Last week, I took my first mental health day. I honestly don’t understand why I haven’t taken advantage of this before because I think it’s really great that students now have the opportunity to prioritize their mental health without the fear of getting more than 10 “unexcused” absents. For me personally, I can think of more than a handful of times when I was feeling overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, or other things and would have really benefited from taking the day off, but never did because it just did not feel like a good enough excuse to miss an entire day of school. Even with it being the end of my senior year, and this should be the most enjoyable, carefree moment of my high school career, I cannot think of a time I’ve been more stressed out and continuously anxious. I attribute this to the ridiculous number of days of school I have missed, which is almost ironic because missing school is causing me so much stress that I had to miss school. Whether it be a robotics competition, a college event, or a field trip, I have been incredibly behind in basically all of my classes and have had such a difficult time trying to catch up. I take my school work very seriously and pride myself in working hard consistently but this semester has been brutal. I have been struggling to keep track of deadlines, and studying for makeup tests while still attempting to stay up to date on current assignments, and my mental health has truly plummeted. 

 

So I took a mental health day! It was the day after I had gotten home from a weekend event at WashU and the day before I traveled to Houston for Robotics, so it was going to be the only day I was in school for the entire week. Would it have been great if I had gone to school and caught up on at least some of my missing work? Most definitely. But I really think taking the day to do nothing but lie in bed and cry is exactly what I needed. For me, I break down into tears anytime I am the slightest bit overwhelmed. I can honestly say I am never too far from a full bawling session. All of my emotions bring forth tears; when I’m too happy, when I watch anything super sad, whenever I am stressed, or even when absolutely nothing has happened, I may just start crying. So for my blog this week, I am going to document some of the many times I remember crying in the month of March and why. 

 

March 3: I went out to dinner with a friend and he said we could go get Cane’s. I do not eat out or have Cane’s often so I was very excited. He picked me up, we drove to Cane’s and as we were pulling around he saw El Famous Burrito across the street and decided he was actually in the mood for Mexican food. He was paying and I hate to be difficult so I said we didn’t need to get Cane’s; we went to the El Famous Burrito and he thoroughly enjoyed his meal. I ordered a small quesadilla that I couldn’t even finish because I do not like quesadillas so I went home hungry, got in bed, and cried. 

March 5: My club soccer team went out to breakfast because our season had ended and it was the last time I 

was going to see a lot of them so it was a very emotional morning. Many tears. 

 

March 10: My friend, Tanvi, took me out to get Cane’s because I had been complaining about how much I was craving it for the entire week. These were happy tears with many laughs mixed in.

 

March 11: I was at my robotics competition when Samantha called me and asked what soccer jersey number I wanted. I have played in the number 9 since 5th grade and have not played in a different number ever since but Sam told me 9 was not available. I don’t know why this made me as sad as it did because it is just a number on my back but I was just really upset I wouldn’t be playing my last soccer season in my number. 

 

March 20: It was free cone day at Dairy Queen so I convinced my brother and his friend to pick me up from Robotic and we could go get cones afterward, but when we arrived, the sign said they closed an hour earlier than what Apple Maps said so the store was closed. No matter how much we begged the worker to let us in he would not.

 

March 31: My brother had a soccer tournament in St Louis and my mom was still on a business trip to Mexico so I volunteered to drive the four hours and stay with him for the weekend. Little did I know, a tornado was going through central Illinois just as I was driving. I was very stressed, the wind was ridiculously strong and it was raining so hard I had to pull onto the side of the road on four separate occasions. I didn’t know whether it was safer to keep driving or if it was best to just turn around and go home, or to find some sort of shelter, and the uncertainty was very overwhelming.