I’m so sick of the idea that my value is determined merely by what I can produce. Accomplishments are valuable, but I am more than a paycheck or a good mark. There are other ways to contribute to the world than what you do for work.

I find that difficult to keep sight of when I’m in a school term at Waterloo. It’s easy to get swept along in the competitive nature and feel like you haven’t really accomplished anything unless you have your own startup or work in Cali. Sometimes I feel like I’m wasting my time if I’m not doing something I could put on my resume.

I used to like doing things. I used to have passions: hitting a chord as a choir, riding horses, living moment by moment in an improv scene. In university these smaller, non-career passions fell by the wayside. Before I knew it, I was lacking a lot of joy in my day-to-day life. It got to a point where I was listening to myself talk in a job interview about my “hobbies” and I realized they were all things I hadn’t done in years. You know, because “drinking with friends and watching Netflix” isn’t the kind of answer an interviewer is looking for.

I was in a place where I lost sight of a lot of things I once used to define myself. I certainly didn’t get any kind of validation from how I did academically (thanks class rankings), and I felt that I didn’t have time to do any of the other things I used to enjoy. Anxiety narrowed my big-picture vision to the point where it shattered my self-confidence. I spent all of my time doing this thing that I wasn’t even good at, and I couldn’t imagine it being any different in the future.

I had been depressed for quite a while by 2A term, but then my anxiety really started to take over. My brain became this anti-cheerleader that shouted the worst-case-scenarios and discouragement at every opportunity. I somehow scraped by 2A, but by the time I was taking 2B it became too much to handle.

That term was definitely a low point. It’s not that I ever really wanted to die, it’s just that I wanted to fall asleep and never have to wake up. I remember sitting on the end of a dock swinging my feet in warm water, daydreaming about quietly slipping in and sinking into that cozy abyss. Kind of like the way my bed felt to crawl into; a place to feel as minimally as possible. A place to escape into unconsciousness. The longer I stayed, the harder it got to come out. When I did emerge, the lack of feeling got harder and harder to shake.

I was stuck, because seeking help required thinking I was worth the effort. With prodding from my boyfriend at the time, I finally went to health services for a mental health appointment. I remember the GP looking at me and saying, “oh you definitely don’t need to see a psychiatrist, I see cases like yours all the time.” He prescribed me an anti-depressant and told me to go to counseling and away I went.

I tried to get an appointment with counseling, which didn’t work out for fluke-y reasons I won’t get into as to not discourage anyone from getting help. I ended up just being on medication for over a year or so.

Medication felt as though there was a curtain drawn in my mind. I could sense when I felt anxious or despairing, but it was as if those emotions were behind the curtain and I couldn’t quite go past it and immerse myself in them. It gave me the ability to restrain destructive, powerful moods, but it also lowered the ceiling on what I was able to feel.

Keep in mind that this is just my experience, and maybe I should have tried other types or changed the dosage or something. In my case, it was kind of a band-aid solution to deal with the emotions instead of having to put in (what later proved to be) a lot of emotional labour in counseling. There are many different medications that affect many people differently, and that’s something to go over with your doctor

While I was depressed, I started self-harming physically but also self-sabotaging in more subtle ways. If your inner monologue is telling you you’re garbage and you’ll never get through your degree, what is really the point in trying in the first place? It was also a defense mechanism to sabotage my studies by not trying, because if I never really tried then if I failed it wasn’t so bad. I slept in a lot and started missing a lot of class. When I did manage to go to class, I was so behind at that point that it felt like a waste of time to be there when I should be catching up instead, and it made me even more anxious to have no idea what was going on. I failed almost every midterm, and by the time I tried to get my act together it was too late and I ended up failing the term.

It felt pretty shitty, obviously, but it turned out to be what I needed. I was forced to open up to my family, who were wonderfully supportive, and I saw a counselor regularly. I also got a learning assessment and discovered I have a learning disability, specifically with auditory processing. I worked a co-op job for 8 months, and finally one day I realized that I didn’t feel like bursting into tears at any moment. Anxious to the point of melting down had been my normal for so long that I’d forgotten what it was like to be relaxed and maybe even…happy? The vice-like grip around my chest that made it feel like I couldn’t take in enough oxygen in each breath had loosened.

Something that I felt really embarrassed about was self-harming. To me, as a logical thinker, it just seemed like such a dumb thing to do. Why would you hurt yourself on purpose? I was so afraid of the judgments of other people who would also think I was such a ridiculous person. It was something that I never really planned but quickly became addicted to, which scared me.

However, when you think about it from the mindset of a person who is in a state where they would hurt themselves, it makes sense. There are so many terrifying feelings overwhelming you and physical pain is a way of grounding you and trying to keep those emotions in check. Now, mind you, it is very dangerous, extremely unhealthy, does not help past the moment, and can often leave permanent reminders. I’m not in any way endorsing this as a healthy coping strategy. I’m just explaining the thinking because I never understood it before I got to that point.

I am in a much better place now, but I think that I will continue to battle with my mental health for the rest of my degree, if not the rest of my life. I am now at least equipped with a mental “toolkit” thanks to counseling, which allows me to recognize anxious thoughts and patterns and stop them early. It’s not easy though. Just taking care of myself feels like a full-time job most days. I’m in a place where I don’t have as many real responsibilities, even, and it’s scary how daunting life is regardless. By the time I eat, exercise and get enough sleep there’s not a lot leftover. My degree is hard, but I’m only going to move on to a stressful job, more people in my life to consider, and it will feel like I have even less time. I suppose there will always be stressors that occupy my time. I just have to keep in focus my bigger picture life goals which aren’t so easily measured by things like grades or resumes.

If you are suffering like I was, I want you to hear these three things. First, you are worthy of help. You deserve to feel 100% and to get the help you need even if you feel you’re not an extreme case. It’s really hard to be your own advocate for health but you’re worth it.

Secondly, your emotions are valid even if they don’t always make sense. Don’t beat yourself up for the way you feel, as that only adds to your suffering and makes it worse. I didn’t get help for a long time because I felt…embarrassed almost? About not having any reason to feel sad and anxious, because a lot of people have it worse. But that’s kind of the thing about mental illness: it’s an illness and can affect anyone in any walk of life. It doesn’t discriminate.

Finally, you are not alone in the way that you feel. I used to look around and think “how is everyone handling this all so well?”. A lot of people aren’t, they’re just good at hiding it.