As daunting as a blank page is to fill with words, summer and winter breaks from school when dealing with a mental health issue can be intimidating. It’s a common theme in the mental health world that unstructured time is the enemy. And when facing three months of that unstructured time for a summer break, well, that can get stressful pretty quickly.

Large expanses of time absolutely volunteers mental health issues to spring up like daisies. Instead of productively writing a Mass Media article in a set block of time, I might wind up wandering through the bookshelves of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder library and spending my time at a metaphorical tea party than doing tasks I’d much rather be doing.

I know for myself, back at the end of May 2016, I was ready to just get into the summer. So when I wasn’t studying for my finals, I was searching endlessly for a summer job. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one that matched my interests and my blank space of availability. I began to get agitated, particularly from facing multiple prospects of uploading my resume only to re-fill out the information contained in that resume into the provided text boxes.

I had had enough. It was a Friday and I was feeling spontaneous after searching for some type of writing centered job. I had experience writing for The Mass Media that semester, and I had experience with being involved in mental health awareness both professionally and personally. I was aggravated that I couldn’t seem to find a job that would allow me to utilize such experiences.

Eventually, I came across a website that spoke about mental health blogging, and I was quite interested. The process for applying was tedious, however, and in the bubble of my spontaneity I decided then and there that I would create my own blog.

Storming off to WordPress I went, and within minutes I had a blog. I didn’t know it then but this would become the key to my summer sanity.

It may not be my job, but I do love blogging. And for the summer, it was a crucial step in maintaining my recovery gains. I was able to dedicate time to blogging. No longer was I brushed aside to pamper the OCD.  Rather, I was getting the pampering, and the OCD was slowly losing power over me in the corners of my mind.

Through my blog I write about mental health and my experiences with it, as I typically do in these articles. I also write for daily prompts, share my artwork, create some hashtags (shameless self-promotion here: #RecoveryHome), create gift art for my other blogger friends, and do book reviews. Some other topics I blog about include teachable moments, alliteration days such as (re)Framing Friday, and general life updates.

(Re)Framing Friday is all about collecting some positive quote images from Google and sharing them in a post, as well as my music and video recommendations of the week.  I also include a thoughtful quote and some glimpses into artwork I was up to that week. And teachable moments are about returning to some of my art therapy assignments or notes from groups from my inpatient days and discussing them with the perspective of then and now.

The book reviews are an added bonus. It helps me and my readers to break away from such heavy themes like mental health and suicide prevention awareness with some lighter topics. Adding book reviews onto my schedule was especially great for my New Year’s Resolution this year, which was to read ten books. I’ve surpassed that goal since and have fallen in love with reading once again. I haven’t read as much or taken books from the library since I was a child. The thought of unlocking a new book provides me with great exhilaration.

But before I could chronologically obtain the benefits and sanity of my summer, I had a bit of a bump and a roll in my recovery first.

At the end of May, I relapsed with self-harm—a term I’m using as a blanket term, scratching myself and with the OCD. I wrote a blog post about it actually, titled “Relapse Blvd.” It was there that I began to think of additional street names for my recovery journey, names like Hope Avenue, Lapse Circle, and Kill Yourself Road—which is a dead end by the way.

I began to imagine what my Recovery Home would look like—what would be the scenery, where would it be located, what would be in the town surrounding it. I discovered that I liked the concept of my Recovery Home being a large home, like a mansion, on the top of a hill where there is a town down below. There’s a rainbow lighthouse on the property and a gazebo, as well as some other details I have yet to uncover. There’s a stationery room inside the home because I absolutely love stationery. I jokingly admit that it’s become a reason for me to live. Especially the deals at the Target dollar spot or at Michael’s Arts and Crafts. But, I digress.

Watering these creative explorations aided me in spending more time thinking about the details of my Recovery Home, to what I wanted to blog about that day, to writing out my book review quotes in my blogging journal.

It effectively made the summer pass by, for which I am grateful.

My first step in response to my relapse was to speak with my therapist about returning to the OCD-Institute for a partial hospitalization to “reboot” myself. I filled out the paperwork and begun the wait, but until then my parents were urging me to stay busy through either work or school. Granted, they said work and school, but I took it as an either/or option.

I wound up enrolling in a psychology statistics course for the second half of the summer. I also kept myself busy every Sunday for two to three hours visiting a local doggy daycare business open to the public for playdates. In those few hours I could get my weekly hold over of petting dogs until I could come by the following Sunday to do the same.

By July I was realizing that the reboot I was searching for was unlikely to occur, especially with taking a summer course over the second part of the summer, which is when the partial would happen. So I kept telling myself that once I got through X and Y appointments, I could then go inpatient. Then, when those appointments would come and go, I would tell myself once again that the next set would be what I would wait for and then I would go inpatient.

And so, a pattern of coping formed and I wound up making it through the summer without ever getting that additional help.

There were a few other bumps in the road of my recovery process thereafter, but I did my best to maintain my wellness and I think I did a pretty good job of that.

In August, I began my year-long planner that includes the start of the day 6 a.m. and goes until 11 p.m. It is a goal oriented planner and so far, I have been enjoying it greatly—even if I miss a few days here and there.

In the month of August, I reached my milestone of one hundred followers on my blog. And while I was taking statistics, I barely had any of the OCD getting in my way.

And now, with the coming fall semester I feel quite accomplished for what I got done and got through over the summer break. I have ideas for last minute photography projects and artwork, and of course catching up on writing for my fan fiction story and blogging in general.

I would say for a time of emptiness, I managed well in keeping myself together and sane. The next obstacle is to remain level-headed through the fall semester. I have a lot of plans and ideas for myself, so I am quite excited.
I hope you are also excited for the new semester! Above all, stay safe.