The institution kills people like us just for simply existing on their campuses

I have been out of school since December of 2017. This September was my first time in higher education/college since then. And since then, let me tell you what has changed.

But first, a little backstory on me.

I was an avid activist in my undergraduate years. Absolutely fucking relentless. I did more outside of class than all of my (146 credits of) classes combined. I was part of committees, organizations, hiring committees, student representatives, protests, and a part of a small pool of people who just fucking knocked on the administration’s door every day of their lives, causing hell for them. I am proud of my background, and I am proud of all I accomplished in my undergrad.

Needless to say, not everything was always great and wonderful. I developed anxiety, depression, and a horrible alcohol attachment. Not only this, but I developed physical ailments that I can say, were directly attributed to the massive amounts of stress that others and myself put upon ourselves to be perfect, to be always in the loop with what was going on outside and inside of campus. People left and right of me were dropping like flies, and I was wondering how long it would take until it would claim me into silence (or death) too.

Many activists over the course of their lives develop physical ailments that affect them for the rest of their lives. Diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, heart problems.

For me, it was chest pain. I would wake up nearly every morning and feel pain in my chest, like weights had been piled upon them in my sleep. I felt as if my chest was caving in on itself and that I was dying. I told my doctor about it, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with it, because whenever I conveniently showed up to my doctor’s appointments, it would magically disappear.

This affected me from my junior year up until the moment I graduated. Once I graduated, it stopped. At first, I thought the chest pains were from the massive amounts that I drank, but I continued to do so after I graduated and it did not return.

My conclusion was that it was from the presence, the stress, and the anxiety that institutions of higher education instill in their students of marginalized identities.

If this conclusion couldn’t be proved before, it’s definitely proved now.

I’ve been in my graduate program for almost a month now. My drinking habits have died down (see my blog post here about that journey) and I’m adjusting greatly to my new place, the new area, and the new institution. Despite this, I woke up a few weeks ago with a familiar chest pain. As I write this blog post now, I can feel my chest caving in. I breathe and it hurts. I lay on my side and it hurts. I lay down and it hurts. Everything I do to make it subside does not work. I have to wait for it to fade away by itself.

I haven’t been doing any wild activism since being here. I’ve taken on meetings, had my schedule relatively booked with time for some me time, but I still feel it. The tremendous amount of pressure I have to be completely involved in this institution still eats at me, and maybe that’s why. But maybe it’s also because for marginalized students attending a PWI that doesn’t seem to care about them, simply being on these campuses is killing us.

I work for an amazing office. I am surrounded by people who support and validate me. I love what I do. I love everything about my job and would readily quit school to simply work in this position for the rest of my life. But the work that my office does is taxing. The work that my office does takes a tremendous toll on my coworkers’, supervisors’, and students’ bodies. The institution outside of our office is not as validating as the environment we have made for ourselves. The institution still hates people like us. They still try to wait us out.

I’m not afraid of my health deteriorating and spiraling, but I am afraid that this pain is something I will not be able to escape as I continue to work in higher education and pursue a career in it.

I have talked to many activists about the physical ailments that have killed people, have impaired their lives, and continue to plague them as we exist in institutions that readily seek to kill us and silence us. This is not a new issue. And I don’t have the answer to make it better.

As the semester continues, I don’t know how to monitor my health. No matter how much “self care” we do for others and ourselves, the institution will still exist to try to kill us and silence us. Sometimes in that order. It is called self-care, because the institution will not care for us—we have to.

To you, to the person I was: Alcohol is not the cure. I’m sorry. It is not a blessing in disguise.

This is my story of alcoholism.

TW: rape, alcohol abuse

Underage and of age binge drinking is pandemic in the college experience. It is an “epitomal” part of the experience. 2 out of 3 college students have admitted to binge drinking. Binge drinking occurs when someone drinks 4-5 drinks in less than 2 hours.

I attribute this to the tremendous pressures to center the college “experience” on these activities. I didn’t have my first sip of alcohol until the summer of 2015, the summer before I turned 21. I had always wanted to drink when I was legal (which I did; technically in England I was legal). But before then, I was told numerous things, all of them built on the premise that I disrespected them if I didn’t drink. One of these statements coming from a senior whom I had admired: “You’re no fun, Ka.”

To be honest, I came to parties to have fun. I did have fun. I enjoyed dancing. I enjoyed being surrounded by people who were enjoying themselves. I enjoyed being a designated driver for my friends, whom I cared about deeply and immensely.

I look back at those days with a deep fondness and a pity for the naivety that I was. And I wish I could return to that to make peace, to be at ease with myself.

The summer after I returned from England, I began to attend regular parties. My consumption was minimal, it was exciting, filled with laughter. I was a lightweight and it felt great to feel a high, feel completely immersed with the people around me.

