Dylan C.
Photography by Ally Szabo
If you’re reading this, you are not worthless.
Growing up, I was a sheltered kid. I had no clue what mental health was. All I knew was that I felt really sad and really scared of the world around me. Which, I thought, was normal and something that every kid experienced. My perspective shifted when my classmate and friend committed suicide during my senior year of high school. It struck me hard. I couldn't get food down for over a week and felt physically sick for months after.
I felt scared to ask my family for support because of the stigma behind it. If I had all these existing problems before, it felt like a pot boiling over. Society had ingrained in me this idea that I needed to be perfect all the time; it was a setup for failure.
My life was crumbling before my eyes. I usually had a grasp on everything around me, but I felt as though I was slipping back further and further each day and would eventually fall so behind that I could never come back. If I wasn't the perfect son, student, or even person then who was I? I was playing a game that I was bound to lose.
In my mind, I could only connect the dots that I was worthless. I lost my sense of being perfect, which meant I lost myself. I hated myself. I couldn’t sit through classes without having a panic attack or throwing up. I even went to the hospital because I was so depressed it began to physically manifest itself in my body. There was nothing anyone could say to me that gave me purpose. I wasn’t the happy kid that brought joy to everyone, and I lost my natural smile. Smiling felt like a chore rather than a reaction.
One day I had enough, I looked at myself in the mirror and said I never wanted to feel this way ever again. With the support of people around me and mental health resources, I have approached each day with a willingness to love myself a little more just to prove that I am capable of love. Even though I fall at times, there is no linear path to get better and I know I am just along for the ride. I want all of you to know that failure is a part of the process and that it helps you to make progress and be a better person, especially yourself. So, give yourself grace.
To this day, I am not exactly sure what I can do to convince myself and others around me that we are loved because sometimes we are blinded by self-hate. However, I will say that the people around you are glad you are in their lives because you are outstanding and you are you.
Lastly, I will leave you with this quote a good friend of mine told me: the longest relationship you have is with yourself, so you better make it worthwhile. Whenever you think to yourself ‘the people around me hate me’ and ‘I am worthless’, I want you to do the opposite. The political science major in me likes to say you are your own defendant. But look at yourself and say, the people around me love me and I am a person worth love because I am me. Then you will see you are not worthless. It is just a passing cloud of thought. And you are not worthless because you are you.
Dylan C., Villanova University
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