Being a Girl in College Today: My Mental Health
I’ve always been afraid to write and share this with the world; I’ve been taught that privacy is a necessity, I shouldn’t be so personal with strangers on the Internet. But it feels almost hypocritical of me to not publish my experience with mental health struggles while I advocate for transparency and being honest. Social media and the Internet are such powerful tools for resources, as well as developing communities to feel less alone in these dark times. Considering the context of our country today, I feel now is the right time for me to be more vulnerable, and let other girls in college know how I have been able to overcome some of my demons… and let non-college girls know how fucking hard it is to just exist right now. Today is World Mental Health Day–and it’s October, marking three years since I was sexually assaulted.
Three years ago feels like an entirely different world. I moved 600 miles away from my hometown to attend college, and I thought I was so ready for that. I was confident in myself, I had always wanted to live in a city, and I finally felt like I could make friends with almost anyone. But from the first week I got there, it felt like a huge slap in the face. While everyone pretty quickly befriended their roommates, my roommates were all from the same country and spoke the same language, which I did not–so we never really became friends. I was really on my own in finding a group of people to connect with–enter the journalism major ice cream social, where I met a boy who shared so many of my interests. I had a boyfriend from high school who was attending college at home, and I thought I had made it pretty clear that I really just needed a friend. We started hanging out with his roommates on a pretty regular basis; we watched movies together, prepared for Halloween, ate snacks in the Boston Common… I was starting to feel really happy and comfortable. They even lived in the same residence hall as I did, along with another group of girls who would come over and I befriended as well. I was relieved and felt like this was my group, I would be okay.
My parents visited during Family Weekend in late October, and they seemed relieved that I was alive, well, and fairly happy. They stayed for two or three days and were set to leave Sunday morning. I saw them for dinner Saturday night, hugged them goodbye, telling them I’d see them for Thanksgiving.
On the night of October 21st, with my parents in a hotel room down the street, I was sexually assaulted by my friend. The person who had introduced me to all my other friends, the person who I was doing homework with until 1 am, the person who grabbed coffee with me before class. We’d been drinking that night–I’d never drank more in my life. I blacked out and fell asleep on his bed and I only remember waking up and feeling a touch that I knew didn’t feel right. I tried to get up and felt sick to my stomach. I lied down for a little while longer to muster up the strength to get back upstairs to my own room. About a half an hour later, at 6 in the morning, I left and settled into to my own bed as the sun started to rise. “Come back,” a text from him read. I’m glad I saved that exchange of messages, because without them, I don’t think I would have had any evidence to prove my case to the Title IX office.
That week I told the girls in that friend group what had happened; one of them didn’t believe me and thought I had “wanted” that because it seemed like him and I were “hitting it off.” The other two listened and seemed to understand, but they didn’t risk losing the friends they’d made. I was more alone than ever. I called my parents and told them I needed to come home immediately, so I missed my first “college Halloween” experience. I barely got on the plane to get back to Boston; I wanted to transfer schools and never go back. The thought of returning to that residence hall, where everything happened, was sickening.
Somehow I returned to my dorm room and never even switched buildings. I honestly think I was just too depressed to consider moving all of my things and going through the whole process of explaining to the college why I needed to move. I don’t remember much about the next few months. I lost ten pounds because I didn’t want to go to the dining hall to risk seeing him… it felt like he was everywhere. Anytime I left my room I was in fear. Sometimes I would see him alone, sometimes I would see him with the people who used to be my friends. That was always the worst.
At some point near the end of the semester, I decided I’d had enough. I couldn’t keep living in isolation, starving myself and sobbing alone in my dorm room. I was also extremely motivated by the #MeToo movement that happened to coincide with the timeline of my assault. (I’d even confronted my assaulter the day after it happened, telling him what he did to me was not okay, and he said “I’m not like Harvey Weinstein.”) Feeling empowered by a variety of women coming forward with their stories, which validated that yes, I definitely was assaulted and no, it was not okay, I reported my case to my college’s Title IX office, armed with nothing but those text messages and the hope that the lawyers would believe me.
The process of reporting him was grueling and long, and definitely did not take 30-90 days as promised. Instead, I spent the next six months recounting and reliving that night. I had to obtain witnesses–my best friend from home (who visited and met him once) and my boyfriend at the time. And I had to repeatedly describe, in detail, where he touched me.
During this time, other pieces of my life were falling apart. My boyfriend and I broke up, his mom was diagnosed with cancer, and she died in the spring. One of my friends from home committed suicide. It seemed like I had a million reasons to go back home and none to stay in Boston, but I felt this responsibility to finish my classes, continue going to my Title IX meetings, and try to enjoy college (even though at that point it was virtually impossible). While I had made a few good friends that spring semester, most weekends I spent with them I turned to drinking excessively to avoid all the pain I felt. My life that winter seems unreal looking back… somehow completing schoolwork while dealing with a breakup, multiple deaths, seeing my assaulter around campus, drinking, reliving the assault over and over again.
