The Road to Intelligence is Paved With Insanity
So I went to different schools in two states.
The first school that I went to was a community college in Dallas that was not even an hour away from home.
Taking the classes themselves aside from math because I’m horrible at math but even that was not anywhere my biggest difficulty.
Being on campus was a reprise from dealing with home and I would often stay on campus until closing. It was my only safe space.
I had always struggled with severe depression and anxiety, ADHD, and possible PTSD although those things were still not formally diagnosed until much later in life.
I felt extremely alone as I had no friends and I didn’t have a sense of community that often students in college talk about.
I at the time didn’t think that that should have been my priority, that what should have been my priority was just making the grades and getting the degree.
I had gone so long without emotional support from others that I gave up on the idea that I still needed that.
I was still struggling with anxiety and suicidal thoughts but I didn’t want to admit that there was a lot that was wrong with me because I didn’t want the ‘crazy’ label that my mother had.
I went to a second community college in a different state and it was there where I saw my first therapist and received my first diagnosis of severe depression.
I may have been put on medication for the first time I don’t remember.
Now once again I was a full-time student which mental health-wise may not have been the best thing for me.
Once again I would find myself staying at the campus for as long as I could because I was in a similar environment to the one I was used to at home.
My third school was when I was at a university and arguably my mental health had shocked even me because I was arguably getting very close to becoming not only a danger to myself but possibly to others.
Once Again I was a full-time student studying for more than one major and although I was thankfully living alone in my apartment and where I lived was maybe an hour’s walking distance from the school I was beyond miserable.
So although I already had a formal diagnosis of severe depression and anxiety my mental health was deteriorating in other ways I felt very out of control with my thoughts and this probably should have been the first time for me where I should have been hospitalized either willingly or by force but there was no reason why I should have still been a student.
My only real reason for continuing my studies was I was living on my own barely getting by on student loans and financial aid and I knew that if I took a considerable amount of time away from my studies I would also lose my apartment because I would no longer be able to keep up with the rent.
I could not bear to lose what very little that I had.
One Friday night when I was alone in my apartment I was listening to a particular song on repeat and this was a song by Soundgarden called head down and I had heard this song numerous times but yet there was something about this song at that moment with my mental state being what it was where I was just reaching an unbelievable death of despair and mania possibly.
Thoughts became out of control they became obsessive in my dark room while listening to Chris Cornell’s voice all I could think about was both my mother and I finally committing suicide together.
I’m thinking about that song at that moment became a theme song for my relationship with my mother.
And that night all I could see was both of us hanging from the ceiling.
I So scared of myself and yet I could not do the simple act of contacting 911 because of my other memories of dealing with them when trying to get help for my mother.
I remember going into my bathroom and sitting in my bathtub staring at a blue light and out of all of the things that I could have said to myself to snap out of it I kept repeating the famous Winston Churchill quote about ‘When You’re going through hell keep going’ I Have one memory of being at the campus library and remembering that that day was my mother’s birthday and anyone who really knows me knows that I used to struggle a lot more around my mother’s birthday.
And I remember trying to get out of the library as quickly as I could because the only thing that I wanted to do was to throw myself off of a building like my mother once did before I was born. And in my very sick desperate mind I thought doing that would be almost a gift to her.
A different memory for a different day that is probably the scariest for me because it was so random and it almost happened I remember it being a Sunday and I was on campus and I was trying to go home and catch the bus and I had to keep my hands in my pockets because something told me to gouge my eyes out.
And the desire to want to do that was just so strong and I was so scared and I didn’t want to be on the bus because I felt like I would be even more unsafe and so I remember just walking myself home with my hands in my pocket.
Because it was a Sunday most of the campus aside from the library was closed.
So my therapist and psychiatrist were not available. I have not kept up with all of the medications that I was put on while I was a student but I was probably put on as many medications and my five years of being a student as probably what other people would have been put on in their life.
So unfortunately I did not finish my degree and to be honest, I have no real desire to go back to school and complete it.
It’s been so hard having to walk away from something that you busted your ass for so long, all of those tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, those untold hours sitting at the library until closing trying to write that amazing paper.
All of those books that I had to read even when there was very little food and I wasn’t always sure how I was going to make next month’s rent.
𝘋𝘐𝘚𝘊𝘓𝘈𝘐𝘔𝘌𝘙: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭(𝘴) 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴.