Hey there. I suffer from a mental health disorder. You don’t need to know what it is, why I have it, or even my regular symptoms. You just need to know that I recently had a big, scary episode that was unfamiliar and completely terrifying. And it was my fault — but that’s okay. I’m going to tell you why.

My major and minor related courses leave me with a lot of reading and writing to do throughout the semester. Last week, during midterms, I had two essays due back to back on Thursday and Friday for separate classes. I hadn’t been keeping up on the reading very well for either of them and by Monday, I didn’t even have a plan for either, beyond selecting my prompts.

It was an important and busy week for me with my sorority; I had personally chosen to take on extra obligations there. I had also planned for my sibling (they/them) to come and visit over the weekend as they turned 20 that Wednesday. I was also in the midst of an ambitious art project for my upcoming 5th anniversary. And as has been the standard theme since I returned to higher education — I’d overcommitted.

The essay that was due Thursday got turned in on time, barely. It was also subpar, as first draft assignments go. As for Friday’s essay, that was different. My weekend flew by, I didn’t even have a chance to start the essay until around 8 pm Sunday night.

Around 10, I heard back on my extension. I had until Tuesday. But by then, I was already swimming in guilt and self-loathing flavored anxiety — the episode I’d been pushing off since around Tuesday earlier that week. It was fine, I pulled myself together enough to polish my foreign language midterm that was due the next morning.

Mondays are usually my busiest weekday, but I got my concept fleshed out and all I needed to do was source some quotes from the material to bolster my argument — and then write the paper. Not much got done — and by the next morning, I was really worried about my ambitious art project (my anniversary was at the end of the week) and completely terrified that I’d miss my extension deadline and my prof would know I really was incompetent and worthless.

When I woke up Tuesday morning, I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t explain it until I encountered people who weren’t asleep. I’m not usually a chatty person before I get to school, but this was different. I couldn’t speak.

Luckily, I’d have verbal-aversive periods before, but this was so much different. It wasn’t really even that I didn’t want to talk. I couldn’t. I missed a class because I would be 2 minutes late and I didn’t know how to apologize if my prof called me out. I couldn’t participate in discussion this way, anyhow.

So, I worked on my paper. I made it to my lab class — it’s really weird to think the answer to every question, but be unable to volunteer it, even during that awkward pause where no one answers.

For me, there was a significant difference between my phone keyboard, a pen, and typing on my tablet’s keyboard accessory. I found myself writing responses to concerned friends and sending them photos rather than typing them out. As a chatty person who would tell you that verbal in-person communication is really the center of how they best connect to people, being unable to use my voice was surreal and frightening.

I finished my paper, well before my midnight deadline. My partner and I had made arrangements to get food and hang out — me, him, and my cat — but while I was waiting for him to arrive, I ran into another friend. Since I’d finished the paper, what seemed to be the main stressor related to my nonverbal episode, I tried to speak. I wasn’t ready. My friend remembered that I was nonverbal — it was so hard to see her berating herself to me for forgetting.

Typing into my phone had gotten easier over the day, so I opened a memo, to let her know that I was okay and safe and that I wasn’t mad that she forgot. Later, when my partner arrived, I did the same for him. He reads out loud, and that was honestly the most uncomfortable thing for me — to have someone else’s voice put to my words when I couldn’t access my own.

We spent a while together, and between the giant burrito, my familiar apartment (we live together when I’m not in the sorority house during the semester), my cat, and his kindness, I was slowly able to talk again.

We got to talking about why this might have happened — I’d never been fully nonverbal before, and I’d definitely experienced stressors that I would rank as more difficult.

But the difference between those stressors and this time was that while I experience a lot of guilt and self-loathing type anxiety feelings, it’s not often actually my fault. This time, a lot of things were. I hadn’t studied well. I hadn’t stayed on top of looming deadlines — they were in my planner, but I didn’t prioritize them. I chose to take on extra responsibilities with my sorority that made me busier during midterms.

I chose to do that big ambitious art project for my anniversary — knowing that October always gets too busy. I was the one who’d invited my sibling to visit, knowing that it was just after midterms — all the deadlines had been written into my planner, I should have known better. I could have done better.

But, I didn’t. And that made my episode a lot worse. Still, I choose to forgive myself. I’m not perfect. I couldn’t be perfect even without my mental illness. I’ve lost countless objects, valuable, sentimental or otherwise throughout my life — eventually you just learn that it’s off to somewhere it’s more needed. I try (and often fail) to do the same for my mental health. I can’t stop something from happening when it’s already happening. I can only see what I did wrong, and try to do better next time.

You’re not perfect, either, no matter who you are or what you have going on in your life. But that’s okay. You’re going to make mistakes. Sometimes it’s going to really be your fault that something is worse than it might have been. Sometimes that makes things harder.

We have to forgive ourselves. We have to practice kindness on ourselves, even if we’ve done something wrong. We have to live with ourselves for the rest of our lives — that might go a lot better if we try to reduce our negativity around our own failures and mistakes. If we do that, we might actually have the capacity to learn from them, instead of repeating them. And things will get better a lot faster than if we just punish ourselves.