Column: It can be hard to move on alone

Growing up, I felt separated from everyone. I was a little kid with horrible handwriting, colorblindness and a love for reading. Needless to say, I was a pretty easy target for other kids to ridicule.

One time in my after school care program, a kid punched me in the stomach, saying he wanted to leave marks on my “fat body” for the rest of my life. I was not brave enough to tell anyone about this instance and it has bothered me ever since. That night I prayed that God would kill me. This all happened when I was 13 years old. It didn’t stop.

In the following years, my self-confidence in social spheres dropped, and to compensate, I would often revert to an ego-driven state of pseudo-positivity. It didn’t help.

What really got to me was that even in church, a place where friendliness was supposed to be extended to all, I sat by myself, afraid to talk to anyone and feeling utterly worthless. To this day, when I am at my home church, I instantly revert back to that feeling of isolation.

So fast-forward to today — I am at UNC, away from all of those places, working at a job I love. I have friends who encourage my passions, and I still talk to my family every day. By all accounts, my life is going well, and I consider myself extremely privileged to be here.

Yet, I still feel uncomfortable talking about psychological problems, even though it impacts me every day. Whenever I get a bad grade or if a friend does not respond to a message — or a whole other array of issues — I retreat back into this shell of isolation. The feeling of sitting alone in youth group returns, and I tell myself maybe life would be better off if I had no friends or that everyone does not actually care about me — something I know is all my head. But even if these feelings are not rational, they are real and they terrify me.

To add onto all of it, I hate deadtime. So in my mind, the idea of stopping whatever it is I am doing to practice self-care is not something I tend to pursue. I don’t like talking about my isolationism and have a hard time conveying how I am feeling to others.

Obviously, I am not qualified to write an advice column, so that is not what this is. This probably won’t give you, me or anyone else a new understanding of life, but it is how I feel about dealing with depression.

So to those out there like me — I know you hate listening to other people, but I would just like to offer this:

Do not be like me and let past experiences dictate your idea of self-worth. In the words of one of my favorite bands, “you’re an irreplacable human soul with your own understanding of what it means to suffer.”

So take that understanding and channel it. For me, it is going to work every day and writing. It may not be the traditional idea of self-care that is thankfully helping so many others on this campus, and, honestly, often it does not make me any happier. But trust me, I spent a lot of years trying to pretend my problems were not real, and it didn’t do me an ounce of good.