Yesterday was September 24th. I woke up, took my meds, ate breakfast and started on school work. It was a typical, ordinary day for me, filled with online classes, PT exercises, and journaling in my spare time. I’ve gotten used to both working at home and my dysfunctional body, and I’m settling into the “new normal” I once swore I would never obtain.
But this time last year, September 24th was anything but ordinary. It was a hard day that was chillingly easy, the day I moved out of my college apartment and officially withdrew from the university of my dreams.
I look back on this day with a stabbing pain inside my heart. A year ago, I was riding in a car packed to the brim with my fragmented life. Suitcases were arranged like Tetris in the trunk, stuffed with outfits I’d never wear for memories I’d never make, along with college spirit gear I suddenly had no use for. I was headed towards home, where I’d wait on referrals that were months away, wondering what would become of me while I wandered into unchartered darkness.
A year ago, my mother was overseas when I called, when I sputtered out the words, “met with my advisor”, “decided it’s best”, and “I can’t do this anymore”. I felt the words crawl through the phone, heard them plop out the other end, rippling across the vast Atlantic Ocean. Instead of catching a flight to Nice as planned, she booked a last-minute trip to Nashville instead, cutting her well-needed vacation short in order to help her debilitated daughter move out. She should’ve been walking along pebbled beaches in Southern France, catching up with longtime friends, but instead bore the brunt work of loading up my CR-V.
A year ago, my roommates surprised me with a dinner party. It was really a goodbye party, the only one I’ve ever had, and maybe I’m biased but it was also the best, filled with joy and laughter amidst our heavy sorrow. It hadn’t set in quite yet, that I would really be leaving–for now, for forever, for who knew how long. Up until this point, I was too focused on survival, how to make it to the next moment, to the step, to the next seemingly impossible breath.
A year ago, I turned in my keys to the RA. For five weeks, that little dorm room was mine, filled with symptoms and sleep and phone calls to my mother. I watched as the RA quickly closed the door, feeling the rattle of the doorframe reverberate in my bones. She took the keys, turning the lock, and as she did, I heard a small knocking, coming from a piece of myself stuck behind that door forever.
A year ago, I stood in the kitchen of that apartment, fidgeting, stalling, doing anything to stretch out time. My roommates and I looked at each other from across the table, daring one another to be the person who said it first–that one word, those two syllables. “Goodbye”. “Good-bye”. If it weren’t for my condition, I could’ve stood there until the end of time, suspended in the last moment of my old life.
A year ago, I left a university I adored. I abandoned plans, hopes, dreams, versions of myself I never got to become. The frightening truth is how easy it was, how easy it is to leave when you’re left with no other choice. With a sturdy composure, I gave a final wave to my roommates, shutting the car door, saying softly to my mother, “maybe this is what it takes for me to finally get better”.
My roommates saw someone brave, calm, and collected that day, saw their friend facing the unimaginable with an emotional armor made of steel. But the truth is, that armor was fleeting; when the spotlight turned off and the audience went home, my epic costume unraveled, leaving me bare, naked, and entirely defenseless.
These days, I’m so focused on moving forward with my recovery that the act of looking back feels unbearable and draining. My healing still seems fragile, as if one wrong step will shatter all the precious progress I’ve made. I worry that if I’m not careful and wander too far into the past, I’ll get lost there forever, reverting back into my crippled state, becoming frozen in moments I worked so hard to get out of.
It’s been a year since that day and so much has happened since then. I feel like a different person now; stronger, sturdier, more sane from the rest that was long overdue. But in my weakest moments, I transport right back into that apartment, where the sorrow and pain were acute and so raw, where I’m still the girl who’s terrified of what her life has become.
I don’t have any words for that version of myself. No advice, words of wisdom, or genuine encouragement. If I could, all I would do is wrap my arms around her; tightly, like a promise, never letting her go.