While my faith in God remains strong and unwavering, every day I wrestle with it. I struggle to surrender my troubles to the Lord. I struggle with the horrors of this world. I struggle to simply relax and accept myself for who God allows me to be. I just struggle with the mere fact that I exist.

While my grandpa is continuing to make a miraculous recovery in front of everyone’s eyes, even baffling the doctors, I am still angry at God for allowing him to go through such a harrowing experience in the first place. Over playing cards, my grandpa tried to assure me that my anger was not and is not needed, for he does not and did not fear death, and wasn’t in much pain while he was having the heart attack. Still, regardless of what my grandpa thinks, I remain angry and upset at the world and at God. Some may call it adolescent angst. Personally, I call it empathetic anger, or anger built up over the years, as I have been through so much suffering and strife throughout my life already. And, I’m only going on twenty years old. 

I’m not exactly having a crisis of faith. Rather, I’m having a more existential crisis. Perhaps, a “post-covid” crisis as well. As a result, my mind is fogged and my spirit remains depressed and enraged. Only now, after over a year and a half of isolation and having to grapple with one huge change after another, do I feel like I can breathe again. And, my mind has just begun the frightening process of processing and compartmentalizing everything that has happened since late December 2019, when I took the first dose of Trikafta with a breakfast steak at Outback Steakhouse. 

Thankfully, I’m not exactly depressed. Depression tends to suck all of the energy and creativity out of me. I’m still my energetic and creative self. Instead, I’m just in a sort of limbo, and feeling the anxieties of not knowing or having even an outline of a plan for what’s up next. I don’t know if I’ll be returning to Washington state this fall, for it largely depends on how my grandpa’s doing in several months. I’m missing meeting my writer’s group in-person more than ever, but am not yet sure if/when we’ll meet in-person again (though I hope it’ll be sooner than later). I’m not quite sure how I feel about college. I know I’m going to college, but I’m absolutely scared shitless of it, and I don’t know why. I feel the same way about finding a decent church to attend. I want to find a church to regularly attend, but I’m deeply afraid of stepping foot into one to find out if they’re the right fit. 

I'm really starting to miss aspects of the life I had pre-pandemic, more than ever, now that I'm fully vaccinated and most people I know have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine. I miss meeting up with my friends from writer's group in-person, especially now that we can probably start doing that any day now. It frustrates me that I still don't have a reason to leave the house every Monday night, and I'm terrified that maybe I'll never meet up with my friends in-person again. I miss having a daily routine that made me feel like I was going somewhere and doing something. Hell, I miss having a daily routine in general, even though I naturally fall into a routine, and seem to be falling into a pretty decent one right now. I miss going to the grocery store without a mask or a worry in the world. Even now that I'm fully vaccinated, I'm still very cautious around others and will drive around for as long as it takes to find a grocery store with less people, so the air doesn't feel so "chunky". There's so much that I desperately want to do that we haven't been able to do for over a year, but am unsure of when, or even if, I will be able to get back to doing those things. The simple thought of never going to the grocery store maskless again scares me beyond words. 

I’m also going through an identity crisis. I still don’t know how to react to the fact that I’m autistic, and it’s a huge reason why I’m so scared of rejoining society. I’m glad that I got officially diagnosed last year, as that will finally allow me to get the help and support I’ve so desperately needed my whole life. Also, I finally have a new set of words to describe my experiences so non-autistic people can better understand me, and I can understand myself much better. But, at the same time, autism is massively stigmatized, especially in the States, when it really shouldn’t be. I have unfortunately taken much of that stigma to heart, knowing damn well that a lot of it is bullshit anyway, which has further brought down my self-esteem and has made me exponentially more self-conscious. It doesn't help that even some of my closest family members haven't quite accepted the diagnosis either, and seem to treat me differently than before, even if it is subtle. All I want is to be treated like an average person instead of some alien from a different universe, because in more ways that not, I am an average person!

I also regularly struggle with the fact that if it weren’t for three daily pills, I would be far, far sicker than I am, and the pandemic would've been even more harrowing than it already was (and is). I can’t compute the fact that I rely so much on those three colorful pills, and that those three pills quite literally gave me a brand new, healthy body. The science, funding, and support that made those three little pills possible is beyond overwhelming. It makes me nauseous just thinking about it, and it is especially freaky to ponder the fact that I’m still just a walking science experiment. Part of me is still expecting the other shoe to drop any second now. 

By volunteering myself to science, I’m helping to shatter one glass ceiling after another, not just for CF, but for science as a whole. Therefore, making the world a much safer and technologically advanced place to live. Again, I hate thinking about it, because it makes me feel deeply guilty for occasionally refusing to participate in another CF study or survey, and it also scares me. After all, there is a small risk that an experiment could end very badly, either right away or years after it began, possibly maiming or even killing me. So, I try not to think too much about the significance of those three little pills, lest I feel like I’m gonna pass out. 

However, I can’t stop my mind from pondering and questioning the things that scare me the most. I try to keep myself busy to shut up those thoughts, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I’m doing. Those thoughts remain at the forefront of my mind, and I’m not exactly sure what to do about them. All of my coping mechanisms combined can’t seem to quell this existential crisis, and practically no one I've talked to can relate or even begin to dispel these gnawing concerns. All I can really do is hope that I’m not the only one dealing with these weird thoughts and feelings, as isolating as my life experiences have been.