Invisibility is my specialty.
I’m not shy or introverted, per se, but the less attention I draw to myself the better. On a large college campus with a lot of loud people who like to be noticed, this has proven laughably easy.
Allow me to give a few examples. I walk around campus with headphones on so I don’t have to worry about having an awkward conversation, the vast majority of my closet is neutral or black, and I always, always stand in the back row of group photos. I rarely raise my hand in class even if I know the answer, and in groups of people I only say something after I’ve thought about it for a very long time—sometimes, to my frustration, so long that by the time I get the courage to pipe up, the conversation has moved on. On the Chronicle, I was the Design Editor—no byline, just a tiny credit on the back page, which I earned by quietly organizing, packaging and laying out the beautiful work of my peers with meticulous attention to detail.
My penchant for fading into backgrounds allows me to do some things wonderfully. I make an easygoing team player, will support the most harebrained schemes of my friends and like to listen to most anything someone has to say. But it has also manifested itself in ugly ways. The worst of these, I’ve figured out, is that I’m not great at asking for help when I need it.
Last spring, I needed it. I was nearly failing a class and, after realizing that what I had been working towards just wasn’t working, had no idea what I wanted to do after Duke. These anxieties reached a breaking point in February when the sudden passing of a beloved cousin triggered unresolved grief and confusion over my father’s suicide when I was a child, and I entered a complete tailspin.
I started to shrink myself. Like I said, invisibility is my speciality. It was only when my mother came to pick me up from the airport six months later and drove right past me that I realized I had faded so completely that I had become someone that nobody, not even I, recognized.
My battle with anorexia has taken a toll on everything. Rebuilding the friendships that I shied away from out of fear of concern or judgment has been a long process and regaining trust from my family that I can take care of myself still a longer one. I can’t blame Duke for the insecurity and anxiety that became so terrible that I nearly starved myself in a semester because those things came from within. What I have realized as I have put my life and body back together bit by bit is that this place is filled with love and support as rock-solid as the Gothic arches that hold it up—you know, the ones that aren’t being knocked down at the moment.
It turns out that the Universe really likes to drive hard lessons home. Just as I started to get things under control again, progressing through the fall semester of my senior year with healthier relationships, mind and body, I hit my real bottom. Or rather, it hit me.
I was crossing Erwin Road, returning from the library after submitting no fewer than seventeen law school applications, when an SUV struck me on the right side and flipped me into the air. The next few hours in my memory are blurry images of EMTs strapping me to a board, ER doctors stitching my head and splinting my arm and a flurry of fluorescent lights and masked faces. When I finally came to, I looked to my right and saw one of my dearest friends asleep in the hospital chair beside my bed, postponing her own Thanksgiving vacation until my frantic mother could arrive from Philadelphia.
I won’t bore you with the details of my very slow recovery. Suffice it to say, I still have all my limbs just with some extra metal to hold the bones together. The point is, just when you think you might be starting to figure this whole college thing out, everything can get torn out from under you. There’s nothing like a near-death experience to get you to realize that one “D” on your report card doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Now, I know how to ask for help. I know that my friends will be there for me if I call them, and I know that trying to map out every second of my life is futile because life tends to have other plans. Most importantly, I know that within each of us is a deep and wide store of bravery and resilience that only becomes truly apparent when we need it most.
Four years down my Duke road, I don’t have it all figured out. What I do have is trust that things work out even, or maybe especially, when I can’t see how they possibly could. I no longer want to be invisible. I have a voice. And I start every day with a thousand-watt smile for the simple reason that I have woken up and can live another day with all its ups and down. There is a big world out there with innumerable places to go, people to see and things to do, and I get to be a part of it—and I mean not to waste that opportunity.
Eliza Strong is a Trinity senior and former Creative Director of Towerview. She would like to thank all of the friends and family who made Duke home and made her feel seen, including Elysia, Sophia, Bri, Cassidy, Sam, Lauren, Kristin, Alison, her sisters and mother, and everyone else. She would especially like to thank Danielle for a friendship that has crossed an ocean and a living room and will last a lifetime.
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