Helen D.
Photography by Cat White
If you’re reading this, your decisions to honor your health and truest self are always worth it.
In my parents’ house hangs a comically large poster of me and my family on my high school graduation day. Cloaked in royal purple, I am beaming. I remember clearly the overflowing pride and joy I felt then. On college breaks since, I would see that photo in passing and get sentimental, knowing what little I knew then and how much I know now.
When I was admitted into UVA, I wasn’t surprised. I was a confident 17-year-old who knew my worth. First year, however, tested what I thought I was capable of. In the fall, I auditioned to be in the cast of a First Year Players musical. This club and its people were utterly fun, but demanded an uneasy amount of my time. Three weeks before our first show, I decided to leave, frightened after realizing I’d been majorly neglecting work for astronomy class…
Making this decision troubled me deeply. Thought spiraling around it led to unprecedented symptoms of anxiety and then depression. It might seem minor, but I had felt it was life-altering, immensely significant. I thought: “I was letting my community and myself down in one fell swoop. I was letting go of something I really enjoyed and considered an important part of my identity.” Because of this, dropping out felt like surrendering a special part of myself and a future where I’m more involved in musical theater and the performing arts.
In spring of 2022 into summer, I dealt with on-and-off weeks of hypomania and depression that would be diagnosed as an unspecified mood disorder. I would feel similarly, but for different reasons, during my fourth year.
The unique pains that I experienced at my most anxious and depressed are pains that have shifted my perspective on my relationship to academic success and, broadly, my priorities in life. Knowing how bad I can feel and what is sacrificed during those times, I cherish invaluable moments with my friends and loved ones - moments that I’m really present in - where there’s music, love, and light.
After these past few years, I have become able to manage my expectations for things I used to put significant stake in. Any nerves I used to get from public speaking or performing are now mostly gone. I am more comfortable with confrontation and choosing honesty over feigned humility or politeness.
As I write in my birth month, the month of rebirth and poetry, I am grateful to share this letter and that I've been well now for some time. If you’ve written for If You’re Reading This, thank you for helping me get through tough times in college. Finding people who know what you know is powerful.
I am grateful, too, to friendship that sticks. These friends take care of you and listen to you even when you don’t make sense, you’re less funny and can’t recall things as well, because your brain is working overtime or undertime (I don’t know). Or, when you’re unusually funny, because you have no filter, because you feel hypomanic after a bout of depression.
I saw a quote that my friend shared recently by writer Hermann Hesse. He said, “My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
This is kind of dramatic for my relatively tame life as a sheltered undergrad, but I resonate just the same. At times, I’ve made choices out of fear, thinking they were in my best interest. Other times, I’ve made scary choices knowing they would honor my truest self. I’m not always fully convinced that these decisions were the right ones, but I made them. That should be enough.
In moments of doubt, I want to remember that, as well as this wisdom from the great American writer Toni Morrison. If you’re reading this, your decisions to honor your health and truest self deserve “no time for despair, no place for self-pity…no room for fear.” They will always be worth it.
Helen D., University of Virginia
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