I praise the human,
gutted and rising.

Katie Ford, Song After Sadness

I am writing plainly because I have been feeling voiceless lately. I don’t like that feeling. The arts of loving, of losing, of coping with disappointment, have seldom seemed more relevant to me than of late. I am not happy; not at the present, anyways. The cause is quite simple. When I went home for the summer, when I made the decision to undergo more regular and intensive forms of care then I had ever experienced before, when I agreed to take higher doses of stronger medications, when I sacrificed elements and sources of my own comfort because I was told that it was in the best interest of those that I loved, I had a very different understanding of what I would be returning to when I arrived back at Oxford.

I thought that I would be re-entering an environment that, while rigorous, was nevertheless a space where I felt welcomed, supported, and loved. I hoped that the pastoral care systems would have improved. I hoped that I would not have to do such a large portion of the labor by myself. And I was absolutely certain that my friends would make time for me, be honest with me, accept me in full, at the very least regard me as I have always regarded them–as a person worthy of the simple human dignities of being acknowledged, being listened to, being treated with respect.

In almost all of these senses, I have been let down.

I am not a victim; but nor am I immune to the occasional feelings of alienation, worthlessness, and distress that accompany times and circumstances such as these. I am not despairing, but I certainly am disillusioned, disquieted, and discontented. Because everyone said how much better this year would be, everyone promised we would make it work. And honestly, the only difference I can really see is that I take more medication and attend more doctor’s appointments. So yes, perhaps I am more equipped for how bad such places and people can be, but learning to tolerate external toxins does not amount to “improvement” in my eyes.

The sad irony is that, in many ways, I am healthier now than I have been in a very long time. I know this to be true, because if my mental health had not improved over the summer, then I would never have been able to make it through some of the more devastating facets of this term. All of my work has been completed on time, I haven’t missed a single tutorial or class, I am eating regularly, I have met some wonderful and interesting people, I try to keep my room clean. I have been doing so much better than I, a chronically mentally ill person coming off of a deeply traumatizing year, ever could have expected to. I have so much to feel happy and proud about. And I feel like I have no one to share that victory with.

It really is not all that complicated. I never needed people here to try to explain my illnesses to me, to pretend to be my therapists, or to perform enormous, taxing, unequivocal feats of emotional labor. I just needed company. I needed to feel heard. I needed love. But the people whose promises lent me the strength to endure one of the most difficult periods of my entire life have simply not made good on those promises; the same can be said for the institution itself, with all its bits and cogs and shining multiples. So much of the illusion has fallen away. And I am working very hard to resist succumbing to a misinformed cultural narrative of what it means to be mentally ill in a competitive university. But I have found it to be tiresome and deeply solitary work.

I sometimes wonder if everyone feels this way, and I am just complaining more loudly, or allowing it to affect me more. But I have lived long enough, and worked hard enough, and considered deeply enough to be relatively certain that this is not all in my head. It is hard, it is really, very hard, to look at the people and places and things that you love, that you want to regard as perfect, that you want to love you back, and realize that they just aren’t doing right by you. It is hard to keep on clawing yourself back into standing position, and trying again and again. It is hard to remember that you’re worth something, when everything from a locked door, to an unanswered text, to the American presidential election is saying otherwise. It is hard to give your love and your trust to the wrong people.

But Christ, who is less of a stranger to that feeling than me?