My past is especially gruesome and devastating. I was so close to death for so damn long. Even when I was "healthy", I was always one minor infection away from risking losing everything in one of the worst ways a person could. My family could almost never rest, especially when illness took a hold of me. Nobody knew how much time on Earth I had. Doctors only said it would be very short compared to my peers'. Some doctors predicted I'd die before my first birthday. Others were more optimistic, believing medical science would progress as I aged, granting me the gift of a normal lifespan and near-normal health. 

Needless to say, the optimists were right.

I'm going into my twenty-first birthday with an average lung function of 120%, and an average weight of 135 pounds on just one or two meals a day (nowhere near the over 4,000 calories of food I had to shove down my throat every damn day, just to have the chance to maybe gain a pound per month). My tolerance for physical exercise is only increasing, even though I'm not doing nearly as much intense exercise as I did as a teen (I can usually jog up the stairs to the fourth floor of my college without stopping. As a teen, I could barely walk up one flight of stairs without bending over wheezing at the landing).

My tolerance for extreme cold and wind is much better too. Pre-Trikafta, I could barely stand walking several yards in temperatures below twenty degrees, and dusty weather made me feel like I was choking to death. Now, I shovel my drive and walkway in sub-zero wind-chills in very light winter gear (a couple hoodies, cowboy boots, a baseball hat, and motocross gloves), and only my fingers freeze. Dust also doesn't bother me any more than it does anyone else, though I'm still very wary of it. 

Overall, I'm just doing my best to adapt to a new version of my normal self, knowing that I won't die of a lung infection anytime soon. But, that hasn't done anything to help my anxiety or depression. If anything, my mental health has only been made worse by Trikafta. 

Trikafta, as I've explained before, fixes my cells after they're created. Trikafta can't alter my DNA, but it can (and does) fix most of the damage dealt to my cells by my faulty CFTR gene (the gene that causes CF by causing my cells to form with severely twisted-up salt chambers, preventing them from properly receiving and processing sodium, causing my body to be dehydrated and produce excessive amounts of sticky mucus). Trikafta isn't perfect, and it isn't a cure. I still have CF. I still suffer some complications from CF. But, Trikafta does significantly reduce the severity of my CF symptoms. With a cost, of course. 

That cost being the fact that Trikafta has caused the salt channels in my brain to be "stuck open" in places they shouldn't be. These salt channels are only supposed to open up in times of extreme distress to feed my "fight-or-flight" response. But, now that they're always open, I'm basically being fed a constant, overwhelming influx of adrenaline and cortisol. The only way to close off those salt channels is to get off Trikafta, which is something I absolutely refuse to do. Instead, I'm taking tranquillizing medication to reduce my "fight-or-flight" response. Taking a relatively high dose of Zoloft and Buspirone isn't a cure-all, and my anxiety is still really bad. But, it staves off most of my panic attacks, and keeps me relatively functional. 

Still, the world is a deeply scary place. I would feel so much safer and more secure if I knew I was gonna die in the hospital in twenty years or less. But, now I'm being faced with the prospect of living well over fifty more years (doctors just re-evaluated the average life expectancy for CF today, and it's now around 50 years old; a huge jump from just 37 years). Frankly, I'm questioning if I have the ability and strength to live that long. Such a long life doesn't seem to compute in my brain, as it spent my whole childhood being hardwired into believing I would die before my parents and grandparents. That is very much no longer the case, which has really been throwing me through an endless corkscrew since the infamous "Trikafta Purge". 

Going to college hasn't helped me combat my existential crisis. It's actually made it worse, because college is all about focusing on my future and learning how to plan for months, years, even decades into my future. I still can't even plan for shit a month ahead of time. Let alone for my retirement. Yet, professors and peers alike seem to expect me to at least be able to comprehend the idea of living into my 80s, because unlike me, almost all of them have grown up just expecting to die of old age. 

In a way, college has only made me feel even more alone in this world. It's not a good feeling of being alone either. I cherish and need "alone time" to recharge, and I like being independent. But, I don't like to venture into the unknown alone. Especially since there is no standard path for me to follow.

Most people can more or less expect what will happen to them over time: be born, go to school, go to college, get a job, have a family, retire, die. But, I've never had such an option. I didn't dare dream of a future growing up because... well... I just didn't have a long life ahead. At least, not until literally two years ago, which isn't nearly enough time to get over the shock of everything. Let alone, get used to the opportunities and responsibilities and expectations of an average lifespan. 

Now, my future feels like a lifted Chevy pickup with flashing brights and truck nuts, tailgating me in the right lane while I'm going fifteen over the speed limit, with the driver hanging out the window with a loaded 9mm in his hand. My future's right on my ass demanding attention, but I want nothing to do with it. Yet, I'm in college because I want a decent shot at an independent, comfortable life. Apparently, I do want something to do with my future, because I wouldn't be in college otherwise. But, damn it, I am so torn between those two contradicting wants. A part of me is just hoping I'll crash soon, because I don't have the heart to quit myself. 

I feel like I'm in a lose-lose situation. If I disengage from college and kind of just retreat into the safety of my comfort zone, depression bites me in the ass. But, if I keep on charging headlong into my studies and future, anxiety bites me in the ass. It's like picking between getting in a fistfight with a grizzly bear or a bull moose. Either way, I'm gonna get fucked up. So, I might as well keep on chugging through my studies.

There's gotta be a healthy balance where I'm not constantly fighting like absolute hell for my life and sanity. There's gotta be a middle-ground somewhere, where I'm not always overwhelmed by anxiety or depression. Why can't I have a little bit of both, instead of an overwhelming dose of one or the other? What am I doing wrong? Am I even doing anything wrong? What if I'm just destined to live with frayed, electric nerves and/or crippling survivor's guilt? What if I can't relax? Ever. 

I'm aware that I need to learn how to relax, now that I know I will have a long life, because I can't live forever depressed and anxious as fuck, especially since that depression/anxiety is completely unnecessary these days. I no longer need to spend my summers and holidays travelling the world and visiting with relatives. I no longer need to shoehorn so much into my schedule knowing due to having a much higher chance of dying young than anyone else around me. I'm feeling better about staying home while my family travels (I love a week straight of uninterrupted alone time), knowing that if/when I want to travel again, I can and I won't be too sick. But, I still feel like I'm missing out in many ways, because, well, what if? 

What if I've grossly overestimated the effectiveness of Trikafta, and the other shoe will drop any day now? What if I die in a rollover car accident? What if I fall off the hogback ridge in the Valley? What if I'm one of the extremely unlucky (and unlikely) few to die of covid despite being heavily vaccinated against it? What if World War Three breaks out, and Russia sends a shitload of nukes our way? What if, what if, what if?

The what-if game never fails to ruin my day. It never fails to make me so painfully aware of time passing by. It never fails to make me feel guilty, depressed, or downright afraid to just laze around for a day. The what-if game, or more accurately my anxiety, keeps me on my feet at all times, even though I really don't need to be so productive all the time anymore. I have the time and the health to just do nothing every now and then, and not feel guilty or freaked out by it. Yet, my brain, conditioned by almost two decades' worth in doctors betting on my expiration date like it was a horse in the Kentucky Derby, refuses to let me just chill the fuck out. 

Again, I don't know what to do to calm my anxiety down besides doing what I'm already doing, or getting off Trikafta. Obviously, I will not get off Trikafta. I am adamant that I stay on Trikafta no matter how bad my anxiety gets. Unless I turn yellow as a result of my liver dying, I will not get off the medication that has granted me the health and strength to attend college and dream about the future.

So far, so good.