Sometimes the hardest thing about having a mental illness is the time you can never get back. The time before you got help, the time before you realized that you had a problem. The choices you made out of fear or expectations that may or may not have come to pass.
I never applied for college when I was in high school. I was a solid C student (though everybody said I was smart. I now know it was inattentive adhd). But I barely coasted my way through high school, i was certain I’d never make it in college. And besides, this was before the Internet, I had no idea how financial aid worked. But I was certain I wouldn’t get any scholarships with my grades and my parents had explained for quite some time that when we were 18 it was military, college or paying rent, and they weren’t helping with college. So I went military. (I did finally go school, getting my associates at about 30, and now, at 37, finishing up my bachelors)
There’s been other things through the years, that looking back at it now, I realize it was my depression telling me lies. Or my inattentive adhd making me scatterbrained. My house has never been neat or clean.
What I’m mourning today is that, two years ago, pretty much when I hit rock bottom, I lost a semester and a half of college to depression Because of that lost time, those failed classes, I need to go for one more semester, so I can graduate in December this year. (That failed semester also forced me to wait a full year to get the job I have now while I got my GPA up.)
A couple days ago I got an email from financial aid that I’ve hit the max for student loans and so I’ll get no financial aid for fall.
Today that was coupled with learning I got a D in a class, which means it doesn’t count towards graduation, and instead of needing two more classes I need three.
I know I missed a couple assignments in that class and I’ve resisted looking to see that if I’d done them if that would make a difference. Of course it would have, but I can’t change it so no point putting myself through that.
So I have no idea what I’m going to do. My credit is too awful for private loans (another side effect of adhd is being bad with finances). I’m a world better off now then I was last year (for those of you who know what a bitch of a struggle last year was for me). We make enough right now to pay the bills, but not enough to save.
I’ll do what I’ve always done and figure it out. I need to knuckle down and start writing again. I may have depression, but, oddly enough, I tend to be naturally optimistic. I’m upset and worried, but I just have to have faith that, somehow, it’ll all work out. Though as of right now I’ve given up on the idea of being able to travel to Arizona to walk in my graduation. The important thing is to finish, and I only have a little farther to go, depression and lost time be damned.
