Aside from loneliness, I do have a lot of survivor's guilt. I'm well aware of just how rare my case of CF is compared to all other cases of CF, and how close I've come to death. Yet, compared to most of everyone with my same condition, especially those suffering from the same type of CF I do, I am miraculously healthy to the point much of my health can only be logically attributed to Divine Intervention. There's no other way to explain my health, because most people with my kind of CF decline severely no matter what they do, and are on the lung transplant list by the time they turn 16. In fact, an 11-year-old kid in my city with a less aggressive type of CF, who I read about on the forbidden CF message board, is on his death bed after a failed double-lung transplant attempt. And, his story is not very unique in the CF community.
I, on the other hand, am extremely healthy and my case is basically unheard of until now. Because of that, I often ask God, "Why me? Why heal me but let everyone else die?", to which I haven't gotten any answers yet. To be honest, I don't feel qualified to take on the challenge God more or less tasked me with when I was born. He performed life-saving miracles for me. He provided a light in the tunnel when all hope seemed lost. And, God also gave me this amazing talent to write, which has been apparent for most of my life, since I was in kindergarten. Nobody else in my family is even close to being a writer, except for maybe my grandpa Lyle. But even he doesn't write nearly as often, or as detailed as I do.
Due to all of that, and then some, I think it's hard to argue against the thought that I maybe was put on this earth for a very serious reason. I wasn't just put here to live and die like everyone else. God is keeping me alive for some strange reason I just can't put my finger on. However, I just never feel good enough to fulfill this life's purpose, whatever it may be. I wish God gave it to someone else, because I'm always second-guessing myself and using self-depreciating humor to tear myself down while elevating everyone else around me. But, maybe that's all part of the plan. Perhaps, anyone else given my role in life would've gotten too big-headed.
I stopped looking at my local CF message board a long time ago, except for the occasional peek here and there, because it's full to the brim of deaths and intense suffering that I just don't care to know about. The CF message board is where hope and determination go to die. It's the place people go to admit defeat and say their final goodbye. It's the place parents with kids who have CF come to grieve and detail their child's last day alive. It's the place people come looking for hope, but they find the complete opposite of hope. So, I've stayed far, far away from that cursed website, even if my insight might benefit the general public if I ever mustered up the courage to start talking.
Instead, I've tried to focus solely on myself when it comes to my health. I've kept up-to-date with medical science involving both Cystic Fibrosis and the general public. I've kept up with all of my treatments, medications, calories, and exercise to ensure I'll make it through the day. I know CF is still too complicated for scientists to cure with the knowledge they have today, but I'm confident that they'll eventually find all of the answers and cure CF. Maybe it won't happen in my lifetime, but it will eventually happen, assuming we don't blow ourselves up first. Based on the current political system, as well as history, I don't have much hope for the future of our dying planet and am tempted to put a "Giant Meteor 2020" bumper sticker on my Jeep to express my pessimism.
Sometimes, it isn't always possible for me to focus only on my own health. People often get in the way of things, demanding me to answer their questions or justify my ways of treating my condition. Many of my distant maternal relatives often try to force me into their medical quackery, claiming that since X worked for them, X will work for me too, even though they don't know half of what CF does to me. So, I'm often distracted, or forced out of, paying close attention to my needs, to defend my needs and ideas from those who seek to change the way I take care of myself to fit into their own wacky standards of living.
When the world hears Cystic Fibrosis, suddenly everyone is an expert in treating it. Hordes of people with holistic medicine invade my online inboxes and even my own house with things they claim will help me out, though rarely, if ever do they give me anything that has an even slight effect on me. If essential oils didn't taste like the bitter apple stuff people spray on their shoes so their dogs won't bury them in the backyard, I'd probably drink an entire bottle of the stuff in front of those who told me it had some sort of special healing effects, just to prove to them that either I am indestructible, or their stuff just doesn't work. I'm willing to bet big bucks on the latter.
