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[gracekiernan-blog1]

A First Year Retrospective and Moving Forward

Billy once told me that your first year of college would be the best and worst year of your life; that in the span of eight months you would reach your highest highs and your lowest lows. At the time, I thought his perspective was bleak. How could “the best time of your life” also bring with it the worst times of your life? College was meant to be the end game-the light at the end of the hormone drama bullshit filled tunnel that is high school. 

Looking back on my freshman year, I can confidently say Billy could not have been more right.

Because you see freshman year of college is the first time in a long time where you are thrown into a sea of strangers. And in a sea of strange people and strange places, we yearn to look at something familiar, something that feels like home. Yet in a sea of no one familiar and a place filled with street signs never seen before, the only familiar thing to look at is yourself. 

I used to believe what I saw in that reflection was nothing. That college was the time where I would discover the composition of the person staring back at me in the mirror. But subconsciously I knew there was something there. In the mirror I saw what everyone had always told me I was; a top student, a best delegate, a loyal friend, an innocent girl. And hiding behind those titles was some shadow of a lost, unhappy individual. A familiar face suppressed behind the artificial wall I’d built over time. 

So college started and I looked in the mirror. I hated it.

I hated what I saw because it was no longer comforting. Those titles no longer applied in my unfamiliar surroundings and suddenly they vanished, leaving nothing but the vulnerable, scared, girl hiding behind them.

In the vanishing of these labels was a sudden freedom-not in a liberating with a positive connotation sense, just freeing. With their disappearance came a rapid devolvement from my careful nature. I turned away from the reflection and alternatively refused to look anywhere-at myself, at the people and places around me, at the consequences of my actions. I listened to my first instinct and went for it. I lived.

And so I railed shots back like a pro. I made out with strangers who promised to buy another drink. I danced on tables and ended my night when the sun was just about to come up. I stopped worrying about my weight and more about fulfilling my hunger and thirst. 

That was until I woke up to my arm in an IV.

What happened after that night I spend every day trying to understand. I think prior to that night, part of me was still holding on to the titles I’d seen in the mirror. I would be careless, but not too careless. I was be wild, but only enough that I felt I could still be called innocent. I was pretending.

I think maybe I lost hope. In one night I had devolved so far away from the person I’d hid behind that I felt like there was no way of recovering her. She was gone. Everything in the mirror had vanished. I was nothing and I felt nothing.

The other part of me thinks maybe I was angry. I was angry that someone else had the ability to make me lose sight overnight of who I thought I was. That overnight at the hand of someone else I had gone from being a fairly self-confident self sufficient individual to weak and fragile. I was angry at myself for being weak and fragile.

If this was Vampire Diaries, I would compare this to the moment where I turned my humanity switch “off”. 

In this recklessness, I truly understood what it means to live your highest highs and your lowest lows.

I went to fancy parties and socialized with new friends. I had sex on a roof and ate muffins in the middle of the day. I didn’t give a fuck and I made sure people knew it. And in a place like Penn, where everyone lives to extremes, it was so easy to hide as this new form. My walk of shames and freshman 15 blended in with everyone elses. But there were also nights where I sat at my desk chair, shaking and sobbing, hit in the silence by an overwhelming sense of loneliness and disappointment. A low low where you think you may never be able to get back up and move forward. 

I’m getting side tracked and this is getting depressing when in reality it wasn’t. I smiled bigger than I ever had before, laughed harder, danced looser. I met incredible people-friends I will cherish for a lifetime and professors who gave me their lucky Cubs t-shirt. I lived around the corner from my dream place of work and managed to get a job there for the summer. I lived, and I lived big. 

Jesus Christ I forgot how tiring writing is.

As the year comes to a close, and I look back on the wonderful mess that was this year, I think I still don’t recognize the figure I see in the mirror. The surroundings and the strangers are now familiar, and so to look to them is a feeling of home. But the introspective look in the mirror is met by the gaze of a complete and utter stranger. 

But unlike before, there is finally a person. There are no longer meaningless titles or the faint shadow of a confused soul. There is someone. Someone who values nothing more than she values her family. That seeks to make a change in the world around her and in the lives of people who matter most to her. Who loves to sing and dance loudly (and also drunkenly) to bad music. Who likes to laugh and to smile and to look around and appreciate what is around  her. 

Now, I just need to meet her.

I think that is what this summer is for. To spend some time really focusing on who I am, what I value, who I value, and what kind of person I want to be moving forward. I need to learn to actually love myself so I can be better not just to myself, but to those who matter to me in my life. 

So here’s to a summer of self love. A summer spent loving myself and loving others and coming to understanding with who the person in the mirror staring back at me is made of. 

If there is one thing about myself I know for certain, it is at the end of the day I need structure. So for my summer of self love there are of course a few guidelines-five to be exact

1. I just decided this exactly six seconds ago but I think it seems fitting that for a summer of reflection that I spend it without social media. I spend so many hours in a day focusing on my Facebook, Instagram, and snapchat-wondering who will contact me and when; feeling FOMO when I see other people’s stories and photos. It’s unhealthy and I’m going to go without it for a while. 

2. Learn to love to workout again. Workout everyday for AT LEAST 30 minutes starting May 15, 2017. Preferably, one session of 9 round and a 30 minute run everyday. If there’s one thing I can't hide from it’s the freshman 30 I am currently packing and it has got to go.

3. Eat healthy!! Haven’t quite worked out what this consists of. But first things first, going back to being completely gluten free (minus beer of course-it’s the Irish roots you can’t blame me). This also means not staring myself. Eating healthy and eating well. 

4. Slow thoughts and mind. I’ve spent too long thinking and acting without any initial reflection. I want to be more careful about what I say and how I behave towards those around me. Controlling my bitchy thoughts and helping out around the house. I call this goal “live slower”.

5. Take care of myself. Subgoals include-stop picking my cuticles, moisturize after every shower, wear my retainer to sleep every night. Also including verbalizing one compliment per day to myself in the mirror after every shower. 

These are the five guidelines of my self love summer- live in reality (not online), workout, eat healthy, live thoughtfully, and take care of myself. And this blog has now become a platform to document my success in achieving these goals. My thoughts, my feelings, my experiences, and all from this summer will find home documented on this blog. 

So here’s to a summer of recovery and self-love and a first year down and in the books.

G