Undergraduate / adventures in anxiety and depression + world of imagination - UC Prompts #1 & #2 [3]

PROMPT #1:Describe the world you come from-for example, your family, community or school-and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

ESSAY #1: My fifth-grade teacher spoke to my parents in a conference one night, and he told them that I "live[d] in a fantasy world." I had my back turned to him when he said it; I was busy doodling with whiteboard markers, pretending that I wasn't listening to the conversation, and ostensibly proving him right with every bug-eyed creature that my imagination brought to life on the whiteboard. That moment is one of my most vivid memories from that school year: forcing myself to remain calm while my so-called authority figure committed one of the vilest sins against me. He had slandered my creativity.

This so-called "fantasy" reflects my concrete world-my family, my city, my friends and my school-and my ongoing efforts to understand it and build from it something that will help others understand their world as well. The landscape of my mind has been a rich source of solace over the years, and the words of my fifth-grade teacher have given me the motivation to continuously express that "fantasy world" that he mocked. It is populated by passions and obsessions that I've sustained over the years; the ingredients of music, art, and writing in my life. It began when I was a toddler, drawing made-up Pokemon, playing with Legos, and pretending to be a tigress; it stretches all the way to the present, with my constant exploration of the sciences, intensive analysis of TV and film, and incessant creative writing. Knowledge, observations and experiences feed my mind, and my "fantasy world"-influenced by these very real elements of the Earth-is not the work of a madman but the foundation for progress. My doodles of dragons, my kooky short stories, my made-up songs and scenarios represent the potential for exploration and discovery without forking out the gas money to drive to the next greatest vacation destination. The "fantasy world" I was ridiculed for is the land that opened me up to the wonders of storytelling in both conventional and unconventional forms. Everything is story-the biological sciences are story; books, film, and history are obviously story-and the "fantasy world" was where I realized that all of my great loves could intersect.

PROMPT #2: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

ESSAY #2: In the lodge after the concert, I glanced to the corner of the room; one face in particular stood out to me, and my stomach lurched, unsettled before I could even recognize what was happening. My friend's face was bright red and tearstained, and it took me a moment to recognize the pain in her expression, because in the short time that I'd known her, I'd never seen her cry. I set my clarinet in its case on the floor and pushed through the post-concert crowd to get to her. I remember grunting a brief sound-"hug me"-before we were locked in a wholehearted infinite embrace.

In all the time that I'd known her-lean, idiosyncratic, footloose, and a magical clarinetist in ways I'd never be-I'd considered it a privilege to be around her, a girl that oozed infectious passion and held up a mirror to my own eccentricities. We'd only known one another for two weeks, but in a rare stroke of chemistry she ranked among an exclusive few who I felt I had known my entire life. This is why time with Ari always seemed so special to me. Throughout my camp experience, however, I assumed that I was, to her, pleasant but forgettable. Nothing prepared me, then, for the fulfillment that swept through me during those fifteen seconds that we embraced. It was the sense of being in sync with another human being for the first time in recent memory, of being able to comfort one another silently because we both knew that we were two sides of the same coin.

I had dealt with anxiety for years when it began to have other unanticipated effects on me halfway through my high school career: an unwarranted amount of self-loathing, increased isolation, chronic psychological pain that followed me everywhere I went. The way I saw it, I was finally realizing that I had no future. I bottled up the knowledge and faked my way through the weeks until I would break down, sobbing, unexpectedly in the oddest of places, taking friends and family by surprise. My thought processes became manic, all-consuming. I stayed in my room, convinced that I had a life of solitude and failure ahead of me, a life devoid of love or purpose, if any life at all.

By the time summer came, I had collapsed under the weight and become completely emotionless; an utterly bizarre existence that I too quickly became used to. Friends and family took notice, and halfway through the summer my Zoloft dosage was doubled. My depression didn't end, however, until weeks later, when I returned to the music camp for my final year as a camper, my stomach knotted with anxiety. I leaned against the window of the bus to camp, listening to an Animals CD on repeat, the English bluesmen soothing my worries as only they could do, completely unaware that the upcoming experience would transform my psyche.

The friendship formed between Ari and I was reason enough to begin believing in people again. The hug on the last day was reason to believe in myself again, trite as that may sound, because it was a simple reassurance that I meant as much to other people as they did to me. The experience stuck in my mind, yet each day in the weeks that followed, I woke worried that the spell would break and reality would entomb me again. I edged carefully back into the practice of living, but months passed and my life became my own again, and I eventually let go of the fear of falling into my old mindset. I owe it entirely to fifteen seconds at the end of camp, when her tears dried on my shoulder.

We let go at the same moment without saying a word.

ESSAYS Š 2013. ALISON O'NEILL.