Last semester, when some of my work got a major recognition, my college experience transformed. I quickly went from being the quiet kid with few friends to the student that everyone in my department knew about. People who’d barely spoken to me before were now congratulating me and asking for advice. And I finally got invited to social events.

While I enjoyed my upgraded status, with my success came a side effect: unreasonably high expectations.

No one ever said to me outright that they expected me to be the best, but I could feel certain expectations when I walked into a room sometimes: peers assuming I knew far more than I did, professors scrutinizing my work more carefully, and outsiders urging me to do whatever it took to get into the “top” grad schools. While I’d thrived on this pressure at the time, after being so ill this summer, I found myself dreading showing up at school this semester while still struggling so much. I hated the possible humiliation that could come from having everyone find out I couldn’t even handle a full course load anymore—that I went from being “at the top” to barely being enrolled at all. I hated the idea of not living up to what my professors and peers had once expected of me.

For the first few days back at school this semester, I treated my part-time status and my now-delayed graduation as shameful secrets that I had to conceal. I walked through the halls pretending to be just as fine and happy and productive as ever so that I could fool myself and everyone else into thinking nothing had changed since last semester. I wished more than anything that I still had my old life where I could meet everyone’s high expectations.

But one night this week, after countless hours of struggling to even start any work, I went home and bawled my eyes out in frustration over the difficulty of writing a one-paragraph assignment. Before I had the flu in March, I could’ve done this homework in under an hour with little anxiety, but now, my brain is a mess, and the simplest things are exhausting. That night, reality came crashing down: I can’t possibly live up to anyone’s expectations anymore. And more importantly, I don’t have to.

I decided that night that I had to forge a new path for myself to get to my dreams in my own way, rather than the way others expected me to go.  I found so much freedom in releasing old expectations. Just because my path will be different from what everyone expected, why does that mean it’ll be worse than what “should’ve” been?

And really, who cares what anyone else thinks and how they choose to go through college themselves? It doesn’t matter, because we’re all on our own journeys with our own obstacles, so there’s no point trying to live up to the expectations of people who don’t understand my life. Yet truth be told, when I finally started talking about what happened this summer and my ongoing difficulties, I was showered with nothing but love and support—even from the professors who had been the hardest on me in the past. It turns out that most people are far less critical than I thought, so I might as well do what’s best for me instead of what I imagine people expect.

This road of relapse, slow recovery, a lighter course load, and new expectations is not the one I would’ve chosen, but it’s the one I’ve been given. So I’ve stopped asking why such difficult things have happened to me, and I’ve learned to accept and bear up to whatever lies in front of me. I’ve figured out that life with a chronic illness requires resilience, and resilience requires accepting life for what it is instead of dwelling on what I wish it were. Resilience is letting go of old expectations and moving forward as best I can—even if I must crawl towards my dreams instead of running.