Hey, it gets better

Ever since I was eight, I’ve always suffered from severe anxiety disorder — a mental illness that brings severe low mood swings, constant changes in sleep and energy and severe anxiety.

I always knew that I was different from other kids, able to get either extremely anxious or sad in under 30 seconds, always on-setting a chain of events in my academic or social life that moved swiftly like a set of dominoes.

After dealing with this for years, I learned how to manage —  how to fake being normal and happy like most of my peers. I had learned how to bury the anxiety, which made me feel safe, but wasn’t the healthiest habit in the long run.

But I’ll get back to that later.

Once I entered Cornell my freshman year, the moods started to come back, my friendships started to tumble down after what seemed like weekly anxiety attacks.

Whenever I would make a friend, I would question their motives, so paranoid that they wouldn’t be the support that I needed to make it through the day.

As others were able to make it to class every day, I would be comatose in bed, struggling with the fact that I had even woken up that day.

It’s been hard, balancing mental illness with being a Cornell student.

Time and time again I’ve had to make up, or even going to the extreme of forcing into realization, excuses to professors for poor attendance, or why, despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to work effectively in group projects even though the reason for the latter is simply that being around people gives me extreme anxiety 90 per cent of the time.

The kind of anxiety that you see in movies, where the lead goes nutso at the drop of a dime and no one in their life is able to deal with them.

There are those who promote the stigma of mental illness on campus. Those who use the term “bipolar” as a nickname for people who seem “crazy.”

There are those who still think that it is okay to call anyone who seems to be struggling, note the word seems, with anxiety, “psycho” or say that “Oh, you seem upset today don’t go and shoot up the school now,” making light of recent tragedies (which is never okay).

Or there are friends who will block your number or de-friend you because you’ve been feeling really down about life lately (which happens here, trust me).

And to those students who actually believe that making light of other peoples’ struggles (big or small) and demeaning them because they have social anxiety, have been abused (i.e. “he/she deserved it”), have some sort of eating disorder or whatever someone else is going through: I want you to know that every time you kick someone while they’re down, you’re only adding to the struggle that they face on a daily basis.

And everyone at Cornell is going through something, so putting them down to make yourself feel better, is not okay.

But I’ve also been blessed enough to be surrounded with extremely supportive peers at Cornell.

There are kinds of friends who are willing to hold you mid-panic attack to remind you that, in fact, the world is not actually crashing down around you and that you will be okay.

The kinds of friends who will talk with you for hours on end to distract you from the anxiety that has been drowning you for days.

The kinds of friends who take time post-graduation to visit to make sure you’re okay.

And you are the people who make me proud to be able to call myself a Cornellian, even on my worst of days. You are the students who hold the door open for someone rushing to class looking frazzled, the students who take a quick second to console a stranger crying outside of a prelim, the students who make the stress of Cornell worth going through.

The students who remind you that everyone is going through something and that there is always someone to empathize with, even if its a completely confidential consultation with an EARS peer at 2am the morning after a loss, shitty prelim grade or when you’re just feeling terrible.

So, whenever you are feeling down and out, it is important to remember that despite the few assholes roaming our campus who can’t seem to get a clue about what is appropriate: Cornell is a place of acceptance and that it is worth it.

And it does get better, even when you can’t think of a reason why it ever would. The best thing about Big Red is that no one is perfect, and we’re all okay with that.