College and a Bathroom Stall
As I stood there, my forehead pressed against the cool, gray stall door with my heaving chest, I felt like I was stuck. And I was. Mentally I was stuck. Physically, I was just in a bathroom stall on the second floor just trying to keep up with my breathing. I sat down on the toilet seat and ran my fingers through my hair, just trying to get a grip.
It felt like I had been suffocating as I had been walking to the bathroom. I was just waiting to be behind a closed door and just exhale. The relief shooted over me when I finally was, a relief to be somewhere where no one could see me. Relief to be somewhere where there was a physical barrier between me and the world and everything else that came with it.
Sometimes I’ll just be walking down the hall and it’s like I can’t breathe. Like the breath gets caught in my throat and won’t let go. Like it gets clogged along the way. But today it was like I was choking.
The bathroom stall was just a temporary barrier for me until I was ready to go to third period. It was a barrier that I needed. But as I looked up from my hands to the stall door there it was, staring me down: the words financial aid night on the monthly newsletter next to a random date in December. The words right there in print. It was like I couldn’t escape from it — college — even in the place that’s supposed to block out everything.
People go pee in here for Christ’s sake, I think the last thing they want to do is to be reminded of how they’re going to pay for college. The thing is, is that it’s not just about the payment of college itself that freaks me out, but every other single thing that seems to come with it. Classes, dorm halls, parties, new friends, new place, new responsibilities — new everything.
The one thing I was trying to block out made its way past my barrier.
I don’t really know what led me to think about college in the first place. I wasn’t talking to anyone about it before the period ended and we didn’t talk about it in class.
But that’s the thing about college, it never really leaves. It’s always there in the back of your brain, beating into your thoughts like a heartbeat. I’ll be in the middle of math class, or at work, and there it is: college. The thought will come and it will stay there, pounding louder and louder in my head like a drum.
When I simply see the word college it’s like my brain goes in a million different directions, and pulling me with it in the process: How will I pay for it all? Which one will I end up actually going to? Illinois State is cheaper than Mizzou. But I like Iowa. Iowa isn’t that expensive right? Christ, they’re all expensive. And what will I even major in. I want to be an author but how will I get a job after college then? I won’t even have time to write my book when I’m in school. How will I even be able to hold a job in college let alone write a novel? I have a job right now but high school and college are completely different ball games. The one thing that’ll get me the job I want I can’t even work on. But then what? What happens after college when I’m stuck with all these bills and loans and a piece of paper I worked towards for four years? What will happen to me?
And then I’m spiraling — I’m falling.
It’s like I can’t breathe.
And there in that bathroom stall, I was doing just that, falling.
I looked at those words, financial aid night, and I felt myself stop. I felt myself just where I was, in a bathroom stall having an anxiety attack. I was not falling, I was sitting on a toilet seat. I looked at those words one last time before I ripped off the monthly newsletter and threw it in the sanitary bin.
It wasn’t gone, the thoughts had just retreated to the back of my brain. But I had no time for mental breakdowns, I had to go to third period. So I left the stall.
