One step at a time

While rummaging through my desk the other night, I found a stack of pictures taken during my sophomore year of high school. In some of them, I'm playing soccer or stretching out by a pool, and in most, I look nicely put together: hair and makeup done, clothes neatly pressed. What these pictures do not show, however, is that I was killing myself, and trying to, in increments.

Although I had a tumultuous childhood, I had always been able to keep things in perspective and stay focused enough to excel in school and extracurricular activities. I had to "manage" my life amid madness because no one else was going to do it for me. Sophomore year, however, the foundations of the life I had worked so hard to manage were knocked out from under me in quick and painful succession. My father, with whom I was extremely close, passed away in January, the house I grew up in was sold and leveled, and my family splintered. Most people praised me for being "strong" and "brave" in the face of all this devastation, but this apparent stoicism was the result of how terrified I was to fall apart. I had always taken care of myself, and, more than anything, I did not want to need anybody.

I took out the internal anguish I felt on myself in a number of destructive ways that grew more and more severe as time passed. I started binging and purging after meals, taking handfuls of caffeine pills (which made me capable of little more than vomiting stomach acid) to get my homework done and even hacking at my ankles with razors. I spent entire nights dry heaving on the bathroom floor. The pain I incurred from all these little acts of emotional suicide paled in comparison to the much larger grief I would not let myself feel. I became isolated and lonely, crying myself to sleep every night and completely unable to get out of bed in the morning. The only balance in my life was between the two forces that controlled it: fear and anger. Day by day, the world grew more colorless and my place in it seemed more insignificant.

Still, I believed that I could take care of myself.

I was diagnosed with "clinical depression" by a therapist my family insisted I see and put on a cocktail of medications that were supposed to straighten me out: some to get me through the day, some so I could sleep at night. For the most part, this method worked. My grades improved, and I could actually function like a normal human being. I considered this a temporary fix, however, and tricked myself into thinking that there really was nothing wrong with me other than some basic teenage angst. I filled my days with a myriad of scholastic distractions, and of course, I refused help at every turn.

By the time I arrived here at Duke, I was sure that any problems I had were safely left behind in Connecticut. I breezed through fall semester, making close friends and having a great time. Come spring semester, cracks started to form in the emotional wall I had built around myself, and they grew into canyons by the next fall. I broke plans with friends because I "didn't feel like" doing anything. I turned in papers late and barely showed up for class. I alienated the people who cared about me and clung to ones that didn't. Half my life was functional, and the rest I half attempted. I started to believe that no one would notice if I disappeared. I started wondering if anyone would show up for my funeral. This was when I knew I needed help.

I would like to say that something miraculous happened, that my experience was one of deus ex machina or a blinding flash of realization. It was really only a long overdue recognition of the fact that I could not handle everything by myself. I knew there was more to life than the way I was living, and I knew someone else was going to have to help me find it. I went to Counseling and Psychological Services and started actually being honest about how scared and lonely I felt most of the time. I started to concentrate only on doing "the next right thing," whether it was actually getting out of bed, making myself study or washing my face before bed when I was tired. I actually gave my friends and family a chance to care about me when I started taking an active role in my relationships with them. Although I had previously fallen into what seemed an endless pit of despair, all these "minor" tasks were links in the chain that got me out. The first and most important step I took was that of asking for help.

If there is anything we are pressured to do at Duke, it is to excel. For a good many of us, that means sometimes taking on more than we can handle. I used to believe that I was the only one who felt overwhelmed. More and more, I am discovering that this is not the case, that everyone feels lonely and disenfranchised at certain points in their lives. I see people evaluating themselves in terms of their rZsumZs, class ranks and GPAs, which makes them feel insignificant and unaccomplished. The psychologists at CAPS all have full appointment schedules, so that must mean that someone besides me is going, but still people feel ashamed to admit it. There is a certain stigma to reaching out that I will never understand. I would have been completely consumed by negativity if I had not been able sort out my emotional chaos. I spent my life thinking that getting help was a sign of deficiency or weakness. I let my limitations eclipse my own capacity to deal with them. Admitting that you cannot completely go it alone is not an avowal of weakness, but a demonstration of strength. I know, because it's the strongest thing I ever did.