I don't know how to feel about finally getting better — lucky, robbed, or both

I've been sick my whole life without fully knowing it. For as long as I can remember — and I mean that literally, because my earliest memories are already colored by it — I cried. Every day. Not because something happened. Nothing happened. That was just my every day. Every time we moved to a new place, I cried so much that neighbors would knock on the door, or leave notes: *are you okay? did something happen?* Nothing happened. That was just me. From age 3 to 24, I experienced depression, brain fog, and exhaustion I thought was simply who I was. It turns out it was gluten sensitivity — but not the kind anyone would suspect. No GI symptoms. No skin rashes. My gut felt iron-strong. Just allergic rhinitis that every doctor blamed on air quality, and depression. That's it. No one looked further. And when I was growing up, most doctors had barely heard of celiac disease — so even if someone had looked, they wouldn't have known what they were seeing. I was the one who first suspected it. Pieced it together slowly. Built the case myself. Then tried to get answers through proper testing — except celiac testing is complicated, often retraumatizing, and frequently inconclusive. So "getting diagnosed" for me meant months of my own research, quiet certainty, and then learning to live with a conclusion I could never fully prove on paper. Then came the sleep apnea. Except I have none of the risk factors. I'm young, female, slim, no thick neck, no snoring. Every single classic warning sign pointed away from me. It hid perfectly — making me more and more disabled while I genuinely believed I was slowly recovering. I didn't suspect it until October 2025. Again, I had to find it myself first. Again, I had to fight to be taken seriously. Again, the path from suspicion to something resembling confirmation was long, indirect, and lonely. February 2026 — a few days ago — was the first day I woke up and wasn't exhausted. First day my brain felt clear. First day I thought: *oh. This is what normal feels like.* I'm 27. And I don't know how to feel about it. Part of me is overwhelmed with gratitude. I get to feel this. Some people never do. Part of me is furious. I lost 20 years. My education, my career, my relationships — all shaped by illnesses no one caught, that I eventually had to catch myself. Part of me is terrified. I've thought I was getting better before. I've been wrong before. And part of me feels something I can't quite name — looking up people who struggled like me, and finding that some of them didn't make it. Feeling close to them. Feeling like I only survived by luck, not strength. I don't have a question exactly. I just wanted to say this somewhere people might understand. Has anyone else felt this strange mixture — grateful, robbed, cautious, and completely disoriented — when chronic illness finally lifts? And for those of you who also had to find your own way to the answer: how did you carry that?