I'm New to This Pt. 2

Years 17 through 27, I really was just lost and losing. I thought, and probably said, daily... I am cursed. I believed, entirely, that my sole purpose in my short life was to suffer as an example for others to be more appreciative of their own life. That was it. Any glimmer of hope that college was going to be this transformative melting of the most magnificent minds, like our high school teachers boasted, fell flat. They were wrong. It wasn’t about being the best or brightest after all. At a school as large as UCLA, it was just as much about being able to coordinate between departments. It was about being able to work 25 - 30 hours a week and fighting to stay off academic probation because you can only carry 15, instead of 16, units. Overwhelmingly, or underwhelmingly depending on how you look at it, UCLA was a business, and it wasn’t hard to figure out the business of getting things done was easier with more resources.

I had none.

I wasn’t prepared for that.

Honestly, I wasn’t prepared for much. Initially, arriving on campus felt like “maybe I have a chance”. But within two weeks on campus, my dining hall access was rescinded because I hadn’t paid for housing. On a Friday evening. And the housing office didn’t open until Monday.

Why didn’t I pay my housing? I thought it was paid with tuition. At 17, with no one guiding me, how would I know otherwise? These years were defined by one mistake after another, after another. Guess what, mistakes are expensive. They are time consuming. They are energy draining. Learning everything through trial and error was fucking brutal, there’s no other words to describe it. With every hurdle I crashed into before leaping over, the unhealthy ideas I held of myself and my inevitable demise were reinforced.

It’ll never get better than this.

It will always be this hard.

You won’t make it much longer.

In survival mode, as much as I wanted to separate from everything back home, I clung to the dysfunction, and it permeated my new life. Every decision I made was to get me to the next day, next week, next semester, or next check. I had no concept of my future because I still didn’t believe I had one. What was the use of long-term planning when the clock was ticking? I just needed to get through, whatever that looked like, so be it.

Self-harm looked different, too. I added drinking, partying, overworking, understudying, unhealthy relationships and so much dissociation to the mix. I hate to admit how much of it is a blur. Like a vignette instead of a memory. I was there, but I was completed disconnected.

Beyond just youthful shenanigation, while my friends knew when to buckle down or bring it in, I pushed farther, went harder, and took it to the extreme. While I was adamant I would never take my own life, I had no issue putting myself in to situations that could lead to just that. There was a recklessness that could only be attributed being on my final lap. I know it’s a common thing to joke about being on the edge, one step away from jumping, but I lived on that cliff, always looking down, waiting for a gust, not hoping to fly.

Simultaneously, I was the life of the party. Remember, no one is ever worried about the person who is always smiling. No one second guesses the person laughing, dancing, and lighting up the room. I wasn’t shining, I was burning. Only a few people, mostly my roommates, saw a glimpse of how broken I was. But they were barely adults and ill-equipped to deal with my cycle of my self-destructive behaviors, especially when we were, concurrently, having the time of our lives.

And Oh Em Gee was I having a ball.

My highs were a tangible high. Until the night was over or the event was done, whew the way I crashed. I kept getting higher and crashing lower, my masking was failing more often, and slowly, I was losing control.

Senior year was when I had my first catastrophic menty b. All I could do was sleep, party and work. I just wanted to sleep, but had to work, and needed to party, it was unsustainable. During my first go at therapy, let me tell you, in 2007 it didn’t look like it does today. The individual sessions were limited and mostly a funnel to prescribe medication before ushering you into a support group. With two new diagnosis, Major D and Severe A, it was relieving to know what I was and it was miserable to have no way to fix it. I was hitting a wall repeatedly, each time a little more bruised, a little less able to bounce back.

By the time the recession hit hard, I gave up. My Mom offered me a chance to move back home, and even though I knew it was the last place I wanted to be, I packed my shit up and went back to what I knew. I was tired of trying to make it. I just wanted a break. I was breaking. I needed a break. I was so broken. Although I said it was temporary; I hoped it all just ended where it began. I would just fade and fade and fade and then it would be over.

Despondency pinched every nerve, it clogged every artery, it cramped every muscle, and it suffocated every breath. It was in every step I took behind every smile I showed. It was more me than I was myself and yet looking through the photos of those years you would never know.

Because Black girls weren’t allowed to be depressed. I wasn’t allowed to have that much potential and be held back by something as frivolous as my feelings. I couldn’t be complicated, or difficult, or struggling, or scared, or angry. I truly believed I had to take everything life was throwing at me and return with all 32 teeth and I couldn’t do it anymore. A depressed child with no support turns into a depressed young adult with no support. Changing locations didn’t change anything but the ways I was failing.

That is what has been the hardest thing to move beyond. That I JUST survived. I just made it through. The choices I made, when I thought I didn’t need choices to make, still impact my every day. I live with the actions of the 17- and 23-year-old who acted with an ending in mind.

When I say I am new to this, I am saying that for a long time, I wasn’t living. In fact, I was trying to do the exact opposite. I am still healing from that. Still learning how to accept the decisions I made. Still trying to find grace for the Nica who got through by questionable means. Still trying not to be angry with her, because judgement doesn’t change outcomes, and she left one helluva mess.

I am still incredibly new to this whole living thing.

And I am still figuring out, what’s next?