Queens Can Cry Too
By: Anonymous
Like many student leaders at SIPA, I am proactive, ambitious, and some people might even describe my work ethic as “type-A”. My small circle of close friends at SIPA, all women, consistently praise one another, and we pass around the title “queen” every time one of us is awarded a new internship, research assistant position, fellowship, or gets an A on a paper. We are young, independent, ambitious women attending a world-class policy school. Each of us deserves the title.
I chose SIPA because I want to make the world a better place, I want to see peace in countries that have only known conflict, and I want to create policies that uphold the rights of Americans and the dignity of people abroad. I graduated summa cum laude from my undergraduate institution in 2018, making the Dean's List every semester while holding a job or internship on top of my full course-load. I have always whole-heartedly focused on my schooling and career. I know in my heart that I was born to lead and make real positive change in this world. I have set goals for myself that only someone with my experience, resilience, and ambition can achieve.
So, how do I make sense of my complacent and submissive behavior that left me trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship for 10 months, lasting the entirety of my first year of graduate school? How can I possibly justify being in a relationship with someone who could care less about my ambitious, goals and mental health and still call myself a feminist? In what world does a true Queen behave this way and allow herself to be treated like this?
The worst part of the relationship wasn't so much the emotional abuse I endured — the manipulation tactics, like threatening to sleep with other women if I walked away from an argument; the lack of trust, like looking through my phone when I was asleep; or playing the blame game and telling me that he was allowed to “act crazy” because he didn’t trust me, making his behavior my fault — it was knowing that my actions were completely irrational. I knew better. How could someone so ambitious and so rational stay with someone who treated her so poorly?
Many conversations with my peers and friends soon turned excruciatingly bland. I stopped going to SIPA social and networking events because he didn’t like how sociable I was around other people. I was careful with whom I spoke to in the hallways. Somehow, he always found out. If I spoke to a male student, I made sure to keep the conversation brief and strictly about school. I made sure not to give my number out, not even to other women, for fear that I would get a text later while I was with him. This could result in explosive anger and accusations. I unfollowed male classmates and friends on Instagram and stopped answering when they texted me, even if the message was school-related.
I couldn’t go to my friends with any of this information out of sheer humiliation.
I allowed my shame to ruin my mental health. This intense feeling quickly morphed into self-loathing. I blamed myself for staying with him and ruining my graduate school experience. He made me burn bridges. But I felt that I was to blame for letting him do this to me. I was weak. A coward. How could I possibly think that I could ever become a leader? That I could ever make a difference in the policy world? I couldn’t even effectively stand up for myself in my relationship. Maybe I was never even meant to be at SIPA. Maybe they made a mistake by accepting me. I am clearly too young and too immature. I applied to graduate school too soon after my undergraduate studies, and the admissions office realized that. I don’t deserve to be here. This spot in the class of 2021 belongs to someone else, and I robbed them of it.
These thoughts consumed me, and, by spring semester, I could feel myself spiraling.
Instead of reaching out to friends, I backed myself further and further into a dark corner, not letting anyone else in, not even my closest friends, not even my sister. Nobody needed to know what was happening in my personal life. My private life was my private life. It would be utterly unprofessional for me to bring these issues to a fellow SIPA student, right?
Wrong.
We are human. And like all humans, we are fallible. We make mistakes. We have emotions that get in the way of rational thinking sometimes. And when this happens, it’s okay to reach out to colleagues and friends for the sole purpose of leaning on them. It’s okay to remove that tough exterior and expose a vulnerable layer to classmates who care about you. You can do this without thinking that they will expect something in return. Not everything in life is transactional. But when you are the type of person who hates burdening others with your problems and has trust issues, this is difficult to realize.
SIPA’s entire student body consists of activists, leaders, and scholars. Trying to fit as many extracurricular activities, courses, and career panels into just two years pushes many of us to be proactive to the point of self-destruction. It’s easy to look at our classmates and think they have it all, especially our classmates in relationships, marriages, and with kids.
I write this to remind my classmates not to strive to be perfect because you’ll only end up disappointing yourself. And more importantly, I write this to remind you that you are not alone, and that it’s okay to ask for help. You are not the only one silently suffering. Asking for help doesn’t make you any less of a scholar, leader, writer, mother, father or spouse. It doesn’t make you any less of a Columbia student.
And especially to my fellow young women leaders at SIPA, always remember that you are queens, and that queens can cry, too.
Editor’s Note: This article was submitted anonymously via The Morningside Post website. The usual process at The Morningside Post includes sharing feedback and suggested edits with the author, for transparency's sake. To continue our transparency in this instance, we will share that we have only edited small parts of this piece for grammar, but the content remains the same as the submitted piece.