Kids Under Twenty One

My mental health problems are real and they are valid

I will not judge myself for the bad days when I can barely get out of bed

I will not make myself feel worse because someone else appears to be handling their mental illness better than I am handling mine

In Defense Of Milk Chocolate, The Underdog Of The Chocolate World

Sorry, that title might be misleading. I didn’t fail, I guess. But I did get D’s, for the first time in my life. And I did land myself on Academic Probation. I don’t know why I capitalized that, Academic Probation. Maybe because it holds so much power.  I’m on Probation and I lost all of my scholarship money and I have been kicked out of the honors college, and if you had told me a year ago that not only would these things have happened to me, but that I would be telling the internet about them, I would have laughed right in your face. I’m a smart girl. I do my homework, and I study for my tests, and I go to class, and I do not ever get D’s. But here we are, and it happened to me, and I’m telling you because this shouldn’t ever happen to anyone else. You might want to get comfortable, because it’s kind of a long story.

To tell it, I need to tell you that I had been taking Prozac since February of 2013.  If you’re reading this, you probably know that I’ve had Anxiety since I was 9 and Depression since I was 16, and you know that because I talk about it, because I think it’s important not to be embarrassed of these parts of my life and the things I can’t control about myself. 

I started college in August of 2014 and it was the best, most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. By the end of the semester, I had a group of friends, I had joined clubs and activities, and I didn’t want to die. All of those things were new and welcome changes from my senior year of high school. Also by the end of the semester, I had a D in American Government, and a C in Media in Society. I was pissed because I knew that I studied for exams and I did the homework and I went to class most of the time, but I also knew I had skipped a couple of classes and I was adjusting to college and I gave myself a break and said, you know, everyone messes up a little in their first semester.

I knew these grades weren’t me, so I just told myself I was going to be better next semester and thought that that would be enough to do it. Now this is where the story starts.

Second semester was, in a word, traumatic. On the fourth day of classes, a Thursday, my grandpa went into the hospital for quintuple bypass surgery. Also on the second day of classes, one of my closest friends was hit by a car (while i stood 6 inches away) on our way to our first class of the day. Everything is off to a great start, and then, weeks later, I receive my first round of exams back and find that I had failed them. 

You know those video games where you navigate your character across these platforms and you have to jump to get the coins, and you have to jump over obstacles and duck under things and basically just try not to get killed while at the same time trying to collect the coins floating above your head? Yeah okay that was my semester and I’m pounding on the X key or whatever it is that makes me jump and I’m doing everything I’d ever been taught to do to pick up that stupid coin but the me on the screen won’t jump and then I fall off the platform and have to start over.

And if you fall off the platform too many times, you lose your 3 lives and the game is over. 

And that’s how it happened for me. 

And so it’s February and my grandpa just died and I’m in the school psychiatrist’s office and the doctor hears me say all of that (well, I think she hears me but I’m crying and probably yelling because I’m so mad at myself for not being able to touch the coin, and I’m mad because I hadn’t come up with the coin analogy yet and I couldn’t figure out how to get anyone to understand that I’m working so, so hard and I’m not getting anything back) and anyway she hears me and she says ‘it sounds like you’ve been through a lot of trauma.’ and I’m thinking yeah, no shit. and she tells me i’m very anxious and i’m showing a lot of symptoms of depression, so maybe i just need more medicine. So she gave me some Trazodone because I said I was having trouble sleeping and she gave me some Zoloft for everything else and, because I told her everything I could think of that was going on in my life and because she’s a doctor and I trust doctors, I took the medicine. 

As it turns out, I was taking way too much medicine. For the rest of the semester, I was a zombie. I was completely desensitized and just wanted to be asleep all the time. And I was skipping meetings, and breaking plans, and just laying in bed feeling sorry for myself. And all this time, all I’m doing is studying and studying and studying and I’m not doing any better in my classes and I’m not understanding why and I’m hating myself for it because everyone thinks I’m lazy and I’m not, I’m not, I’m not.

And then it’s finals week and I am failing, I am FAILING intimate relationships and I’m panicking because that was supposed to be my easy A, and I’m barely hanging on to my C’s in all of my other classes and how do you tell your parents you aren’t getting acceptable grades in anything? So I lied, and I studied my ass off, and I did okay on my finals but I kept lying until my grades came out on MyZou and I couldn’t lie about them anymore and I had gotten a 1.92 semester GPA and I hated myself for it. It’s like that was the only thing I could feel all semester, was how much I hated myself. I could not feel how much I must have annoyed my roomie, staying in bed all day and never giving her any privacy. Or how much I must have annoyed the exec board of my sorority, because I did just the bare minimum and didn’t put as much into the chapter as I know they deserve. Or how much I hurt my mom when I lied about my grades and how i was feeling. 

So fast forward and it’s the day before my 19th birthday, it’s May 18th and I’m in a new counselors office and my mom and I are both there and we’re telling her everything, everything, and she stares at me for a long time and she says “I think maybe you have ADHD.” And then she tells us why she thinks that and it’s the best birthday present I have ever gotten in my life because finally I understand why I just can’t learn the way I’m supposed to.

And that’s it, that’s how I failed my freshman year. And there was talk about not letting me come back to Mizzou, and there was talk about whether I really wanted to, but I think I have to. Because now I’m not taking any of those medicines anymore and I’ve been seeing doctors and counselors once a week at least, and I’m working very hard to learn how to learn things.