My Greatest Achievement — J. Landon Piazza
My anxiety and depression used to bring me so much shame. I was afraid to talk about it because I thought it was a blemish on my character. I thought that because I suffer from mental illness I somehow wasn’t worthy of success and something was wrong with me. Bluntly, I felt like a failure and that my illness would define who I am forever.
However, I was able to go back and watch LeBron James, Maverick Carter, and Drake share a conversation on The Shop about LeBron’s first Finals lost in 2011 as a member of the Miami Heat. When the conversation shifted to Maverick referring to it as LeBron’s greatest failure, he responded by saying, “It was my greatest achievement,” because it was the start of everything that was to come in his career. A light immediately went off in my head and I had the epiphany that realizing I struggled with mental illness wasn’t the end of the journey and was instead the start of something more.
I thought my life was over and I had little to live for in March 2018 as I was in rock bottom in my dorm room alone at Miami University. I was heavily self-medicating and doing anything possible to numb my pain up to that point. I was having panic attacks that left me feeling like I was immobilized and had an anvil on my chest. I felt that I couldn’t keep going and was absolutely exhausted from having to put on a front on the time like I had my whole world in line. I was drowning and felt like I couldn’t reach the surface for air. I just laid in my bed and cried on the phone as I called my parents and told them I needed to come home and that I couldn’t possibly think about school right now. All I could think about in this moment was swimming to the surface and finding relief. For a brief moment I thought about ending it all then quickly decided that I had more I wanted to live for and knew I had a family that would love me unconditionally. I am so grateful for that and realize how fortunate I am to have that.
However, in that moment I felt like the biggest failure in the world and there wasn’t anywhere for me to go. I was dropping out of college for the second time. My peers were flying by me and I was never going to amount to anything that I envisioned previously. It all felt so permanent and I was terrified of hearing whispers about how I was the kid who couldn’t handle the stress of the real world.
Looking back though, it was the best thing that ever happened to me and the start of my greatest achievement. I was able to acknowledge my issues and take the steps to address them. I was able to get into therapy, get a diagnosis, and begin taking medication to help grow into the best version of myself. I was able to learn how to love myself and live by own standard.
I still felt like there was something missing though. I wanted community to share in my growth with and felt like I was still trying to find that at U of M. I felt isolated and that I needed peers to share in this journey of growth with. Luckily for me, I took OS 435 and was surrounded by WSN leaders who shared with the class about joining WSN and finding a community on campus. I felt like Adam, Simran, Jackson, and Matt were speaking directly to me in a room full of people as they described this wonderful community.
Then I got even luckier as Caroline and Tiger provided me with a great group that helped me navigate through a global pandemic and have the best academic semester of my life. I then got blessed further when I was in group with Nick and Victoria as leaders who made me feel loved and appreciated all the weird stories I shared with our group. I felt embraced and that I found a community of people who were able to share my tears and bring out my laughter all within two minutes.
I’ve gotten to bring this story full circle by becoming a leader in my final semester at U of M. I’m now able to invite others into a community of compassion and love that motivates me to keep growing. I have gotten to share in my greatest achievement of overcoming my mental illness and finding a reason to jump out of bed with genuine joy every day. I have gotten to share group with an awesome co-leader in Maggie who has pushed me to help others in a way that I felt wasn’t possible.
Thank you to WSN for being the best part of my time at U of M and what I will miss most when I graduate. I wish I could put the energy this group gives me into a bottle and take a swig whenever I feel like going forward is too hard. I love this community so deeply and wish our time together was longer.
Finally, I want to end with a quote from Rainer Rilke where he says, “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” You are enough and when you feel that all is lost remember that our greatest achievements most often come from when we feel the least hope.
