Tonight is a very eerie night for me.
Tomorrow is the last day of my college career. Tonight is the last night I will be sleeping in a college dormitory bed. Tomorrow I will be taking my last final exam. Ever.
It has been a long, strange and beautiful four years. If I'm going to be honest with you, I never thought I was going to make it this far.
Just before, I left my songs on my Spotify account play on shuffle while doing some studying. Suddenly, a song came on that I had no listened to in about three years. It was "My Last Semester" by the pop-punk band "The Wonder Years". The song is about some dude hating his experience at college and anticipating the end of the year to come so he can finally drop out.
I am a senior now at Manhattan College, but I did not attend this school for four years. Before I transferred here in the Fall of 2014, I had attended St. Thomas Aquinas College for my first year. St. Thomas Aquinas College, or STAC, is a very small college located in Sparkill, New York. Even though there are still some memories from STAC that bring a smile to my face, I did not have a pleasant experience there. I'm not going to get into the drama of all of it right now. What I can say, however, is that I fell into a deep depression my freshman year. I had a lot of issues going in internally and externally. I did not like the person that I was. I did not want to eat. I could not get out of bed in the morning. I hated looking in the mirror. This was a horrific time for me because I did not understand what was going on with my brain. I had a great life, so why do I always feel so sad? I was frustrated with myself. No matter what I did, these negative feelings could not go away.
All I could think about was how worthless and how pathetic I was. I cried every single day. I remember being really embarrassed about all of this, and would sometimes lock myself in the bathroom and just sob. Being at the school made things even worse. The school was very small and there was nowhere to go if I needed to go for a walk or anything. Everybody knew everyone. I felt constant judgment and I felt constant suffocation.
By January, I knew I needed to get out of there. I was like, "Do I just drop out now or do I just wait it out until the end of the year?" I knew that dropping out was the most relieving option. It would make it fast and I would be out of there in no time. But I knew that if I just pulled myself out of there ASAP, I would not be learning anything. I wanted to grow from this even though it was difficult and painful.
I listened to the song "My Last Semester" every single day until the last day of school. I felt like I could really relate to the lyrics and the theme of the song. There's this one line, "Two more months till I'm done with this." I remember hearing that line over and over when there really was two more months left to push through. I remember telling myself, "Okay, okay, you can do this. Only two more months. Come on." I spent my days here occupied with reading, writing and watching films. I did not want the sadness and the insecurities to get to me. It was really hard to push because it was so easy to fall down. I refused to give up.
Two months eventually became one month. One month became two weeks. Then two weeks became one day.
No matter how hard it was to believe in myself, I pushed myself to no end. I just wanted to push myself until the end of freshman year. I had no idea I would make it to a senior year at another school.
Now, tomorrow is my last day of college. I did it! I really did it! It's moments like this where I want to hug my past self and tell her how proud I am of her. I am now completely different girl. I'm the happy and confident girl that I always wanted to be.
So, I guess it really is true; if you're going through Hell, keep going.
