indynerdgirl replied to your post “I am feeling a lot of anxiety tonight about things. The school I went...”
Franciscan. I attended for a year when I was 19 and my already unstable emotional life took a huge turn for bad. The mental health care in 2010-11 was pretty bad. My counselor told me to pray more and find better friends.
My spiritual health took an even worse turn. I hardly went to confession unless I was home (Fall break, Christmas, and easter) and while I went to mass every Sunday and sometimes during the week, I hardly received communion. After all, I obviously didn’t deserve it because I didn’t pray away my depression, I self-harmed, and like I said confession.
TECHNICALLY, I failed out. I failed out because I never slept, I never went to class because of sleeping/ I cried less when I spent days in my room. I would do work, I worked hard, but didn’t have a support system there, not even in the student life or my RAs to help me or help me find the help I needed.
While I am sure people have excellent experiences there and other catholic universities, I didn’t. Since I have left I have heard from mainly older catholics within homeschool circles say that FUS must be fantastic because it is a catholic school and it teaches great catholic tradition. One woman (Who has sent her own kids there) asked my mothewhy I left and in hushhush tones “Was she raped?” like that is one of the worst things that could befall someone.
When my parents came to pick me up in December they were half tempted to take me to the nearest inpatient ward, They were twice as tempted in May. My mother regrets letting me go and then letting me go back.
That one singular year had a huge impact on me and took me about 3 plus years to be okay with everything that I let happen to me. I have no close friends left from there and I am so okay with that. It is like a breath of fresh air that I don’t have to be that person any more.
these are what got me all twisted up last week.
https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/plaques-removal-franciscan-university-exposes-abuse-former-chaplain
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/popfeminist/2018/09/an-open-letter-to-franciscan-say-youre-sorry-sam-tiesi-sexuala-abuse-franciscan-university-fus/ This line is probably what got my bawling on the couch with my head in my husband’s lap. It is about survivors of sexual assult, but it just opens up so many things in my on how people, especially 18 year old boys, saw me and how I let people see me.
“I revisited those moments at school when vulnerable women were first embraced, then people tried to rescue them, and then they were finally discarded when the job became too onerous, because you can’t rescue someone from trauma, you can only walk with them through their healing, and it gets ugly, that healing process.”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/popfeminist/2018/11/grooming-the-congregation-an-open-letter-to-fus-pt-2/