Feeling Left Behind: Graduation Story or Lack Thereof

I am an entire year behind in college. I should be a senior, but I’m still a junior on the cusp of being a senior. I had to drop all of my classes last semester due to being so unstable because of bipolar disorder. I couldn’t handle the stress, the thought of having to play catch-up after my first hospitalization was nauseating, and the med they put me on during my first visit made me evermore unknowingly unstable. So I had to drop all of my classes. Luckily I no longer need two of them.

My second hospitalization confirmed that I shouldn’t take any classes next semester either because I needed to use that time to find med stability. So having to drop last semester and not even doing this semester has put me an entire year behind so that way I may be graduating in 2015 instead of late 2013.

Most of the friends I came into university with graduated today. I’m going to admit I feel left behind. They’re moving on, hopefully finding swanky careers with their polished diplomas, and here I am just trying to register for the fall semester because the education program doesn’t do PIN numbers and I have to wait until late registration to get anything done. It sucks, I’ll totally admit that. I wish I could join them, celebrate with them, be happy about my graduation and being able to hold on to the hope that the future is endless for me.

But nope. Bipolar did a lot of damage and I’ll probably have to end up making new friends come fall semester. Well, school friends, anyway. It’s no fun being a loner on campus, not that I’m much of one anyway. It’s frustrating, too, because part of me wonders if I could have held on. I probably could have, but then my GPA would have suffered, further damaging my already low self-esteem at the time. And being depressed and being expected to stay on top of things is really, really difficult, especially when all you think about is sleep and not wanting to be awake because everything just hurts and you don’t know why and would rather not deal with the ‘why.’

I could choose to be bitter about what bipolar did, what depression did, but looking at what I was able to accomplish makes me realize I may not have been able to accomplish anything had I been in school. I got to do a ballet recital, and that means so much to me, especially because it was a dream come true. I was dying for the chance to finally be able to show my parents and my fiancé what I’d been doing in class. Then I got a contract for my book, When Stars Die, because I finally took a risk. Who knows if I would have taken that risk in school. Who knows if I would have even been thinking about When Stars Die while in school.

So while everyone is celebrating graduation, I am doing pre-release book marketing, solidifying my platform, writing another book, and instead of holding a graduation party, I will be holding a book release party. I would say two dreams come true beats graduation any day.