Remember as a kid when you first learned how to do something, the urgency you’d feel to show everyone that you could do it yourself? Rushing to the first adult you saw, grabbing their attention to say, “Watch me!” and “Look what I can do!” Once you knew their eyes were on you, it was lights, camera, action as you displayed your skill. I feel like as a kid you’re so impatient to grow up. With each mastered skill, you feel closer and closer to being a “grown up.” Because the true proof of adulthood is being able to do things all by yourself, right?
I held that belief up until the end of my very first semester of university. I had the mentality that this would be my time to prove to everyone, that I’m ready to be an adult, to be independent. I realize now that my definition of independence centered self-reliance and neglected community. So, after a semester of “Do It Alone” mentality and a conversation with my therapist, I’ve come to question my understanding and re-define independence for myself.
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This past semester taught me many things about what I considered independence to be. Also, exposing the impossibility to maintain the independence that I had originally defined for myself. There were a crazy amount of instances where I chose to thug it out instead of reaching out for support when I knew I needed it. Despite, how fun it would be to take a full trip down memory lane, I’ll just share two stories with you.
While both of these stories address the theme of me being a “lone wolf Simone,” they do so in different forms. What I mean is, the first story is about independence where you’re able to do something. The second focuses on emotional independence. This is, at least, the ways I’ve come to see both of these stories and how I’ll present them to you.
Story 1: The weekend sick in bed
It was early October when my roommate Melissa and I got sick. Now, after the COVID tests came back negative, we both thought that we’d be fine by the next day… our optimism was poorly placed. We woke up on Saturday morning with weak bodies, headaches, runny noses, and what would often feel like never-ending coughs. When I say we were sick, we were sick.
All day Saturday we stayed in bed, literally. I only remember leaving my bed to shower, go to the bathroom, refill my water bottle, take Advil, and make tea. It got to the point where I just wanted to be home. In my family, when one of us got sick, we’d all take care of them. So this was the first time I was sick and my family was 5 hours away instead of just downstairs in the living room. It got to me. I’ll be the first to say that being sick and feeling isolated makes getting over sickness ten times harder.
During this, I learned a new level of university reality. That being away from home meant more than not having my mom remind me to wash the dishes. I needed to accept that I had to take care of myself much more than before. Looking back, that wasn’t a bad lesson to learn. There should come a point in everyone’s life when they learn to look inwards at times. Yet, I’d be lying if I didn’t mention how this encouraged me to double down on the idea that independence equalled isolation.
Saturday night, I called my mom to tell her how sick I was. Despite her wanting nothing more than to come down to be with me, she couldn’t. As an alternative, she told me to call my aunty who lives in Ottawa and is close to Carleton. This isn’t the type of aunt your parents tell you about but you’ve never met; she’s family. To appease my mom, I told her that it was a good idea and that I’d reach out. I never did. I thugged it out for the rest of the weekend.
For the record, being sick in bed for two days straight is the worst on a university dorm mattress. I can say with all confidence that my body was sore for a bit after that weekend. Also, when you’re sick to the point I was, you just want to sit in a hot bath. Instead, I had to settle for a warm shower. However, that would not have been my reality if I had called my aunt. She would’ve let me stay the weekend at her house, on a nice mattress and with hot baths.
Story 2: grade growing pains
University growing pains is a different field for me. Though my grades didn’t tank, they took some hits. During the first semester, I felt out of my element and in over my head. However, there was one time that hit me really hard…
Grades-wise, I had taken three consecutive hits all in one morning. The day just started and I was mentally out of it. I wanted to call my older sister, Shannon. I just needed to talk it out, you know? Seconds away from calling, I decided not to. I felt like I needed to thug this out too and fix it on my own. All I could really think about at the time was, “Calling Shan won’t change my situation, only I can do that.”
Now, it’s important to understand that I was partially right. Calling Shannon wouldn’t have changed the position I was in. However, rather than seek some support, I chose to put all of the emotional weight on my shoulders. That morning, I was emotionally all over the place and I moved through that completely alone. Not reaching out forced me to sort through my emotional state and my grade issue. Though I feel like I grew a lot just in that situation, I can’t overlook my role as my own “lone wolf mentally.”
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Unlike riding a bike…
My dad taught me how to ride a bike. He was my teacher throughout all of the stages: tricycle, training wheels, and the final stage of two wheels. I remember when I finally mastered the formula of balance, speed, and confidence, and was riding my bike without the training wheels or my dad. I was on top of the world that day. The pride and excitement I felt riding around as my dad, mom, and sister watched. I had reached the ultimate level of bike riding and could do it all on my own.
I assumed that university would be just like that moment. It would be me adulting without the training wheels of support: doing it all on my own. However, when I told my therapist about how this is nothing like riding a bike, she challenged my understanding. We spoke about the role of support in independence, to which I explained how I don’t really see the two together. I struggle to wrap my head around being independent and receiving help. Because would you say that I truly learned to ride a bike if I needed my dad to hold the back of my seat the entire time?
That’s the thing though (that I’m starting to learn) unlike riding a bike, there isn’t really a point in adulting where you can do it by yourself. It’s not a skill where one day you find the right formula and you’ve mastered it. Rather, this whole “adulting” thing seems more like an ongoing process of mastering. For that reason, there will always be a need for training wheels.
At the end of our session, my therapist tasked me with redefining what independence means and looks like for me. As she suggested that my “Do It Alone” definition seemed unrealistic in the sense that I wouldn’t be able to maintain it. On top of that, the mentality that receiving help is a sign of incapability is destructive in the long run. Especially when you’re in a situation where support is necessary for success, that kind of thinking only guarantees failure.
re-defining
Now, there’s no way I’m uprooting my entire mentality toward independence by the end of my writing this article. Deconstructing and then reconstructing a mindset takes time. Regardless of that fact, here’s how far I’ve gotten:
- Independence is the maturity to know when you should do it by yourself and when it’s time to get some help
- “Adulting” requires community and support
- Independence is found in the freedom of choice not in proving you can do something alone
- Asking for and receiving help does not take away from your capability
As this list builds and changes over the next semester, I’d like to challenge those who need it to reflect on and re-think how independence is walked out in your life.