No Longer A Poster Girl

My name is Ciera, and I feel like a failure. There, I said it.

I was once a poster girl for “what to do” and “how to do it”. I contributed to every charity event the small town high school of Marshville, North Carolina played a roll in. I excelled in every AP class you could imagine, particularly college English and history courses. I planned and presented an unimaginable number of speeches and presentations to school staff, student councils boards, national honors society boards, and many more. I played sports, I held positions, you get the picture. Overall, I soared tremendously and received extreme praise from family members, teachers, and advisors, which kept my self esteem afloat amidst the intense schedule these endeavors demanded. I had a beautiful plan for my life after high school. I would move to Stephenville, Texas and attend Tarleton State University, who I had received many scholarships from, where I would obtain a bachelors degree in pre clinical psychology from the Honors College and then go on to obtain a masters and hopefully get a job in the research side of psychology. My education and what I thought would one day be my career, meant the world to me and everyone who knew me had more faith in my plan, and my ability to carry it out, then I could probably imagine. Low and behold, they were wrong.

Skip to fall of 2020, I am in what feels like prison, mentally and physically. COVID has ruined our lives. College is not college. Classes are online. I am stuck in a tiny dorm room with an extremely introverted roommate. No events, no football games, no restaurants or bars to go to with friends. I am inevitably drowning in my own thoughts each day. I am 1,000 miles away from my parents, and the life I once knew a few months prior. God bless the few life long girlfriends who had moved with me and were just across campus. However, the reality still remained the same, we are all bored and lonely. I begin to slip.

A short month later, I find myself in their dorm room where I have basically hid like Anne Frank for what felt like an eternity. I have not showered in 4 days. I struggle to eat. I drink everyday. I cry myself to sleep every night. I let my phone ring when any of my family members call. I watch TV and sleep all day. And God knows I refuse to pick up a laptop or a book. I am basically a vegetable. Depression and anxiety have backed me into a dark cold corner and I refuse to stand up. Now, their biggest, scariest coworker, suicide, is suddenly creeping up behind me. Eventually, I ask for help and go to the therapist on campus, which proves unhelpful, and I return home to North Carolina. I appeal my scholarships and medically withdraw from college. I spend 2 months back in my parents home. That is where my life changed forever.

2 years later, I have given up on a few community college classes, and 2 esthetician programs. During those two years though, I have maintained a job, provided for myself, had two leases back in Stephenville, Texas, learned coping skills to keep me afloat such as yoga, keeping a tidy home, reading, etc. I have also met a man who is one of the kindest, most compassionate, understanding, and hardworking humans I have ever encountered. He is a good egg in the midst of a million revolting ones. He is my reminder that God hears our prayers because he is the epitome of who I prayed for, for many years. He is quite literally God sent.

Recently, we have made a big decision. I packed my stuff up, quit my job, and moved 3 hours southwest to the tee tiny town of Fredonia, Texas to live here with him. Heres the harsh reality, we live in a 25 year old single wide, in his parents back yard, that is covered in holes and window units, and is more than likely not structurally sound. Oh, and my 16 year old brother lives with us. With that said, I do not want to make it sound all bad. We have really good friends who we spend lots of time with. His parents, sister and her husband, have become some of the most important in my life and they extend compassion and support to us on a daily basis. My boyfriend has recently received a great job with the Texas Department of Transportation. And we are financially blessed enough at the moment to buy a new house. My point is, our little single wide in the middle of no where is full of love and prayer and opportunity. I do not want to neglect those blessing because they are ultimately what keep us, mainly me, going. However, the long and the short of it is that things are hard. We are young adults trying to get our lives off the ground and everyone knows that comes with major setbacks.

Within the last week, I have made the difficult decision to drop out of the esthetician program I was enrolled in. We were denied a loan from a housing company. And I still do not have a new job. These last couple days have been extremely taxing on our self esteem as individuals and as a couple. Today I had a long FaceTime call with my mama. I was questioning what I have ever done good in my life, was it even worth it, and what my purpose is here on this earth. I’m wondering why it seems that God hasn’t heard the prayers I have been screaming through tears the last two years. I seem to be retreating back to that dark, cold and lonely corner, that I know all too well. It feels like a battle that will never be won.

