It’s finals season, and that means it’s my favorite time of year: it’s time for seasonal depression! Every November I’ve been in college, I’ve crashed. Hard. The fatigue and workload just get to me, and my body decides to go catatonic for a month, which, as you may imagine, sucks shit for my grades.
But this year? I was turning things in on time, I was going to every class, I was brushing my teeth twice a day—
Then everything changed when the Johns Hopkins Medical Center nation attacked.
I need mitral valve repair surgery! That’s where the surgeon [GORY DESCRIPTION INCOMING! SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU’D RATHER AVOID THE NASTY SQUISHY DETAILS! I’M USING SECOND PERSON TO COPE] cuts right down your sternum and opens your thoracic cavity like a little cabinet, cuts open your heart (but not before stopping it with potassium and hooking you up to a giant machine that takes over the gas exchange from your lungs) and sews a little ring onto your mitral valve so it can stop flopping around like one of those inflatable dancing guys and start pumping blood effectively for once in its 22 silly, silly years.
So I got that call the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and had to spend the holiday trying my best to smile for pictures. Now I’m knee deep in the horrible cranberry bog of finals, I have several overdue assignments and I barely studied for the exams I’ve already finished, and all I want to do is lay in bed and maybe scream.
All of November I was just waiting for my mental health to plummet, for my body to give out and for my life to crash and burn. What can I say, I’m dramatic and love to catastrophize. But this time is different, because there was a catalyst, not necessarily any more real but more tangible than my usual depression, I don’t know how to feel. It’s taken years of cognitive behavioral therapy to internalize that no, my depression wasn’t just me being lazy, but it still feels like my depression now is somehow more “””valid””” because now I have a horrifying-sounding medical procedure looming over me. I think the people around me are more scared of the surgery than I am. I’m just tired. I just need to finish another paper.
Unruly Bodies 
I wish breaks were more normalized in our society. The tiny week break we get in thanksgiving near the end of fall semester isn’t much for college students. I crashed my scooter a few weeks ago, and I was lucky enough to get a week to recover, although that isn’t enough in your case. I really hope you are okay, and definitely rest well. The winter break is almost upon us.
It kinda sucks that your professors didn’t let you have the time to recovery fully or just give you a few passing grades given that you were doing good work all semester. You have a life saving(?) surgery that needed to happen, and they weren’t accommodating? I realise that the world doesn’t just stop when one bad thing happens to one person, but why can’t the world be more flexible about this and other chronic illnesses, mental, or otherwise. I hope your recovery is quick and smooth