I attended St John’s College in Annapolis, MD for my freshman year of college. My dad died at the beginning of second semester. I was a young eighteen, already struggling deeply with depression. I didn’t think I would live to see my eighteenth year, and losing him fucking gutted me. I spent the remainder of the year an angry, lonely ghost. It broke me to such a degree that my headmate Eight took over as host for the first time in my system’s life, setting off a power struggle that would persist for many years to come.
I would later write of that period in my life around a year later:
"my father
they say
i had a father once
i can’t forget his eyes
green olives from the top down
and this man i do not know
may have created me
but i hope he won’t keep me
for his own
i am not even my own
and i keep telling the same
old stories to new people
i wish i could make myself new
i wish i could bring him back
i wish none of this shit would
have ever happened
i wish that the olives had never
gone
oh, stranger
take this cup from me
will i die if i drink?
blessed are the poor in spirit
for they will inherit a life i
do not want
nonetheless
not my will but yours"
Now, the interesting thing about the way they do things at St John’s College is that there aren’t any final exams. Instead, all your instructors gather in a room at the end of the year and tell you what you did wrong and what you did well. They call this unique form of humiliation the “Don Rag”. It was fair to say that I was absolutely not a good student, especially considering the circumstances, and they did not go easy on me. That being said, my seminar instructors said something that’s stuck with me for the past decade. It was something to the effect of, “even if they can’t make it through a full class or can do nothing else, they show up.” Many of my instructors echoed the same thing, including my Greek instructor, who had told me earlier that year that I show up even when I look like I want to be blotted off the face of the earth.
That’s something I take a lot of pride in. I do my utmost to show the fuck up, no matter what shape I’m in. I don’t give a flying fuck if I have to come up with 17,000 workarounds in the process, if I want something, I show the fuck up, I put in the work and I get it. And I love a challenge.
Many people thought I would kill myself that year and in the years to come. My writing and my friends saved my life. I hated myself, and that was apparent in nearly everything I did. But I lived, despite not wanting to. My depression is much better now that I’ve gotten out of Texas, stopped pushing myself so damn hard, and I have better medical care. I’m tremendously thankful for that.
So here’s to showing up, again and again.
-Allēna