From the time I was in middle school, I knew I was going to leave my hometown once I graduated. I remember being 13 and angsty (and depressed, but maybe that goes without saying) and making a Facebook post that had two words: "5 years." I couldn't wait to leave.
And eventually, I did leave. I applied to four schools in the Northeast, only one of them in New York State where I was born and raised. The end of this story sees to it that, yes, that one school was Stony Brook University, and it was the one I ended up deciding on.
SBU looked like everything I wanted my college experience to be. And now that I'm halfway done with it, I still stand by that sentiment. Choosing to go to SBU is one of the best decisions I've ever made and there honestly isn't a day that I regret it.
This place is the perfect place for me to be. All of the reasons that I love SBU is for a different piece. But one of the main ones was and still is that it's about 400 miles away from my hometown in Rochester, NY—that translates to an eight-hour drive, a ten-hour train ride, or an hour flight plus two hours of trains.
I realize that compared to some of my friends who are from India or Ireland or even California, that doesn't sound like much. But it's enough. It's far enough away that I felt like I could come here and create a new life that I was happier with. But it wasn't far enough away that I could outrun myself.
I come from a good home. I have a father who loves me and supports me financially and a solid group of friends that I've known since I was 12-years-old and love like I never knew I could love people. But I wasn't happy at home. I wasn't happy in middle school, I wasn't happy in high school, and to be completely honest, I wasn't happy with myself.
My life in Rochester felt very small and very scary. I lost my mother when I was 13-years-old and everywhere I looked was a reminder of all I had lost when she died. I couldn't deal with the grief and I was self-medicating for a mental illness I hadn't had diagnosed for years to come. I developed enough unhealthy coping mechanisms and routes of escapism to fill not just a book, but an entire library.
By the time I graduated, I hated the person I had become, the illnesses I had developed, the dependencies I couldn't escape from, and the life I felt like I had effectively ruined.
So I ran. I ran in a pretty normal way, but it was still, looking back, running. I ran 400 miles away in the hopes of creating this new life where I didn't have to deal with the home that I had turned into a mausoleum or the person in the mirror that I had turned into nothing more than a sickness.
It worked for a little bit. I got to Stony Brook and I made new friends and I joined new organizations and I developed new coping skills and I created a new life that I was proud of and finally passionate about living. It worked. Running worked. And then time passed and life happened and, well, running stopped working.
I'm realizing that no matter how far I go, I will always be there. And at the end of the day, I'm the problem.
It's been two years since I left my hometown and all of the things built within it that I so badly wanted to escape. And the more time that goes by, the more those things start popping up again, no matter how happier my life is in this new place.
I can assign a location to the grief and to the awful things I have done to myself all I want, but at the end of the day, the location is just a scapegoat. I'm still here. These problems live and die within me.
I'm happier now than I was when I was 13 or 15 or 17. I have better coping skills, better resources, better people that I'm surrounded by. I've learned how to be honest about what I'm feeling and what I'm going through and I feel some degree of accountability to my future and to getting better.
But I'm still here. And the problems I tried to run 400 miles away from are still here.
Here's to peace and a life that you don't have to keep trying to outrun. Here's to healing.