A Semester Away

An exploration of what time away from college was like for me

By: Carter Starkey

CW: Mental illness and suicide

“Give yourself a break, Carter!”

My mother rarely shouts like this, but I had said something that stung. She asked me a question. “Yes,” I replied. “Then you’re done,” she said back. Her tone was concerned, sure, but even more so, it was surgical. She cut through the tension with quickness and precision. I was instructed by my mother—for the time being—to give up on school if my mental health was as dire as I said it was. I couldn’t face the truth of the situation. By staying where I was, I was risking my life. However, I wasn’t willing to turn my back on everything I’d worked on for years; my mother, on the other hand, wasn’t willing to gamble, and I had no real say in it at that point—Mother knows best. I would be dropping out.

I’d felt down before, depressed even, through whole periods of my life, but this was a new low. When you are in a low place, sometimes you can’t recall what it feels like to stand on solid ground. I felt fear, for the first time, that I would be unable to finish my college education. Though, much deeper, I felt fear that I might not make it in general. There was no ladder, no rope upon which I could climb out of that low place. I had been buried without the tools I needed to escape.

I’d like to imagine that just about every college student faces these thoughts at some point in their academic career—thoughts that their degree may not be worth the time they're putting in—but that doesn’t soften the blow when you have them yourself. What I was going through was a complete deconstruction of my self-worth. I watched as everything I once embodied in the classroom turned to ash in front of me. I asked my counselor to put the Ws on my transcript as I looked on.

When your future has always looked one way, a disruption of that conception will come with lots of complicated emotions. In particular, there is immense guilt tied to dropping out. No matter what other people told me, I always felt like I was a failure. That feeling was the result of a lot of “shoulds” compounding. Thinking that my life should look a certain way, or believing that I should be able to do something, or even holding on to the idea that other people have a say in what I should do. Until I get over the “shoulds,” I’ll never escape the grasp of whatever is holding me back.

I’d like to say that the pivotal moment came: the day when I opened my eyes and it all made sense; when I woke up with the weight lifted from my shoulders and the burden off my mind. However, I cannot pretend that was the case. Instead, I spent many weeks just getting by. I watched as my peers worked through the semester I had abandoned. I went to therapy and worked as hard as I could on myself. But the days were filled with a whole lot of emptiness. Nothing felt like it had meaning to me. I would wake up, go to work, come home, take my medicine, and go to sleep, only to repeat the process the next day. When I wasn’t working, I would spend the day holed up in my room, writhing in psychological pain. I would sit in complete darkness and think about what the rest of my life would look like, images flooding my mind that were neither welcome nor appreciated.

What got me out of that low place from which there is no escape? How did I bend the rules and find myself back in the classroom and working harder than ever before? One major piece is the excellent psychiatric care I received. Another is a newfound sense of perseverance. I enrolled in classes simply out of spite for my situation. I wasn’t about to let another semester slip by. Courage, as Atticus Finch would say, is “when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” And come January, that’s what I did. I started anyway, knowing the problems were still there, but now, I’d be facing them head on.