Sometimes I can't help but mourn the loss of my undergrad experience.
I had a great first year (you know, if you ignore the whole "almost dying of septic shock after my appendix ruptured" thing), the stereotypical college experience. I have always been an awkward and shy person, and though that element of my personality remained, I was a lot more social, I found it easier to make friends, I was going out regularly. I was thriving academically, I enjoyed my classes.
Then, one of the first friends I ever made (and who I rejected romantically because I was already involved with someone) began harassing me over the summer break. By the time we hit the mid-way point of the autumn term of my second year, I was getting sent screenshots of this person talking about me with someone else (presumably the anonymous person messaging me) on a daily basis. These messages ranged from how ugly he found me, to wishing violence upon me, to discussing how he'd sexually assault me. At the same time, a close friend of ours reached out to tell me that he'd told her (and several others) that a trip I'd taken to Italy thar summer was actually a cover up for an abortion, and that he'd caught me cheating on my partner and sneaking out of someone else's dorm rooms. Both were false, but the latter was especially absurd because I was in Greece when this allegedly happened. Around this time, when some of the worst rumours were being spread about me, a sizable chunk of my new friends stopped speaking to me, and I ended up transferring classes after I overheard a classmate parroting something particularly malicious straight from his messages.
I spent the last two years of my undergrad miserable, focusing only on work, and periodically begging my department head to let me defer a year, transfer to another university, or drop out entirely. I still did well academically, but I was paranoid, depressed, and devoid of enthusiasm. I mourned the loss of my former friends, pined for the magic of that first year, and feared checking my messages or walking around campus alone. The Dean and department head dealt with the situation quickly, and the university provided me with weekly therapy sessions throughout my undergrad and postgraduate degrees in response, so I can't fault them. But in what felt like a moment my university experience soured and never recovered.
I'm grateful that my Master's experience was much better. My classmates were kind, they were interesting, and the people who'd come with me straight from out BA were good and fun to interact with. It never made up for what happened during my undergrad, nor did I ever fully relax and allow myself to enjoy it like I had done initially, but I had a lot more fun, even when I got sick.
I don't know why I'm rambling. The last few weeks have been taxing on me mentally, and in a lot of ways I've been reminded or thst very dark period of my life. I hate that, on occasion, I'll remember the contents of those messages and find myself unable to breathe properly for a few seconds. Because I'm a masochist. I still have the screenshots stored on a flash drive that's shoved in the back of a drawer. I hate that I still wonder why, hate that I still think "what if?", hate that I still miss the sunny ease of my first year over a decade later.
romaincrisis
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