I’ve been contemplating on writing this post for a few days now since I started to write it. I didn’t think I’d even ever take the time to sit it down, and start writing, but it’s an itch that endures. Should I give a rundown of everything that’s led up to this moment? Should I go for straight to the point or be dramatic? What is the goal of this post anyway?

I never thought I’d have such a colorful academic career (not in that way), and certainly not the kind you tell stories about to others. People close to me know that I have been struggling with major depressive disorder and anxiety issues for a few years now. I am open about my mental health. But to those who only know me on surface-level, here’s a glimpse of who I really am.

First of all, I don’t really know where to start, or how to start. Maybe I’ll begin with this:

Life never goes the way you plan it to go.

Sometimes, it does if you’re lucky. If you’re someone like me, then too bad for you, buddy. I learned that the hard way. There are some lessons in life that are just heard from other people’s own stories, and you nod in sympathy because oh, you feel bad for them and for their sufferings. You sympathize, but you can never really understand, because those things have never happened to you and you’re not in their shoes. I thought those were just things that people told people, until they happened to me.

Before I went to college, I had the rest of my life all planned out. It went a little like this:

1. Get into a prestigious school
2.  Study for three years
3. Graduate with honors
4. Immediately get a job after
5. Save up for traveling expenses
6. Live the life I’ve always wanted

But it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, so I had to tweak a few things.

1. Get into a slightly cheaper school
2. Study for four years
3. Graduate with honors
4. Get a job after maybe a few months
5. Save up for traveling expenses
6. ???

So I tried to settle with more realistic expectations and compromises. It went rather swimmingly. For my first year in college, I was a little disheartened at not being able to get into the school I wanted and I was going to take up a course that I was only mildly interested in but was still mostly aligned with my current skill set (aka writing). It was practical, after all.

But then around the next year or so, I decided that I didn’t want to be mediocre and that I wasn’t going to spend my college years slacking off and not even putting the least bit of effort into my studies like I did in high school. I knew I had potential, I knew I was intelligent, but I never really gave it my all. I worked my ass off for the next year and got into the Dean’s List and the Honor’s Circle for a few semesters.

I was hopeful. I had my mind set on wanting to graduate with latin honors. But it seemed like I was always just going to fall short of everything that I was hoping for. I got sick for two months during the most crucial period of my junior year. It derailed me, and for those two months, I was sulking and moping. Frankly, it was terrible. Being holed up in your room with almost no one to talk to made me irritable, and restless.

Things went downhill from there. I lost a lot of things that year too. Going into my senior year in college, I had the first inkling that I was depressed. My therapist would probably tell you that it’s been a long time coming, and that it was brewing long before I was even in college. But that major event was the tipping point. I was inconsolable, but I tried hard not to let it show because that’s just the kind of person I was. I didn’t have anyone at this point in my life, either.

I couldn’t let other people know what I was going through. I was too prideful for that. Everyone knew me as an intimidating person, one who always had her smarts with her; people thought I was intelligent, immovable, invincible, untouchable. I wasn’t.

For the next few months that followed, I went through the motions like rote. Until now, my memories from my senior year are hazy and disjointed at best. The more that time passed, the more I isolated myself. I was sleeping more, but at the same time, I was also losing sleep. I was eating more, but I was also eating less. It was confusing, my brain was muddled, and my memory was shitty.

I was trying to deny that I was depressed, because how could I be? I was an optimistic person, positive, and I’ve made it a personal philosophy that I should always try to see the good in things and in other people. I tried so hard to push the thought of me being mentally compromised into the farther recesses of my mind, because I was scared.

Time was slowing down, but it also seemed to be moving far too fast for me to catch up.

It was like attempting to walk in sludge, and my feet were too heavy for me to lift to take another step. It was dark everywhere around me, and I was drowning on air.

I was playing with the thought of suicide. I never got to the point of executing any plans I had envisaged, but I was certainly entertaining them. It was hard. But even saying it was hard is an awful understatement.

I tried to pick myself up again after that horrible year. I told myself that not graduating on time was only a minor setback, and repeated to myself all sorts of wonderful words to cheer myself up. It worked up to a point. But it did nothing except plunge me back down into muddy pits and even murkier waters.

I was beginning to grow hopeless and helpless. I couldn’t tell my family that I was depressed. I’d already begun to accept that maybe I was depressed, except that the concept of being mentally ill was a foreign one to my family. There’s a stark memory from back then that I could never forget: I don’t resent anyone for it, but I once shared a post on Facebook about depression. It was a relatively harmless post.

Mostly, it was a call for help. That Sunday night, they asked me what the post was for, and why I posted it. They asked me to take it down. Instead, I could only hear blatant rejection in so few words.

Of course, all of this plays a big part into that moment when everything just boiled and spilled over.

My mom confronted me one night, because she knew I wasn’t well. In that way how mothers can tell when their child is hurting.

She asked me what was wrong. I told her that I wanted to die. I was tired of being alive.

I cannot fully illustrate with words the sheer magnitude of the encompassing relief at having to say those words to someone I knew could help me. It continues to be one of the most liberating things I have ever done in my life.

After that, I was asked to come to school so I could talk to my guidance counselor. I remember crying a lot inside her cramped office, and using up an inordinately embarrassing amount of tissues. It’s a wonder how I managed to tell her everything that I had to get off my chest. That was the first time I’d ever told anyone of what I felt, and what I was feeling.

That was the first time in two years.

