Dear Mom and Dad,
I am writing to you because it is what I know how to do best. Please don’t take this as an impersonal, new age way of communication. You have never given me reason to be fearful of you, but out of the respect I believe all parents should be given by their children, and my personal expectations, I remain nervous to speak, let alone write about my difficulties.
I will start out with the plain facts: I failed all six of my classes this semester, I have known this for a good part of the semester, and I will need to take an extra semester next year so I can graduate with my degrees, which is something I still want to do. As I have lived with this brewing knowledge for four months, I know you will have a much stronger reaction than I am currently capable of, this news being a surprise to you. What helped me was realising these consequent facts: I want to continue, taking an extra semester is something I want to do, and I have to keep hoping things will change.
Looking back, I should have known this was inevitable, though I had originally thought it impossible. In September, I felt confident and clear headed, sure that I could take on all six of my classes as well as my extra-curriculars. I felt organised and powerful and very positive. October came along and for some reason, I would sit in front of my laptop to write my essays but I could just never finish. I began each task with motivation, but soon lost it, being unable to imagine the end. It felt like I was running on a treadmill – working very hard, but not getting anywhere. I soon realised I was stressed out by both my workload and my inability to keep up. Why then, did I lie and hide these things from you? I felt like I could fix it up. It was still October, I had time to patch up my work and pull myself together. But no matter how hard I tried, the same thing happened over and over again.
One day, at the end of October, I was trying to get some work done with ____ at the student center. For the past week, my stress had been apparent to the public. Every day someone new told me I looked crazed and on edge. Yet at this moment, something clicked and I almost spat at ____, “Should I go to CAPS right now?” She very quickly agreed. We packed up our things and went to the counseling center. Already in uncontrollable tears, I was suggested for an appointment immediately. I filled out the forms and within 15 minutes, I was in an office, crying my eyes out, like they do in the movies. It was just a preliminary appointment, but even just that forty minutes of telling someone what was on my mind instantly cleared my head. I had never felt this way before, this listened to and understood.
The advice the counselor gave me was good, too. She said she had the same problem when she was in school, and she has the same problem now. She likes to write, but in a different way than was expected of her. Now that she’s a professional, she writes as she wants to. However, while she was still in school, she just did her work, not caring much about the content, just to get the grades. Hearing that I wasn’t the only one with this problem was uplifting. I felt inspired to continue, like I didn’t have to waste my life and that I just had to push myself for a while longer and I could make it.
Before going into my first real appointment, I had to fill out a million questionnaires. Eventually, they revealed that I waver between a state of depression and anxiety. She said that there were two routes to deal with this – to just continue with counseling, maybe move on to a group setting. She also suggested medication in conjunction with counseling. She told me that I needed to tell you all that was happening, as medicine would require seeing a psychiatrist and copay. Regardless of medicine, she urged me open up and let you know I was seeing someone. I couldn’t bring myself to do this, however, until today. I didn’t want to pile on your list of stresses. I thought that if I just made it through the semester, it would all be over.
As I still had a month left, I had myself convinced that I could still pull my grades up if I talked to my professors. The counselor agreed that it was possible for me to do this, but she strongly advised that I withdraw from the semester and just take an extra semester next fall. I was adamant – I felt like I HAD TO graduate this spring. I worked hard during finals, but only for the work I had for finals. It was not enough to make up for an entire semester. Most professors, at the end, said that they would have given me a D, but gave an F so that I may retake the course and get the grade I actually deserve. They said they knew I was capable of far more than a D.
This trajectory of my work correlated, in my head, with my visitations to CAPS. I stopped going come December because I felt like I was finally okay and able to do things on my own without help. But I was sorely mistaken and continued to spiral downward, not stopping for help because I began to feel like I was a lost cause. I felt incredibly worthless and purposeless, like an embarrassment and a disappointment, and a waste of space. All of these thoughts in my head were very crippling.
I wanted to tell you before tonight, so that 2014 may start as fresh and as new as possible. New years, if anything, help us frame the past as something to reflect and learn from, but not regret. I felt regret for a lot of things in 2013, but I should not be so hard on myself if this regret will soon turn into knowledge and experience which I can carry far into my future.
Parts of me often still feel like I am a waste, but I am still here because you have brought me up with so much love, and it would be more of a waste to let that all go. Thank you for being great parents. Thank you for loving me and accepting me and believing in me. Thank you for reading.
Love,
Anon
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