Heading Home!

Tomorrow, I will be embarking on my journey home to the United States. As such, there will be a hold on new written posts until a week from now (as I recover from jetlag and all the residual sadness of leaving. However! You can enjoy a series of photo posts from my trip for the next week, starting on Sunday. Tomorrow a quote, then a picture, then all the pictures of scenes I'll miss/I found interesting while living in Dhaka, Bangladesh for the last three months. Enjoy!

I Took A Break! Here's What I Learned

I'm a pretty emotional person. Much of my writing comes from the same place of vulnerability that causes me to tear up when Serena Williams won her fifth Wimbledon and to feel inspired by the words of Margaret Cho on dieting. However, though I know this about myself - that my emotions can get antsy and want to overflow like so many river embankments - I didn't suspect that I would be incapacitated by them for some time during the past few weeks.

In short, I've been in a rut.

An Introspective on Taking Breaks

Apropos of my Tuesday post on the college environment (and to kick off the start of this academic break), I wanted to talk about the extended break I took from creative endeavors for the past few weeks. You might be wondering: "Why talk about taking breaks? It's cool, we all take them." But for me, a break has long indicated some much more troubling factors than just simple lack of interest.

For many years, taking a break for me was a sign of failure. It was a sign that I was giving in to apathy, which is highly related to my bouts with depression over the years. I was excessively busy in high school for just this reason - to stop moving was to stop ignoring my emotions and have to actually deal with them. To stop moving at that point in my life felt like a small step towards death.

It may seem extreme now, but I think young people have the hardest time dealing with their emotions. They haven't been trained to sit with them (as is done in certain therapy techniques) and it often is not encouraged by our culture to cultivate the wide range of emotions we can feel at any given moment. As we grow older, we can internalize these patterns and fall somewhere along a spectrum - the extremes of never acknowledging deep emotions or drowning in them, or perhaps the healthier middle range with a skew towards one side. But when we are young, those patterns are still being felt out and we try to justify our actions with them as best we can. There are many theories on this, but I will keep to my own personal story.

The Locked Room & Beating Perfect

Last week, I found myself in a locked room. I had no key to get out, so I knocked - lightly at first, but then more insistently - hoping someone could come to my aid. No reply. I proceeded to become more and more frustrated and sincerely thought about throwing myself against the door, screaming, doing something extreme.

This, my friends, is the locked room of my mind.

For the last few weeks, I've been pacing around in it, measuring the length and width with my steps. I was experiencing the ultimate academic burnout. Emotionally, I was flat-lining and felt guilt over my lack of motivation. Physically, I was trying to rebuild a self-care routine out of sand. I felt trapped by my inability to be Superwoman, instead constantly dwelling on the mighty to-do list that usually governs and stabilizes my life.

But, for all that effort, the door would not budge. I was forced to sit with the uncomfortable tension of not getting everything done and not feeling up to doing even a little bit of it.

At some point, I made a grand realization: no one cared about my work as much as I did. Not to say that no one cared about me and my accomplishments, but no one cared about me finishing everything I'd set out to do just when I set out to do it. I'll expand on this point:

I missed many events, classes, and opportunities to study or socialize throughout the last weeks. And I felt madly, passionately guilty. But, at some point, the tension began to lift. And it was all because I realized that people will forgive you for not being perfect. In fact, no one expects it of you in the first place. We all have our moments of doubt and instability, so it may even be less effective to fight through them than to ride them out.

No one was giving me a harder time than myself. So I made a decision - I could sit in that little room in my mind and kick at the walls, or I could use that space to chill out and let myself come back to center. I'm sure you can guess which one I've gone with.

This week, I am slowly coming back into the world outside, not mustering through, but giving myself some room to feel comfortable again out here. Patience is the key.

Statement: Take Care of Yourself!

 

(via ICanHasCheezburger)

I am really good at not taking breaks.

These past few weeks, I have been going through meteoric stress levels, intense weather changes that prompted severe illness, and general hopelessness towards completing personal goals. I tell myself that I need to take breaks and make it about me for a while, but my priorities have always been so stringent and my mental state so stubborn that I haven't actually done that. So, that has meant a lot of sacrifice.

As you have probably noticed, it has meant moving away from this blog and the novel I've been working on to distill all the precious bits of sleep and energy I have into my day job. It has also meant sniffling through amazing bus journeys into different parts of the state, crying in public, and talking to friend after friend about the tenuous mix of tiredness, annoyance, and genuine sadness I've felt. Physical or mental, the weeks have been taking a toll.

But why do I share this with you, my readers? My blog doesn't usually deal with my personal life (though I suppose it does tangentially through my blatant editorializing of everyday life), but I wanted to share for two reasons:

1. To tell you where I'm at and where I'm going. I really want to get back on track with the blog once I'm feeling better. I will never have all the time in the world to write here, but I will make do with the precious moments I do have. Once they're not being monopolized by sleeping, that is.

2. To ask you to learn from my mistakes. I am notorious at pushing myself too hard and exploding into thousands of pieces upon impact. Don't copy me on that! I think it is partly due to our culture of efficiency and productivity, which asks us to work until we are dog tired otherwise we won't feel "worth it," whatever that means. And I've internalized that by being a go-go-go person for my entire life. But you don't have to follow in my footsteps - you can instead read some of the clear-headed articles I've written about relaxation and living in the moment. And sure enough, sickness is one great way to be reminded to live in the moment. All you can concentrate on is that ache in your side or cough in your chest. Nothing else matters.

Anyway, I will be posting more interesting articles in the weeks to come, but for now I will be taking my own advice and laying low for a bit. You can take a look at my thriving Tumblr page if you want some great media to absorb until my return!