Classes I can't remember, grades I can't forget.

I've been looking into a local graduate program here, and looking into the admissions requirements has been a bit of a kick in the cooch.

First, staying in Montreal is my only real option. I could pay for an entire master's program here for the cost of one semester our of province. That's fucking malarkey.

Looking at the highs and lows of my university grades is something. Hit or miss really. My final university GPA was 3.19, but the start was rough. Going through my transcripts was actually upsetting. I didn't expect that. It's an actual record of a time in my life I barely remember. It's a cold record, which does not care for me or my problems. It's an official transcript.

This  next bit makes me laugh, because it shows the difference between hard-theory and classes where I could use a more creative approach to the work. A professor I thought the world of taught Feminist Thought which was heavy theory (Émile Durkheim and shit like that). I took her two introductory classes while also taking classes that involved more popular culture and the possibility of creative projects.

As you can see, the heavier theory classes (first two) didn't go down so well. Pop culture stuff went great though!

The start of university was rough, but eventually things got better as I ran from Human Relations and settled into Women's Studies.

What's difficult to look back on, is the grades, failures and class suspensions during the first year out of high school. In Quebec we have a CEGEP program, which is like a pre-univeristy college. We have one year less of high school than other places. Instead, it goes high school, then cegep/college, then university. Or, high school, technical college/cegep.

First, I left high school and went into Liberal Arts. This was a huge mistake. I didn't even know what Liberal Arts really was. I took the title of the program literally (problem #1), and was surrounded by rich private school kids that didn't even speak the same language as me (not literally). It was so alien.

Shit then hit the fan with a boy I was in an unhealthy relationship with. I changed school, went into Social Studies for a semester, did terribly, felt worse, and then headed back to my original school, where I bounced around the creative arts until I graduated with a Arts & Culture degree.

Things were such a mess. I was in so much pain. I was manic. It's just hard to look back on.

This "rough patch" lasted throughout my college life. Roughly 3 years. University continued that, but I was on a slow incline. My time in graphic design followed that (I graduated in 2011) and the last few years have been the best I've had in the last decade. 

It really bums me out that these grades follow me around. As they do anyone else who had an accident, survives a trauma or has some type of mental break. Registrars don't give a fuck. 

I know I shouldn't settle on this. I'm trying not to fixate on the image and the low numbers. I know that eventually, I was able to stand back up and move along, but it's so hard. It's like remembering a wound. It's a type of ghost-limb syndrome. A muscle memory for pain. A general sense of uneasiness and a heat in the chest. 

Things got better. I eventually got better. I have more good days now.

I was able to graduate from university. This is a privilege. This is something I earned. That I paid for. That I accomplished. That's not nothing.

I did okay. Excluding chemistry of course - but don't expect too much from me. I'm in the fucking arts.

What I'm feeling isn't fear. I thought maybe it might be, since I'm looking at grad school now, and that means re-learning an academic language. It means more work. It means academic texts. It means papers. It means a thesis. It means work and school. It means long hours. But things are different. I have methods of coping now. I have a support system. I'm able to better manage my expectations, and don't overly commit to things. I know how to say no. I can drop out. I can work less. I can move things around. I don't feel the same pressure now, maybe because I don't feel forced into it. 

For a long time, I was in school as to be "doing something." I felt like for as long as I was in school, I wasn't actively ruining my life. It was a pause on decisions. It was a pause on the big moves expected of your 20's.

What I feel now, when looking at these transcripts is yes, some sadness. But I also feel empathy for myself, then. I still feel the twinge in my chest. It hurts. It's the reverberation of a devastation. It's similar to that feeling you have when you walk away from an upsetting documentary, only it's evoked by your own memory. 

Why Mental Health Disorders Emerge in Your Early 20s.

Vice has an article up on Why Mental Health Disorders Emerge in Your Early 20s. This is something that's come up in a few of the articles and books I've read, but I wanted to highlight some of the points made in the article for my own clarification.

The interview quotes below are from Johanna Jarcho, Ph.D. a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health:

... The vast majority of mental health disorders do emerge during one's adolescence or early 20s. If you're going to have an anxiety disorder as an adult, there's a 90% chance that you'll have had it as an adolescent. Basically, you're not going to develop an anxiety disorder as an adult. You're going to develop it as a kid and then it'll carry through to adulthood. Emerging research suggests that this is because adolescence is a time when the brain is changing to a great degree. We once thought that the brain didn't change that much after earlier childhood, but what we've seen is that the brain continues to undergo really profound changes up until your early 20s. It's still quite malleable, so being exposed to different influences in your social environment can really have a profound impact on the way that your brain continues to develop.

 Is there anything else you think that the average young adult should know?

They should know that most of the mental health disorders that people have in their 20s do dissipate. That can give you hope. But they should also know that if you're one of the people for whom it's not going to dissipate, it's much better to get help sooner rather than later. Don't think of seeing a mental health professional as something stigmatizing that you only do in a moment of acute crisis. Think of it as a general wellness thing, like going for an annual checkup. Talk about problems early instead of letting things build up.

