I like to think of people as balloons; for the most part, we’re adaptable enough to hold so many emotions and thoughts inside. We expand and expand and expand and everything seems great… until our walls have grown too thin, we reach “the breaking point”, and we just pop. When we’re young, it’s so hard to acknowledge that “the breaking point” is real because we think there’s more than enough space to fill with feelings.
The truth is, though, that we could prevent breaking if we learned to relieve ourselves of stress while it’s still possible. Practicing self-care, especially in college, has helped me feel stable in the midst of change and inconsistency. I’ve realized that it’s okay to put myself first sometimes or to take some time alone so that I don’t spread myself too thin. It took awhile for me to recognize when I needed this time to myself.
My journey to finding the wonders of self-care definitely started at the beginning of my college career. Being in a new place, away from my family, all alone was not the peachiest way to enter “adulthood.” Plus, the intensity of college in all aspects terrified me: the pressure to find and place myself into social groups, the stress of school, and responsibility to discover myself was overwhelming. Newness of situations like these are good in that they present distractions from feeling burdened; distractions can only do so much for you for so long.
My “breaking point” finally came in the beginning of my sophomore year. I was not very explosive, yet it still taught me a lot about the type of self-love I needed to succeed in the real world. It came in the form of a few weeks, in which I experienced maintenance insomnia nightly. It may have been so I had more time to talk people back home or so that I could be awake for any fun adventures or even to stay on top of my work. Point is that each night I slept less and less, and the more agitated and broken I would feel.
And this started to affect how I interacted with people socially; in a room full of friends, I saw myself as isolated and bothersome. I put myself in reckless situations that didn’t even make me happy or excite me. I was lost because I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t sleep because I was anxious about feeling lost. Then one night, despite the huge amount of reading I had due, I decided to put on a face mask, drink a glorious cup of earl grey, snuggle up in bed, and catch up on shows. And I slept early that night. And I didn’t wake up until morning.
Since then, I’ve managed to set aside one night a week where I do little to no work and just do the things that made me feel cozy. And I am so certain that this has made a great distance in my mental well-being. When you’re able to minimize your problems, it’s easier to let the unnecessary go, alleviating pressure from the inside. Self-love is so crucial to the stability of every human; I believe that it’s so important to give ourselves time away from the world to focus on what we need to grow and be healthy.
You’re probably wondering yourself how putting goop on your face or reading a book for leisure makes you a better person. My only word of advice to finding support for self-care is to try it yourself. Think of what activity you’re lacking and miss in your life, save a few hours a week to do it, and I bet you’ll see the difference in your attitudes. 2018 is all about letting out some air before we reach the breaking point and taking care of our balloon-selves.
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