Hello Self, Permission to Rest and Reacclimate
Granted… eventually
Finally summer break… Yay?
The start of summer break didn’t at all feel like a big deal. It didn’t feel like this thing that I had been waiting for, for months on end.
I recall the moments where I’d say to myself: Just a little bit more and you’ll be able to sleep!“
Then by the end of the school year, I finally could and I felt nothing. There was no ecstasy, no sigh of relief, just nothing.
Maybe, it was because I had no extravagant vacation plans awaiting me.
Maybe, it was because I was too tired to feel anything anymore.
Maybe, it just took a long time to really hit me, like any big event does.
Maybe, I am now just a cranky 16-year-old, not a kid who goes “It’s summer break!!!” anymore, and all I want is to sleep.
I’m not saying that I wasn’t grateful that all the sleepless nights and endless schoolwork was finally finished. I was just surprised to find myself sitting at the same exact desk I spent those sleepless nights in, to find myself in the same exact place, mentally and emotinally, as when I had to deal with all that endless schoolwork.
Missing my friends and teachers. Missing being around people constantly. :(
I consider myself an extrovert in the way that I love talking to people and socializing. It gives me energy. And, the school environment kind of lends itself to that.
Think, around 100,000 students in a campus along with a bunch of teachers. Everywhere you turn, there are people sitting on benches chatting with one another. Glance at the field and you can watch your classmates have a frisbee game.
And of course, when you look to your left and right, there are your closest friends sitting with you, eating with you, complaining with you, and laughing with you.
All of this is happening five times a week, nearly twelve hours of the day. Then all of a sudden, nothing.
I describe it as being ‘socially starved’. I was so used to being stimulated and constantly being around so much energy that it just felt like withdrawal to see the same four faces every single day and just be by myself all the time.
No routine? No agenda? That’s weird…
In school, I had this whole morning routine to follow because that’s what I had to do in order to get to school on time.
- Wake up at 5 AM
- Head straight to the shower
- Slap on my uniform
- Frantically pack my things as fast as I can (while somehow still moving in slo-mo as my mom describes it)
- Get my butt out the door and into my dad’s car so he can drive us to school.
That’s how it was every single day.
Then boom, break. I didn’t have any place I needed to be and/or anything I needed to prepare for. The routine just vanished, it wasn’t needed anymore.
And I just want to say that at this point in time, I wasn’t the type of person who just had a set morning routine. — Partly because I rarely woke up in the morning *insert nervous chuckles* — I just kind of woke up, ate food, and did whatever. There was no step-by-step order, no bulleted list, absolutely zero structure.
School was the complete opposite
When you actually get to campus, there’s this whole schedule to follow. English at 7 AM, Math at 11:15 AM, Physics at 3 PM, etc. My hours were blocked out for me. Then sitting in those classes, the teacher already has an agenda to be covered, be that a lecture, a worksheet, or a test. I didn’t have to decide for myself what I was gonna do during those blocks of time.
At home, my time was no longer planned for me and I had no one in my face telling me what I was supposed to do. I could do whatever I wanted, at any time of day that I wanted.
It was such a weird, confusing way to be in.
Feeling like… shit
Pairing the first two things together — I was not expecting there to be this quiet kind of hell
I rarely went out with friends during the break, in reality, I just didn’t have the money or the means to do it more than once a month.
Apart from that, my friends were off on out-of-country vacations, summer internships, or they were just exhausted from the hectic school year. Everyone was exhausted, and I was too.
I spent most of my time at home, at my desk, staring a blank.
It’s ironic to think that I had been wishing for this freedom, to be able to do whatever I wanted and to block out my own time, since the school year started. And then when I had it, it was paralyzing. To think there was so much I could do and no schoolwork was in my way. It was spending afternoons until evenings just watching YouTube videos, scrolling through Twitter, or sleeping kind of paralyzing.
I was in a rough state.
Come on! You can do it! Climb out!
I had this little voice in my brain, yapping at me to get up and get to work.
