somewhere I’d never lived before. I ended up in
Houston, where I basically didn’t know anyone but
I was excited to move and even more excited to get
back in school. My first year of college had ended
somewhat disastrously after a serious bout of depression and was why I took some time off, which
I viewed as a setback but I was ready to move on
from that.
My first semester in Houston went well and a couple of weeks before the next semester was to start
(and about three weeks before my 21st birthday) I
got mugged while waiting for the bus to go home
from work. I was in the hospital and underwent
major surgery, but that wasn’t even the biggest
challenge. For me, it was the fact that I was going
to yet again have to put school off.
I had decided immediately while I was in the
emergency room that I was going to move back to
Virginia, where my parents lived, which meant I’d
have to apply to a new school again and I felt like
I’d wasted my time going to Houston. However at
some point, I’m not sure if I was still in the hospital or when I was already recovering at home,
I decided I wasn’t going to let this incident be a
setback.
Two of the classes I had been registered to take in
the Spring were online classes and so I decide I’d
go ahead with those since I could complete them
even when I moved back to Virginia.
I spent a lot of time the first couple weeks out of
the hospital in bed, and I can still remember only
thinking positively and refusing to be discouraged. That’s how I was able to move forward, but I
think I was only able to have such a positive state
of mind and determination because something so
terrible had happened. I was grateful to be alive
and I think I was just so determined to not let that
fact be a waste. Being able to push past the negative and start being more positive helped me move
on, and the more positive I was about things the
easier it got.
I’ve definitely experienced other challenges in my
life, but I think this whole incident was by far the
most difficult, but also the most rewarding once I
was able to get on the path of moving on from it. I
thought a lot about if I’d do things differently for a
while afterwards, mostly in terms of being where I
was when I was mugged because there were different factors that could have changed it, but now
I don’t think I’d change anything. It was all a life
learning experience and it’s made me a stronger
person coming over it. Going through this also really allowed me to open up to the idea of exploring
and getting help for the anxiety and depression I’d
felt for years and years, which has become invaluable to me.
SP: In some circumstances, women can be incredible harsh to one another. Has this ever happened
to you?
AB: When I was about nine or ten, I remember I
was around a group of girls and one of them said
to me “Why are you so quiet? You miss out on all
the gossip.” A petty thing now that I’m older, but
I remember being pretty embarrassed that she’d
said it.
I think the society we live in has a lot to do with it.
Women are often shown impossible standards of
what the perfect women should look like, what she
should do, how she should act, etc. This creates a
heightened sense of insecurity and I think
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