I've been told that life is one big adventure, that we're supposed to live it to it’s fullest and enjoy the ride, but I haven't been feeling much like I'm on a journey. My name is Erica and I'm currently an 18-year-old art student who just finished her freshman year of college. I am an artist, an avid reader and a proud fangirl. I grew up in a town where nothing ever seemed to happen and I'm a little lost. Lately, life seems to be moving too fast in no particular direction. I don't know where I'm going or what I'm going to do, which I've come to understand is a very common position to be in at my age.
All my life I've been conditioned to believe that everything leads up to college, which subsequently results in the success you will achieve in the life beyond. Everybody says elementary school prepares you for middle school, which prepares you for high school, which prepares you for college, and if you don’t do well in this assembly line you'll never get a job, which means you'll never have anything, you'll be homeless, and you'll never be happy. When you simplify it to such a blunt chain of events it sounds a bit preposterous. Yet still this is exactly what we've been teaching the children of this country for years. We ask five year olds what they want to be when they grow up and we give them a little over ten years to make up their minds before it's unacceptable not to know. As a result of this, I became hyper aware of my education. I obtained the absurd notion that my grades defined my worth. This mind set originally helped me to motivate myself. I've been an A's and B's student since the very first year letter grades applied to me. I pushed myself harder than I probably should have and developed unrealistic expectations of myself. I began sleeping less and putting my homework before my own health.
Before any assumptions are formed that this stress was caused by my parents, I want to quickly explain that I am an unbelievably fortunate person to have extremely trusting and understanding parents. Despite the stereotype of typical Asian parents, which unfortunately isn't just a stereotype for many people, my parents never really pressured me to get straight A's and go to an Ivy League school. They were always clear, to both me and my brother, that all they expected of us was to try our best and never give up. They trust us to do well in anything we put our minds to because they had faith that we had the ability to do good without being forced to do so. My mom constantly tells me that she believes people learn best when they make mistakes. My parents taught me to have proper morals that would guide me to be the best person I could be, and whenever I would make a mistake they taught me that I had to own up to it and learn from it so I'd never make that mistake again. I have grown up pushing myself to do better because I believed that I had to in order to be worth something in this world because that is the world I grew up in, not because of any persuasion on my parents' part. I was a very happy child from what I can remember.
My childhood was filled with nothing but love and creativity. I think I decided I was going to be an artist when I was about six years old. I'm lucky to not have had that dream squashed by adults at a young age like too many artists have. I've had an idea of what I wanted to be in the future since before I can remember, but that idea developed before I could even comprehend the idea of a future. When I was about 12 was the first time I ever thought about killing myself. I didn't know it at the time, but I was suffering with a bout of depression for about two and a half years before things improved. I thought I had just been suffering through some sort of teenage angst stage that all teenagers fell through. The year I was in 9th grade was the best year of my life. This was until I fell into another bout of depression, which would further take me into a whirlwind of mental chaos and emotional imbalance. At this point I had given up writing, which I had been immensely passionate about for about three years. I wasn't doing very much art and I stopped reading as intensely as I had been. I also began self-harming at the age of 14. Entering high school in tenth grade was the beginning of three harsh years. I isolated myself from my friends, focused solely on my schoolwork and stopped doing almost all of the things I loved. I was diagnosed with major depression and general anxiety disorder when I was 15. I began therapy once a week, which helped me a bit but I ended up needing more. In my senior year of high school I had received treatment from a partial outpatient program for 2 months that had improved my mental state greatly. It wasn't my first stint of treatment but it was definitely the most affective. I was able to cope with my emotions easier and I was mostly free from my suicidal ideation for nearly 5 months. I was healthy enough that moving away to college didn't seem like it would do too much harm. If it did, I felt like I was in a place where I would be able to deal with my emotions in an effective and healthy manner. Unfortunately, I underestimated how much of an affect moving away from my home and support system would have on me. About a week after starting school I fell into another bout of depression, my anxiety increased rapidly, I relapsed in self-harm, and I was having crying spells at least once a day. I ended up transferring from that school, which was 246miles away, back home to attend an art school closer to my house so that I would be able to commute. Yesterday was my last day of my freshman year of college.
You might be asking why I'm providing so much personal information. Am I looking for attention? Am I not afraid of being judged for my illness? No, I am not looking for attention or sympathy, neither am I afraid of any judgment that may fall upon me due to a mental illness that I did not chose to possess. I am providing this information for two reasons. First, I plan on documenting my journey as a person from now on as blunt and honestly as possible and my illness is a very important part of my life. Second, I am not ashamed of my illness, nor do I believe that anybody should have to be. My depression and anxiety are things that I deal with on a daily basis and there is no shame in having an illness that you cannot control. Depression and anxiety, along with almost every other mental illness, are suppressed with stigmas that make them taboo to talk about. This prevents people from ever being properly educated on what these illnesses really are and makes it harder for people to recognize that they are suffering from something real and that there is help and hope available.
