Guess who’s back in the house

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve been around this entire semester. So let’s face it: it’s been a while since my last post in January. Shortly after that post, I started to experience a depressive episode that caused me to spend most of my time in bed, barely eat, and experience frequent dissociations. All in all, it was a scary experience. Emerging from a depressive episode is also a scary experience, since I now have to deal with catching up on work, classes, and deadlines I’ve missed. As I’m currently writing this, I’m still in the process of getting in contact and meeting with my professors and TAs. I have no idea what’s going to happen. Picture yourself falling into a deep slumber and then waking up years later. The entire world has moved on without you, and all of a sudden you’re trying to find your place in it again. That’s how I feel at the moment. Things were going well, I had just gotten the hang of my classes and now I feel like I’m back at square one. There’s a large chunk of the semester that I’ve just missed out on. Against all odds, I’ve decided to keep my head up and move forward. In this particular case, I know that there is nothing I could have done to prevent myself from falling behind. All I can really do right now is try and catch up. Would I have preferred that my mental illness had not affected my work, grades, and performance these last few weeks? Of course, but it’s out of my hands. For a while, I thought about dropping out of school altogether. I keep finding myself in patterns of falling behind every time a new symptom of my mental illness surfaces. I started to wonder if there was a point. Was I ever going to finish my degree? But the bottom line is: I want to be here. I enjoy what I’m studying and have done well in my classes. I had just been elected the Content Editor-in-Chief of the UC Gargoyle and the Leader of the Opposition of the Trinity College Literary Institute. There are many reasons for me to stay. The only reason I even considered dropping out of school was my mental illness but that’s not a good enough reason to drop out of school altogether. Let’s face it: having a major disability can make your undergraduate experience more difficult; it can even prolong the time you spend on your degree. But that’s not a reason for me to not be a student at all; especially if I want to stay. The road ahead is dark and mysterious. I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen with my current courses, but I know that I’m going to do my best to catch up and stay.