cool and unusual punishment

chrona's adventures in rowing and social isolation

(Vent chapter. I ask before you comment that you read to the end, because I'm going to be talking about events that happened a long time ago. There will also be mentions of anxiety and suicidal thoughts littered throughout. If you have experienced or are experiencing any of the things below I recommend you contact a psychologist or talk with a trusted adult, and remember that things do get better. Please stay safe.)

One year ago, give or take a month, I attended a rowing camp that jumpstarted what I consider to be the worst months of my life.

Let me give you some background.

I came to rowing camp on the heels of my second year at a writing camp I had enjoyed, but even while I was there, there was a creeping sense that I wouldn't receive quite what I had come for. It was less that the camp itself was a bad environment and more that there was a hunger in me for something that was already sliding out of my grip. At the time I didn't know what it was or why I was so distraught... after all, there was no discernible reason for me to be unhappy. 

Needless to say I was not terribly socially active at rowing camp. In fact, I came knowing no one's name and I left unable to remember a single person or even so much as a face. My social anxiety kicked in like nothing I'd ever felt before and I became, in essence, a ghost. I remember sobbing on the floor of a fast food restaurant bathroom and long nights up past midnight watching YouTube videos I had already watched over and over again just because I could not conjure up the energy to stop myself and fall asleep.

Most vividly, I remember a singular occasion when many of the campers went down to the Sheetz in the area in groups- my group forgot I was there and left without me. Out of sheer desperation, I walked home alone in the dark through a college campus.

Before that moment, it hadn't crossed my mind in all seriousness that I could disappear off the map and be better off for it, but it definitely occurred to me then.

After that, I was a mess. I went home and would have week-long periods of total apathy followed by hour-long fits of emotion in which I would begin sobbing uncontrollably, set off by seemingly inconsequential things. I tried several times to return to a regular update schedule only to become frustrated with my books. I had very little energy for people and alternated between venting and feeling, even in the presence of close friends, almost nothing at all, even though I desperately wanted to be happy that they were there with me. I started lying to internet friends, people who posed me no danger, about my state out of paranoia that they'd find some way through to me in real life. I'd post vent comics and take them down when I didn't get notes. When I got into school, I knew no one in my classes and to this day people will come up to me from said classes and say hi and 

I don't know their names. I literally memorized two names between September and November of that year. 

Worst of all, I burned a lot of bridges with people. I confessed (almost) everything to one friend and he unceremoniously dropped me like a brick. I stopped talking to almost everyone in my "acquaintance" groups and didn't contact one of the few people I knew both now and at the time could have actually helped me out with this. I dumped someone over text on a particularly bad night and essentially assured the death of my entire friend group.

I learned one of the harsher lessons about life from that summer and subsequent fall: People are not obligated to like you. If you are enough of a burden, they will not like you, or worse, they'll just care for you out of pity before eventually giving up.

It's a little much to blame this all on a five-day camp, but it's more that the camp was a stumbling block I was going to run into eventually and I wouldn't be able to get up afterwards because I was in no way prepared to do so. It was the first time in a long time I'd been so completely alone and it was months later, reflecting upon it, that I realized what I was missing and why I was so angry at everyone around me at writing camp and following that, and why I eventually sealed myself off from so many people.

I had managed to convince myself that I literally didn't deserve to exist outside of the persona I had created for myself.

When I was young, I used to have a thriving group of people around me at all times who were deeply engrossed in my world and works. I existed as both myself and the mask I wore, a mix of childish fantasy and well, tiny Chrona. Of course, when I got older, people were no longer involved in that, so I acclimated to keeping my external friend group separate from my internal world of stories. However, I still saw myself chiefly as "part of x group" and "person who does x things and writes x stories" because that was pretty much the important stuff, far as I was concerned.

In high school, I had a shaky at best group to rely on and my motivation started petering out as my goals grew more and more extreme. I didn't have the support I needed... and no, I don't mean emotional support in the traditional sense, because literally that was all we did back at my school, talk about our emotional problems (AND IT WAS EXHAUSTING AND INCREDIBLY DISHEARTENING). What I needed was a community of people with similar interests who were going to buoy me up just by being around and I didn't really have that, so I turned in on myself to occupy my time. People would only really refer to me as 'really motivated Chrona' or 'the smart one' or 'the writer' because they didn't know enough about my worlds or me to know me past that, so that was all I became.

When I wasn't being that person, when I wasn't making those goals or climbing those mountains, I was no one.  I blamed all my problems on this lazy, sad sack of a procrastinating human being because there was no one else to blame it on and started kicking my self esteem in the gut whenever possible. 

At camp, with nothing to grab onto, I was just dealing with person Chrona. Chrona I woke up in the mirror with every morning, acne-ridden and tired and anxious all the goddamn time, Chrona who mixed up words with similar meanings in conversation and couldn't small talk and didn't take care of her basic hygiene half the time.

And I hated that person. I hated her and I was willing to destroy anything to get one more jab in at her face. Any time things got worse I would run circles around myself with how fucking awful I was and how I was never, ever going to get out of it because more than anything, my flaws made me.

And I let them. 

I could go on with the story of last year's Chrona, the most self-destructive person I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, but the truth is, you all know how that story ended up. I wrote Roses and Thorns, I set achievable goals, I started talking to people again... no, I've definitely been over this multiple times. I'm proud of that. I'm proud that there's something to be proud of, and I'm glad I can even say "proud" when I'm not meeting my goals all the time. I'm so relieved I have more than two people to talk to now when the going gets rough and that I can pursue writing without letting it dominate my every waking moment.

Crew was a big part of it. I can't say I know any one person on the crew team particularly well, but they were all happy and young and went out with people and did normal teenager things and they liked me for me. It was an escape and I felt so much better when I was around them. I might have scoffed at that once but god, after seeing the way being loners has killed some of my friends, I can vouch for that lifestyle a thousand times over. For the love of god, people, drink more water, exercise, go outside, eat healthy, and be young while we're still in school. Isolating yourself is a sure-fire way to ruin your own life. 

Tonight marks the last night of my crew camp for this summer. I spent most of it on my phone or procrastinating, I still don't know anyone particularly well, and the coxswain keeps making snide jokes about "what would your mom say Chrona" whenever I try to get food. It doesn't sound like paradise, by any standards, but I had fun this time around and I can definitely say it was better. In the end, maybe that's all I need to do- be a little better. 

Maybe that's what I can aspire to be.

Night kids.