I went home that summer and immediately started taking antidepressants. When removed from the college environment I stopped drinking, and it was comforting to finally be around people who knew me and loved me. Everything was okay until the week the report was finalized. This was a whole mess too, because now that I wasn’t in Boston, we needed lawyers in Akron to acquire the paperwork, and sit down with me and watch me as I read it. My dad set this up for me, and in June of 2018 I sat in an office in downtown Akron, carefully reading through a hundred-page packet next to a silent man in a suit. I read, for what felt like the millionth time, my description of what happened, but for the first time I read my assaulter’s description of what happened. And then I read the accounts from his witnesses–the people who used to be my friends–who claimed I had probably consented to the advances, and that I didn’t seem as drunk as I said I was. And even though one of these witnesses–his roommate–didn’t believe me, he did take a photo that night that he submitted as evidence. A photo of me, unconscious, wrapped in the arms of my assaulter, conscious, on his bed. That was the first time I had seen or even known about that photo.
The school asked me to provide an “impact statement” to help finalize the decision of the case. This is the final paragraph;
“Today, I am still struggling but improving. Whenever I think about the assault I feel disgusting. My doctor prescribed me antidepressants at the beginning of this summer, which have helped my mood somewhat. Reading over the report, however, like I did yesterday, always is disturbing. I hate having to think about what he did to me and reliving that night over and over again. Obviously writing this isn’t easy either. It’s worth it, though, since now he will have to somehow face how he has hurt me. I am grateful for the Emerson advisors and coordinators who tried to make this process as easy as possible for me, and that I felt comfortable enough eventually speaking out to them. It took a bit for me to build up the courage to do so, but I am glad I did. I want him to understand the significance of consent and how disgusting it is to think it is okay to take advantage of females in the way he did. I really never want to see his face again.”
The lawyer found sufficient evidence to prove that he did assault me. He was suspended for a semester and banned from the residence halls. He transferred schools and I have never had to see him again, except in my nightmares. I had, and still have, nightmares where he finds where I live, or randomly reappears in my life again. So even though I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones–so many women are not believed and there are hardly ever consequences for the men who commit these disgusting crimes–I don’t feel like I “won” in any way. On top of the barrage of other shit that was happening in my life at the same time, the trauma I experienced will never be “suspended” or “transfer.”
Three days after I read the final report I checked into a mental hospital for the first time. I felt like I was going to take my own life. There was this part of me that desperately just wanted everything to go away, I couldn’t deal with anything anymore. The pills didn’t seem to be helping, I had nightmares all the time. But still, I knew that I didn’t really want to die… there was this strange division within me where I knew I didn’t want to commit suicide, but I couldn’t help feeling that urge. Going to that hospital was scary and weird, I was the youngest person there, I thought I shouldn’t have been there. I couldn't do much aside from puzzling (which is now my favorite activity to help decompress) and attending group therapy sessions. Like I said, I was the youngest person there, so it was pretty eye-opening to hear other people talk about their own struggles… it can make your own problems feel a little less heavy. Also–none of them knew what 13 Reasons Why was, so through uncontrollable sobs I told them how much I hated that show and why it was like gas to a fire for my mental health. One woman said, “That sounds awful. Why would anybody watch that?” I agreed.
That brings me to today. I’ve been in therapy for two years now, and I’m not suddenly all better but I’m definitely improving. In addition to the trauma I experienced, I discovered I have an anxiety disorder that has also been negatively affecting me over the years (flashback: my first grade teacher told my mom I got a little too frustrated when I didn’t understand subtraction). I’d never had the right vocabulary to describe how I felt, or tools to exist with my anxiety in a way that wouldn’t let it take over my life. I guess that’s why I’m not super open about my mental health struggles… I don’t want anxiety to be a part of my personality. There’s something so toxic about the subcultures of the Internet that romanticize these issues and compare struggles. I’m definitely a really privileged and fortunate person; I had a lot of support from my family and I had the means to seek professional help. There are so many people who have it worse than me. But I don’t let that invalidate my own problems–instead I try to get better by focusing on myself, meditating, practicing yoga, and learning.
It may sound weird to include my academic experience in this, but this portion of my life helped me refine “what I want to be when I grow up.” I never really knew what I was passionate about, or what could motivate me to wake up and accomplish something every morning. Since taking classes about marketing, social media, and their impact on our culture today, I’ve learned so much about the ways in which these platforms can really help us, or really hurt us. Without the women who used the hashtag #MeToo, bravely sharing their stories, would I be the same as I am today? But on the other hand–would I have been so depressed that first week of college had I not seen Instagram posts of people who looked like they were having more fun than me? This separation of reality, activism, and performative posting is tricky to navigate, especially as a girl in college today. You can chalk this up to “first world problems” if you don’t believe in the power of mental health, or you can listen, learn, and try to understand the struggles that accompany owning a vagina. I want this post to uplift other young women, and know that there’s at least one other person out there (it’s me, hello) who is dealing with some shit too. And that’s what I hope to do with my future, because not everyone has those resources to get better, and not everyone will believe you when you say something is wrong or something terrible happened. So stay tuned, I’m working on a project that will hopefully accomplish that.
I hope you take care of your mental health and think about what small actions you could take today to start getting better. Maybe start by turning off the news. :)
Madison