It seems, to me, that a lot of this has to do with self-awareness of ourselves within an outside world. My introduction to my anxiety and depression was through an eating disorder. I was 16, all of a sudden I was worried about my being sexualized, my being wanted and accepted, my place in the world (literally). Anxiety is another branch to that same fear, our role, our responsibilities, our natural state versus what we feel we should or should not be. Depressive thinking - acknowledging the struggle, the pain, seeing things an insurmountable - all comes in when you start really identifying with your ego, especially an unstable ego that is panicked and threatened, as well as sensitive, self-conscious and hormonal.

You know teenager's are ridiculous, and often feel immortal? They go through their Jackass phase where they do dumb things because they can, to make their friends laugh and because they're going to live forever, just astronomically high on being oblivious and self-centred. Well maybe that eventually dulls and mutates into something else. Maybe it worms it's way back inside of you, and rots. It becomes its own antithesis. You're suddenly faced with the reality of all of your choices. The difficulty of moving forward and choosing your life. Suddenly there's college. There's a major. There's a gap-year or time-off that could ultimately lead to you being homeless, because there is no time for time off. What about working while in school? What about taking out a student loan? Loans? What about your sexuality? What about it is abnormal? Wow, that person is really good looking. You are not that good looking. Independence would be nice. But you can't afford to live on your own. Stay with your parents, like a loser. Your ex is now with someone put-together. You're a mess. You don't come from money. Work two jobs. Is everything meant to be this difficult already?

What if all of that ignorance gets blown open into something like a hyper-awareness?

Maybe that's what it looked like for me, since I'm hyper-sensitive, an introvert, and a thinker.

But not everybody is made like me. Maybe it's different - the process. But, it could also be rooted in that same rot. That existential ignorance that becomes existential knowledge, coupled with the trauma of navigating that realization and moving towards (or avoiding) that eventual acceptance. 

On the echoes of trauma.

I've been thinking about memory and trauma a lot lately. Why is it that certain things are fixed into my brain. Why is it that certain memories have had such an impact on me? It’s as if the memories have pooled, and during the course of the depressive episode of my 20’s became this large body of water I don’t remember crossing. And this water, unmoved and untouched, has become stagnant. So here I am, on the other side of it, trying to figure out how the hell I got to where I am, and how to navigate my way forward.

I use to think this meant going back, trying to return to how things were, but now I know better. There is no going back. I am a totally different person to the micro level. You don’t survive a sickness untouched. Your cells have mutated. You've adapted.

But moving forward isn't as easy as it sounds. Patterns and habits exist. A decade of negligence to parts of me needs addressing. Waking up is painful. Uncomfortable. Takes energy.

“One step at a time.”

“One day at a time.”

Focusing on the management of my life, on surviving one day at a time has gotten me through a lot. But it’s also meant my vision of the future is extremely limited.

I lose the entirety of my 20’s to depression and anxiety. I hold pockets of memory here and there. All of it is a haze. A deep, thick cloud I surface from occasionally. It’s become a joke to some of my friends, “you don’t remember anything!” they'll say, recounting the time I slept through our being lost in a national park.

The reality seems to be that I don’t remember significant periods of that time in my life because my focus of surviving one day at a time meant every day was nearly identical. My only comfort was in sleep and unconsciousness. My work and school memories are cloudy at best. I kept telling myself as long as I was in school, I was mildly productive.

My recession from life, my attempt at protecting myself back-fired. I gained weight. I became physically unhealthy. I detached from my sexual self. I became so internalized, it took years to re-form my voice. To hear myself.

How can a memory of someone be so traumatic? At some point, aren't they just a ghost? This event has become exponentially larger as it transitioned to something resembling myth. At some point it just represented the feelings it engenders, doesn't it?

Your ghost reminds me of shame. Of rejection. Of pain. Of me being on my own. 

How do I let go? How do painful memories become less intrusive?

I think a large part of my problem is my disengagement from my life. Ten years of memories didn't happen. I wasn't out. I wasn't dating. I wasn't travelling. I wasn't socializing. I was surviving myself. Because of this, I wasn't making new memories. New references.

My references, my memories were these old ghosts.

There’s shame tied to my inability to let things go; these memories that have festered into larger villains then they originally were. Why can’t I be lighter? Easier?

Makes me think of Jenny Lewis’ She’s Not Me.

she's not me, she's easy

I am not easy. lol. I can’t be! Look how fucking dark and incessant my brain is! Sure, in real life, I'm comical. I'm clever. But how can anyone fall in love with me, when I'm so heavy? How can someone truly know me and still want to be with me?

Stagnant pools of memory, and heavy fucking baggage.

It's like I'm a junior adult. Sure, on paper I'm 31, but I'm lacking a decade of the formative experiences my peers have. First apartments. Room-mates. Casual sex. Parties. Drinking. Exploring with drugs. International travel. Basically 100 different kinds of socializing. Dating mainly. 

Socially stunted and romantically retarded. 

That's me. I'm trying my best to figure out how to move forward. I don't want to feel like there's no way out of this. 

It's going to be so much work.