Berline Exantus
ENC 2135
Assignment 1
Instructor Mat Wenzel
Nike Told Me To
I was standing in a Chick-Fil-A kitchen at the University of South Carolina wondering whether or not this might be my new home based on career advancements, then I heard the “ping!”. I unlocked my phone and pulled down the banner to view a brief summary of my notification; I immediately locked my phone again. This wasn’t the first time I held my breath on a college admissions letter, this wasn’t the second, nor was it the third. I wasn’t 17, nor was I in high school.
•••
Learning about depression and experiencing depression are two completely different experiences. I was in my 6th semester of school when I realized what was really happening to me. I didn’t realize I was depressed and it was coupled with anxiety until I reached out to the Florida State University counseling team. There were long stretches of time that just seemed to go by without me being aware. Sitting in class was like living through a time lapse where people spoke about things and I couldn’t fully grasp what was going on. Listening to my professor was like trying to get a cohesive message out of alphabet soup. I didn’t talk about it with anyone outside of that counseling room and I wasn’t planning to. After that summer I decided to get a job so I could feel more productive and more goal driven. It took two and half years for me to get a job in Tallahassee. Luckily, I had a friend who was looking for food service employees on campus. Once I got into the rhythm of working for the first time in my life, I decided that the issue in my life was school. I made the decision to leave and never come back. It was the most exhilarating and freeing moment of my life. Somehow the air felt crisper, the sun shined a little brighter, and sleep felt more relaxing. Of course, that all ended as I avoided any and all contact with my family and home friends. I dreaded explaining my depression and anxiety to a group of people that would just tell me, “its nothing! What are you worried about? Why did you leave school?” I didn’t want to think about it just like how I didn’t want to answer the “so, what’re you in school for” and “when do you graduate?” questions. I just completely avoided my mother and everyone else by simply living 8 hours away in Tallahassee.
The comfort I felt in having a minimum wage job lasted about two years. I had gotten the promotions, the awards, and I loved my coworkers that I saw for 90% of my week. That all came to an end once the company that was contracted by Florida State University was fired then the sense of purpose I once felt collapsed. Starting over with new people and new rules really put a dent in my self denial. The shift in management made me doubt what I had learned over the course of the last two years. I was highly skilled in my position and my new bosses were nothing of the sort. I was convinced that I was insane and that I never knew what I was doing. I constantly doubted how to do things that I had routinely handled because of the new management team. All of my favorite coworkers had transitioned to new places in their lives instead of staying on campus. I felt out of place and misunderstood by the people who considered themselves professionals. My friend who had originally gotten me the position decided to move to South Carolina and began to run her own store. I missed the sense of community that her presence brought. So I decided to visit an old friend when I felt stuck in my life and confused about my identity. I wanted to move forward and out of the food service work but I doubted myself, so she offered me a position.
°°°
This email from Florida State’s Office of Admissions didn’t include whether or not I got admitted; it simply just linked me to my application status in an ominous manner. The electronic letter was vague enough to trigger my flight or fight response. I immediately began to walk away from my friend’s office and towards to main kitchen. Then back. Then forwards. Then back towards her. I could feel the ground gliding beneath my feet, completely unsure of whether or not the Chick-fil-a oil was my friend or my foe. A better question placed itself in front of me: should such an important life altering decision be conveyed so casually? An email, my inbox was full of about 14,000 of them for this one account out of seven. This one email isn’t the same as the “you’re account balance has fallen below $25” or the “your monthly ebill is due” emails. This was a verification that I am in fact worth more than a $11.26 an hour fast food position, more than the severe depression that consumed the last four years of my life, especially more than my last semester at this same school that set me back .7 points on my GPA. My mother had forgiven me; I had forgiven me for quitting on everything including life, but had Florida State University forgiven me? The first time I went through this process I received a thick white packet in the mail, with tangible evidence that, yes, I am in fact worth it. The second time around I got a notification that’s a fraction of a megabyte, barely more than a kilo byte. After working 65-hour weeks for four months to get enough money to go back to school, I got a template of an email with my name auto populated into it. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was drugged and someone was playing a cruel prank on me. Like when a close friend got too intoxicated and we decided to tell him we couldn’t understand what he was saying because he was speaking Spanish. The punchline was that he couldn’t speak Spanish despite being Hispanic.
°°°
I felt nauseous when I went into work because I hadn’t slept. How could I read something like that and be expected to move forward with my life, learning that living human beings consciously made the decision to disturb reality like this? If someone had told me the numbers 304 and 227 would be important in my life I would’ve played the lottery. Sadly, the day my reality cracked was when the world’s worst con artist got access to the largest stash of nuclear codes on this planet. I asked myself how could a man who was vastly unqualified for the position as the President of the United States win over a woman who was a career politician? It was then that I realized that I couldn’t just “work my way up” in the food service industry. In comparison, despite me being qualified for my position I was left feeling like I never applied for the position. Along with that feeling, I felt as if these people don’t have my best interest at heart. That’s not say I thought everyone around me during that time period were pure evil, but the chaos of the moment put a sense of purpose back in my life that I was never in touch with. Three years of my life floated by, one day blurring into the other like a stack of pages. It was like the conversation you have with a friend who’s too self-absorbed to realize that you aren’t paying attention between the “uh huhs” and “for reals”. Zoning out after the first sentence and coming back into the moment when they’re on the last sentence is dangerous when you realize point a and b are wildly unrelated. The dizziness and the fog that overwhelming anxiety brought on the night of the election resurged in the moment that I got that email from Florida State University.
°°°
To be quite honest I almost didn’t open the link in the email. Why should I open something so generic and vague about my future? I couldn’t tell my story to the admissions officer, I couldn’t let my voice get heard with an essay so why would Florida State readmit someone who didn’t even bother to show up to class during their last semester? And that’s how the downward spiral begins, think then do nothing, then think about how you did nothing, do some more nothing, then do some more thinking. “Why are you dirtying up my floor?” my friend asked me when the she was done with her light chat with her coworkers. “I just got an email about my application for FSU and I don’t think I got in,” I replied back.
“Well did you open it? You won’t know until you open the link.” She was right. Nothing will happen if I don’t do anything. Someone with a psychology degree or someone who’s spent 3 hours and 24 minutes on WebMD or WikiHow might tell you anxiety is all in your head or curable with a quick meditation session. My mother’s mantra was “why are you scared for”, never what but always why. Why is a mildly garnet colored button so scary? I had already decided to not attend the school once, what difference would it truly make if my decision was followed through. I fretted over a few pixels in a place that doesn’t actually exist, how did I get here? How did I let my anxiety and obsessive control override a decision that had already been finalized no matter if I opened it.