Depression in College

DISCLAIMER: Originally, this was a letter sent to my friend Jessie; it’s been repurposed and sent out on other occasions to help people get a better sense of my past. The person, at the time, I wished I could have “shared the moment” with was the man I dated in college.

I learned a lot in college. I learned that it is CRAZY cold on the east coast, and I’m not a fan of cold weather. I learned I really like to eat out, and I’m not good at being a domestic and cooking at home. I learned that I liked education for the sake of learning and that being around really smart people is fascinating to me. I saw that I am not much of a party girl, though I do enjoy having people in my life who are. And in what was some of the darkest days of my clinical depression back then, I learned that I have a passion for walking around late at night, just to look at the stars. I found that I have a deep romantic side that I am scared shitless to show anyone for fear of being hurt. Oh, and of course and I learned some stuff in class too… like how to speak Spanish and some French, but that is less interesting to write about.

So, let me give an example of what the last paragraph means. In the Spring of 1997, I lived in a house with 13 people including the guy I was dating. It was a lot like the MTV The Real World: we had a manic-depressive person, a Mormon girl, a few architecture students, this really chill Native American chick from Montana, the nerd, etc. etc. The house was 3 stories, it had been outfitted with false compartments from back in Prohibition Days, it had two kitchens (one of which was attached to my room in the basement), and was an all around bad-ass house. The real story was in the people. For instance, the manic depressive guy would go into long periods where he wouldn’t leave his room. He’d lock himself in for days, not eating or drinking or showering. No idea what he did about bathroom time. Then, one day, he’d emerge like a caterpillar that hasn’t quite morphed, completely furry from his room. One particular day, he came down while I was sitting in the living room with the Mormon girl. He was wearing those 70s-style super short shorts. And when he sat down on the couch, immediately we were hit with two things. The first were that his nutsack fell out of the bottom of the shorts. The second was the whiff of sweaty balls. Let me tell you, if that Mormon girl weren’t already a virgin due to religious reasons, that moment would have killed all hope of her getting laid, right then and there!

On its happier occasions, the house would throw parties I wouldn’t attend. You might ask yourself, why a college kid would not attend a party. One reason was my awkward shyness meant that I hadn’t learned to interact in that sort of social gathering. Plus, I didn’t drink alcohol so that was a bit of a buzz kill, I typically didn’t like the music played, and probably more than anything, I’m just uncomfortable with large groups of people I don’t know. This awkwardness is still something to this day that I am learning to overcome, which is a shock to some friends, and a major “oh is that what’s wrong with her” to others.


One evening, at around 2am I was feeling rather low, the weather was relatively decent (meaning above 40) and I decided I’d rather take a late night stroll than sit in that house listening to bad music from my room. I walked out of the back door that circumvented anyone seeing me leave, out to the street, over a suspension bridge, up what felt like 100 stairs, into the heart of my college campus. Emerging from the staircase, I recall tears welling up in my eyes. The walk & staircase were unlike regions you’d see in California. The suspension bridge hung over a huge gorge that had cut through rock over the millennium. The staircase was surrounded by trees and the stairs themselves were just cuts of wood that had been put into the ground. That trail often felt more like nature trail than a path to a university.

What caused me to start crying, as I stepped onto the sidewalk, was that I looked up and saw the stars. At that moment, I felt how immense the universe is and what a small part I am in that universe. As I walked onto the quad of my university, I imagined the thousands of people that walked through that campus over its 130-year history. I felt the sweeping changes that had been made from the university evolving from a one-building schoolhouse into a world-renowned university. Most importantly, at that moment, I felt and saw an immense beauty around me, but at the same time I felt so completely isolated and alone that I physically ached. At that particular moment, I wished to be able to share with someone the beauty of it all, and I suspect now that had I been in the right mental place, perhaps I could have shared it. Instead, I just spent the next few hours crying for myself.

I share this letter with my broader friendship network, not to receive pity, nor to make you think I was pathetic. Instead, I think it begins to create a picture of how different the Alayne you know today is from the Alayne that existed 10 years ago. It’s also why I will sometimes describe my current life as boring. There are far less emotional swings in my life today, than there were yesteryear… and that’s a good thing.