I had a pretty terrible mental breakdown in 11th grade, due in no small part to pressure my mom put on me to overachieve academically (I was made to take the SAT six times because a 1420 wasn't good enough). I was a good student, albeit a slacker at times, but at that particular junction in my life the jenga tower was teetering. I was in danger of failing calculus, I was doing 8 hours plus of homework a day, and I was writing 3 papers a week. I could allot basically 4-5 hours a day for sleep and even then there was so much shit going on in my head that I could barely consider it restful. I wasn't burning the candle at both ends; I was throwing my life supply of candles underneath the launch pad of the space shuttle:
About March I had a pretty serious meltdown. It didn't look like I would pass 11th grade, let alone graduate and go to college. Mom of course went even more nuts about this, telling me ridiculous things like I'd never amount to anything and I wouldn't even be admitted to the community college. I don't know what her endgame here was, but at the time she was doing her best to make my life miserable. We've had some conversations about it since then but I think the preference is to just leave it as an unresolved dark spot in our relationship. It doesn't help either of us to revisit it. While I didn't need to be on suicide watch, I was definitely evaluating why my life was worth living.
I eventually got to the point where I had to just shut myself down. I slept for three days. When I woke up I prioritized what was important. I decided that I didn't care if I got a D in math. I'd have to work more efficiently, and accept that some things just wouldn't get done. I think I began to care too little.
Revisiting it now, I feel like it was coping with a deficiency I have on trying to bust my ass on things that aren't interesting to me. My grades definitely declined, but I was sleeping through the night and I was happier with myself. I could see friends and pet projects flourished. I developed a habit of prioritizing things that were important to me. My physics teacher in high school dropped a hard truth on me after he started noticing a decrease in the quality of my work after the meltdown - "You need to learn to do well the shit you don't like." I've carried that with me because he's one hundred percent right. You can't just run through life doing whatever in the hell you want unless you have stout financial security, no matter how much you want to. I will work through the night on things I am passionate about, I will never ever quit on something or someone I care about - but if it's something I don't want to be doing there's a good chance it won't get done. That is perceived as laziness.
One needs to strike a balance between the extremes that I peaked and troughed between.
When I burned out, I blocked stress. It has been wonderful to a degree. Since then, I have really not stressed out about anything. I can have emotional mood swings, but external factors rarely if ever brought my blood pressure up. Now I'm concerned it may have been damming up in the back of my mind and my mental "little dutch boy" has taken a leave of absence.
I bring this up because I'm in a situation now where I'm concerned that without action I'm going to have a relapse. I'm going critical shortly and I need to release some pressure. I know I need to make a change with my job and my lifestyle. At some points I think I just need to throw caution to the wind and jump into the unknown. I can't say it's the fiscally responsible thing to do, but one truth I came out of the meltdown with is that I need to enjoy waking up and doing whatever it is I've chosen to do every day. If I can't sleep through the night and don't want to get out of bed, I'm not doing something right. Life is too short to not want to wake up and live it.
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