All my life I've been conditioned to believe that everything leads up to college, which subsequently results in the success you will achieve in the life beyond. Everybody says elementary school prepares you for middle school, which prepares you for high school, which prepares you for college, and if you don’t do well in this assembly line you'll never get a job, which means you'll never have anything, you'll be homeless, and you'll never be happy. When you simplify it to such a blunt chain of events it sounds a bit preposterous. Yet still this is exactly what we've been teaching the children of this country for years. We ask five year olds what they want to be when they grow up and we give them a little over ten years to make up their minds before it's unacceptable not to know. As a result of this, I became hyper aware of my education. I obtained the absurd notion that my grades defined my worth. This mind set originally helped me to motivate myself. I've been an A's and B's student since the very first year letter grades applied to me. I pushed myself harder than I probably should have and developed unrealistic expectations of myself. I began sleeping less and putting my homework before my own health.
Before any assumptions are formed that this stress was caused by my parents, I want to quickly explain that I am an unbelievably fortunate person to have extremely trusting and understanding parents. Despite the stereotype of typical Asian parents, which unfortunately isn't just a stereotype for many people, my parents never really pressured me to get straight A's and go to an Ivy League school. They were always clear, to both me and my brother, that all they expected of us was to try our best and never give up. They trust us to do well in anything we put our minds to because they had faith that we had the ability to do good without being forced to do so. My mom constantly tells me that she believes people learn best when they make mistakes. My parents taught me to have proper morals that would guide me to be the best person I could be, and whenever I would make a mistake they taught me that I had to own up to it and learn from it so I'd never make that mistake again. I have grown up pushing myself to do better because I believed that I had to in order to be worth something in this world because that is the world I grew up in, not because of any persuasion on my parents' part. I was a very happy child from what I can remember.
My childhood was filled with nothing but love and creativity. I think I decided I was going to be an artist when I was about six years old. I'm lucky to not have had that dream squashed by adults at a young age like too many artists have. I've had an idea of what I wanted to be in the future since before I can remember, but that idea developed before I could even comprehend the idea of a future. When I was about 12 was the first time I ever thought about killing myself. I didn't know it at the time, but I was suffering with a bout of depression for about two and a half years before things improved. I thought I had just been suffering through some sort of teenage angst stage that all teenagers fell through. The year I was in 9th grade was the best year of my life. This was until I fell into another bout of depression, which would further take me into a whirlwind of mental chaos and emotional imbalance. At this point I had given up writing, which I had been immensely passionate about for about three years. I wasn't doing very much art and I stopped reading as intensely as I had been. I also began self-harming at the age of 14. Entering high school in tenth grade was the beginning of three harsh years. I isolated myself from my friends, focused solely on my schoolwork and stopped doing almost all of the things I loved. I was diagnosed with major depression and general anxiety disorder when I was 15. I began therapy once a week, which helped me a bit but I ended up needing more. In my senior year of high school I had received treatment from a partial outpatient program for 2 months that had improved my mental state greatly. It wasn't my first stint of treatment but it was definitely the most affective. I was able to cope with my emotions easier and I was mostly free from my suicidal ideation for nearly 5 months. I was healthy enough that moving away to college didn't seem like it would do too much harm. If it did, I felt like I was in a place where I would be able to deal with my emotions in an effective and healthy manner. Unfortunately, I underestimated how much of an affect moving away from my home and support system would have on me. About a week after starting school I fell into another bout of depression, my anxiety increased rapidly, I relapsed in self-harm, and I was having crying spells at least once a day. I ended up transferring from that school, which was 246miles away, back home to attend an art school closer to my house so that I would be able to commute. Yesterday was my last day of my freshman year of college.
You might be asking why I'm providing so much personal information. Am I looking for attention? Am I not afraid of being judged for my illness? No, I am not looking for attention or sympathy, neither am I afraid of any judgment that may fall upon me due to a mental illness that I did not chose to possess. I am providing this information for two reasons. First, I plan on documenting my journey as a person from now on as blunt and honestly as possible and my illness is a very important part of my life. Second, I am not ashamed of my illness, nor do I believe that anybody should have to be. My depression and anxiety are things that I deal with on a daily basis and there is no shame in having an illness that you cannot control. Depression and anxiety, along with almost every other mental illness, are suppressed with stigmas that make them taboo to talk about. This prevents people from ever being properly educated on what these illnesses really are and makes it harder for people to recognize that they are suffering from something real and that there is help and hope available.
I don’t know what is to become of me in the future, but I know that writing it all down helps me to understand myself a little better. I’ve just recently realized that this path I’ve been following so far doesn’t have to be set in stone and it might be the very thing that has been driving me mad lately. Therefore, I’m determined to find some adventure in my life. Maybe a journey might help me finally find some worth in myself. I want to live, not just survive. I’m about to make some big decisions and I sincerely hope it leads me somewhere good.
