When I first walked onto campus at West Chester University in the fall of 2009, I felt as most would at that stage in their life. I was ready to embrace my newfound independence, and finally leaving my small hometown granted me a somewhat inflated sense of superiority. I was determined to live out my own romanticized view of what college should be. It didn’t go too hot.
Reality has a tendency to hit hard and quickly. For me, it only took about two weeks into classes that I began to realize I was not going to have my idealized college experience. What I thought would feel fun and exciting, was in actuality overwhelming and intimidating. Although I was never confused for an extrovert, I became more painfully shy and self conscious. I was never quite able to stay engaged and focused, and gradually fell behind in classes. Falling behind turned into skipping classes, and skipping class turned into shame and regret. And the snowballing continued. I began to wonder if I was as capable and intelligent as I thought I was. I had absentmindedly waltzed through high school, hardly trying but doing very well academically, and perhaps I arrogantly assumed I could do the same in college. Or, perhaps, I simply was not good enough.
Despite this, I soldiered through multiple years of classes. I was treading water, performing well in classes that interested me, and performing awfully in ones that did not. However, the most difficult aspect of my life during this time was my acting role. This act was as someone who never hurt, who was happy with himself and who was normal. Everyone bought it, of course; it was the role I was born to play. I would tell my friends my class was canceled as I skipped it to spend time with them. As far as my parents knew, I was acing every class and was being considered for the university president position.
My biggest fear was not just failure, but that others would see me as a failure. This created a constant state of anxiety that I would be exposed as just that. However, an act like this is never sustainable, and quite frankly, exhausting to maintain. At my core, I knew that my friends and family never truly knew me, and that was by my own design.
After much wrestling with the thought, I left college in 2014, not entirely sure I had a direction in life. Predictably, I floundered just as much out of college. I held down jobs that were by no means terrible, but rather terribly unfulfilling. Time seemed to flow differently, alternating between intolerably slow and seemingly instantaneous. As the years went by, it became exponentially more difficult for me to visualize a return to school, and it became easier to say “I’ll be in a better position next year.” In truth, I was encasing myself in a routine. When things were predictable and consistent, I felt safe from failure and disappointing others. But this was just another illusion. I realized I had never ended my act from college. I thought back to all the goals I had entering college, and how they still remained only as goals. Had I given up on them?
When I again walked onto campus at West Chester University in the fall of 2021, I felt a lot of the same feelings I did in 2009. The university felt both familiar and utterly alien. I thought about what it took to get me to step foot on West Chester soil again. I spent the past two years in weekly therapy. It was there that I confronted a lot of the issues that encumbered me my entire life and intensified in college. I built up coping mechanisms and unraveled why I act the way I do.
In April of this year, I was formally diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. This diagnosis changed my life, as it gave terms and names to the nebulous problems I had always struggled with. All of my anxiety, my inability to focus, my relentless self criticism, became something real. The abstract became tangible. Slowly, I rebuilt myself into something more closely resembling the person I wanted to be, and for once, felt like I could actually be that person.
I once wrote on a post-it note that hung above my desk for a year that read “I want to help myself enough that I can begin to help other people.” It felt corny at the time, but as my focus in therapy shifted from learning about myself to an urge to use that knowledge for people like me, I remember why I wrote it in the first place. If that doesn’t convince you, consider the following: as someone who once was so anxious to interact with strangers that I faked an important phone call in order to leave class, I can now write a public article detailing my biggest source of shame. Not bad for an old man.
If there is anything I would like students reading this to take from this story, let it be this: ask for help. I know firsthand how difficult it can be to ask, but suffering in silence compounds and only works to bury you deeper and retreat further within yourself. I would have never achieved what I have in the past two years without the support of others, be it friends or psychological professionals. There is no weakness in seeking help, as much as societal attitudes would have us believe. Although I am not “fixed” or cured of my issues, and ADHD will be a lifelong condition, I can say without hesitation that I feel better than I ever have in my life. And to be honest, it just felt good to finally drop the act.
So I’ll leave you with this, and as simple as it may be, I fully mean it: it gets better, and I’m rooting for you.
Dan Debuque is a fifth-year English major with a minor in Film Criticism. DD717545@wcupa.edu