The Myth of Independence

Some people regard me as a failure. Halfway through my sophomore year at Tufts, I went home. I gave up, I gave in. I admitted that I was weak and went home to try and fix it. Almost everyone that doesn’t know me well regards this as a defeat: Tufts was too stressful for me. And so they tell me things like It’s okay, someday you’ll be able to handle this.

I don’t blame them. I thought about things in the same way when I was contemplating the decision. To go home would be to give up, and I’m not the type of person who gives up. I’m the girl who gets A’s no matter the cost. To admit that I couldn’t face school without the support of my family and close friends required relinquishing this image of myself, and it wasn’t easy.

Why? Why do we have this idea that the pinnacle of human achievement is independence? Why do we send our kids off at the arbitrary age of 18 halfway across the country (or the world) and hope that somehow by being forced into independence they will make mistakes, discover themselves, and suddenly be an adult? Maybe I’m being unfair—sometimes it does work that way. But I don’t like the implication that to need to stay at home is somehow “immature.”

In fact, being home has helped me to understand that there is nothing wrong with needing the support of other people. Nothing. Everyone needs people; I honestly think that true independence is a myth. Isolating yourself in pursuit of independence becomes a death sentence. Instead, you become yourself in loving others and in letting yourself be loved.

I’m not saying that this can’t be done on a college campus a million miles from home. It can, and it does. I needed to go back home because the extreme stress of school made it impossible for me. I isolated myself and almost killed myself in order to achieve this independence that I thought would prove me invincible. When I realized that the type of independence that I was seeking was a myth, I knew that I had to go home and let myself be loved.

And so I don’t think my decision was a “weak” one. It was a recognition of my true nature as a dependent being. I am a person who needs to love and be loved by others. I am not invincible. I can’t exist on my own.

It’s a humbling way to look at life, but it’s also extremely freeing. Think about it—do you expect yourself to be independent? How does it affect the way that you think about yourself when you don’t live up to this standard?

Personally, I think the world would be an extremely lonely place if we never needed each other.