A New Beginning

It's almost been an entire year since my college experience fiasco. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, let me fill you in. On August 18, 2014 I moved to a different town to attend college. I was excited at first, because this particular college is supposed to have one of the best art programs in the state. My high school art teacher attended this school and told me about all of the wonderful people she met there. My friend who was also planning to major in art was attending this college as well, and we were going to be roommates. After we got moved in and settled, my parents said their goodbyes and left. That's when the dread set in.
I'm fairly certain that almost all college students who have to start life in a different town know what I'm talking about. It's a real change to be uprooted and expected to start your life somewhere completely new and pretty much alone at first. The school I was at was a fairly small school in a small rural town. The number of attending students was somewhere around 3,000. After moving in, we still had a full week until classes actually started. We went to all of the back to school barbecues and ice cream socials that were being held on campus. I even met a few people that were pretty cool. The dining hall food was decent, and my roommate and I had made our dorm room comfortable, so sleeping was fine at first.
I used to have problems being away from home when I was little. When I was in girl scouts I hated going on camping trips because I could never sleep. Sometimes I even struggled to stay overnight at close friends' houses. After a while I went on more trips and got used to it. When I got into high school I would go on week-long trips with my church youth group at least twice a year and loved it. 
Anyway, back to the story. So the first couple of days were decent at college. We learned our way around campus and found where all of our classes would be, but at the same time I was sort of starting to get this weird feeling in my stomach. I basically started calling my mom at least twice a day, and Skyped Sharon and my boyfriend all the time. After classes officially started I had to start waking up early again. I didn't really like my classes because I had taken them all before in high school. They put me in basic art classes, even though I finished my senior year in AP Studio Art. I was taking basic level geography and psychology classes. It's obviously what is expected of first year college students, but still, I didn't really like it. 
I started feeling extremely depressed all the time. I felt almost like I had been removed from my life and I had to watch everyone that I was close to carry on with their lives without me. Every time I got on Facebook or Twitter I would see pictures of people I knew from high school smiling with their new college friends and having a great time while I was holed up in my dorm room watching HGTV. It's not that I didn't want to go out and meet new people, but I'm not good at talking to people at all. So I just gave up really quickly. My stomach started constantly feeling like it was in knots and I completely lost my appetite. I started not sleeping at night too. Basically everything made me burst out in tears because I was so exhausted and felt terrible all the time. I constantly called my mom and just cried about everything (sorry mom). For about a week I didn't sleep much and hardly ate anything except the occasional granola bar.
My mom tried to make me feel better by telling me about her college experience and how she was alone at first, but ended up making friends. But to me it just felt impossible. Eventually I think she got tired of my incessant crying and told me to visit the campus psychiatrist. I've never done anything like that before, so it was really strange to sit in a dimly lit room on a couch pouring out my emotions to a stranger. She asked me questions and decided that I was just homesick (duh), which didn't exactly help my state of not eating or sleeping. It had gotten to the point where I pretty much threw up anything that I ate. 
My mom tired again by telling me to go to the campus medical center and see what they had to say. I made an appointment and went the next day, because at that point I really just wanted to sleep (oh yeah, classes were going on while all of this was happening. So that sucked). So I saw the doctor, who was this really sweet lady. She had me take a couple of psychological tests and decided that I had severe anxiety and depression. She told me that as of that moment, she would either give me a prescription of Valium or she would request to medically withdraw me from school and send me home. She said that if I were her daughter, she wouldn't want me walking around campus and trying to pay attention in class while on Valium. I agreed. So I called my mom and told her the situation, which she was not very happy about, but she understood that it would probably be for the best that I just came home. That same day I filled out the papers to get my money back, moved my stuff out of my dorm, and drove home. 
At first, when I got back home, I was kind of ashamed. My parents had put a lot of dedication and money into me going away to college. Even though I got my tuition and housing money back, we still had bought all new things for my dorm room and things like that. It was a little embarrassing to explain to people why I wasn't away at college like I was supposed to be. I still was having trouble eating and sleeping normally after I got back home. I took a lot of Tylenol pm just to get me through the night. I had been home for a few weeks and I still couldn't eat real meals. In the time that I was away at school I had lost around 20 pounds.
My mom and I finally decided that it would probably be best to go see my actual doctor and see if something was medically wrong with me. He told me basically the same thing that the last doctor had said, but he was going to run some tests to make sure that nothing medically was wrong. Over the next couple of months I had been poked and prodded with needles and scanned many, many times. They tested my blood and my thyroid. They did an ultrasound to make sure my liver, gall bladder, pancreas, and kidneys were all working properly. Nothing seemed to be physically wrong with me, but my doctor wasn't convinced that my only problems were anxiety and depression. They did one final test to check my esophagus. I had to drink that disgusting barium drink and they did an x-ray, finding that my sphincter wasn't working properly. Basically, the sphincter is a valve at the end of your esophagus that opens and closes allowing food and drink to pass through. A malfunctioning sphincter is the main cause of acid reflux. So that was it. I just had acid reflux, easy fix right?
So I go back to the doctor and he prescribes me some medication. It ended up being the absolute worst medication known to man. The first day I took it, I felt horrible. Every time I stood up I thought I was going to pass out. I thought it would get better the more I took it. On the second day of taking it, I had to work 8 hours. It was awful. That night I slept for thirty minutes. The third day of taking it, my vision started getting blurry and and I was exhausted. That night I slept for an hour. After that I decided that this drug was the devil himself and I stopped taking it all together. I couldn't hardly keep myself standing upright, I couldn't see anything. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest. That night I slept for two hours. 
That next day I went back to my doctor and told him that I refused to take this medicine anymore. He told me that if I was having such severe side effects, it's probably for the best. He prescribed me some Xanax to help me get some real sleep. He also told me that he had the test results back from my x-ray. He told me that I have gastro-intestinal reflux disease and one of the worst cases of acid reflux that he had ever seen. Basically, my options were to take an anxiety medicine or to get surgery that had about an 80% chance of actually working and then would wear off in about five years. I opted to take the medicine, since the reflux seemed to be the worst when I was stressed. 
While dealing with that, I had to be taking classes in order to keep the government issued subsidized loan I won from an essay contest. So I decided the best thing to do was to take online classes since K-State's semester had already started and I didn't want to be behind. I started classes with Highland, who offered eight week courses. I ended up taking 52 credit hours in a year through them, which was really cool because I got all of my general education classes out of the way (plus it was waaaaay cheaper). I got a really cool job working at a gallery, which is basically my dream job. So things are finally starting to look up. Now, almost a year later, I will be starting taking classes at Kansas State University in a couple of weeks. I currently live at home, which is fine because I don't have to pay extra money for an apartment.
After all of that being said, I have a few words for the incoming freshmen and future college students. First, you need to think really hard about your college choices. Don't go to a college because that's where your friends are going. Don't go because that's where your parents want you to go. Go to a college that you honestly feel is the right fit for you. Do your research and have actual reasons as to why you want to go to college there (hopefully not because it's one of the top party colleges in the country). Second, if you're away at college and feel like you can't find friends or you are homesick, don't be afraid to talk to someone about it. Everyone goes through it at some point. It's best to let other people know how you are feeling so they can help you instead of you trying to deal with it yourself. I've been told that college will be the best years of your life. I'm still trying to figure that out, but I really feel that leaving the last college and starting over was the best thing to do for me. College is also a time of finding yourself. Going through this has revealed some things about myself and qualities that I possess that I would have never known if I hadn't gone through this experience. It was rough at times, but I'm definitely excited for this new beginning.