Kelly S.
Photography by Ally Szabo
If you’re reading this, it is okay to have a cloud on a sunny day.
As someone who is as positive and optimistic as one can be, it can be difficult to accept sad or difficult times. I want everything to be sunshine and rainbows all the time, so when I experience hard times or feel down, I repress these feelings. I don’t want anything to burst the happy bubble I live in. This, however, is not always possible or sustainable.
Freshman year was one of the most difficult times of my life. Not only was I moving away from my home in California for the first time, but I was leaving my family, friends, and everything I was used to. I had no clue how different everything on the East Coast was from the West Coast; everything I had known was completely different. This combined with experiencing mental health issues for the first time, such as distorted eating and family troubles, I sent myself into a whirlwind.
To hold onto the positive, bubbly individual I am, I tried pushing these sad, depressed, and lonely feelings away as far as possible. I convinced myself that if I didn’t acknowledge how I was feeling or admit them to anyone, it meant they weren’t real or true. Because I refused to be honest with myself or others about my new reality, I pushed away my friends and chose to isolate myself in my dorm room. Who needs to go out or be with friends on a Friday or Saturday night? Who needs to go to the dining hall with their friends? Who needs to go on walks with others? The more I turned into myself, the farther down the rabbit hole I fell. I was suffering from a hurricane on the inside while trying to keep a certain image on the outside. I am positive. I am happy. I am optimistic. I am sunshine. If people don’t see or recognize me as this person, then who am I?
Eventually, this exterior I was putting on began to crumble. I decided that this secretive storm was taking over my life, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to be happy again. I wanted to be in love with life again. And most importantly, I wanted to feel like myself again.
I started relearning and becoming who I had always been. Instead of faking this happy persona, I re-embodied who I am in my core. I began to confide in the person who became my rock at Villanova, and one of the many reasons that I now call Villanova home. Without her friendship, support, and unconditional love, I would probably be a student at a different school feeling just as lost as I did my freshman year. I turned to SoulCycle, which quickly became like my therapy-the place I could express myself and let my frustration out. I have a little– one who I am not only obsessed with, but is one of my lifelong best friends. I now love seeing the church every single day, instead of resenting it.
Freshman year was my rock bottom, my breaking point. I was not only ready to leave, but begging my parents to let me transfer. Because I was struggling mentally for the first time, I blamed Villanova. It surely couldn’t be me, it had to be this new school and environment. I refused to take ownership of my struggles and reflected on everything around me. Instead of choosing to pretend like my problems didn’t exist, I wish I had learned earlier to tackle my clouds one on one before they became the all-consuming storm that I was drowning in. Now, I could not imagine who I would be without Villanova.
You have to learn to ride and embrace the wave of life. You won’t always have sunny days. There will be cloudy ones too. If life was full of clear skies all the time, there would never be rainbows.
Kelly S., Villanova University
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