On December 1, 2018, I got my acceptance letter to my dream school, Miami University. I remember feeling so happy and relieved because I knew this was where I wanted to go since I was in 8th grade, and I had worked so hard to get there. I could picture myself moving into my dorm, meeting all these new people, and becoming a responsible adult.

Cut to less than a year later. I was calling my mom in my dorm room and crying about how stressed and completely exhausted I was. She then asked me, "How is your mental health?" As much as I wanted to say that it was good and that it was just a rough day, I knew that wasn't true and that I have been unhappy for longer than just a day.

While this isn't the first time I have struggled with my mental illness, it's definitely been the hardest. This is the first time I have had to take care of my mental illness without my parents being there to help, and honestly, I've been doing a terrible job at it. I feel like a burden to everyone around me, and I'm so tired of it. I've been losing focus on the important things going on in my life, and I have been letting the dumb, little things get to me.

When I was a child, my friends and I would pretend to be in college during our little playdates. Unfortunately, pretending to live the college life never prepared me for how much stress my mental health would undergo as a student. I have lived with mental illness for as long as I can remember, and I felt very unprepared to handle it once I got to college. The people in my life were basically begging me to go to therapy, so I did. Therapy has become a very important part of my life since college. It has really given me a chance to talk to a professional without feeling like a burden or like I'm being judged.

With my mental illness, I have noticed that it starts to feel like walking on a tightrope every day because I'm either falling or walking across perfectly fine. There will always be those days when I am struggling, and there will always be those days where I am great.

Beating depression is a very difficult thing to do, especially for college students. It's very hard watching all of your friends go out on the weekends. I am most definitely not the first college student to go through it, and I'm not going to be the last.