You see the way my life is setup right now, really, this past year and some change, it has been a sinking ship that I’ve been trying to patch up with tape. And I’m not talking about that Flex Tape they be trying to sell us on those infomercials, if you know what I’m talking about. That actually would have probably worked.
I suck at getting help. Getting help is hard. The thought of how much better I could feel and how much more successful I could be while getting the help that I need, torments the force that is stopping me from getting help in the first place. My head is so jumbled that even sitting here trying to write about this is a struggle. My thoughts are usually all over the place and in no place at the same time. It feels like there’s this mental block stopping me from getting through the simplest shit like putting my classes in my google calendar. I easily get overwhelmed with things like making doctor appointments even though I can feel parts of my body needing to be assessed.
Everything really started with the pandemic. Spring 2020 I remember sitting in Erickson Hall in the common room of my suite with my roommates getting the news. The news about covid-19 reaching the U.S. and how after Spring break we would be staying home. What I felt in that moment was one of my worst fears coming a reality. I guess it would be okay though since this all was going to blow over after a couple of weeks, but as you all know, our stay home was much longer than expected and covid-19 was much more of threat than we initially thought.
Since then, things have been going downhill. I was living in fear and having chronic anxiety. Nowhere was safe, even in my dreams. The people close to me know my fears, one of them being my mom who frequently enough brought up my fear because it was something she believed in. Even when my thoughts (rarely) would slightly calm down, boom! I was triggered and It felt like I couldn’t escape it. This would intensify my fear and anxiety to the point where I didn’t want to be here anymore. On top of all this, online school was horrible for me. I was constantly interrupted by my thoughts, stopped participating, had lost motivation in going to class, in doing schoolwork, and overall lost a lot of functioning as a college student. I had changed. Before all of this I had been really improving my GPA after my fuck ups from Freshman year, but that took a quick turn. Fall 2020 I took a W on my transcript, got my first D, and started fucking up with my job. Spring 2021 I took another W, got my first F, and continued to fuck up with my job. This summer I got kicked out of my scholars’ program and lost a big scholarship because I didn’t take enough credits over the past two semesters (those W’s got me). After not having to take out loans for being an RA last year, now I have to again even though I’m still an RA. This semester I am already struggling. It has been an endless cycle of wanting to do better, needing help, not getting help, and doing worse. I am so much more than this.
Throughout this whole time, I have been self-aware enough to know that I need help, a lot of it. Truth be told, my problems even go way beyond school. I know that I need help, but many of the things I need help with are the same things that are making it really hard for me to get help. When I try to explain this to my friends, professors, and to all the people I have disappointed, it is easy for them to see excuse after excuse. This is my experience. It is hard to understand and feel what I feel coming from a different point of view. To be honest, some of it is laziness, but a lot of it is also a reality of being stuck and silently yearning out for help. Flex tape would have been a better alternative.
Unruly Bodies 
I may not be in the same boat, but we are definitely floating across the same ocean. I am sorry those events have happened to you, I know what it feels like to try and carry the weight of everything on your shoulders until you just want to give up. It gets hard, but we must remember that there are people that love us, and that we CAN trust others for help. Our minds can deceive us sometimes for us to think that there’s no one that can understand, but those who care try their very best, and it’s okay to have people not understand; no one is YOU! I completely get feelings of being stuck or lack of motivation, this semester has been really hard for me to remember anything. I slack on assignments, forget due dates because it is all so overwhelming. You got this, you’re amazing and are capable of great things!
I wish flex tape is something I could use. I had this realization this semester. Mentally I had always struggled in school and in life but somehow I was able to pull it together. Last semester thanks to a few very accommodating professors I was still able to make it through the semester. This semester though was tough for me. I knew I needed help but asking for help is so much harder than people make it seem. It took a professor reaching out to me and my friends pointing out my bad coping mechanisms to finally realize I couldn’t do this by myself. But even when I wanted to get help there were definitely things stopping me. For instance having to actually pick up the phone to make an appointment at the counseling center. I don’t know why phone calls are so terrifying, but it took everything in me to finally make an appointment. I’m starting to do a little better now, but getting help is seen as the first step, and it makes me wonder if the first step in the journey to being better is this hard, does the journey get easier from there, or will it always be an uphill battle? Whatever the case may be, I guess it’s at least worth a try.