Mercury in Retrograde
What does the future hold?
I think many of us have asked that question to ourselves over the years, wondering what exactly the ominous future has in store for us. This carries into the way we view life. Some of us are afraid of the future, so we plan out every single meticulous detail in a color coded excel spreadsheet. Some of us like to go with the flow, enjoying the surprises life gives us along the way. I myself have never been that chill of a person. My friends even go as far to call me anal. If you looked up the definition of a Type A individual on Google, my picture would probably be headlining that search. I am a planner by nature. I have my color-coded spreadsheets. I have known that I wanted to go to medical school since the age of seven. I even have a six-year plan of when I’m going to get married, what city I’m going to live in, and who I’ll be friends with. That being said, my mom’s favorite saying is, “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
I had big plans for college. High school for me was kind of a bust. I didn’t have many friends. I never got the lead in the musical no matter how hard I tried. I even got bullied quite a lot when, in my opinion, I did nothing wrong to deserve that hatred. This is why college was supposed to be a fresh start for me; one where I would completely reinvent myself. I’d finally be the fun girl who is in the most amazing girl gang on campus. I’d get the grades. I’d have a super cute and supportive boyfriend. But most importantly, I would be far away from home and those awful reminders of four of the worst years of my life.
Like I said before, “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
Exactly a year ago when I was making my plans for where to go to college, I found myself in a tough spot. That is, all my plans had fallen through and I was at a crossroads.
My original plan was to get into either Notre Dame or UVA, my top two schools. However, life always has other plans in store for you when you think you know what you want. Unfortunately, in the middle of my senior year of high school, I ended up getting really sick and missed about two and a half months of school, leaving my entire second semester incomplete. When UVA and Notre Dame deferred me, I was essentially screwed. Maybe if I had the grades, I would be telling a different story right now. But I guess what I wanted isn’t something I was going to get.
Imagine working your ass off for three and a half years, only to have your carefully curated plans just crumble right in front of your eyes. Got that image yet? Yep. That’s exactly what had happened to me. Ten AP classes, three years of sleepless nights, crying spells over tests and a rapidly declining self-worth that depended solely on how well I did in school. Where did it get me in the end? I’ll tell you. Absolutely nowhere. Maybe if I had spent less time on school and more time on friendships and my mental health, I would have had a better high school experience. Instead, I lost everything.
When it came time for me to finally make the decision to go to college, the only options I had left were my list of last resorts. There was Pitt, which I had surprisingly gotten a full scholarship to. There was Villanova. There was Fordham. CU Boulder was also in the running. And finally, there was William and Mary. Out of all those schools, I realized that nothing in my situation was ideal. The only school I had toured, despite living in Pittsburgh since 2007, was William and Mary. So naturally, it took its place at the top of my list.
As the weeks went by, I went back and forth trying to decide where to spend the next four years of my life at. One thing for sure that I knew I wanted was that I did NOT want to go to Pitt despite the financial package I had received. My goal was to leave, wasn’t it? I didn’t want to stay in the city that had caused me so much pain. But alas, money was a very important factor in my college making decision, especially since I was on my own and planning on going to medical school.
Growing up in my household was tough, because I was never really was taught to follow my dreams because dreams were impractical and unpredictable. My parent’s favorite saying is that the grass is always greener on the other side. Translation: you may think that your dream will give you a perfect life, but reality isn’t always so kind.
So, when the opportunity to finally take a chance to dream, to follow my heart, to take a new step and turn the page to my not so ideal life arose, I was stunned. My whole life had been spent trying to please my father and mother, not myself. However, it was not my time to dream a year ago, as I decided with a heavy heart to go to Pitt because it made the most sense financially. My dreams that I had wanted for so long; a college with a campus, to leave Pittsburgh, to become my own person without the influence of my overbearing parents? Gone with a click of an expensive button.
I tried to stay hopeful though, saying that I’d make the best of my situation despite going to college in the same five-mile radius that I had been living in since 2007. I tried to look at the positives: I was paying virtually no money for school, mind you a good school, something people would literally kill for, I could watch my brothers grow up, I could take as many study abroad trips as I wanted with all the money I was saving. It also didn’t hurt that I lived in a thriving medical hub with insane opportunities.
Sometimes though, life doesn’t meet your expectations of reality, even when you try to keep an open mind. Life sometimes just sucks.
My freshman year of college was, to be frank, terrible.
I must note that yes, I spent my first year of college while COVID was mid swing and maybe I would have had a different experience. But the reality is, I did make my first impressions of college while COVID was happening and it sucked. All those amazing female friends I thought I would make? I still haven’t met them. My dreams of going to medical school? Shaken. I got the boyfriend but of course he had to live 590 miles away and doesn’t even go to the same school as me. To say I was lonely was an understatement. I felt like I was Mr. Cellophane from Chicago. Invisible. Inconsequential. The worst part of it all was that I was watching everyone else live out my dream.
