In about three weeks, I'll be starting my senior year of college. It's all very surreal. I'm excited for the year before me. I'm nervous for the year after, but mostly, I'm proud of the ways that college has shaped and influenced me, particularly in the last year. This last school year was one of the toughest years for me both academically and personally. In the course of a year, I took 32 credits (16 English credits and 16 history credits) which meant an insane amount of reading. I was also working, tutoring, involved in three student organizations, and coping with a terminally ill family member. I'm still not sure how I survived the year, but I did, and I think that I've even become a better person because of the challenging year I went through.

At this time last year, I was just as excited for classes to start, but I was also dreading what that would mean. I would be leaving my family behind just like I had for the previous two years, but this time, that meant leaving behind my terminally ill grandpa. It was tough being excited for school but at the same time realizing that school starting would mean leaving him behind and maybe not seeing him alive again. I loved him, but watching a loved one wither away is just as difficult as you'd expect. Perhaps even more so when that loved one has played such an active and lively role in your life. The grandpa that I was spending time with was not the grandpa I was used to. He was in visible pain, thin, slow-moving, and very tired. I didn't really know what to say when I was around him; all I knew was that I had to be around him. I needed to cherish whatever time with him I had left, which was what my entire family was trying to do.

Often, it seemed as if we were walking on eggshells trying not to mention the scary fact looming before us––that he probably wouldn't be here in a year. Living your life that way is exhausting. Avoiding certain topics and censoring your conversations is tiresome, but we did it, for the most part. I felt like I had to pretend that I was fine when I was struggling to cope with the impending loss of a family member because I knew we should be savoring our last months with him, rather than constantly talking about that one moment that we were all dreading. But by doing so, I was neglecting my mental health because I felt like I had to. I felt like I should be focused on my grandpa rather than myself, which I don't truly regret; I only regret the way I did it. My process of suppressing emotions and pretending contributed to an emotionally draining fall semester. Yes, I'm glad I spent as much time as I could with my grandpa, but I wish I had realized sooner that I could cope in a way that didn't involve suppressing difficult and sometimes uncomfortable emotions.

I felt bad leaving home to go to college, but I was also relieved. By going to school and creating such a large geographical distance between me and my family, I could pretend that my grandpa wasn't really dying. I could pretend that it was just like any other school year, but then the phone would ring. I hated that I dreaded seeing my mom's number pop up on my phone, but whenever she called there was almost always an update on grandpa's further deterioration. Finally, it got to a point where I wasn't able to distance myself from what was going on at home because my grandpa was nearing the end. When I finally released the words "terminal cancer" and "grandpa" in the same sentence out loud, the floodgates I had worked so carefully to build burst.

I've found that I have a pattern of bottling up emotions that I'd rather not deal with at the moment (or ever). It's only a temporary fix, and does nothing but create distance between me and the people I love. In the past year, I've come to realize how therapeutic it can be to experience those painful emotions and deal with them as they come, rather than trying to wish them away. Believe me, I've tried, and it most definitely does not work.

A year ago, I was in a completely different place emotionally, but the loss of my grandpa and the following emotional turmoil has taught me the importance of acknowledging your emotions, rather than stuffing them down and trying to ignore them. I'm still a work in progress on this front, but acknowledging that there is a problem with a doable solution is a move in the right direction. It will take work to actually acknowledge emotions rather than ignoring them; however, I know that by moving in that direction, I will be a happier and a more emotionally healthy person. I'm determined to start this year off in a better place emotionally, and hopefully maintain my emotional and mental health throughout my last year of college. I'm looking forward to this new year of classes because it's my last, and I know it's going to be a great year filled with lots of learning and growth.