CW: This is a personal, somewhat depressing blog post. No notions of self-harm or anything, but some low points in my life.
Let’s go back in time to 2015. I was getting ready to wrap up school. I had a job offer from my final internship and if I accepted it, I’d get a nice big paycheck working for <EVIL TECH COMPANY> in the US. My primary hesitation at the time was that something just didn’t feel right.
I didn’t want to grow up. I had an inkling that once I settled into a job, that’s all I would do. All of my personal ambitions, goals etc would just be tossed away as I came home too tired from work to do anything. There was a feeling in me that if I just followed the easy path, nothing interesting would come out of my life.
So, I made the bold, but very reckless decision to turn down that job offer and make a last second u-turn towards Grad School. My good friend at the time even questioned me, “are you sure? Usually folk who go to grad school plan for it years ahead not as they are about to graduate?”. He was right, of course.
I had no idea what I wanted, no direction, just an inkling that I did not want to leave school yet. During my more euphoric Undergrad moments, I had felt close to some grand understanding; a feeling that I could join the disjoint threads around me if I learned just a touch more. Empowered by that weird brain feel, I signed away my easy life.
I want to make it clear here that I was only able to make such a reckless call because I come from a well off family, so even without a job, I’d be able to survive (albeit not terribly lavishly). I am aware that’s a luxury few can enjoy.
Unfortunately, partly due to how late I was and partly due to carelessness on my part, my leads at my Alma-Matter did not pan out and I graduated school without any acceptances from a Grad Program for the next term.
The Summer passed and so did Fall and everything was up in the air. Looking back on it, I was kinda down at this time. It was supposed to be the best time of my life, no school, no job, just games and anime and yet I rarely partook in either of those.
Eventually though, an application was accepted and I got to start Grad School in 2016. Nervous, but excited I headed off to Montreal in January 2016. It was a good 6 hours away from my family, so I wouldn’t be home much, but I told myself that wouldn’t be a big deal, after all I was in a different country for 4 months before. Silly me. I had no idea the following 2-3 years would be the most lonely of my life and I am still eternally grateful to my twitter friends for providing me with at least 1 social outlet.
Plenty of folk try Grad School and flunk out usually for a good reason or another. Many folk simply can’t afford to stay in school, others struggle under heavy workload and some get stuck with absolute dipshit Supervisors.
I don’t really have much of an excuse to be honest.
I started off okay enough, wading in the waters, hanging out in the lab, but I found the atmosphere incredibly suffocating, so just chose to spend most of my time in my lonely apartment. For 2 years, I juggled classes and “grad research” and by juggled I mean did the class homework and spent no time at all on actual grad work due to a lack of self-motivation.
By some miracle, I finished my courses during those 2 years, but despite extending my time for a 3rd year, I could not make any progress on my Grad thesis. You could not even call it half done. Maybe it was never even started.
I can’t really pinpoint what went wrong. Maybe it was just laziness on my part. Maybe it was the fact that my supervisor really didn’t care much for my project, so barely provided direction. Maybe it was that I never sought direction either. Who knows.
Montreal…was a lonely place. I spent all day cooped up in a rundown apartment. I went out to lectures, to cafes to relieve my down mood, but that’s about it. On many days, I’d feel too sick and unwell to do anything (only later did I realize that your stomach health is very closely tied to anxiety and depression) and the day would just pass in a flash.
It felt like I just had enough time for my class assignments and while I wanted to spend the rest of my time on my thesis, I never could. Instead, I passed by the time thinking I had to do work, but not doing any either. I wish I had fun
It would have been so much better if I just shrugged off of my responsibilities and just played games or watched anime all day, but when your brain is anxious about undone work….you get nothing done, not even fun stuff.
I remember once going back to my apartment during that 3rd year (since I was spending most of that year at my parents) and it was perhaps the most depressing night I was conscious of. That may have been the first time where I realized ‘ah, maybe I am actually not well’.
To rope us back to the title, every time I felt overwhelmed (which at some point felt like every other day if not daily), I would look for manga: isekai, fantasy, romcom, basically anything in my wheelhouse of easy to read and hard to put down.
It’s hard to describe, but being completely absorbed in something completely cleared my mind and I always felt so much better after. Sure, by the time I looked away, it would usually be too late to do any work and it would only pile up for the next day, but if I would have been incapable of doing it to begin with, then I might as well clear my head and feel better.
Whenever I felt down, I just had to find a manga I could be engrossed with. I kept doing it unconsciously and it was only much later (when I read a tumblr post of all things) when I learned that one way of relieving anxiety and panic attacks is to find something completely engrossing that distracts you away from it.
Somehow, some part of me had developed a self-defense mechanism of seeking out manga when the rest of brain was malfunctioning. I do not know how, but I am super grateful that I somehow developed that habit. It may have been a waste of time from a productivity sense, but I am sure I’d have been much, much worse off had I not sought out manga to clear my brain fog.
And that’s where this post comes in. To this day, I love manga and I am eternally grateful that a medium which can so consistently capture my heart exists.
Apologies for the downer, but don’t worry. Some 2.75 years after starting grad school, I finally started seeing a doctor and while I was initially very surprised to learn that yes I was actually depressed, I have become much better since. Sure, I still occasionally have a blue night, but they are less common and I recognize them and can shrug accordingly.
The combination of medication, some therapy, giving up on grad school, landing a decent job, jumping deep into my photography hobby has helped me feel so much better.
I wasted 3 years, and to perhaps a lesser extent the 5 preceding years in Undergrad, but now finally I feel like I am living. It is just unfortunate that I am almost 30 (it is my birthday today >_<), but now finally feel like I am living the life I should have lived at 23.
I don’t regret my decision to not take a job straight after school or anything, mind you. I have many regrets, but I still feel that would not have been a good path. And in truth, the 3 years in Grad School may have been fruitless, but I feel I developed my politics and sense of self the most during those blue times.
Unfortunately, beyond the wasted time, I can’t really say I came out any better. At some point, either in those 3 years or right before, my brain broke. I wasn’t the best in school, but I could do my work. I could focus on something for more than a few minutes at a time, but since then, I have lost my ability to do so. Starting things feels so hard now. Even things I enjoy like anime or games are so hard for me to start now.
To top it off, I have only just begun to get over that dreadful feeling of always thinking there is something I need to do. When you are in grad school, working completely on your own schedule, there is always something you should be doing. There is no off switch unless you are very disciplined. So while I didn’t do any work, I always felt like I should have been and that kept me from having fun. Somehow that stuck with me.
It took a while before I started to accept that my post job hours are truly my own and I can do W H A T E V E R I want. Even now, I often have so many fun things to do, but I still occasionally find it hard justifying doing them. I am getting better though!
But, despite all of that, despite the ups and downs and fractures in my brain, somehow, I still love reading manga. When I have nothing to do or am unsure of what to do, I find myself looking up manga out of habit. Sure, I never read anything that takes actual thought or effort and generally stick to fluff or dumb self-insert fantasy, but I still love it.
And that’s how I have concluded that for me, whether I read more or less, manga will always hold a really special place in my heart. Today, tomorrow, and till the end of time.
Sorry for the downer post, but I have wanted to document this on my blog for a long time and well I figured that my 29th birthday is as good a day as any. Thanks for hanging around friends, here’s to many more years of good times ahead.
Toxic Muffin 