If you've been following along, some of you might be wondering about a gap in my story. Specifically, why it feels like I've already been in college for nearly two years, yet I'm only just now interacting with people and noticing the faces around me. I want to clear that up, because the truth is, those first parts of my college life were an absolute blur.
Truth to be told, before everything changed, I was quite a boring person. I didn't really know how to do anything outside of studying. I loved my parents so much, but I adored my mother the most. I would do anything just to impress her, because I loved the warm feeling of being looked after by her. But my parents always placed their highest expectations on my sister, never on me. They always assumed I couldn't handle much because I was fragile and weak. Because of my social anxiety, I couldn't even speak properly in front of other people. So they believed I couldn't achieve anything big, they didn't expect anything from me either.
Deep down, I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to show them I was capable, so I poured everything I had into my studies, fighting to improve my grades and better myself. Because I was so relentlessly focused on that, I didn't have time for anything else. I didn't have many friends, I never had a crush, and I certainly never fell in love. Those kinds of things simply didn't exist in my world. Besides, I was always hyper-realistic and painfully insecure about myself. I knew I wasn't good-looking, and I always overthought everything, convincing myself that someone could never care for me because I wasn't good enough.
And then, after my mother passed away, everything fell apart completely. When I first got admitted into college, the initial semesters were overshadowed by trauma. I wasn't skipping classes out of rebellion; I was drowning in relentless nightmares and terrifying hallucinations that left me barely able to function, let alone focus on lectures.
Things only grew more complicated as time went on. My father remarried, bringing a cold, strict stranger into our home, only for that partner to abruptly flee amid a storm of bitter family conflict. By the second semester, I tried to force myself back to attending classes, but I was still entirely consumed by my own anxieties, fighting a silent battle inside my own head just to make it through the day. I wasn't capable of connecting with anyone or opening my heart up to new friendships back then.
That is why those early days are left mostly unsaid because there wasn't much of a student life to share, just survival. But things are finally changing now, step by step.