10. Life is “The Pits”

I left off my story at the point where I carried my old life straight into college. I didn’t mean to. I thought college would be a clean start, but it turns out you don’t get a clean start just because you change locations. You bring your patterns, your insecurities, and the parts of yourself you haven’t healed yet.

I was assigned to McReynolds Residence Hall — basement level. We were called The Pits, which sounds terrible, but it wasn’t. It was a good group of girls. Most of them pledged sororities, but they treated me like I belonged with them, even though I didn’t always believe that myself.

I remember going to parties and being asked one question on repeat:

“What house are you rushing?”

The moment I said I wasn’t, the conversation usually ended. At eighteen, that kind of thing mattered more than it should. It hit the part of me that was already used to feeling “almost enough” but not quite. I slipped back into familiar habits — lowering my standards, trying to be whoever someone else wanted, chasing approval I didn’t actually need.

And when you’re already in a pattern like that, college can make the highs higher, and the lows lower. I didn’t have anyone I felt safe talking to. So I kept repeating the same choices, hoping something would feel different. It never did.

That’s how I ended up spending a lot of time at Sigma Chi. I was a little sister there, and on the surface it seemed fun. But looking back, it was also where I spiraled the most. People saw it. They talked about it. Just not to me. I don’t write that with bitterness — just honesty. Those moments were part of the story that eventually led me into addiction. Ignoring them now would be rewriting the truth.

There was a room in that house where everyone wrote on the walls — quotes, jokes, signatures. One night I wrote:

“The things you want most in life are the things you can’t have.”

It was personal to me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.

Later, someone added underneath it:

“Like weight loss and boys.”

That one comment changed everything for me.

It wasn’t just rude — it cut straight into the insecurities I was already drowning in. After that, the whole place felt different. Unsafe. Blurry. I didn’t know who had written it, and I didn’t trust anyone enough to ask.

I heard talk about them repainting the room because of it. Maybe they did. What I remember clearly is the shame. I felt like the whole thing was somehow my fault, even though it wasn’t.

By sophomore year, I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment. I needed distance, even if I didn’t know how to articulate that then. I just knew something had to change.

That period of my life wasn’t all bad — it rarely ever is. There were friendships and fun, mixed in with choices I didn’t know how to stop making. But those experiences shaped me, and they’re part of the road that eventually led me to addiction… and later, to recovery.

Writing about it now isn’t about regret.

It’s about telling the truth.

And remembering who I was, so I can show who I became.

And moving into that apartment opened the door to a whole new chapter — new faces, new neighbors… and, eventually, new problems.