A letter from February 5th, 2020

Dear FutureMe, Today is February 4, 2020. You've been suffering with SIBO, anxiety, depression, and other undiagnosed illnesses for many years. Too many years. Your whole childhood and teen years were consumed by these monsters. You didn't get to enjoy what a child should enjoy. You knew about germs, how they spread, the incubation period. You were always on high alert for symptoms, 24/7. You felt alone in elementary school, you often walked around the track by yourself, feeling nauseous and anxious. You missed many, many days of school, and on this day, I ******* wish I hadn't. You've put your life on hold for now, your plans got derailed by your treatment. I wanted to go to university, have a job, contribute to the world, but right now I'm suffering with the symptoms that haunt me every single day, the same ones that have plagued me for years. Right now I'm on the liquid diet, in an effort to figure out the cause of my gastrointestinal issues. I got the results of my food allergy test not too long ago. Remember when I used to eat eggs everyday thinking it was what I could tolerate? LOL that backfired a bit. By the time you read this, it will be your 25th birthday. Life is so rocky right now that I dont know what life will hold for me in the next 5 years. Will I still have sibo? How are me and dads relationship? Do me and kurstin talk? Will my nausea and gut issues be cured? What college did I go to? Do I suffer less with anxiety and depression, or much more? Will I still have candida? Will I live with sammy? Is marley still around? What about vovo? Can I eat freely without worry? What job do I have? There are too many questions I need answered, that only I can answer in the far future. I am 19 right now, laying in bed with my symptoms flaring because I ate coconut. I'm nauseous, weepy, depressed, stressed and much more. Actually, I'm not sure if it's the coconut. Tell me, do I ever find out? Do I ever find out what's causing me my anguish everyday? Is it truly just anxiety, or something more sinister, because right now I'm at a loss. I hope you got some answers within the 5 years of me writing to you. Because I know I cannot handle much more of this, future me. For the sake of us, please tell me I'm okay. I feel it, whatever it is, that sinister thing growing in me, but the problem is that I dont know if what I'm feeling is real. You know what I mean, you ARE me after all. I'm on many meds right now- 3 antifungals for the candida, sertraline, n-acetyl cystein, ichol, oregano oil (******* GROSS btw, I'm sure you remember), magnesium+calcium+vit D supplements, and tummy glycerite. I dont know what you're doing to deal with your anxiety, future me, or if you even have control of it (I cant imagine you do, it's so ingrained in my head that it's become part of my personality and the way I function) but here are my favorite things to deal with it right now- THC/CBD oil tincture, THC facial spray, 12 hr gravol, ginger supplements (because I'm sure you know I struggle with nausea all the time), citrine crystal, relax-o-ring, and my pressure point bands. Who knows, maybe I'll still have these things 5 years in the future. Right now my state of mind isnt good. I'm stressed, depressed, underweight, never hungry, always sickly, and struggling with many health issues (diagnosed and undiagnosed) and I'm waiting on the results of my heart exams, (holter monitor, ekg, treadmill test) tell me, did they come out okay? Or, on another note, did I overcome it all? Am I at last healthy enough to have a stable job, or a stable life in general? Because knowing that 25 year old me has her **** together would be the greatest thing I can think of right now. Right now, I want to be a miner for crystals and fossils, and god I hope I've achieved that dream by the time you read this. Did you go on excavations and digs? How many crystals and fossils have you found? Have you traveled, like I want to right now? What I want to know most of all, out of all things mentioned in this letter, is if I'm better and healthy. 5 years can be a very short or long time depending on how you look at it. And I'll know which it is when I look over the details of my life in those 5 years, when I read this letter back to myself on May 11, 2025. Man that doesn't even feel like a real year. But then again, when I was 5, 2020 didn't feel like a real year either. I dont know if things will remain the same, change for the better, or get worse in the future, I just need to know that I'm happy, because at 19 years old right now, I'm not happy with my life and how it's going. This was not what I had planned. On a happier note, I'm going to list some of my favorite things right now- Favourite names: Belle, *******, Robin, Camille, Rose, Henry, Alfie, Persephone Favourite foods: That spaghetti squash dish with tomato sauce, cream cheese, and chorizo sauce, Salmon, black olives, lasagna, anything fudgy, fresh beef bone broth with chunks of meat on it, 90% dark chocolate, honey dijon chips, plantain chips, roasted duck and roasted chicken thighs Favourite colors: Mustard yellow, dark olive green, forest green, light peach, deep maroon Favourite games: Neverwinter, minecraft, Mario kart, super mario galaxy, wordsearches, pokemon go, animal crossing pocket camp Miscellaneous: grey pitbulls, peach iced tea, oil painting, drawing, cuddling with Marley Things I'm working on: trying to get my *** up and do Sarah's painting, healing my gut and figuring out what works, managing my nausea and anxiety, getting diagnoses, writing down more recipes, reevaluating my life, gaining weight, overcoming my emetophobia and heart anxiety, and most of all, discovering who I am again, because I've lost myself and who I am these past few years. So that's that for now, I dont know if I'll even remember writing this, but knowing myself, the more I try to forget about something, the better I remember it,somehow. I hope life gets better for me, and that I'm happy 5 years from now. So good luck, and don't **** it up~ Rupaul