My sophomore year of college, in February of 2018, my mom passed away unexpectedly. To say I did not know what to do is an understatement. I emailed a professor I was supposed to be meeting the following day about what happened, unsure of who to contact or even how to phrase it. I then went home for one week, spent time with my family, and went back to school the next Monday. Only one of my friends at SLU knew what had happened, my roommate at the time, because I physically could not bring myself to say the words out loud and explain the situation to anyone else. I tried to reach out to the University Counseling Center for grief counseling soon after returning, only to receive a strange response of, “Oh, so do you want to talk to a psychiatrist?” Knowing that was not even in the ballpark of what was looking for, I never followed up with them due to how much effort it even took me to call them the first time. So, I just carried on with school, drifting through days, flashing between unspeakable grief and complete numbness, with only one person at school knowing.
When things like this happen to you, it feels like you are holding onto some big secret that you are not mentally equipped to handle. I felt isolated, ashamed, and all the other feelings that, to this day I cannot fully articulate. The only way through this silencing sadness, in my mind, was to just not talk about it during my day to day. Back home, I felt like all eyes were on me because of what happened, so SLU sort of became my safe haven from it all. I could act “normal” here because no one knew. This was not the healthiest thing, however, because I started to just emotionally detach. I lost meaning for my time at college, thinking how pointless it was to reach out to people and make connections because I would just lose them, too, eventually. I did not consciously mean to detach, I just was so traumatized that it became a coping mechanism my mind implemented in order to just function.
It was not until recently that the full extent of this tendency for detachment became apparent to me. About a month ago, I started feeling as though my emotions began thawing from all of my icy grief, making it somewhat tolerable to begin processing any of it. I am hesitant to fully explore this, however, due to feeling like I am standing on the edge of a never-ending abyss of trauma and sadness. I also remain unsure of how much of it I should let in, due to the fear that once it is in, I will be unable to return to what has become my normal. But, I know I owe it to myself to face this challenge and feel every emotion from my life fully and with no reservations. After all, isn’t one of the main points in life to overcome obstacles and find strength? This should apply even when the obstacle feels like a terrifying abyss. I hope in writing this I provide a tiny amount of comfort to anyone who has lost a parent in college; you are seen, you are felt, you are understood, even in your silence. Though this is the first time I am publically acknowledging a topic even my closest friends here are unaware of, I expect it to start me on a life long journey of analyzing my trauma and accepting the past at face value. And through the ruins, a future will be built.