Mental Health Check in

Ive always enjoy filming because I have always been traditionally telling other people’s stories.

Since they aren’t mine and can make them as beautiful and glamorous as possible.

I hate telling my story usually because I suck at it. I feel like I brag too much and I’m trying to work on it. I feel like my reason is that while I know I’ve had an easy life in the greater scheme of things, I’ve had some really rough times along the way. By celebrating and communicating my success and the positives in my life, I am able to remind myself that the good outweighs the bad. And that’s something I truly am thankful for. The opportunities and relationships I’ve made in my life have made me who I am today. I still have so much to experience and grow and the path was rocky as hell but I wouldn’t change a thing.

If you know me well you know I have had struggles with commitment. Some of this ties to the anxiety and depression in general obviously, but there’s more to it than that. It was winter break a few years back when I ran into a girl that I remember meeting at a summer camp over 10 years ago, and she was just as gorgeous as I remembered. We hit it off and things move pretty quickly. A week later I was at her families’ famous Christmas party being introduced to all her family and friends.

Her and I both had or were struggling with anxiety and depression, which as always I want to say there’s nothing wrong with. But, the problem is you can’t fully love someone else until you’re able to fully love yourself. And neither of us were there yet. We caught feelings so fast and became a legitimate part of each other’s lives so quickly that it freaked me out, I’m not gonna lie. I just remember knowing that I wasn’t ready to love her the way she deserved and I had a lot to figure out about who I was before I couldn’t figure out about who I wanted. What made things even more difficult is we were long distance because winter break was over and I had gone back to school. I remember calling her, telling her all of this, crying because I knew I was hurting her. I remember her hanging up and texting me asking me how we could work it out together countless times, her messages getting more and more concerning. Until the messages stopped after she had sent a very clear message that she was about to do something drastic. I panicked, didn’t know what to do, I didn’t have her parents’ numbers. So, I called 911, only problem, she was in back home and I was directly to Clemson’s emergency services. After telling the operator the story just to be told that I needed to contact the authorities in her area I was even more worried. The clock was ticking and she still wouldn’t text back or pick up. I finally got in contact with an officer back home and told him everything. He tried reaching her but she didn’t answer. After that I sent him screenshots of every text we had so that he had the proof he needed to go in and make sure she was ok, at this point I just had to wait. While I waited I remember calling my mom bursting into tears just asking her what to do. This was when my mom and I weren’t really that close but I just remember wanting all the fear to go away and she was who I knew I could turn to. When the officer finally called back he said that she was ok and had been taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation. I still don’t know what was or if anything was happening but it was heart wrenching. I remember I was shocked to see her call me, I think about two hours after all this had went down. She had already been released from the hospital and made a comment about us working through this. I remember hearing that and not know what to say, I felt as if her life was in my hands based off what happened just hours earlier, but also knew that a relationship was not what either of us needed at the time. We ended up cutting ties pretty abruptly after that, but she was ok, and that was all I cared about. For the longest time I held on to those pictures of our text that I sent that cop, reading the conversation over and over, trying to explain it all, figure out what I could’ve done differently. It ate me alive to the point where I was afraid to actually commit when I was ready, out of the fear of something like that happening again.

A little over a year ago, my life changed forever. I initially thought it had changed for the worse. It was the start of my “senior” year, I had just been accepted into Clemson’s sport Comm program, was working with the basketball team and had some pretty great friends. I had the opportunity to travel to Spain with the basketball team, and can’t wait to visit again soon, but things didn’t go like I expected them to. Within a week I lost my last and one of my closest grandparents and was on the streets of Barcelona during a terrorist attack. That moment was truly the loneliest I have ever felt in my life. I was stuck in a foreign country who’s language I didn’t know, hoping I made it back to my hotel, to my team. But, at the time, me and the team weren’t as close as we are now. I had just been moved over from soccer a month before and was still trying to find my place. I want to emphasize how after our trip the players and staff were amazingly intentional about checking in on me, and I’m beyond thankful for that. And while I was happy to have found my place on the team, I felt as though I was a burden or weak link because of struggles.

Fast forward a couple months and things are starting to get back in stride. I still to this day suffer from weird forms of ptsd from the attack and think I always will, but it was being to be something I could live with healthily. If you’re reading this you probably know what happens next. October 22nd I woke up in a hospital and knew my life had taken a sharp turn once again. Mentally and physically I had changed, and at the time it was definitely for the worse. I remember weighing myself at some point over the next month and I was around 115 lbs due to me being stuck in bed with my jaw shut. I remember just wanting to be back, back in Clemson with my old friends, routine, job and everything else in life. But I knew that wasn’t possible, life wouldn’t be the same and that fucked with me mentally so hard. The depression and anxiety started getting worse again instead of better. I remember begging my doctors and parents to just let me be at Clemson, I didn’t care what it took, I just wanted to be home, laying in my bed. When I finally got to come back everything had changed again. Work has always been my foundation at Clemson. I had friends outside of work, but I devoted all of my time and heart to my work because it was my passion. When I came back though, I struggled to find my place again and eventually was let go. It tore my world upside down. The friends I had before were obviously still my friends, but so much had changed. There were new relationship, new dynamics and new inside stories that I had missed out on. I felt as if the months had just been stolen from me and I was so far behind and was moving even further backwards. Don’t get me wrong, there were some amazing experiences during all of this. But I think at the time, my mentality was that the bad were outweighing the good, and just the thought of that is enough toxicity to mess with your life.

I’m finally getting to the point where I’m positive the good outweighs the bad, yeah I still struggle and always will, but my plan and hope is to just keep stacking up the good. I’ve put back every pound I lost, am eating healthier, working some amazing jobs, and building and continuing relationships that will be lifelong. And that just gets me hella hype.

I’m going to try to be intentional about writing on here. Writing has never been one of my strong suits and my mentally this last year has been out of the norm for me and I’m working through things. I love my life, let me start by saying that, but I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression my whole life. Up until around my senior year of high school I was on Prozac (an anti-depressant). I had been accepted to Clemson and was preparing for college when I decided I wanted to quit taking it. I first want to say that I am 100% for medication to help with mental health, it literally saved my life. But, I wanted to push myself to find peace myself and overcome my anxiety and depression by keeping in check with myself mentally and actively seeking to better my life. It’s definitely something that will always be a work in progress, and sometimes there’s regression instead of progress. There have been days, weeks, months and even years where life has just been to much to handle and my daily life and mentality falter from it. I think that’s why it’s important for me to start this. I’m a communications major because community is something we find power in. By being able to share ideas and open up with one another we are able to grow through one another’s experiences synthetically in ways we never would’ve been able to experience. I’ve recently started meditating as a way to intentionally check in with my mental health and focus of goals for my life and mind. I’ve always had a running mind and it can be hard for me to focus, but my hope is that with this I will be able to keep myself intentional through my passion for communication as well as directly work on my social anxiety by sharing the feelings of layers of my story that I sometimes feel uncomfortable being real about.