Despondence in a Dashing Disguise

Neil Baker

I asked good friends of mine a series of (seemingly) jarring questions for this little, wonderfully illuminating project. Right off the bat, I simply asked the nebulous question: “How is your soul?” I wanted to see where this question would take me and my interviewee laissez-faire. Intriguingly the response was starkly similar across the board. I was immediately greeted with a puzzled look by all those interviewed, and the general sentiment was the same: “I haven’t thought about that.” From this point, each individual diverged as they opened up the pages that create the respective stories of their lives in the present. As they began to color the unique canvases of their lives, I then would ask the second question:  How was your first semester, relative to mental and physical health? Now, you see, the first question was strategically placed. I wanted to establish a repour of genuine trust and openness, to create an aura of comfort, compassion, and intent listening. The first interviewee said, “I felt lost, destabilized, and disrupted.”

This is something that become a resounding theme in these particular chapters of my friend’s lives. Both the second and third interviewees said, in essence, the same thing. Although the details and the nuances were varied, the general feeling was the same: the first semester was immensely difficult. This difficulty was extremely pervasive. For the first interviewee, it was from newfound “scary” mental health developments. For the second, it was “not having a sense of who I was” – losing the flame of character in an unfamiliar tundra and trying desperately to ignite an ember in the cold. For the third, it was a sudden stoppage of taking medication and “not having access to a mental healthcare professional.” I found these similarities to be of sincere and great interest. I, myself, had a tremendously difficult first semester due to neuropathic abnormalities (whole body tingling, pins and needles, cold sweets, chronic goosebumps and insomnia).

The three friends I interviewed seemed to be having the times of their lives their first semester; smiles abounding, laughs echoing, and fun times-a-having. I thought my struggle a rare case. I thought most people have a great time during their first semester. In reality, we all have our own personal battles — we are sentient sacs of molecules trying to make sense of this strange experience of life in a unique way. Unfortunately, it seems that opening up to our peers about these challenges is taboo, when in actuality, being open and not disguising our despondence is the best thing one can do. I can personally attest. Luckily, my lounge has something called “girl talk” (I do not agree with the name, personally) where one person is forced to sit in a chair a talk about their feelings. I was able to tell my lounge about what happened my first semester, and it was magically cathartic. I can now only begin to imagine how my first semester would have been different had I opened up earlier…