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. 

At least, that’s what I gathered from the last lecture day of my summer course on Human Development, in which we spent three hours learning about and discussing dying and death in grave detail (pun intended). Turns out, after someone goes through the grieving process upon finding out that they’re nearing the end, they tend to focus on “getting it right with God”, along with their legacy, and what they may leave behind for their friends and family. 

I had the idea of writing a memoir for a few years before I joined my writer’s group, and I had many, many things typed up and ready to be read in my Google Docs. I had all of my passwords and usernames written down in a physical journal I kept in my nightstand, as well as those same usernames and passwords typed out in my phone’s notes. I also explicitly wrote in my journal of passwords to “Read my Google Docs”. 

Even when I joined the writer’s group, I kept that journal of passwords and usernames updated, and continued hoarding every piece of paper that I sketched on, storing them all in my nightstand unbeknown to anyone but myself. According to my Human Development professor, those were signs that I’d reached the final stage of accepting my death; of accepting the fact that, unless a literal miracle happened, Pseudomonas was gonna kill me like it killed the author of “Salt in my Soul”, and that was that. 

That said, I didn’t accept my death lying down. I fought like hell to live. My whole life, from my diet, to exercise, to my pills, was regimented to the extreme. I attended my frequent doctors’ appointments religiously, and wrote constantly to alleviate some of my constant anxiety and anger. 

Even so, I knew that unless a literal miracle happened, my days were very much numbered, as my body continued to deteriorate despite my best efforts. But instead of “getting it right with God”, I more-or-less did the opposite. Assuming God existed (which, for most of high school, I didn’t think He did), I saw Him as the epitome of evil. I mean… what kind of God would allow kids to suffer and die from things like Cystic Fibrosis?

Then, out of nowhere, thanks to a miraculous medication, I was suddenly ripped out of that final stage of human development and dropped at the very beginning of the “emerging adult” stage of human development. Physically, I was aging backwards; Trikafta healed my body in ways I never thought were possible. Mentally, however, I’ve felt 90 years old ever since. 

Of course, I’m tremendously grateful for the fact that I’m no longer dying of a terminal illness anymore. Since getting my health back, I’ve changed my mind on God (for the most part, anyway). I literally thank Him every morning and evening for my family, friends, and health, all of which have enabled me to go to college and succeed at it. I work very hard to appreciate the things that I do have, and not get envious of others who have things that I don’t. I work equally hard to accept and appreciate my life for how it is, rather than how it could’ve been. 

Because I’ve been practicing gratitude every day for years at this point, my mental health has significantly improved, and I no longer see God as a sadistic freak who likes to torture kids for fun. 

At the same time, I still struggle with envy and resentment towards God and others. I still have a desire to be “normal”, and still have some lingering anger over the fact that I’m not and never will be “normal”. I still struggle immensely to fit into society and connect with my peers and community. I still feel tremendously out-of-place in the world, and that feeling is exacerbated when I step onto any college campus. After all, I act more like a 90-year-old than a 23-year-old; I make better friends with my professors than my peers. Hell, when I attended the summer college Bible study, I made stronger friendships with the hosts (who were in their late 50s/early 60s) than with the peers I tried to connect with. 

While there’s nothing wrong with having much older friends as a young adult, I still don’t like how hard it is for me to connect with my peers. I don’t like how out-of-place I feel as a student, or how lost and scared I feel despite the fact that I seem to have taken to college like a duck to water. And, no matter how much I write about it, or rant about it to my therapist, or try to make good friends with people my same age, or do well in my classes, the feeling of being completely out-of-place hasn’t diminished even slightly. 

To put it more specifically, I feel like I’m a character in a Final Destination movie. I was supposed to succumb to my long list of genetic diseases… but I didn’t. Now, I’m basically an old woman in a young woman’s body, trying to navigate an increasingly complicated world. I’m doing what I think is right, in the sense that I’m going to college and trying to make up for lost time, so that I can one day succeed in an increasingly-competitive job market and live independently. But, for some reason, everything just feels so… wrong. Like I shouldn’t be here. And it’s only a matter of time before I meet my Maker by getting crushed between two cement trucks on the highway. 

I know that feeling (among others) is entirely irrational. I know, logically as well as spiritually, that I’m exactly where God wants me to be. If I wasn’t meant to survive the things that I have, then I wouldn’t have survived them. 

Why then, is it so damn hard for me to relax and accept the gift I’d undeservedly been given? Why can’t I simply trust in “God’s plan” as it’s called, and fearlessly charge into the future? Why can’t I accept the objective fact that I am, in fact, an academic of sorts, and will do just fine throughout the rest of college as well as in whatever career(s) I choose? 

If I knew the answers to those questions, I wouldn’t be the stubborn, anxious creature I am.