Disclaimer: In this article, I am completely honest about my experience in Greek life, but I am in no ways trying to bash the organization or even the idea of greek life itself. Greek life is wonderful and a great thing to be involved in and I stand by that 100%. The organization I was a part of is amazing nationally and I respect it for the values it upholds. My experience is by no means the experience that everyone has. It is my own experience and my own opinions based on the way I was treated during my time there.

All throughout high school, I always swore to people that I would never join a sorority because I just wasn't that kind of girl. I was quiet and extremely introverted and believed that I didn't have the 'pep' required to be considered a sorority girl. Not to mention that after having gone to an all-girl's school, I simply felt that I'd had enough of the single-gender community. But after a semester and a half of hanging out by myself in a city where I knew no one, when I was offered a chance at this community that seemed like a taste of everything I knew and loved about high school, I jumped at the chance.

After meeting a group of girls from the chapter, I was in love. They seemed to share my sense of humor and they all seemed to like me for who I was. For the first time in months, there were people who seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. Once I got my bid and signed that paper that affiliated me with the organization, I was so happy. I remember going home that day and calling a half dozen people to tell them the news.

The first few weeks in my sorority were everything I could have imagined and I quickly felt that I had already made a good number of friends. I finally thought that I was going to get to have the college experience that all of my high school friends seemed to have on Snapchat.

But it is said that in life, all good things come to an end. The acceptance and love that I felt from the sorority began to fade away. I have always been a very independent person and a very confidently vocal person about issues and problems I see and experience. After a particularly bad day, I felt that I needed to excuse myself from the people I was hanging out with and just go home. I wasn't feeling well and had had my feelings hurt and knew that if I didn't leave my anxiety might have gotten the best of me and really messed things up. Some of the girls in my chapter took a major issue with this. One person in particular flat out told me that I "wasn't a good look for the sorority". I can't ever even imagine saying something this cruel to anyone, let alone someone that was clearly upset and on the verge of an anxiety attack. After that day, things took a real turn for the worse.

I had become a target for a good majority of the chapter, an attack that seemed spearheaded by people that I loved. Being quite a small chapter of girls, everyone knew everyone, but even the ones that didn't really know me personally seemed to talk the talk and were all to ready to jump on the bandwagon of finding faults in me. Girls would dig through my social media posts and take screenshots of anything that could be used against me and share it with others. Girls that I hardly knew were just being straight up cruel, and for no real reason. They tried to attack who I am and tear down my confidence, and in the process, they very nearly destroyed it.

During this time, I felt alone, scared, and lost. My whole world went dark. I began to distance myself away from not only Greek life but everything else. I would have anxiety whenever I would pass by a sister from my chapter on campus. I hid away for a while, only leaving my apartment for class and work.

But it was during this time, when I was at my worst, that things finally started to become clear. I saw people for who they were and saw that I meant much less to not only these people but to my chapter as a whole. Not a single person (except for the select few who I'd confided in) seemed to wonder what happened to me or where I was. When it came down to it, I realized that I simply was not accepted or missed in this sisterhood that was supposed to stand by each other through the good and the bad.

I want to make it clear that there were a few girls in the sorority that were accepting of me and showed me so much love in the darkest times, and for that I am eternally thankful. I had some of the closest friends that I'd made in it by my side, supporting me in the good and the bad times. These were girls who truly uphold the values that the sorority is supposed to represent, but when it came time to decide what to do about the chapter and how I was being treated, the pros were significantly outweighed by the cons. And the great thing about these girls is that they understood and supported my decision and are still there for me today.

I'm sure that people call me a quitter for leaving, and I know a lot of people will have opinions about it. Just as I know that there are girls there who probably celebrated me leaving because they felt that they'd won and had finally been able to get rid of another person that didn't fit their idea of what I should have been like. But I honestly just don't care.

I've attempted to put my experience behind me, but I soon found that I couldn't. I lost a part of myself during this and I'm still trying to heal from the hurt that I experienced. And that's going to take time. But I know that soon enough things will be better. Hopefully in the future I will be able to to use this experience to find a community of people that truly accepts me for who I am and applauds me for speaking up for the things that I believe in.

I don't regret joining my sorority. I even miss the parts of it that I truly loved. And most of all, I am so thankful for the friends that it gave me and the good moments and memories I experienced because of it and them.

However, since leaving the chapter I have felt a weight lift from my shoulders that I didn't realize I'd been carrying. I very well could still be getting hate and shade thrown my way, and the writing of this post will likely send another wave of social media unfollows my way, but at the end of the day, I'm still out of a horribly toxic environment and that's a win in my book. I wouldn't say that I'm completely myself again, because I'm still trying to deal with this loss of community in my life, but I'm closer than I've been in a year. And that is far more important than being a part of something that doesn't fully allow you to be yourself.