Wasted Summer

School starts in four days. I guess it's natural to feel like a summer never lives up to its potential, but I'm feeling pretty melancholy about the last few months. It feels like I spent too much time inside the house because I didn't have anything to do or anyone to do it with. I saw all of my friends at least twice, but in a span of three months that's not that great. I saved all of the summer work for the last minute (I'm about halfway through both The Grapes of Wrath and The Tipping Point, haven't started the work for either, and haven't read the 77 pages of my history text book yet), and am now rushing to complete it.

I have all of my school supplies set up, and my outfit picked out for the first day of school. I have plans to go to the mall and get a few last-minute clothes (because really, can you ever have too many clothes?). I have all of the things on my wish-list. I have the schedule I want (or I will, a few days after school starts). So everything is set up in that front.

I'm excited to see my friends every day again. I'm excited to finally be taking physics, and to get back to Latin. Part of me is excited to have a routine again. Part of me thinks it won't be a repeat of last year; that I won't be so weighed down that I crack. But then, part of me is afraid that it will happen. Part of me imagines afternoons filled with homework that I can't bring myself to do, nights turning into screaming matches with my parents. I'm afraid that they've taken the wrong lessons from last year, and are going to start off being so restrictive that it'll choke me early on. It got worse when I felt like I couldn't do anything to help myself.

It's frustrating when people lose trust in you, because they didn't listen to you in the first place. Their punishments only reinforced my growing hopelessness. I didn't have solace at home or school. So I'm afraid of that again, of having nowhere to turn if I stumble again. I'm afraid of feeling helpless as I become increasingly unable to do the things I need to do. I couldn't relax because it was always on the back of my mind; that I needed to do something and I knew I wasn't going to. It felt like trying wasn't worth it, because I'd already failed; that once I failed, I couldn't succeed again. I was miserable, and I don't want school to do that to me again. It seems like school shouldn't be a thing that breaks you.

I'd like to be trusted to do things on my own again. It doesn't seem like it'd be such a big deal to be able to set my own restrictions for small things. I guess they'd argue that I proved I couldn't handle it, but that's forgetting the many variables contributing to my downfall, so to speak. I'm afraid that I'll be tired all the time again. I'm afraid that I'll fall behind. It feels like they're expecting me too, as if I haven't learned anything from last year, or this year is just a continuation of last year. It's not, and I wish they'd extend the same trust to me that they did at the beginning of last year. This year doesn't have the same influences as last year, after all. It's fair to say that I'm a different person, and I could at least be given a chance.

I've digressed. I meant to talk about how the close of summer invariably brings a melancholy feel, no matter how well or poorly it was spent.

I have to go to bed now, so I guess I'll leave this somewhat unfinished. Maybe I'll continue my solemnity tomorrow, if I don't realize how boring it is by then :P