Recently (as of a few days ago), I came across a new Trikafta study, which basically said that people taking Trikafta can expect to live to be an average of 71 years old, with that number being higher (77 years old) for someone who started taking Trikafta before the age of 25 (which I did).
77 years old. I'm gonna live to be 77 years old, at least. I know it's just one article on one study, but still. Holy shit!
Of course, I'll reiterate that this is an objectively good thing. It's good that I'll live to be an old lady, and I'm tremendously grateful for that. Still... I... I don't know what to think about that. And I sure as hell didn't when I first read the article a few days ago. So, I did what I knew to do best: I went for a walk with Toby around Clement Park.
Clement Park will forever hold a special place in my heart, as it was where I first began to heal after successfully fighting off Pseudomonas with phage viruses in eleventh grade. The library where I met with my teacher is at that park, and I agreed to walk to and from the library every day, five days per week, so long as the weather was bearable and I wasn't too sick. Needless to say, I got better very quickly thanks to those walks and much-needed outdoors time.
Though, I will say, I never got back to my pre-Pseudomonas self, unfortunately. Not that I was expecting to, anyway. At the time, I was just glad I could walk a couple miles a day and not keel over along the way.
A little less than two years later, Trikafta happened. Three years after that, I took Toby to Clement Park for the first time. And... oh boy... as I was walking the loop trail around the lake with Toby trotting beside me, I fought hard to swallow my emotions (I didn't want to burst into tears around lots of other people, many of whom were eager to pet my puppy). For the record, most of the emotions I was feeling in that moment were good. My heart overflowed with thankfulness for Trikafta, for my health, and for my life as it currently was (and is).
Alongside the thankfulness and joy, I also felt... intensely sad... for my 16-year-old self, for lack of better terms. A part of me desperately wished I could go back in time, and reassure my younger self that everything would turn out okay. In fact, I had a dream like that once, about a year or two ago. My memory of the dream has since faded quite a bit, but I vividly remember waking up crying tears of happiness and relief upon waking up from it.
I guess that dream gave me some closure, though not complete closure, given that I still feel so... I can't even explain it. Lost? Unsure? Wishing that dream was reality and I could relive it? I don't know. I sure as hell can't put into words what I don't know, let alone what I do know.
Point it, emotions are hard. It's emotionally difficult to deal with the consequences of Trikafta. As I make my way through college and continue to explore my likes and dislikes, abilities and disabilities, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and possibilities, etc. I get more and more overwhelmed... but not necessarily in bad ways. I just feel greatly overwhelmed by the possibilities that lay before me.
Prior to Trikafta, living with CF was like living as a bird born in a welded-shut cage. I just had to accept that my life would be short and severely limited. But then, Trikafta came along. All of a sudden, after over eighteen years of living like I was, the cage was completely done away with, and I was (and am) free to fly out into the world, like everyone else. So, while I am, in theory, free to do whatever I want, truth is, I can't just spread my wings and fly. After all, I never dreamt of flying, let alone ever had the chance to learn, so what am I supposed to do?
Well... I'm just now learning how to fly. Again, I'm doing this by simply throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, while also taking suggestions and advice from the people in my life who know how to live long, functional lives.
If covid taught me anything, it's that I don't find any joy whatsoever in doing absolutely nothing with my life. During the covid days, I spent most of my time sitting at home playing video games, and only leaving the house to run basic errands and get some fresh air. 95% of my socializing happened over Zoom and Skype. I never stepped foot into a restaurant, and most of my groceries were delivered to my doorstep. I avoided people like the plague, and wore an N95 or gas mask whenever I had to brave indoor public spaces.
Needless to say, it sucked major ass for me, and everyone else in the world. By the time I got my vaccines and could get out into the world again, not only did I have to re-learn a lot of social skills, but I was ready to attend college, for no other reason than it would give me some structure to my routine and face-to-face, in-person interactions with other people my age.
A little over a year later, now that the initial shock of attending college has largely worn off, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life as I'm running out of general pre-requisites to take.
For the record, I haven't come up with nothing. I just don't know what to pick! On one hand, it's a very good thing that I'm figuring out that I'm good at a lot of stuff I never thought I'd be good at. But, on another, it's paralyzing. I've only just started to create a web map of all of the different careers I could take that require a college degree, and it's already huge. I haven't even included careers I could try that don't require a college degree, of which there are many! Nor have I included careers I have little-to-no interest in, such as careers related to real estate and education.
What am I supposed to do with all of this information? How am I supposed to narrow down a single career out of hundreds of thousands? Hell, what happens when I do narrow down a career? How does college graduation work? How do job applications work? How to job interviews work? What will the job market look like once I finally graduate college? What will the real estate market look like? What will the economy look like? What do I do with my first paycheck? How do taxes work? How does retirement work? How does health insurance work, and how do I make sure my health insurance covers Trikafta? How does politics work, and what will the political landscape look like when I'm out of college? On and on and on...
Such questions are why I considered an early death a security blanket of sorts. While I didn't (and still don't) want to die, dying early meant I would get to skip most of the complicated "how does life work?" questions every functional adult has to wrestle with. Now that I'm no longer dying for the first time in my life, I'm having to face all those "how does life work" questions for the first time, too.