She proceeded to break down the timeline of her life for me. She grew up in a broken home, full of cheating and not enough food, with four siblings and single mother who worked her guts out to provide. In her adult life she has endured backstabbing friends, an affair, a divorce, a new relationship her family did not approve of, miscarriage, bouncing from state to state reliant on my dads jobs to keep us alive, no job of her own, houses being ripped out from underneath us when my dads jobs ended, and overall the guilt and shame that conjured up from choices that were made. She explained that she too questioned what her purpose was when she sat in a single wide in Cool, Texas. She explained that the choices she had made up until that point haunted her, and still do sometimes. I knew many parts of the story she told, but hearing them in one sequence made it much more real. She often still alludes to the idea that she wished she had achieved more in her life, but in my opinion, her biggest achievement is being a thoughtful and kind mama.

As someone who is naturally a people pleaser, a control freak, and a perfectionist, the past two years of my life, and where I am at today seem terrifying and once again lonely. Sensing a reoccurring theme yet? Anyone who has similar personality traits to mine will understand that our biggest fear is disappointing those who matter to us. Thoughts like “If my teachers knew I had thrown my college career away within a few short months, they would be so disappointed.” “My parents have invested money into multiple opportunities for me to better my life, and I have given up on them. How could they still love me?” And “I cannot call my grandmother (who I talk to regularly) anymore because if school gets brought up, I will have to tell her I have given up on yet another thing.” Run through my head on a daily basis. My confidence is shot, and I have absolutely no idea who I am anymore. The girl who I once was is buried somewhere deep and dark in North Carolina. She was so unapologetically brave, someone who never took no for an answer, and accepted nothing less than the best from herself. Perhaps she needed to be laid to rest though, because I remember her being very tired. But man, do I miss her. She was beautiful. I mourn the death of her every day that my eyes pop open and I’m forced to proceed on with my current reality.

As my mom told me this story this morning, I silently cried outside of the frame of the camera, and she cried as well. I don’t know exactly why she cried, but I know why I did. It occurred to me in that moment, like never before, that no matter what mistakes I have made, or I will make in the future, she still loved me. My parents still love me, my boyfriend still loves me, my friends still love me. I am not what they always hoped I would be though. I look around and see all my friends, all 18-23 years old, and none of us are probably what our parents thought we’d be. Some dropped out of college like I did, some never went to college, some are taking a semester off, some still live with their parents, and many more scenarios. Yet somehow I still stand by the fact that they are people deserving of love, and happiness. All of them are people I admire for a multitude of reasons and they are all people I am very thankful for. I imagine they give me more grace then I give myself, as I do them. I deserve to give myself that same grace. My prayer is that the love I experience and give to others, will stretch beyond the bounds of fallacies. I pray this kind of love stares mistakes in the face and extends nothing less than forgiveness and compassion. I saw that kind of love within my moms story. It gives me peace knowing that all the people my mom included in her story this morning, were once basically the same people in my story.

I am not a poster girl for anything except depression and confusion anymore. But you know what, I still pray, I still go to church, I still continue one day at a time. I am 20 years old and I have no idea what I am doing, or even what my goal is, but I guess everyone older than me would say they didn’t know those things at 20 years old either. And might I add, the romanticized version of 20 year old entrepreneurs and business owners, we see on social media is simply not the norm. I don’t know if there is anyone else who has a similar story to mine, or anyone else who experiences the things I do everyday, but I’d like to think there is. I did not write this to be some encouraging story of triumph, because I have yet to find the light at the end of this tunnel. I am just writing this because its what I know how to do. I, and many others, are staring reality in the face today, doing our best to keep it together. Simply trying and surviving. And probably crying all the while. That’s it, I’m just trying and crying. Oh and writing.