“... I love you all. Please try to find peace as best as you can. I wish you all well.”
It was a bright, late morning. People bustled around me amidst the chatter that filled the coffee shop. The astringent taste of cold brew lingered on my taste buds as I stared at the words on my laptop. I just finished typing out a suicide letter within my third week of being here. I felt my face flush as my head disconnected from my body, drifting away to another distant place despite the lively stirrings of the morning.
As my new life in graduate school began, my faith in myself was put to the test. Still traumatized from my last year of undergrad, my childhood wounds were more exposed and gaping than ever. I had never felt more like an imposter roaming the halls of my school. What was someone like me, who all my life only knew how to follow orders, doing in a place where people’s minds came together to innovate? At places like these, people like me should’ve been weeded out ages ago. Was my karma finally catching up to me?
My fragmented mind was still in the midst of clinging onto the memory of the boy from the prophecy. Even though I left him behind, I still clung to the dream that he thought about me as much as I thought about him. But at least I made it to graduate school. I desperately wanted to belong, but deep down I knew I wasn’t meant to be here. Everyone kept raving about the infamous imposter syndrome, but it’s not just imposter syndrome when it comes to me, I’m an imposter of my life. If only I could get him back, I would no longer feel like a fraud. And since there are a lot of police cars in this college town, obviously he must be thinking about me too. So whenever I saw them, I told myself I needed to be on my best behavior. That meant keeping my secrets to myself. I had yet to understand how I was on the brink of something bigger than finding true love to solve all my problems.
NO ONE can know about my dirty secrets. I NEEDED to keep them if I wanted to survive at this place. It was a miracle that I was able to keep my secrets from my colleagues up to this point. I needed to ensure that I never got too close to anyone during my time here. Keep them all at an arm's length from me and my secrets.
“It’s okay if you need to cry. I often find that the strongest people need to cry because they’ve been strong for too long…” A professor said to me after pulling me aside when I burst into tears in their seminar. They handed me a couple of tissues to let me wipe my tears. All I could muster was some sad muffled weeping. Sensing that I wasn’t willing to open up about what was bothering me, they continued,
“You know, I didn’t have the greatest caregiver when I was growing up,” they began. They shared their life story with me, their struggles, and the joy that they eventually found for themselves. Afterwards, we sat in silence for a bit, my gasps occasionally interrupting the still air. In my exhaustion, before I realized, my lips started moving on their own volition.
What was I doing?!? How could I just throw Drew to the wind like that after everything they had done for me? I struggled to trust this professor for a long time throughout the year, knowing that they knew my dirty secret. But they stood by me through and through, patiently giving me space and empathy as I slowly, finally grew up in their classes throughout the school year. As the gears in my head finally started to slow down, I ceased running away from other people, a mirage of a future, and from myself. It was time to stop running, and to start taking stock of my life. I wrote and wrote and wrote, even when my body wanted to give out. And when it was time, I started sharing, through every outlet I could think of. I started letting myself be truly seen.