Do we actually live this long?

Dear 100-year old Chris,

I was told recently by our ENT doctor that we are “very immunocompromised”.

As you may remember, this explains absolutely every symptom that we have had when we would go outside as of late (early 2024).

So how do you even exist? And how were you finally able to manage all of this?

I’m seriously having a hard time justifying to myself that I deserve to be accommodated and to realize that my boundaries are actually valid.

I wear a mask every day that I go outside, it can get sweaty, it can itch, and it can just downright be uncomfortable to still be masked in Texas in Spring 2024…

But it’s necessary because, as our therapist stated, our boundaries are important, right?

I hope you were able to keep all of this up, I bet it’s far easier when you’re at the stage of life that you are, though I do want to know how long it took before our arthritis got so bad to where we couldn’t do the things that we enjoy.

I also know, for sure, that you have long realized that the social conditioning that reared us was wrong about us.

We weren’t any of the negative things that it told us that we would be.

And I have just realized that we are not actually of deficit just because we have physical disabilities and struggle with our mental health.

I just wish that you could tell me when we would reach the stage to where we would have confidence in ourselves again.

We did so well between 2013 to 2015 and, because our health was so good, we still reminisce, even though we were completely broke at the time – and that isn’t even an understatement.

To have good health, it’s something that I envy right now, most millennials in our age range are at the best physical shape of their lives and, here we are, we continue to suffer.

Suffer from physical ailments, from ill mental health, and from societal pressures.

We still have our parents with us because you know that our moral compass and conscience would never allow us to abandon family.

But I bet that you’ve forgotten how you used to write this way, huh?

I just learned that ADHD delays the age of maturity from 25 to 35, so I know that we still have a ways to go before we can expect ourselves to have things ready by that time.

You also used to be scared of the supposed “10 year curse” in your life.

2008 was when our family’s store closed down.

2018 was when our family lost our home.

I wonder what 2028 will bring, or were those two just a coincidence?

Especially considering how awful 2018-2019 were for us…

How we began to empathize with the hikikomori of Japan we were living their lifestyle to a tee.

Or how we literally did not sleep for over 2 hours because of our noisy upstairs neighbor at that apartment complex from hell.

And especially how we had zero clue or feeling of control in our lives because we had just gone through so much, emotionally, mentally, and physically.

2019 was the year that we needed to have sinus surgery, and the recovery time was so long.

I’m about to have an outpatient procedure, the one that we heard from our ENT doctor a few years back: Clarifix.

It’s scary because I just found out that there are long-lasting symptoms and I literally do not know what to expect from this.

Do things really get better from here on out for our allergies? I doubt that the sinus pressure I get from peak Spring and Fall allergy seasons will disappear, but I do hope that the post-nasal drip finally calms down.

We have been using Dupixent for years now and things still haven’t calmed down.

And, at this point, our doctors no longer want to give us any form of additional drug treatment since I am taking so many already.

But anyway, you know that I’m scared. You remember how scared you always were at 30, right?

I’m just glad that we finally realized that gamifying our lives would work wonders for our growth mindset.

And you don’t owe me anything, honestly.

I just hope that you’re happy and that we have lived a wonderful, beautiful and fulfilling life reaching the many goals that we have, failing fabulously and the ones that we didn’t, and finally having fun with this existence.

Respectfully,

Chris

P.S. Did we ever become a data scientist, or was that just a fad? I honestly don’t know at this point since I can’t seem to do anything but obsess about data at the moment. I hope that we did well in MS in Data Science program that we’re going to be pursuing in May!