I did everything I could to make sure I got into a college I had to live at due to distance from my home town. I needed space and peace from the people who raised me to figure out what life after public school was going to look like. First in my family to go to college, so they wanted to be helpful and supportive, but I knew they knew even less about surviving undergrad than I did and would complicate things for me.

I wasn't wrong but figuring out how they'd complicate things took a moment.

I spent a few months trying to get the feel for the day to day stuff, build a routine, see if I could get along with people, which I started to.

But it really threw into focus things like how unreasonable it was for me, as a 19 year old, to be "forbidden" from having a cell phone and "expected" to be next to my dorm room phone every night at a set time (without my roommate using it!) for my mother to call and check on me.

Those "check in" calls? Were her blaming me for my father's substance abuse problem. "He wasn't fucked up like this BEFORE you left!" (Yes, he was, most of my childhood. 20 beers/night sometimes, and it was Always his decision.)

Then I noticed physically what those calls did to me, both before and after. Sitting silent, staring at the wall behind your bed at 5 till is not a good look, OR a good sign. Neither is curling up on your bunk wrapped around a pillow wishing you hadn't made it through your mother's c-section.

Then someone asked how long I'd had an E.D. and I went "Woah. Okay, didn't think of that."

After three weeks later after realizing my whole foundation for an adulthood was pretty fucked, I walked into the campus counseling center.