End of Summer Melancholy

There's always a certain melancholy associated with the break between school and summer. Part of it was mixed feelings about school, but more of it, I'm now realizing, was the loneliness from most friends being on vacation. At the same time, it's also a time for unprecedented partying if you're still in Davis. There's nothing like a half-blacked-out night followed by a long day with nothing to do and no personal contact for some sobering self-reflection. Also, a lot of emotion comes from the hunger from forgetting to eat, which happens when you spend an entire day doing nothing.

It's the kind of melancholy that makes you squirm. Like you want/need something so desperately but you don't even know what it is that you want. That makes you want to do anything to slow the flood of thought. It's the kind of melancholy that makes you feel physically sick, and by the way I might be coming down with something. Sleep is always the most obvious solution, but part of having nothing to do is being irritatingly well-rested. Other solutions are television, talking with friends in person or via telecommunication, and drinking yourself silly.

Sometimes I want to lash out and hurt people around me. It's not an emotional desire so much as a cognitive one. I feel like people take my self-possession for granted and that their lack of control is attributable to laziness on their parts. And maybe, maybe, if you took the same liberties as they do they would respond and treat you with all the attention that you don't get but feel you deserve. But I've found that you cannot get away with the actions of others if you aren't in the same headspace as they are. If you do something malicious on intellectual whim that other people do in passion, you will be held accountable in ways that the passionate person won't be. In short, the world expects of us what we can give. Furthermore, and this should be obvious to everyone: everyone sometimes thinks they deserve more attention than they do, and to base short term actions with long-term consequences on angst and whim is rarely a sound course of action.