Before I got stuck in this storm of loneliness and confusion and so-much-stuff-I-could-do paralysis, I had so many personal projects I wanted to do and so many goals to I wanted to start working towards. And I did my best to remind myself of them.
I put items on my to-do list. I reinforced my habits.
My body was still accustomed to waking up and sleeping early, so I used that to my advantage by trying to create my own routine.
I began my attempt to get through the storm.
I tried.
Ultimately, it didn’t work.
I was getting barely anything done. The more I tried, the more tired I felt.
And the worse things got.
At my worst
The sleep schedule that was once ingrained into my body slowly began to fall apart.
I vividly remember this one time I attempted to sleep at 12 am, it ended up just being me sometimes admiring my white wall, then sometimes admiring the floor, the ceiling and the desk on the other side of the room.
That night, I decided to just get up and sit in front of my desk. It was an effort to get something done instead of tossing and turning in bed. But, instead, I ended up spending hours watching YouTube and Netflix, before going back to my bed at around 6 am, ultimately falling asleep around 7:30, then waking up at around 2 pm.
It’s funny when you think about all the sleepless nights you go through during the school year. Then, when it’s over, there’s literally nothing stopping you from getting a full night’s sleep. And, for some reason, my body decided: “Umm, not tonight.”
I knew I was at my worst, when the video game I had once banished made its way back to my laptop’s taskbar.
I can’t say I was once addicted to video games, but I found myself using them as a way to procrastinate on everything I actually wanted to do. Following quests and defeating bosses was a way to make myself feel like I was progressing and achieving something, even if it was just virtually.
Eventually, video games just became a way to bridge the gap between awake and asleep, and this went on for weeks.
This was my real rock bottom.
A broken light and a glimmer of hope in disguise
Black screen. No lights. No life.
The last thing I remember, my grandma was staying over at my family’s home and I was showing her this little USB lamp that plugged into my laptop. I kept flicking the switch, but the light just wouldn’t come on. It was weirdly a little embarrassing to say the least.
She laughed at me and patted my chair, then returned to her own desk. I turned back to my table and examined my laptop, I thought it was just asleep. You know, ‘sleep mode’
Then, I looked down and saw that, despite my laptop being plugged, the charging light wasn’t turned on. I had my finger on the power button for about five, ten seconds, but it just wouldn’t wake up.
With no time or means of getting it properly fixed, my laptop was totally knocked out. (Unknown invisible force (probably dirt) — 1, Laptop — 0)
This meant I had to dig out my mom’s 2011 Macbook Pro from the depths of a crate, in a part of my desk where no light dare reach.
While it was old and clunky, and the screen had these weird lines on it that wouldn’t go away, it still worked. Mostly.
I had no access to any of my apps, or video games, but I had Google Chrome and that was all I needed.
Nothing else to do but get your shit together
Aside from the barreness of apps and games on this ancient laptop, the speakers were totally blown out, so watching any YouTube videos or Netflix shows was absolutely uncomfortable.
The only thing I could really do normally was type. In the end, I realized that it was all I needed to do.
Things started to get better the moment I made the best decision I could have ever possibly made: Write down my Ideal Day.
By writing down how I wanted my day to go and what things I wanted to accomplish in my Ideal day, I basically gave myself a daily blueprint to follow from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep
And things only started to improve from there.
I finally accomplished my goal of writing daily again, i began to pursue all those personal projects I had thought I’d never do. I began to take care of myself physically and mentally by sticking to my mindfulness practices. Hell, I started to take better care of my hair, of all things, by researching the appropriate products for my hair type (Skin, you’re next.)
And last but not least, I finally wrote this essay which I began those weeks of quiet hell, only at the time, I didn’t know this would have a happy ending.
You were reacclimating, just give it time.
- what I wish I told myself a month ago.
Come on, I was in this people-filled, activity-filled environment for nearly 10 months.
304 days.
437,760 minutes.
So excuse me, self, if I needed a few weeks to adjust.