Things moved at a rapid pace following that. I was recommended to a psychologist after they let me take a test to gauge my condition. By that point, I was already feeling a lot more uplifted and ready to take on whatever it was that needed to be done. I was tired of feeling sad and down all the time, because it was either go get help, or end my life for good.

I went into intensive therapy sessions for twelve weeks following, and at the same time I was taking medications for my depression and anxiety. It was all so new to me, and the things I thought I’d only ever read about in books and see in movies were happening to me. I was okay for a while, and for a few months after, I was doing well. But of course, things are never that easy.

Around the later part of that year, I had a relapse. I was frustrated at my slow progress, and began sliding down a spiral that sent me feeling so many more emotions at once that I couldn’t process properly: guilt at having to experience the good things despite my non-accomplishments, and shame at how I was accomplishing nothing even though I was supposed to be doing better.

I was also avoiding meeting with my therapist and my psychiatrist. It was made easier by the fact that it was just after the holidays and even they were mostly unavailable. But sometimes, you just have to do the braver thing: asking for help.

Asking for help has always been my weakness. I don’t know how to ask for it. But I was tired of shouldering everything on my own, and admitting you need help is always the first step in being brave.

Finally, an olive branch was hung in front of me. Things were looking up for real, for once. That isn’t to say there weren’t a lot of mishaps and missteps to finishing my degree, because there was – from defending my topic proposal in June, to lagging behind everyone again, to picking myself up countless times until I could finish my paper in time for my defense in March.

All of that couldn’t have been possible without the help of the many important people in my life. Most of the credit goes to my mom. There were a lot of hiccoughs along the way but having a solid support system in her (along with my sister, my cousin Sybill, my best friend Addie, a few trusted friends from high school and college, other friends and relatives) was the key to me finding my way here.

Look, I’m not going to be preachy or weepy about this whole thing. I’m just saying that my journey hasn’t been easy to say the least, but it’s definitely more rewarding because I know that my disability (and yes, mental health is a disability) never hindered my success.

God, saying this all of this has been a success still tastes a bit clumsy in my mouth. I’m trying to grapple with my conflicting emotions about what I count as success in my books, so forgive me if I’m still working on that.

But here I am. I’m graduating from college, a place I have long attributed to being my hell, after seven years.

If you’re struggling with mental health issues and problems, I hope my post has some merit in spurring you into action to call for help when you need it. Trust me, and trust in the people around you. You’re never alone.

I once thought it pretentious and an oversimplification of things for those struggling with mental health issues, but

It

Does

Get

Better

(not easier, but absolutely better). So please, stay.

To my closest friends, who at some point I may have depended on throughout the years and down the stretch, Pio, Abby, Madel, Mimi, Klaire: I am forever indebted to you, thank you for being loving and supportive friends in my life during the times I most needed you. Thank you for pulling me up out of neck-deep waters, and being lifesavers. Your words have always meant a lot to me especially during the times I doubted myself.

To all my family, especially to Mommy, Sybill, Addie, and Lola: You were the shining light during the darkest periods of my life. Thank you for holding me up when my heart was too heavy. For taking up more than the weight you can carry on your shoulders. I wouldn’t be who I am and be where I am without you. Your unconditional support and love have buoyed me back safely to shore up to now.

To my doctors: Thank you for all your help. I know it is in the service of your professions, but thank you for saving lives because you are in the line of work that you are. You’re heroes for carrying and lifting up so many people in your lifetime.

To relatives, friends, family friends, and teachers: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for believing in me, and for supporting my mom when she had her hands full with me (hehe).

To daddy: Thank you for being a consistent and persistent loving presence watching over me, and us. The reason I can go on is because of your and mommy’s love and sacrifices, even long after you’ve gone. Your legacy continues in me.

For now, I step onto a new stage in my life, and getting my pen ready for a new book in this whole new world.

But that is a story for another time.

I’ve finally come to the culmination of all the past trials and tribulations of my bachelor’s degree. I feel like there’s something ironic or perhaps even poetic about how it’s taken me seven years to get here.

There are a thousand thoughts swirling around in my head all demanding for clarity, for the chance to be given meaning but I’m pretty overcome with too much emotion right now to properly voice them out. It’s been a long-time frustration of mine when the emotions overpower my need to vocalize them, and I settle instead for just feeling everything. It persists until now.

For the longest time, I’ve contemplated writing out a disclosed and intricate timeline of my journey in college for the past seven years on my social media. I wanted to write about how it was stepping into the shoes of a young woman full of dreams, and striving for the goals I had in mind before I could fully comprehend the consequences of my choices. I also wanted to speak about the milestones in my academic career and the achievements I attained, and the eventual deterioration of my mental health in my continued quest for perfection in everything.

I actually still do want to write about it. I want to inspire people with my experiences, and the wisdom I’ve gained because of them. But I’m thinking if it would be contrived if I was to be dramatic and serious in my story, because let’s be honest. When was I never not serious in anything?

I’m scared, though. I’m afraid that I’ll be exposing myself in that way if I write it out. I feel like people have always seen me as an effortless achiever and that I was that kind of person who always had her shit together. It was that same prejudice that brought me to my lowest point in my life because I was afraid of being judged for my weaknesses.

But most of all, I’m just afraid that people won’t care if I share my story. That’s always been a fear of mine. I know that I don’t want pity when people start noticing (if they ever do). Being on social media has felt like an endless cycle of whetting my appetite for validation from external sources, and the consequent patronization I get in return.

However, if I ever do start and finish writing the draft of that post, I’ll publish it here first, most likely.

For now, there’s that. I can’t believe I’m finally here. I’m graduating from college.