Growing up I was very confident, loud and wanted to be a part of everything.
Once I was in middle school I was convinced that I would move across the country for college and that I wanted to get away from New York.
That was before Covid happened and not realizing until I was deciding what college to go to that I was scared.
I knew I wanted to go away but I had changed my mind about how far.
SUNY Fredonia was my place, it had my major, it was only an hour away from home, so I still got to be independent and on my own.
Super exciting getting out of the house, no more rules from my parents, this was “the life”.
Until life got really real.
Over some time during my freshman year I figured out that I did not like my major.
No hate to journalists or journalism, but a task I could do with full confidence two years ago was sending me into a bathroom crying because of how anxious I was.
That task was talking to people, I had to go up to strangers and try to interview them, and I couldn’t do it.
I was finding myself really unhappy and anxious. Before college I had never really experienced such stress and anxiety.
This was all new to me so in no way did I recognize how bad my mental health was getting.
In my eyes it was “reasonably” explained as “college is hard” and not “I have poor mental health”.
My major was not the only stressor of my life at the time, but I wasn’t learning what I was confident in.
This caused a decrease in motivation in all my classes and wanting to get out of my room.
Over time I had started to lose weight because another way my body reacted to stress was having no appetite.
Once again, not being at home and not realizing my poor mental health caused me to not take care of myself.
During my Spring semester as a freshman I was diagnosed with alopecia areata.
For some background that is an autoimmune hair loss disease.
My body’s way of reacting to my stress, anxiety and my poor diet was my hair falling out.
Can you imagine the stress and anxiety you would get if your hair started falling out because of how stressed and anxious you were? Yeah it wasn’t fun.
I had so much stress and anxiety that by mid summer I didn’t have any hair on the bottom half of my head.
As I said before I had other things going on in life.
Like the classic freshman year heartbreak, and family drama back at home.
Even being an hour away felt like thousands of miles away. I was homesick and still get homesick.
Being scared and feeling alone mentally was so hard and I wasn’t fully expressing how unhappy I was to my friends or family.
I experienced poor mental health and I was in a very dark state and every school year since have been able to pull myself up one day at a time.
There are days, weeks and months that my stress and anxiety get high, but overtime you are able to recognize it a little more.
We all breakdown and we have all been low.
The point of sharing my story is to acknowledge how important checking in on yourself is.
During my freshman year I didn’t know what I was doing and had no idea what to expect.
I had a rough time, but now in my junior year looking back at how much I have grown keeps me going everyday.
During my freshman year I met the girls who I live with today that know me just as well as my family.
Understand that you’re not alone, because that was one situation two years ago out of millions that I’ve experienced in college.
Life keeps going and you have to keep moving forward with it.
During my Fall semester as a sophomore I was convinced that I would be transferring home during Winter break.
I was still unhappy and it was my mental health.
My options were running so low that the only way to fix it was to get out, to run back home.
During my Freshman year I got so low that I was still struggling to get out the following year.
I still had no idea how to take care of my mental health, I was still scared.
During my sophomore year I started telling myself “there’s nothing I can’t handle”.
Writing a paper? Mental breakdown? Don’t want to go into work?
There’s nothing I can’t handle.
This has helped me so much because everything I have experienced, I’ve come out on the other side.
College is filled with so many experiences but remind yourself that the good weighs out the bad and you’ll get through whatever you need to.
