Olly-Olly-Oxen-Free (Known synonyms: senioritis, burnout, and high-anxiety individuals)

I have spent the majority of my life panicking immensely over the judgement of other people (a testament I’m sure many of you can relate to). In fact, I worried so much that when I was in elementary school, my grandma gifted me a worry stone that I could hold any time I started overthinking because she was legitimately concerned that I would develop stress-induced ulcers at the age of seven (hopefully this is not as relatable).

[Ironically enough, I was planning to insert a picture of the worry stone right here, but I can't find it anywhere...I guess that explains a lot.]

Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to the story. While I’ve gotten a lot better at managing my stress — aka not staying up until 2:00 AM playing the same awkward encounter over and over in my head until I was too physically exhausted to muster another thought — I recently realized that my perceived improvement is actually just compartmentalization. Oops. 

In class this week, we read “Hide and Seek” by Robert Fulghum, and let me tell you, it was an experience. Upon finishing the story, I had a lot of questions: Who came up with the rules for hide-and-seek? What gives some random foolish fifth-grader the right to tell another that he is playing the game wrong for hiding too well? Why did that doctor’s family get so angry when they found out he was terminally ill? Is anger in that situation not a selfish emotion? Is the end always happy? This Fulghum guy seems to be talking about the end of life being full of laughter and happiness, but what about all the people who end up in Hell? Are they happy? I highly doubt it. 

If you're also oddly curious about the origins of hide and seek

My mind spiraled into an abyss of emotional doom, and I wasn’t quite sure where to begin dissecting my thoughts. Maybe it was time for me to shout olly-olly-oxen-free and give up on this piece. No worry stone could help me recover from that existential crisis. 

But just as I was considering entirely giving up on English for the day (sorry Mrs. K), my contemplation was interrupted by our class discussion. As we went through the piece, I quickly realized that my interpretation (okay, maybe that’s a stretch…my inquisition) almost completely ventured down the wrong path. So as any teenager in the twenty-first century who was practically raised by social media would do, I began to psychoanalyze myself. 

Why did my mind jump to concepts like Hell and selfishness? Am I selfish? Wait…no…pause. I must be reading into this too much. Or maybe I’m not. Maybe this trait has been hidden implicitly for years, desperately waiting for the right 12 AP prose passage to finally tip me over the edge and—

NO, SHUT UP. WHO CARES. YOU’RE BEING SELFISH BY THINKING PEOPLE CARE SO MUCH SO JUST SHUT—

NO NO NO. STOP OVERTHINKING. TELL YOUR BRAIN TO QUIET DOWN AND FOCUS ON SCHOOL. 

Unfortunately, this cycle is not unfamiliar to me. My mind functions like an autoimmune disease with repetitive attacks on every aspect of my moral compass. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Honestly, I can rarely tell what is going on up there. 

But seriously speaking, I know this is something I need to work on. After all, I leave for college in, like, six or seven months, and considering that I’ve already began counting down the days until graduation (116 more to go!!), I’m sure that time will fly by. But still, where do I go from here? It seems like such an all-consuming question. How do you stop overthinking? (For the record, all advice is welcome. Like, seriously. If you know how to stop doing this, DM me on GroupMe or something.) 

Don’t worry, I have taken some steps in the right direction. I have the perfect, highly-credible article for this:

Perfect, highly-credible article...*wink wink*

To be honest, I know that I have a long way to go, and WikiHow can only take me so far. Merely shouting olly-olly-oxen-free to life is not going to be very productive, either. But nonetheless, I’ve admitted that this is a problem. That is the final stage of the grieving process, isn’t it? 

I could easily tumble down the staircase of grit and stereotypical “hard work” to excuse my lack of emotional intelligence, but at the same time, it feels helpless to think that way. Attempting to change the school system will probably end up being the source of my ulcers instead of reducing the stress that will cause them, and after all, you can't just hide from the spiritual roller coaster that is "life." So while I may not have figured out how to quiet my mind yet, this blog did help me realize one thing: I can’t play hide and seek with my own emotions. Wherever I go — whether that’s to the store, out to dinner with friends, at school, or (trigger warning) college — my habit of overthinking will chase me into a black hole of apocalyptic thoughts, so I might as well figure out this whole emotional balance thing now while I still have my mom’s warm, gooey, home-cooked meals to serve as comfort food. Just like AP Bio taught us, carbs release dopamine, so they’re practically good for you, right?

Side note: is anyone else freakishly concerned about dining hall food? I always think about the horror of undercooked chicken during my freshman year string camp or the stories my mom would tell me about food sending her into anaphylactic shock and I assume that I will have the same experience. But at the same time, I’ve had dining hall food before, and it wasn’t that bad. In fact, I would even say it was pretty good, considering the circumstances, of course. So maybe I don’t have so much to worry about after all—

OMG I’M DOING IT AGAIN. HOW DO I MAKE THIS STOP. 

Okay, wait. I have an idea...if I make it my goal to stop overthinking this year, maybe my fear of disappointing myself will overcome my anxiety. I guess we'll find out.

So, to sum up this unnecessarily long blog post-

New Year’s Resolution: stop overthinking. Maybe stop procrastinating, too, because writing your New Year’s Resolution in February is pretty bad. Just like your seemingly unbreakable habit of finishing your blog posts three hours before they're due when you've known about the assignment for a week. Do better. 

To end on a positive note, here's your dose of my cat for the week and some motivation to keep going:

If graduation is also your only motivation (but who is counting?)