18-years-old, a freshman in college and the start of the most developmentally filled four years of my life. I was developmentally delayed due to my homeschool upbringing. So when I entered college I had to catch up on a lot of social development with-in a tight four-year timeline. I learned how to approach people, how to trust people, how to not trust people and how to think for myself. Even now as I look at this picture (2013) I cringe at how innocent and naive I was. I surrounded myself with toxic people out of a need to not be alone. Ultimately leading to a lot of pain and further depression. Although, I did have some good people around me it didn't outweigh the negative impacts of the toxic influences that surrounded me. Coming from a heavily conservative family I held a lot of right-wing beliefs because that was what I was raised with. My undergrad was a private art college that was an extremely liberal environment. This lead to me being the target for a lot of bullying. I was also receiving backlash on my parent's side because I wasn't acting "Christian" enough, if I wasn't converting a soul a day then I wasn't doing my job. This created a lot of inner turmoil. I was trying to create these bonds with people that also challenged my point of view, but my family was also telling me that "I can't trust these people" and that "How can I care for them if I'm not sharing the gospel with them". I came close to dropping out of college because of the constant back-and-forth between my family and my life at college. I felt like I was leading a double life and it was very tiresome to do.
Although, I decided to come back for my sophomore year. I was recharged and ready to face school and a
more healthy friend group. I had met someone by the name of Christian Huthmacher (Pictured Right) my second week of freshman year. We didn't have many classes together, but he made sure to help me through homework. We became decent friends freshman year, but since we didn't have classes it was hard to create the bond. However, once I came back for the sophomore year we had every class together. This ended in up with us hanging out continuously and sooner or later he became my best friend. I helped him through a break-up, starting a new relationship as well as working through two major group projects together. In November I'll be attending his wedding to my other best friend. (pictured left with guitars). Sophomore year was my favorite year in college. It was my best work and I also created my strongest friendships. I also started getting involved on campus more. I became a teaching assistant for the summer sessions, a mentor in my department, and an orientation leader/student ambassador. I also started exploring my personality more (I began cursing, I started questioning my beliefs and also would drink occasionally) things that one would say are a normal college experience.
Junior year was where I developed the most. I had the closest thing to a romantic relationship (Spoiler alert: it didn't end well) as well as the tipping point for my relationship with my parents. By the time my Junior year was over my parents had threatened to disown me more than I can remember and had gaslighted me through the entire time I was away. Pictured above you can see I was starting to embrace my identity through my clothing. Was I fully aware that, that was what I was doing? Fuck no, lol. Because of all the emotional turmoil, I went through in the last couple months of school I went into my summer extremely burnt out. I had landed a summer internship and was excited about that, but it turned out to be a toxic environment so I was very rarely able to recharge from what junior year held. Which meant senior year I was emotionally, physically and mentally drained.
Senior year first semester I struggled with extream depression, I began to self-harm and I almost failed my thesis. I struggled for a majority of the semester and I only opened up to one friend when I began to self-harm. He helped me through a lot, but he also was going through his own issues so I wasn't able to lean on him too much. About 3/4 of the way through I was able to turn my workaround and get a passing grade. Although I still self-harmed into my second semester and also post-grad due to my episodes of depression. Luckily I was able to stop about a month post-grad due to getting into a better headspace and understanding my small victories. While the senior year was the roughest time of my life, I still log it as a monumental developmental period in my life. I had discovered my own set of beliefs and values as well as discovering that I had been hiding from being gay my entire life. I also discovered my passion for higher education in this period and realized my depression was being caused by my chosen field just as much as my social factors.
Wrapping up my young adult period I moved out to Texas for the hall director position and began
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