My best friends from high school were living their absolute best life ever, going to parties, making friends, meeting significant others that went to the SAME school as them. Even my boyfriend was living his best life, with his amazing roommates and friends in his dorm, beautiful enclosed campus and classes and professors he loved. I could not genuinely say I enjoyed a single class my first semester, especially bio. I actually thought about giving up my seven-year-old self’s dream of going to medical school because bio 101 was that bad. The worst part was, I could not stop thinking about the life I could have had if I had just gone to William and Mary and paid the insanely ridiculous price, because there must be a correlation with leaving Pennsylvania and having a better life. Right? Wrong. What if I actually had a much worse time while additionally paying 60k+ in tuition. Who am I to predict the future and say things would have been better? I am ignorant. I can’t play God. What do I know about anything?
I do have to add, that in comparison to other people, my life wasn’t so bad as it seemed. At least I wasn’t paying for college. I still have both of my parents who love me very much. I was even able to balance work and school. However, for me, my life felt like it was at its lowest.
I genuinely considered dropping out of college for a period of time, solely because I was so socially deprived. Why did it matter if I had good grades and that I had goals and aspirations? If I wasn’t happy, what was the point of it all. I felt like I didn’t even know myself anymore and started believing that I was the problem. That I was the reason my life was so sucky.
The majority of my days were spent alone, in my dorm room, crying and feeling sorry for myself. I beat myself up every time I saw someone having fun on social media because of course I must be the reason no one asked me to hang out. I must be a terrible person. I must have gotten bullied in high school for a reason. I am quite possibly, the worst person on this planet.
This attitude started affecting the relationships I already did have. I fought with my boyfriend and took out all my anger on him, just because I know he would still love me regardless. But sometimes, I took it too far and he ended up breaking up with me. I isolated myself from the friends I did have. I stopped talking to everyone completely, deciding to take “personal days” where I was virtually dead.
By the time my first semester ended, I was fed up with myself and disappointed in the way my life had turned out. Whoever said that college was supposed to be the best four years of your life surely got it wrong. The only good thing that came out of college was me realizing I wanted to drop becoming a surgeon like my father and forge my own path in the medical field.
I had finally learned my first life lesson: stop following everyone else’s expectations for you and forge your own path. This led to learning my second life lesson: Don’t be afraid to follow your dreams.
I had to sit myself down and really think: did I want to spend my life doing something I hated for the sake of posterity or did I want to genuinely try to be happy? I had already spent nineteen years trying so hard to be the perfect girl. Maybe the secret to happiness was putting my time and energy into something else.
Once my second semester started, I decided it was time for me to make a change. Yes, it’s okay to be sad, but you can’t dwell on all the reasons why something goes wrong when you actually have the power to make things go right. Bad things will still happen no matter how hard you try, but you have to learn to cope in a healthy way.
It was finally time for me to stop laying flowers at the grave of my old self and move on.
Second semester still was rough, despite trying to become a completely new person with an improved mindset. I forced myself to leave my room and socialize, sometimes pretending I was happy when I wasn’t. I made a new dear friend that I ended up crying to more times than I’d like to admit. I even sucked up my pride and got a cat, which was probably the best thing to happen all year.
I can’t say that this year has gone according to my plan, but at this point in my life, I would be surprised if it had. I can only hope that next semester will go better for me. Maybe I’ll join that girl gang I really wanted to find this past year. Maybe I’ll join new clubs. Maybe I’ll even meet my future maid of honor in my classes next semester. Who knows? All I know that it is silly of me to try and be the master of the seas, because when it comes to down Maria vs. the ocean of life, fighting will only result in a lungful of disappointment.
My advice to you in order to curate a happier and more fulfilling life?
1. Stop comparing yourself to others. The life you want isn’t always the life you see portrayed on the screen.
2. You have to work hard to be happy. While some people seemingly have it all, including the ability to be happy without fighting off 4 layers of depression first, I don’t. So yeah, happiness is a choice.
3. You can’t keep living in the past. We make millions of decisions a day. Where would it get us if we dwelled on each and every one of them? Make a choice and stick with it. We can’t change what’s already happened.
4. Stop setting expectations for yourself. If you live in your head, reality will almost always disappoint you.
5. Finally, go to that party or that hangout. Just LEAVE YOUR ROOM and TAKE A CHANCE. The memories you make will almost always be worth it. And if they’re bad? Well now you have one heck of a story to tell the next time you’re out.
Good Luck and keep fighting. You’re stronger than you know.
Xoxo, Maria