I drank with people I cared about; I drank with people who I had deep, emotional, painful conversations with. People who had sacrificed to be here. People who put their lives on the line. People whose activism extended beyond themselves, to future generations, to love for themselves and their own people. I was in a circle of care and carelessness, the recklessness and exhilaration of activism. These people held me accountable. These people grounded me.

These people graduated, and the torch they lit inside of me was supposed to carry on its roots, its histories, its love, its grace, its burden.

Months after my 21^st birthday, I began to drink more (one could argue, leading up to my 21^st birthday, I drank almost that entire week—the normalcy of this occurrence had desensitized my friends. To me it was abnormal, to others, it was normal...).

It was after the summer of 2016. I drank excessively. You can think about the ways in which our political climate may have contributed (HEAVILY) to this. I don’t wish to get into that. All I know is that it was painful watching the spiraling of the nation, the explicit hate and the fear. The fear for me, the fear for people like and unlike me, and the fear for my family.

I was stressed, I felt burdened and like a burden, I used school as a means to escape—I did assignments weeks in advance in fear that I would spiral into depression one week and be unable to move out of my bed for days, I was afraid that my professors would hate me, I was afraid that my love for my friends was fading and that they were noticing, I was afraid that the love for my brothers was withering away and that I wasn’t being the daughter my parents raised me into being, I was planning protests and attending rallies, I was emotionally exhausting myself and putting my dying flame into the only art I knew—serving people and burning myself out through activism. I learned to hate the term ‘self-care.’ I couldn’t afford it; neither could the rest of the nation. We screamed for justice and we were met with promises of walls and the overt cry of violence against people whose skin didn’t meet the standard.

The election was what really sunk in the reality of the nation; it was the last blow to my crumbling tower. I cried for two hours. I apologized to my brothers; I had let them down. I had not changed history, I had not done anything extraordinary to change the course of history.

I drowned out my pain through alcohol. God damn, people fucking warned me about it, and still, I did it. I pushed away all the people I cared about and I just fucking drank.

It wasn’t the “shutting myself in my room for days at a time and drink until I pass out” kind of alcoholism. It was coming home from school, having a few glasses of wine, and going out to the bars or parties and drink until I couldn’t feel anymore and come back home and pass out. At first, it was just once a week, until it turned into almost every other day.

The culture that surrounded me made it seem so normal. Social media laughed at my pain, made memes out of excessive drinking, my peers encouraged it as a means of forgetting, or just as a means of “having fun.”

I forgot what it was like to have fun without the presence of alcohol.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alocholism, 696,00 students are assaulted by another student has been drinking. 97,000 students have reported alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.

I became a statistic that fall semester.  I came home the next morning, threw my clothes into a bag, shoved it into my closet, and took a shower. (Months later, when moving out, I would find this bag and cried for hours until my partner came to throw it out for me.)

But as I resumed my normal school behavior, my nights were filled with even more alcohol. I blamed myself, so I drank myself into darkness and silence. I’ve spent my entire life screaming the words “It is not your fault” when it comes to victims of sexual assault, harassment, and rape. Yet when put in the situation, I could not feel anything but.

I did not tell anyone. Months later, my partner found out. I remember the “I told you so” and the “I should’ve been there.”

I blamed myself even more. I became a shell of myself and I was on autopilot for the end of my fall semester and going into my spring semester.

I had a panic attack on my 22^nd birthday. I was used to panic attacks before, induced more often after a night of drinking, typically done by myself, in my bed. My panic attacks varied from simply staring at one place for hours on end, hyperventilating, crying, and complete loss of muscle function. I had a lot of bruises on my body. I had a lot of puffy eyes.

On my birthday, it had begun so happily. I was high on the presence of my friends. It was filled with laughter, people I loved. But tensions were high amongst friend groups that existed beyond our doors, pressures had increased, the reality of everything that had happened in the last year settled in, the pain I had tried to hide came full speed, crashed into me, and I convulsed in front of the group of friends that I had tried to be so happy, so calm, so strong for. To show weakness is strength. But this was one I had not prepared them for.

I remember my heart, my chest, my stomach, my legs, my arms, aching. I felt like I was dying, like I was going to die. I remember the hands on me, the sound of my friends voices, repeating my name over and over again. I remember the crying, the screaming, and the fact that I couldn’t breathe. I remember the corner that I stared at as my friends surrounded me.

All I remember after staring at the corner is waking up the next morning in my bed. Alone. The door was locked from the inside. If I asked my friends what happened that night, I’ve forgotten what their responses were. I’ve hidden that night from my consciousness.

The panic attack on my 22^nd birthday was what made me stop. I think. Honestly, I don’t remember when I decided to stop drinking excessively. I just remember my summer was filled with less and less frequent trips to the store for alcohol, to the bars.

