My junior year of undergrad was a struggle. Like most twenty-somethings, academics were kicking into high-gear, I took on a new leadership role in a club, and I was navigating a new world post-lockdown. Unlike most twenty-somethings, I had to manage a team of eight caregivers in order to maintain my health and independence, on top of everything else.

 

I finally had access to the higher-level creative writing classes I had been looking forward to, and I was eager to explore my craft in more detail. In advanced fiction, I developed an idea that I created in high school at a college-level and received pertinent feedback to the growth of the story and my writing.

 

That spring, I branched out and enrolled in advanced poetry and nonfiction. Poetry has never been my strong suit; I often feel like I’m rambling or being too angsty to make anything of substance. The class was very open ended, with few writing prompts and only the expectation of a poem a week with a total of eight transferred into a portfolio at the end. Even though I’ve always considered myself a creative person, for some reason the lack of structure didn’t work for my style. Every week before the due date, I would sit at my laptop staring at the doom-filled white page of the word doc. I explored prompts on the internet and read other poems, but to no avail, I never had the inspiration to create. So, I found myself word-vomiting weekly and seeing what would come out, maybe some gold could be sifted through…

i feel myself drowning, but swallow the water to at least stay hydrated

she would’ve worn a life jacket.

 

Nonfiction was something I had never explored, unless college essays count, but those were a different wheelhouse. The professor approached writing prompts in a different manner than I had ever experienced, she would read them aloud in broken up stages, giving us time to slowly discover the story we wanted to tell. With this structured freedom, I also struggled. I never found myself going to class with a story in mind, and I began thinking that’s what was expected. In office hours one day, I explained to her how I couldn’t think that quickly with her prompts, and how I often found myself discarding what was written in class and rewriting at home. She immediately reassured me that that’s what most do with her prompts, that they open things up for interpretation and it’s up to us writers to take what we need out of it. Her comforting words made me reapproach the class in general, and I found myself finding stories at my own pace.

 

On top of navigating new creative endeavors, I was challenging my leadership skills and responsibility. At the beginning of the year, I had been appointed as a co-chair on a committee at the University’s Programming Board (DUPB), where I was in charge of planning entertainment-based events on campus for the undergrad students to enjoy. I struggled to create a connection with my fellow co-chair who was also balancing her own life as an active student, and I was a new leader to my committee of peers. At the end of the year, we were planning two major events – a concert on campus with a big-name artist, and a grand opening of a permanent stage on campus for student bands and performers to enjoy. My co-chair had lost sight of these goals and started dismissing meetings and left a lot for me to take care of; including buying snacks for the bands, arranging dressing rooms, making a day-of plan, and ensuring our committee members were in the loop and volunteering to help as much as they could. Near the end of the year, I had also been “promoted” to be a co-president of DUPB in the next school year and had to coordinate that lengthy transition.

 

Towards the end of the spring, everything came crashing down. My health paid the consequences of my schedule being overloaded, and I ended up hospitalized for three days.

 

I should’ve known the warning signs; I knew myself well enough to recognize my limits being tested. But I didn’t think I had the time to slow down, I didn’t think I had anyone to help take things off my plate, so instead I kept grinding. In the hospital, my mom didn’t let me bring my laptop and if I got a text from anyone in DUPB that was event-related, she helped me write a text explaining that I was unable to help at that time. I felt like a failure. I had let myself get so wrapped up in everything that I let my health reap the consequences.

 

My younger self never would have gotten herself into this mess. She was in her prime in high school – turned in essays early, got 8-10 hours of sleep every night, and managed to have a social life at the same time. Meanwhile, there I was, reflecting in a hospital bed about how I did everything wrong.

 

Looking back at that time, almost exactly a year later, I feel sorry for having those thoughts. Of course I didn’t handle it like my younger self, she wouldn’t have known what to do if she faced these challenges! The biggest struggles she had included AP exams and friend drama about who was carpooling with who to the prom, and a few medical mishaps. She never pictured herself getting this far; getting to expand her writing skills in poetry and exploring nonfiction, being a student leader and then immediately becoming co-president the next year, managing a team of caregivers so she can live on her own outside of home.

 

While I know my younger self might have been able to sense the warning signs of an illness, that doesn’t mean she would’ve been disappointed. She would’ve been proud to see me come out of it stronger, and I like to think she’d be proud of this version of me, too.