Fargo from the Air, ‘Hell from Above’. This one is a picture from the plane where they are getting ready to land. Most of which are housing developments. That is what you are looking down at and you are seeing the city which is a settlement to me. The population of Fargo is just the population of undergraduates at my previous university. Apparently, this is supposed to be the biggest city in ND. The moment I saw Fargo from the plane I instantly felt pain because I’m miserable here. No matter how much I seek out help , there is no support. I dislike the lack of options for me here. That support piece. Even though I have friends. We are all in the same program and we are in the same boat. I have no way to meet other friends because I’m always in the clinic. It brought up the feelings of hopelessness. I broke into tears. NDSU is helpless in dealing with my mental illness.
The focus of what I can do differently reminds me that I’m stuck here and the only objective is that I need to survive until I’m done and into the real world. I get to read books, exercise, and video chat with any of my friends. It just feels like people at Ceres (building on campus) don’t understand how to deal with chronic mental illnesses. They don’t look at the context for why this is happening. What is happening in the program is not helpful. Minimizing stress and focusing on self-care. Taking a day off means I can’t buy groceries. All things have a tradeoff.
The demand that this time has and the hypocritical nature of not having the time to take care of my own sense. Cognitive dissonance. My clients are important to me and I put all of my energy onto them. Helping people is what I actually love to do. It is one of the only places I feel good about myself. I’m trying to honor my clients and focus on them and putting myself aside. Keep yourself aside and focus on them. I know that I need to be balanced but this is the only thing that is important to me now. I have found that here at NDSU the only resource I have here is getting meds from the student health center. I don’t want to have the drugs in my place.
Reminding people that it is OK to hurt. Reminding people that you are no less of a person or weaker because you struggle with Mental Illness. Mental illnesses are tricky, it knows which buttons to push so it can get into the upper hand. Maybe for me it is using a city I don’t like or don’t connect with. I went to New York. It has 6 million people and that felt right to me.