By: Ashley RoseStaff-Writer/Photographer
When I was in sixth grade, I started thinking about college. Like most Hoosiers, my list included Indiana University and Purdue University. I did not know that IU South Bend existed, or that I would later earn a Bachelors degree from here.
The year I started thinking about college was the same year I got put on medication for the first time in my life. Nothing crazy, just 20 milligrams of Celexa, an antidepressant often given to adolescents. Many things played into needing this prescription; a biological mother that had been absent since I was eight, a loving father diagnosed with epilepsy, unkind elementary school girls that distorted my perception of myself, among other things.
A few years later, I made it to high school. Celexa didn’t work well, and I convinced myself I just needed to fill my time better. So I played sports, joined theater and DECA, took every honors class available to me, volunteered at animal shelters, became editor-in-chief of my high school yearbook and filled every second of my life so full I couldn’t process a single emotion. The best part of these extracurriculars, according to my parents and teachers, was how amazing it would all look on a college application. As a 13-year-old at the time, I didn’t know how to tell them I had a goal of being dead before applying to college.
My four years of high school, while filled with rehearsals, school trips and games, became my time of self sabotage. While I wanted to represent a strong girl at school that was in the top ten percent of her class, I was under the impression I would never live long enough to face repercussions for bad decisions.
These bad decisions mostly involved romantic relationships with older people I should not have been involved with. The emotional validation that came with someone older telling me how mature and beautiful I was could’ve been enough to keep me alive until I became one of those sexual assault statistics. How many times can someone be a statistic, I wondered to myself once it happened multiple times with different people.
My senior year of high school, I drafted six different suicide notes. Looking back is quite ironic, as I never found any of the notes to be good enough as acting as my final words. How funny that my internalized need for perfection kept me alive more than once. I was set to graduate high school early, however, I was missing at least one day of school a week, so I sat in my bedroom, stared at a wall and questioned my placement within the universe. I tried four different medications that fall, including my first antipsychotic, to regulate my brain.
That fall, I had applied to colleges, IU South Bend included, and got accepted into every single one. However, only one college was close enough to my parents, both of which were now in poor health, and offered me enough financial aid for it to all be worth it.
The winter to follow my graduation from high school, the winter of 2020, was the season of many changes. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a mental illness that can dramatically impact your ability to regulate moods and cloud division making. I found God that winter. I re-kindled an old friendship, who I am now in a long-term relationship with, hoping to marry one day.
While this senior goodbye should be written to tell you about the glorious moments and saddening hardships that come with the three and a half years it took me to get a degree, I instead chose to write about the worst moments that brought me here.
As a professor, student, advisor, administrator or friend, you will never know everything about someone. Even that student who is happy to respond to every question or share their personal experiences with the class is still a mystery to you, regardless of what you think.
I write about these hard moments, not for sympathy or for people to question interactions they’ve had with me in the past, but instead to encourage people to be more mindful about their future interactions with others. You don’t know if their parents are healthy or not, you don’t know if they have a chronic physical or mental illness impacting their day-to-day life, and you certainly don’t know if they want to be alive on this earth, regardless of the smile on their face.
IU South Bend has taught me the most about mindfulness, with powerful professors that encourage me to open my mind, classmates that reiterate the importance of being present and the many new friendships I’ve gained who have taught me more about myself than I knew before.
As I prepare to enjoy my final days as a college student, I can say this; after many medications, many bad relationships and many poorly written suicide notes, I am thankful God kept me alive.
In January 2024, I will be getting a limited liability company (LLC) for my photography business and visiting Pakistan with my best friend, a lovely friend I met here at IU South Bend in the Political Science department. While I’m uncertain about the other months to come in 2024, I can assure you it will be filled with reminiscing about college and continuing to work on my ability to be more mindful.