In less than 24 hours from now (Sunday), I’ll be walking into my Calculus One class for the first time, kicking off my final semester at community college before I transfer to a university.

Even though I know that I’ll be okay; that my math skills are solid enough to endure Calculus so long as I do my best. My time management skills are solid enough to stuff a Biology lab course in my schedule too, and I'll still have plenty of time to enjoy myself, I’m absolutely shitting bricks about this semester! 

For the past three weeks or so, I’ve been having a recurring nightmare where I get lost in the hallways at college and can’t find my class no matter what. Either that, or I arrive to campus for the first time that semester, and it’s finals week. Even though I usually recognize that I’m dreaming while I’m still stuck running around endless cinderblock hallways, dreams like that never fail to freak me the hell out. And I’ve been having them for three weeks straight. 

On top of that, I’ve been obsessively reviewing my notes from precalculus and other science/math courses, knowing damn well that nothing’s gonna stick because I’ve been doing so in a panic. I also can’t seem to recall anything from those previous classes, not because it isn’t in my brain (I know, logically, that everything I’ve learned in school, so far, has been encoded into my brain somewhere), but because I’m scared. 

Indeed, I’m genuinely freaked out about this semester and the semesters I’ll be taking on afterwards. Why? Because, despite all of the therapy, writing, and college I’ve done, I’m still extremely insecure and afraid. I still have no idea what I’m doing, where I’m going, or even what I want out of life. And that uncertainty is petrifying. 

I recognize, obviously, that no one can predict the future. It twists and turns in unexpected ways all the time. I’ve been taught this lesson many, many, many times over, as though God Himself has been trying to get me to relinquish my fear and perceived power over the future. And yet, even though I know I shouldn’t worry about tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day, or the next day, I still worry about it incessantly, and conjure up “what if” scenarios in my mind that probably won’t happen.

On top of that, I don’t like the fact that I don’t have a set, solid goal in my mind, as it only grows the dreadful feeling of uncertainty. I know that what I’m going through is perfectly normal for someone my age, though for me, the existential crisis is a little bit more severe because… well… as I’ve written a billion times by now, I didn’t expect to be healthy and/or alive at this age. So, I simply failed to prepare myself for a long, healthy life. 

By that, I mean I failed to entertain the question, “What do you wanna be when you grow up?” I simply lived in survival mode, going to frequent doctor’s appointments where I got to watch my lung function decline in real time, while wrestling with the concept of my own death. And it turns out, I got pretty damn far in my journey towards accepting and embracing my own death before I got on Trikafta.