of bed in the mornings. I don't eat more than a meal per day, and get most of my nutrition from pills and goat milk. I'm extremely motivated, yet extremely unmotivated at the same time. Time feels like it's both standing still and fast-fowarding. I've done so much, yet so little this entire year. But, through it all, I've definitely learned a lot more about myself, and had an infinite amount of time to really think introspectively and figure out who I really am, what I am good at, what I believe, what my fears are, so on an so fourth. I also added a new word to my vocabulary (Autism), which has helped me in this journey of discovering who I really am and what I'm really made of. 

At the time I'm writing this (so, end of January 2021), I'm politically quite progressive (especially when compared to the conservatives in my family), spiritually I'm a Christian who has fallen pretty deep into the heavy theology rabbit hole on my quest to really get to know my Creator, emotionally I still feel like I'm ten years old and ninety years old simultaneously, physically I feel both healthier than ever before and sicker than I've been in awhile, and mentally... well... let's just say I'm an absolute mess there, as I'm sure most of us are right now. 

I've also traveled a lot this year, despite the pandemic, during which I've been able to stay very much isolated from the world. How is that possible, you may ask? Well, a lifetime of Cystic Fibrosis trained me how to survive a zombie apocalypse pretty well, as it turns out. I had a stash of N95 masks, a gas mask, rubber gloves, and shitloads of hand sanitizer long before it was cool. I also grew up pretty isolated from the world, partly because of the annual flu season I had to avoid, partly because I'm just a miserable bastard (literally and figuratively). I also grew up having to constantly protect myself from bacteria and other things that I couldn't exactly avoid, especially since I've always been pretty avidly out-of-doors. Like I just can't avoid Pseudomonas and had to learn how to safely coexist with it, I was well prepared to safely coexist with covid-19, armed to the teeth with hand sanitizer, rubber gloves, and of course my obnoxious use of anti-viral masks.

But, I'll admit. While most people would kill to safely travel just a quarter of the distance I've traveled this year, I wasn't down to travel. I was forced into it. I mean, it's not entirely true that I had no choice. I just had two shitty choices: travel or be forced to entertain my extroverted mom and little brother and two dogs. So, that's how I begrudgingly ended up in the front seat of my Xterra with a puking puppy on my lap for nine-and-a-half hours, on my way to Utah. The drive was an hour and a half longer than expected because we hit a couple of massive thunderstorms along the way that almost took out the semis driving in front and behind us, and for the first 200 miles or so, we were stopping non-stop due to our carsick puppy. But, after that, I just gave up trying to clean up the mess, and put up with puppy puke soaking my clothes for the rest of the drive. All I wanted to do was get to point B as soon as possible. 

However, it wasn't all miserable and bad. I really needed the change in scenery. Before that big road trip to Utah, I rarely ventured beyond the neighborhood, and I was starting to lose it. I needed to get out and go on some adventure. I just didn't think my big adventure would be a summer spent traveling. During the first part of quarantine, a "big adventure" was more like a day-trip to the mountains to hike with just my household. Not a several hundred mile drive over the Rockies, across a desert, and to another big city in the next state over to stay with friends. But, as usual, fate had other plans. And, that summer honestly went a lot better than I expected it to. 

Of course, there were many bumps in the road. We had a pretty close (and rather traumatizing) first brush with covid, which prompted us to drive to Tacoma, Washington and spend a week down there. Looking back, that spontaneous summer adventure to Tacoma was a lot of fun, but in the moment, I hated it. We all did. I didn't expect to ever move to Washington, but several months later, that's exactly what happened. 

Given my history with Washington, I fought that move pretty damn hard. I never wanted to live in Washington, especially since living in Washington meant I had to live very close to the relatives I never really got along with. I was worried that living in Washington would be a lot like visiting relatives in Washington, only instead of the trip only lasting a week, it would last years. 

Thankfully, I was wrong in many ways. I mean, I still miss everything and everyone in Colorado very, very much. But, life in Washington hasn't actually been too terrible so far. I haven't been bombarded with unwanted attention any more than I would've back home. I've been able to make my Washington house feel a lot more like home. I've even been able to explore my surroundings enough to have almost all of Gig Harbor mapped out in my head. Sure, I still don't know Washington anywhere near like I know Colorado, but at least I can drive to the nearby harbor, beaches, islands, and stores without having to hear Siri's annoying voice interrupting my bluegrass and rock music. 

I must admit, I also really like the scenery around here. It's not like the mountains or the plains like I know and miss. But, the rainforest and the ocean are pretty damn awesome. There's all sorts of wildlife running around on the land and swimming in the Sound and the harbor. The grass is always green and growing, there's always green, leafy foliage, and there are even a few year-round wildflowers. Pretty soon, in February, western Washington's spring will begin, and there will be hundreds of wild blackberries and huckleberries growing along my backyard fence and throughout my front yard within a couple months. There's also lots of interesting things within the ocean and along the shores, from sea anemones that clasp their tendrils around your fingers when you touch them, to harbor seals, orcas, clams, crabs, and alien-looking starfish. 

I also like how stable the climate here is. It's always between 40-50 degrees. Rarely, does it get to 60 degrees during the day or below 40 at night. I have kept my window open literally since I've gotten here, allowing the smells and sounds of the nature outside to come into my bedroom (without bringing any of the bugs in). I wish there was more sun, but it comes out at least once per week, and there are artificial ways to get that sunlight even when there is none. I have an artificial sunlight lamp I turn on every morning, and I also hang out in our tent sauna for ten minutes at least twice a week, where I really feel like a lizard sunning itself under a heat lamp.  

I hate to admit it, but I miss the snow. I know when I lived in Colorado, I always bitched about how terrible the snow was. But, now that I haven't seen a single snowflake since I left Colorado, I miss the snow. I also miss Colorado's sun, wind, and general landscape and climate overall. I enjoy the great, green forest here in Washington, but I want so badly to be back on some wide open plains or high above the treeline. The only place that resembles anything like being on the plains or 14,000 feet up is on the middle of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. But, beyond that, there's nowhere else that I know of that feels anything like being in the wide open wilderness. At least, none that are currently accessible. I know there are nearby mountains and lots of wide open spaces out by Yakima, but during the winters and early spring, they're practically impossible to get to due to how much snow falls on Washington's jagged mountains.