I caved in on myself, and I became, what we call, yet another “buzzkill.” I go out less often. This letter is a revelation of myself, but it is also an apology to my friends. My absence has shown, and I know my presence has been missed, but is no longer necessary. I am trying to disappear. I am no longer the person I was. I only show up for a few drinks; I don’t get wasted anymore. I drink, just enough to be cautious. Just enough to make sure I can drive myself home. Just enough to make sure no one hurts my friends. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that my body has gone through so much violence, both self-inflicted and otherwise.

I’m sorry that I’ve been disappearing. I will keep disappearing.

I’m sorry I’m not the person I thought I was—that you thought I was.

But most of all, this letter is meant for you, the reader to understand something.

I was a straight A student, and I did this shit and maintained my grades. I did this while I maintained a composed image of myself. Most people did not suspect that I was dying. Because it was normal. We were (and still are) in pain.

Everything was not fine.

And if something within this letter has struck a similarity with you, I ask you to do something. To please let yourself heal from whatever demons haunt you for just a moment, to please let your body heal from all the violence it’s seen.

We have a tendency to see our pain as strength. Toxic masculinity and the engrainment of its qualities has taught us the value of ourselves, only when we destroy ourselves in what we feel, in what we become. Mixed with alcohol, these qualities are toxic—emotionally, physically, and mentally. Please allow yourself to heal from toxicity.

Please be good to yourself. Self-care is bullshit. But caring for yourself is necessary. It is survival, it is existence. I want you to exist, to be good to yourself.

 

I call bullshit on these universities pledging that student protests will not interfere with their admissions

I protested in my undergrad. I quit my job in my undergrad because they did not align with my morals, nor did they even match up to the tokenizing University standard on diversity that I had to use in order to bargain with them. My last day of work, I told them that it was the most toxic environment I had ever been in and I had tried to do all I can to make it better but I had no more strength to do it. I fought with university administration and  I yelled at professors for their lack of accountability to their students of marginalized identities. I made noise. A shit ton of noise.

All of this was worth it.

Yet, the “professional” world doesn’t care about that.

When I was applying for graduate school, I was afraid that if they went through my employment history and called my supervisor, that they would reveal information that indicated I “had my own agenda” with my employment and that I was uncooperative and coercive with my team members.

I was afraid that my grad school would call their friends at my alma mater and ask who I was. Ask about what type of person I was, and ask if I’d be a right fit for student affairs. (Basically if they were afraid I’d come for their jobs. YES. I am.) Ask about my demeanor, if I’d be compliant, what type of person I was. I was fucking terrified because I had made a name for myself being the person who was never satisfied with what the university was putting out in their diversity efforts. I was the person who said that I could do their job better than them (I’m pretty sure I still can).

I don’t speak for all student activists/protestors when I say that I was fucking terrified about how my protests, my incompliance for the sake of students’ lives, and the stubbornness of my agenda would make or break my future.

I began to question whether or not it was worth it. (It was). Regardless of whether or not I got into grad school (or even if I didn’t get that job at Kwik Trip), I knew that it was worth it, for me. Activism does not pay for my bills and does not fill my stomach and I still grapple with this idea everyday in making my service accessible to myself and others.

So to the universities that want to look good by saying “ur protests will not bar u from admissions” I want to ask you questions:

Are you still willing to say that when the tables are turned on you and students start protesting your inclusive efforts or lack therof?

Are you still willing to stand by that when a white supremacist comes to the campus?

Are you still willing to accept student activists while simoultaneously ensuring that these student activists are protected while they are on campus from any type of violence that may come at them? Or will you sit idly by when they “provoke violence?”

ARE YOU WILLING TO BECOME THE SUBJECT OF A FUCKING PROTEST IF YOU ARE NOT ACCOUNTABLE TO YOUR STUDENTS OF MARGINALIZED IDENTITIES?

It is so easy for these universities to say “your participation in a peaceful protest” will not negatively affect admission.

But I ask you.

Where the fuck was this fucking statement for Black Lives Matter? A literal call for mass murders against black folks to stop? Where was this fucking statement for no DAPL? Where the fuck was this statement before the whitewashing?

What is your definition of peaceful? BLM was/is a peaceful phenomenon. Police made it violent. Oh I get it. They have to look like, walk like, talk like, protest like, white folks.

I call bullshit.

I call bullshit, not because I don’t think that these universities aren’t genuine in their statements, but that they are selective in their statements of faux inclusivity. Selective with their audience (white), selective with whose life matters (white, middle class aka people who can afford to go to these places), and selective with the way they speak out about national issues without “rocking the boat.”

I call bullshit.

This is the abridged version of my “journey then to now.” A full blogpost is to come soon.