My hope is to at least finish this post tonight, and if I don't get to "Year 5" until tomorrow night, that is okay. For now, onto the 2015-2016 school year. I will preface this post by warning that this post mentions explicit details about severe depression. If that is not something you want to read, you might want to skip this one.
Both Fall and Winter quarter's of 2015-2016, were the hardest and worst of my college years/life. This has to do with a lot of things. For those of you who have read my "An Update" post from last March, you might know what I am talking about. If you haven't I will give a recap here. When I transferred after three years of community college, I almost instantly felt like I had made a mistake, or that the school had made a mistake in accepting me, and that I did not deserve to be at the school that I transferred to. It was a combination of inferiority, coupled with that ever looming untreated depression, and the fact that I was away from home for the first time, that caused me to start spiraling.
The first big problem was that I was living away from home for the first time, and I could not make the adjustment! Even though I had matured and grown a lot in my three years at community college, I was not prepared for dorm life. If it wasn't apparent before, I will mention now that I have mild social anxiety. Once I get to know people I am usually fine, but when it comes to meeting 75 new people, while trying to make a million different adjustments, it becomes really difficult. Being around people I don't know makes me really uncomfortable, which is what also makes things like job interviews hard for me, (looking forward to a lot of that in my future)! But anyway, while everyone else was pretty outgoing, I was a lot more reserved, and didn't know what to do with that. Additionally, within the first five days of moving in, I got sick, which is not how you want to start on the quarter system.
For those of you who have not had to suffer through the quarter system, it is essentially when they condense the work of a 16 week semester into a 10 week quarter. Everything moves at least twice as fast, and the expectations are just as high, if not higher. So, getting sick while trying to adjust to that, is nearly impossible. I blinked, and I was already behind by three weeks, It was an unfortunate way to start. As a result of that, and everything I have mentioned above, I did not do well Fall of 2015. However, as I started to open up, I was at least able to make friends with people on my floor, and that really helped. Also, Fall of 2015 is when Lovely Little Losers was on! As I mentioned in my previous post, NMTD is my favorite web series. Well, Lolilo, its sequel is basically tied for first. I know that not everyone like it. It certainly had its angsty moments, and some rough patches, but overall I still loved it. Also, why yes I am a hardcore Pedrazar shipper. I know that a lot of people do not approve of them as a couple, but I don't care. I have my reasons for loving them, that if I wanted to, I could write about them in a different post. The point is that amidst everything that was going on with my college transition, literary web series were there for me yet again. The difference this time, is that I knew that I was using them as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
As I started to struggle with my adjustment, I started pulling away from my work more and more. I knew that I could not keep up with the reading, so I stopped doing most of it, and started focusing all my attention on TV and lolilo. Like with NMTD, I set up notifications so I knew the second episodes were up. I would refresh pages in an endless loop, and if I did happen to fall asleep, I had conditioned myself to know that the notification sound meant a new episode (just like a Pavlovian dog), and I would instantly wake up and run to my computer. I would sometimes refuse to leave my room for fear of missing the update, and this negative cycle continued the entire run of the show. It was extremely unhealthy behavior! I know that, which is why I have never re-watched the show because even though I loved it, there is somewhat of a damaging connotation attached to it. It is also for this reason that I stopped going on tumblr, stopped reading fanfic and stopped engaging in a lot of fandom related activities and discussion, I really wanted to, but I didn't know how to do it in a healthy way, so I had to stop entirely. However, negative behavior continued outside of the show. I started pulling all-nighters for school which is just about the worst thing you can do for your body and brain! All of the above mentioned combined caused me to have the worst grades of my life that Fall quarter. I barely made it to the end of the term, and even though I did, I spent winter break barely able to make it out of bed. I felt terrible when I woke up every day, and I was tired all the time! So when my grades came back terrible, I did not know what to do, because there was no coming back from that.
I came back for Winter quarter barely keeping it together. I spent a lot of time in bed, started over-eating, skipped classes, and began to regret every part of my decision to attend this school. Even though there were external factors at play, my passiveness towards school and my general despondency were of course the result of years of untreated depression and anxiety. My grades only got worse, and I found it nearly impossible to get work done, until I reached a breaking point near the end of March 2016. That is when I wrote, "An Update". I have not gone back to read it, so I don't know exactly what I said, but I can guess. I was in such bad shape, that I turned to this space to try to express my feelings, because I truly did not know what else to do. Some of the people on my floor knew what was going on, but most did not fully understand. I have not remained in contact with really anyone from last year, but I am grateful for those people. Some of them took the time to talk to me when I was feeling at my worst and most vulnerable, and I will always remember the kindness of those people.
By the end of winter quarter, I had spiraled to a point I was not sure I could come back from. I had stopped attending a class altogether, and I knew that if I didn't get the final paper written that I would fail the class. But I just couldn't do it! I have had moments like this at least two other times during college. The assignment feels too massive in scope, and I feel too confused or overwhelmed to write it. In those other cases I still got the papers done. They were not my best work, but I turned them in because I couldn't see any other way out. But with the paper during Winter 2016, I couldn't see any way to do it. So I didn't, and I failed the class. I failed an English class, even though it's my major, because I was not well enough to write 12 pages. But instead of letting my failure cause further despair, I did something about it. I made the very difficult decision to go and see an academic counselor, When I couldn't make it through the meeting without bursting into tears, she directed me towards the CAPS center, (Counseling and Psychological Services). Thank goodness I decided to go that day, because it changed everything. I started that day barely able to function, and by the end of my first therapy session, I was still feeling terrible, but I also started to feel just the slightest bit hopeful. I then spent my Spring Break reevaluating some things, and came back for Spring quarter with a different outlook.
Spring ended up still being very difficult, but I managed to get through it feeling a bit better than I had at the end of Winter. I started going to therapy on a regular basis, and additionally went on a low dose of an anti-depressant. (I have now been on it for over a year, but the jury is still out in terms of how I feel about this particular medication). I made it to the end of that school year, and that is a huge deal! Before I started going to therapy, I considered dropping out of school. I was convinced that it had become too hard, that I wasn't smart or competitive enough to be at the school I attended, and that it just wasn't going to work. I had failed a class, and I thought that it meant that it was never going to get better. But, it did!
I think I am going to save the rest of this discussion for the next post, because it makes more sense to put it there. This post was pretty difficult for me to write, but it also allowed me to reflect on a very difficult time in my life. My next post will discuss the final year of school, while also discussing why and how I am doing a lot better these days. I might be able to finish that tonight, but if not, it will be up tomorrow.
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