During my senior year of high school, art school was the promised land just beyond the icy trap of the conservative walls surrounding me. I attended a small school of just under 1000 students spanning from grades 7-12. It was the kind of place where you know everyone's name, the captain of the football team was the next highest deity under God, and teachers kept up with you long after your time in their class had ended.

Still, it was the kind of place you could get lost if you didn't fit the standard mold. I wasn't skinny. I wasn't particularly pretty. My athletic talents were limited, and I had very little skill in science and math. I was quiet, and I was depressed; two things you weren't allowed to be in the hallowed halls of what we called "The Academy." So, I dragged myself along holding onto my acceptance letter to Columbia College Chicago as hope that somewhere out there, being the depressed artist wasn't just a cliche. I felt like I had found a haven where there was no longer a stigma towards mental illness and getting help wouldn't have to involve calling therapists behind my parent's back and spending money out of my own paycheck on fruitless sessions. Off in the distance, was a place I wasn't sure I would make it to, but I knew I had to try. I knew that if I could just make it out of high school, out of my home, I would be happy again. Spoiler alert: I was very wrong.

Soon after arriving at Columbia, I felt the cold and all too familiar shadow of depression looming behind me. I was hoping I would leave it far behind in my native city of St. Louis, Missouri, but mental illness isn't something you can pack up neatly in a box and store in the depths of your closet. It follows you every day, everywhere, walking behind you like an unwelcome stranger who's pace has put them right at your heels, lurking. I began hiding in my room away from my roommates and calling old friends hoping their voices would ignite joy within me again. Nothing was working. I even joined tinder hoping that just a little validation would raise my spirits. But boys asking me for sex had no effect on my morale. If anything, I became worse. I went on one date with a boy I had met. It was my first date, well I thought it was a date. He kissed me. It was my first kiss, and he held my hand the whole way home. This, I thought, this is what will make me better. And it did, for a while. But when the messages became less frequent, I began questioning myself wondering what I had done wrong. Whispering from behind, my depression told me it was all my fault.

But it hasn't just been interactions with boys revealing the nature of my depression. I crave affection more than anything else, and my main source of that back home was my friends. Coming to Columbia, I thought I would finally be around "my people" and make friends at the drop of a hat. But I shudder at the thought of talking to strangers and everyone around me seems immensely too cool to be friends with me. My roommates were great, but they didn't exactly understand why I would lay on the floor silently for 30 minutes or why it took me hours to work up the courage to use the power tools in our school's workshop. Often, I feel patronized for being the way I am. I'm treated like a child by my peers when I shut down because it's assumed that I'm just throwing some sort of fit. I'm told to "suck it up", something I never thought I would have to hear again after leaving high school.

I understand that Columbia and most art schools are filled with depressed young adults using their art as an outlet, but at what point did we let it become a joke? Teachers laugh about us all being a little blue and disturbed like that's just something you have to suffer through for the rest of your life. But what if you want to get better? I did want to get better, so I called the counseling center to make an appointment for a phone consultation. The website says that you should be able to speak with someone within 24 hours, but I was told I would have to wait almost 2 weeks before I would be able to speak with a therapist. My heart dropped and I instantly began to cry. It was so discouraging to hear that this haven that was supposed to help and protect me couldn't squeeze me in until 10:30 AM, over a week from my consultation. Once again, I felt like I was in that place of dragging myself along until I could get the rest I needed. I felt like just a number, like just another mentally ill kid in the long line of mentally ill kids here waiting to be told that this is just part of being an artist.

But I know for a fact that my depression is not something that I should just have to "suck it up" and live with. It is an illness that can be treated with a combination of medication and counseling so that maybe, I can really live a happy life, free from the shadow constantly behind me. I thought this was what art school would teach me, but that's not what I have found. I have found that art school is much like the real world. Depression is something we love to talk about as a theory, but we don't want to look at the ugly mess up close. We don't want to see the pain in our roommate's eyes or how the mess they left on the floor is symbolic of how they feel inside. We don't want to be patient and understanding when some people just can't function the same way "normal people" can. This place that claims to be so open and accepting is just as narrow-minded and as blind where I came from. Mental illness becomes so commonplace that it is forgotten, and it is just expected that you function with it because, apparently, everyone else is.

Depression isn't a theory. It is painfully real to me and to so many others. It's days without showering, weeks without doing laundry, and piles of crap accumulating on every open surface. It's forgetting to eat or eating to mask the pain. It's laying in your bed at 2 a.m. wondering why you feel so alone when there is another person in the bed across from you. It is not a joke. It is not commonplace. It is diagnosable, and it is treatable. Depression shouldn't have to be another bad art school cliche. It should be treated as the illness it really is and then, maybe, this can truly be a place where we can all live what we love.