How I completely turned my life around
And what mental health issues can do to you if you don’t act.
Okay, before I tell you the full story, let me just give you some background so you can follow along.
I am a 19-year-old kid. I got into college when I was 17 years old. The college I went to wasn’t (and still isn’t) the most prestigious in Portugal, but it was still Law School. the monthly tuition was more than half the minimum wage in Portugal but thankfully, my parent could afford without it making much of a difference — Don’t worry, this might seem irrelevant now, but it all ties up.
I never really wanted to go to Law School but my parents forced me to. So I went.
For a whole year (from September 2019 to September 2020) I was in Law School and I was actually not doing bad, all thing considered. I was getting grades that were just good enough and I was doing great — If you didn’t live in my head.
I was on the verge of… wait let me put this in a list so you can comprehend my struggle in a more fashionable manner.
Depression
It is such a cliché and it almost seems like it’s trending saying you are depressed but I mean it.
The pressure everyone was putting on my shoulders was unbearable. My whole family looked at me as if I were the golden boy of the family. If you looked at me, I was fine. I might look tired, but “I am in law school, of course I’m tired, I have to study a lot”.
Don’t get me wrong, I did study a lot and I didn’t mind it all that much. I was aware that the degree I was getting was literally like Top 5 most difficult degrees in Portugal.
The problem was that I was studying something I didn’t enjoy, didn’t care for and couldn’t see myself doing in the future.
My depression started kicking in when I realized that I couldn’t find anyone interesting enough to start a relationship. There was literally no girls that could catch my attention and that started messing with my head.
I actually thought I was getting depressed because of that. Little did I know…
The disease strikes
Oh and strike it did indeed.
It sent us all home for months. I was home alone for most of the day and I was absolutely broken inside. My physical health plummeted, my mental health went “kaboom” and oh boy, my relationship with my parents… It was ugly.
Every single day there was something for us to fight about. Sometimes, I didn’t even understand why we were all so mad about at the end of the day.
Now combine that with online classes all day long. Oh and keep in mind, I had to keep studying something I didn’t care for.
Imagine yourself after just turning 18. Someone tells you “You will go to college and be a doctor.”. You respond “Hum… No, I don’t wanna be a doctor.” to what they respond “Yeah well, but you’re already here so you might as well do it.”. So you are stuck doing something you have no interest in and there is no escape. Everybody knows that once you get a degree in something like Law, you are pretty much stuck doing something connected to Law.
Alcoholism
Do you know the reputation Law student have? Yes, they are all a bunch of drunks that have no idea how they are passing their classes. It is true and I’ll tell you why.
Law is f*cking hard, man. Trust me when I say this, it is not for everyone and it most certainly wasn’t for me.
I drank. A lot. Just to keep my mind off of whatever responsibilities I had because just the thought of doing something even related to Law in the near future was so daunting I couldn’t bear it.
I wanted to drink. So I drank. 9 am, there I was. 9 pm, I was still there.
For some time I didn’t think much of my routine. I was just going out with friends every single day to the cafés that were near our campus and we drank some beers. I knew it wasn’t really the best decision to make but I didn’t care, it felt right.
Then, somewhere around early October 2020, a thought popped in my head.
I was turning myself into an alcoholic.
Ok, think about it for a second. I am 18 years old (at that time). I am in college drinking every single day, excluding weekends. I am burning a hole in my lungs with all the cigarettes I am smoking (more than a pack a day). And the cherry on top: I was having mental breakdowns every day that I was sober.
Now if that’s not alcoholism, I don’t know what it.
I was telling everyone, kind of as a joke, but I was being serious that “I don’t want to be sober, I can’t handle being sober”.
That’s not healthy for anyone, even less for an 18-year-old kid.
What did I do?
I quit.
Yes, I know it isn’t that easy, but that’s what I did. I quit it all.
I dropped out of college and started going to a psychiatrist.
Just because of that I stopped smoking and drinking.
I actually managed to start involving myself with a girl that I fancied but I am still on the fence about it. That’s something my psychiatrist says I have to work on: I don’t let myself be vulnerable enough and I go from 0 to 100, meaning I go to not showing any weakness to making myself the victim.
I decided I wasn’t going to keep painting myself as the victim and took control of my life.
There’s one slightly big problem. Okay, it’s a huge problem.
My parents are not okay with my decision
Boy, are they furious. They have been busting my balls because I have still not found a job (it’s been two weeks since I officially quit college though) and they have been taking everything I have — my phone, my car, my public transport pass…
It hasn’t been the easiest month of my life, I am fully aware of that. However, I also know that I can go wherever I please and I am no longer cuffed to this metal post that is Law.
I do feel like everything in my life is unstable and I have nothing to hold onto but I can see a light down the tunnel. I can imagine a future for myself. A future where I can be happy doing whatever I want to. Or a future where I a miserable doing what I chose and not doing something people threw me onto.
