As Boston College students, it can be tempting to hide our true selves. Embracing our individuality can help us to understand ourselves and experience the world around us as genuinely as possible. Authentic Eagles is a series that gives a voice to the people who have experienced firsthand the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of being one’s authentic self at BC. We hope that readers are inspired to have conversations and reflections of their own, working towards being more authentic individuals.
Allie Landes, CSON ’16
On my twenty-first birthday, I was prescribed antidepressants. My friends bought me a self-help book. My mom sent me a list of things she loved about me, because she knew I didn’t love myself.
That night, I went to a bar with my friends and danced to songs I didn’t like with sweaty people I didn’t know. People put drinks in my hand and I drank them. People stepped on my toes and I moved them. In all of the drinking and shrinking I did that night, that I’ve done for years and years, I wondered if there was something more. If somewhere, something mattered or had meaning. Or if there was just this.
My best friend from home came to visit that weekend to celebrate with me. My something more, I told myself. Something that matters. On the third day of her visit, I started to have a panic attack on the T. My best friend didn’t get it. I left her with a friend and went home to break down. It was the bad feeling.
Sometimes I feel this bad feeling. It starts small and gets bigger, blooming like ink on paper when it gets wet. First, my head is full and heavy and fast. Then, my heart is violent, knocking at the inside of my ribs like an emergency. The bad feeling whispers mean things to my bones and muscles and skin until they all hate each other and all of my body parts are at war. My hands move in their own way and I shake when I try to make them silent. The air feels like fingernails down my throat, and I breathe so fast that I’m not really breathing at all. It feels like an ending.
I was like this when she found me. Curled into myself and gasping for air, I tried to turn away from her. She didn’t let me. She held me and let me cry. She didn’t ask me to stop, to smile, to be O.K. again. She told me it was alright not to be. My roommate, Darby, let me be sad. She let me be.
For days after, I couldn’t get out of bed. Every morning was a war between who I thought I was and who I knew I should be. I knew I had reasons to be happy, but I wasn’t. Every morning, I woke to my sadness. Blinking into the early morning with disgust, I could see Darby getting ready, smiling at me with her early morning face and letting me know there is more to the world than just my sadness. Sometimes, I get up just for her.
The nights are worse. They are the heaviest. They are full of questions: Did I do anything meaningful today? Did I find my something more? Am I happy? Do I like myself? The answers, more often than not, are no, and I go to sleep so I don’t have to deal with them.
I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety when I was 16. When I came to BC, I told myself I was O.K. I didn’t need help anymore. I would be happy here. For three years, I waited for my problems to go away. They only got worse. I got A’s, joined clubs, went to parties, smiled, repeated “good” on autopilot when people said their passing how-are-yous. I never thought about how I was.
When I got back to BC for my senior year, nothing meant anything anymore. People asking me how I was didn’t care. Standing around with alcohol in my hand felt like a lie. Conversations about last night were meaningless. Last night and today and tonight were all the same. Nothing felt authentic anymore.
This is not a story about BC. This is not a story about my family or my friends or the people who have hurt me. This is a story about me. Finally. This is not to say that what gives you meaning is wrong. This is not to say that drinking and dancing and talking about it are shameful. This is to say that your meaning is yours, and my meaning is mine. This is to say that I am still finding it.
This is a story about depression. This is a story we don’t tell. It’s about my daddy issues and my mommy issues and my other issues too. It’s about loneliness. It’s about feeling like you are the only person in the world. It’s about questioning if anything matters at all. It’s about questioning if you matter. It’s about questioning if you’ll ever be loved.
Everyone has triggers. For me, it’s about love. My parents divorced so early that I don’t remember them ever being married. My dad moved away and forgot about being my dad. He has never told me he loves me. My mom remarried, and said “I love you” over and over to a man who abused her in front of me. Faced with a choice between love that hurts, and no love at all, I chose the former. I chose to be hurt because I didn’t know there was anything else. I filled my emptiness with relationships that made me more hollow. Recently, when I asked my mom if I should go back to an ex, she said, “As long as he doesn’t hit you.” And then I understood. That was about her.
This is about me this time. This is about loving myself. This is about the moment when my therapist asked me what I liked about myself, and the moment after, when I had nothing to say. This is about my inability to take compliments, my struggle to just say “thank you.” This is about Friday nights in bed and reading into text messages because they can’t actually want to spend time with me. This is about me.
This is also about Darby. She is a light, she is laughter, she is the way she loves others. She loves with every part of herself, and she did that for me. When I can’t love myself, she tells me it’s O.K. Sometimes, she loves me when I can’t. Sometimes, she pushes me to love myself.
Sometimes I still can’t. Sometimes I still wake to the emptiness of my own world. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with my own insignificance. But I am still reaching for more, for meaning, for authenticity. Today, that means reaching for Darby’s hand, because she has let me be truly, authentically, me. She has let me tell my story.
