I finally made it to Spring Break.

A much needed week off from the monotony of going to class four days a week, and going home to do busy work for my classes. To kick it off, I had the privilege of bringing a close friend, Eric, to my old stomping grounds: the Santa Fe Arts District in Denver, Colorado. 

While there, I led my friend around the few blocks of art galleries I’ve now visited many times this year. Because of that, I wasn’t really focused on the art itself. In fact, I don’t recall a piece of artwork I saw today, other than the very familiar murals that have been on the walls of buildings for years. Instead, my mind was elsewhere, for the most part, as I reminisced about the nearly three years I spent going to Girls Athletic Leadership School, which was (and still is) right there in the arts district. 

I wouldn’t say that I was looking back at those years with any sort of nostalgia. After all, those were some of the toughest years of my life that I can remember. Back when I was attending GALS, I was incredibly anxious and depressed. My physical health was starting to decline irrecoverably, despite my best efforts. And, holy shit, my daily routine back then would’ve given Cameron Hanes a run for his money. 

Every school day, I woke up right away at 5:45 AM. To ensure that I actually got out of bed, I had an extremely obnoxious alarm clock plugged into the wall on the other side of my bedroom by the light switch. From there, I left my bedroom and got ready in the bathroom, where I had all of my school clothes folded on a shelf underneath the vanity. After that, I headed downstairs, took my pills with an extremely healthy, fat-and-protein-heavy breakfast, then plugged myself into my vest and nebulizer for a half-hour. By 6:15 AM, I was in the car with other GALS students from my neighborhood, en-route to school 25 miles west in downtown Denver which started at 7:45 AM. 

At school, I started my day with a second breakfast, then did an hour-and-a-half of some sort of athletic activity. Some days, it was yoga. Other days, we walked to the crossfit gym on Santa Fe Drive. Or, we’d run laps around the neighborhood from Sunken Gardens Park to 8th street and back to school, until we had ran/walked two-to-five miles. By 9:30, my first academic class kicked off for the day. 

After school, I’d immediately go home (which took about an hour) and change into my TaeKwonDo uniform, and head to the dojo where Master Yosavany worked my ass off. 

“Crying don’t fix nothing!” was his motto with me. If I ever felt sick, I could go into the bathroom and “...puke out [my] guts…”, but I was still expected to finish my workout no matter what. 

After all, if I didn’t do that, my chances of dying a horrible death increased significantly. 

By the time I got home, it was usually 6:00 or 7:00 PM. I’d quickly throw some wild game from the freezer onto my George Foreman grill, chowed down on a salad and/or fruit my mom made for me, did my second round of CF treatments, took a long, hot shower, and went to bed by 9:30 PM. 

Every. Single. Day. 

For. Three. Fucking. Years.

Unless, of course, I was super sick. In which case, I had to go to the hospital ASAP. 

And yet, no matter how hard I worked out, no matter how well I ate, no matter how terrified of the hospital I was, Cystic Fibrosis was winning. 

I never reaped any of the rewards my peers got from the rigorous exercises and mindfulness classes. While my peers were winning sports championships and getting straight A’s, I was barely a C-average student, I coughed and talked like I’d been smoking for fifty years, and I looked like a severe anorexia patient. Every time I went to the hospital- whether it was for something serious or simply a routine checkup- I never got great news. My family praised God like Moses and the Israelites whenever my lung function stayed stable between doctors’ appointments. 

But, as time went on, those “Praise God!” moments became increasingly rare. 

Yet, for some inexplicable, incomprehensible reasons that I cannot even begin to describe, I was miraculously rescued from the deepest, darkest pits of hell in the craziest ways. 

Things happened in my life that I can only describe as “God ordained”; things that nobody could’ve predicted or set up. They simply just happened. 

For whatever reason, whenever all hope was lost, whenever failure and death seemed imminent, whenever nobody but the Almighty Himself could solve my problems, He showed up. For whatever reason, God decided my time wasn’t up yet. It wasn’t my time to step into His throne room. It wasn’t in His will for me to flunk out of high school or even graduate it a semester or two late. 

For reasons I cannot understand, every time I truly needed something, it was provided to me in the weirdest ways possible. Just to name a couple, I found out about Pseudomonas-killing phage viruses through a random ad that appeared on my grandma Debbie’s sidebar while she was reading some random news article on MSN. I ended up in Jeffco’s Homebound program with Dr. Eric Smith as my teacher, when my mom threatened to counter-sue the district after it threatened truancy charges against us. 

And nearly ten years after I attended GALS, I spent a beautiful Saturday morning walking around familiar art galleries with Eric, who’s miraculously recovering from a heart attack and two strokes that, scientifically speaking, should have killed him!

I have no words to describe how that makes me feel.