Both anxiety and depression, as separate entities, are mentally crippling. Having dealt with depression for a few years now, I had begun to adjust to the feeling, finding ways of coping with the feelings and ultimately restricting the depression from affecting my daily life immensely. The same goes with anxiety; I had figured out how to cope with anxiety in a way that it did not interfere too greatly on my daily life, academically or socially.
Then I got to college.
My entire educational career, from elementary school to senior year, I looked forward to the moment that I would finally leave home and go to a university. I looked forward to the freedom and independence, and I was beyond excited to finally be on my own. And for the first few weeks, I enjoyed these feelings a great deal. Everything felt so new; it felt like a fresh start and I was handling my classwork and social life exceptionally well.
But a few weeks ago, about halfway into my first semester of college, something seemed to change inside of my brain. I began much more anxious. I worried about schoolwork, despite the fact that I was doing very well in each of my classes. I felt as if I was failing somehow, as if I was doing everything wrong. At the same time, I started becoming quite depressed again. I found myself constantly feeling as if I were alone with no one around who could understand what was going on.
My roommate would ask me to go out on the weekends, but I chose to go home or stay in on the weekends to catch up on schoolwork or lay in bed. I became less and less social, staying in my dorm room for a majority of the time. This was the depression, the constant sadness. The young adult in me, buried deep behind the depression and the anxiety, wanted to go out and have fun, however between the feeling of constant sadness coupled with the anxiety of going out and not enjoying myself, I always opted out. And, when I would finally agree to go out, I found myself anxious and uncomfortable.
I seemed to constantly be tired, yet when I would lay in bed and try to fall asleep, my mind would run through every thought possible that could sadden me or give me anxiety. I laid in bed for hours on end, unable to sleep, almost every night.
I continued to feel a creeping loneliness, which I found ironic because I go to a school of over 40,000 students. It is quite amazing how easy it is to find yourself so lonely in a school filled with so many people. I never anticipated that my depression and anxiety would come back so harshly when I came to school, yet here I am. Of course, I have friends at school, but people do not come to college to have their friend cry to them about their depression and anxiety, so I opt not to talk to them about how feel because I did not want to be a burden to their college experience.
I suppose the goal of me writing this would be to show those who may feel the same way that they are not alone in their feeling and that perhaps they can reach out to others around them who may feel the same, and perhaps things will begin to get a little bit better.
