All I wanted was to take some time for myself — to be apart from everything, and everyone. I wanted to dissect myself like someone dismantling a clock, turning the gears and examining the insides. I wanted to find out what makes me tick. And I couldn’t do that with all these outside influences, these external stimuli, crowding around me, adding more and more variables to the mix that I didn’t understand. What I wanted was some space, a line I could stand behind and identify clearly, warning others against crossing it, just for the time being.

It didn’t make me feel good most days: screening calls from friends and others that I cared about, ignoring texts and other messages. This is not to say that it was a constant onslaught, but it occurred often enough for me to take notice, often and intensely enough to have a detrimental effect on me. I always felt guilty, like I should keep letting people in, to let them unload their problems and woes onto me because that’s just...what I do. It’s how I’m programmed. The reality became such that I was expending all of my own energy, planting it in the gardens of others, while my own flowers and vines began to wilt. The shadows on the loam made a fairly adequate cloak, but things were still beginning to wither, anyway. The plan I devised was to help me escape that; the plan was to study, to look inside myself, get to know myself, to produce a miracle growth that would restore my brilliant verdancy.

Something instilled in me from a very young age was to always be helpful. If you can be of service in any way, do so. That even kind of bled into my family’s motto: “We help one another.” That extends, for me, from just within my own family to...well, everyone, really. It doesn’t make me feel good to not be helping, helpful in some way. After a few times re-examining it, after some syntax shifting, that translated to me telling myself that “you are not a good person if you’re not actively bettering the world, helping, by doing what you do best.” One of the reasons the onslaught (for current lack of a better term) continued for so long is that I was too kind to try and shout from the bottom of the deep end that all of this was drowning me. So I thought I could quietly slip into the background, making my grand exit humble, unimposing (I was wrong, but that’s a story for another time).

So what is it, pray tell, that I believe I do best?

Help people try to work through their issues. Is there some emotional turmoil plaguing your every waking thought? Give me a call. Can’t decide which option is best for resolving your situation peacefully and without conflict? I’m just a text message away. Not sure which diverging road in your yellow wood to take? For me, it’s like the bat symbol shining brightly in a dark sky; I’ll be there to help. And that’s not necessarily to say that I can solve all the problems. I just do my very best to try. I’m not a miracle worker, but I’d like to think I do put in the work, in earnest, by talking things out with people, helping them, but allowing them to come to a conclusion, a decision, on their own. Every time there was a success, the desire to find another situation to help mend grew. And that’s not to say I went looking for problems to fix, but unfortunately, we all have our trials and tribulations, and sometimes they abound in spades, whether or not we want them to.

I had said that I would come home for the summer, that I’d go to work, and then go home and read as many books as I could, then do it all over again — not even Netflix, just good old-fashioned books to help jump-start that organic thinking process, the age-old debate of words perhaps having more power than images (or maybe not) turning about in my brain. I said I would stick to my plan, that I would, in theory, isolate myself from those forces under which my garden, even just by thought, began to shrivel up. But as I was alone, I found the process frequently to plateau at a certain level (…and I binge-watched a few series in the process).

I found that I couldn’t decipher all the ingredients to the miracle growth all by myself. As much as it pained me to think about, I needed outside input, assistance from that external stimuli to help me ascertain the solution. I believe I had found the missing variable: reciprocation. That was it. Yes, I could still be as helpful as I’ve always strived to be without driving myself into the ground. All I’d have to do, really, was reciprocate. Misfortunes and gripes, troubles, disputes, and adversities would be passed over to me, but I would pass some of my own right back. The give and take, the exchange, that's what it’s really about. The important things, like communication and friendship, are two-way streets. I have to come to terms with the fact that it’s okay to share my problems while others are sharing theirs. That’s how we commune: by offering something of or from ourselves, and entrusting it to another.

Some advice I would give to my friends and loved ones is that they shouldn’t be afraid to share their difficulties with me because I’ve got two ears and some sturdy shoulders, and I’m a real good listener. What I would say to myself is “why aren’t you taking your own advice?”