When I look back at myself starting the break, at hitting rock bottom. It only struck me then just how hard I was on myself.
I was starting my BREAK from school for goodness sake. It was completely okay to sleep more on some days, to do absolutely nothing on other days. It was completely okay to rest and give myself a moment to just… live.
That was the real issue: Not allowing myself to adjust and rest after just getting out of a bustling school year.
I can’t imagine how much of a better mental state I would’ve been in if I had just given myself that permission to reacclimate to the new environment and to get some sleep.
That change in mindset would’ve made me view my whole ‘rut’ as an absolutely-deserved recovery period.
The regrets end there though.
I’m so much more comfortable just being with myself and having quiet moments to myself. And I all the more cherish the times I get to spend time with friends, online or in person.
No longer is there paralysis to be suffered due to too much freedom, I am grateful for this freedom every single day. And every single day, I make the most of it. Still, I remind myself, it’s okay to get a little less done on some days or do something that wasn’t on the to-do list on others.
The Earth didn’t crack and the oceans didn’t rise to tsunamis when my teacher went overtime by 30 minutes. Who the hell said it was the end of the world? (My overthinking brain, that’s who.)
So… Now what?
Now, I was supposed to end this essay at the previous section. But it didn’t feel right.
All it talked about was the happy ending, leaving all the shit I went through at the very much forgotten top of this page.
What about the shit I went through and the happy ending did I want to talk about in this section? Yeah, that stumped me for a bit.
There was no question to answer and no concept to explain.
So… Why did I write this essay?
Well, when I started writing this. I had no idea why. I just felt like I had to write it.
It was a visit to Twitter when the ‘why’ came to me.
I came back to it at a point where I was making my way towards achieving my Ideal Day and focusing on my habits. Rarely any time to check socials.
I was just scrolling through my feed on a private account, where most of its contents are updates and commentaries from my closest friends.
As I was about to exit, a little blue (1) appeared on the bell icon on the actions row. Naturally, I felt inclined to open it.
Then I saw a short, four word tweet from my friend:
@jamainessecretprivacc jamaineee i miss u 🙁🙁🙁
I was touched, it definitely made my day.
Out of curiosity, I decided to hop over to my public account, the one most of my schoolmates follow. There was nothing… I am admittedly not all that popular 😭
What I did see is many of my peers sharing how their break was going
I thought I’d see pictures of them enjoying a vacation, with blue and aquamarine waters or green hills and trees. Instead, I saw:
I can’t sleep
I am so tired
I am so bored
Why can’t I get anything done 😭
you only appreciate what u have when it’s gone (school)
I miss my friends, I am going insane.
I saw people I knew struggling too.
People opening up about how exhausted they were from school, how several night’s of 8 hour sleeps somehow didn’t make up for the amount of ourselves we lost during the school year.
People unable to meet their friends due to a multitude of little factors.
People not knowing what to do with themselves with all this time.
People missing school.
So… This is the why
This is to say to the school year: “I am thankful for you… even if you took my sleep away, I learned something..”
This is to say to the summer break: “Welcome. I am glad you came. It’ll take some time for us to get along, and I am excited anyway.”
This is to say to my friends: “I miss you guys, too”
This is to say to my family: “Thank you for putting up with my tired ass this past month”
This is to say to myself: “I am so, so proud of you.”
This is to say to you that:
Maybe your break from school is just a few weeks away, or maybe you’re in the middle of it right now.
You have all these great plans and goals you want to work towards, and now, there’s no schoolwork in the way to distract you.
But, maybe you’re stuck working yourself to the bone, expecting too much of yourself.
Or, maybe you’re stuck in bed or in destructive habits, deep in a rut.
I want to remind you that it’s okay to rest, you just finished school, let yourself sleep.
I want ro remind you that it’s okay to need to adjust, you just finished school, let yourself reacclimate.
You will get there.
Thanks for reading!
Credits:
Sleep icons created by BomSymbols @ Flaticon
