When September Ends…
Summer had come and past. Summer vacation never lasted…
It was the fall of 2005, and Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” was immensely popular. I often heard it when my P.E. teach played music while we warmed up for gym class. Hearing that song at school made me relate to it. I wanted September to end, or so I thought. I mean, if I really think about it, that song connecting with me made no sense. I never liked school, so when I heard that song, I was like, “Yeah, let’s be done with September!” However, if it was really about not liking school, why would I want to wake up at the end of September? Wouldn’t it make more sense to wake up when the school year ended? So, maybe it wasn’t school that made me connect with that song. Why did I want to sleep through September? What did I want to escape?
I truly did want to escape. I remember sitting in English class and having this fantasy of standing up, lifting up the desk at which I was sitting, throwing it through the window of the classroom, and then escaping out of the back door of the school which I felt was unguarded. I wasn’t entirely sure where I would go after leaving the confines of school. My grandparents lived just north of the school. I felt it wouldn’t be hard to walk there, but I was unsure of how my grandmother would respond if I walked through the door when I should have been in school. Still though, there was a need to escape. I felt it deep within me. But what was I trying to escape?
I believed I hated school. If you were to ask 12-year-old me if I liked school, I would have given you a passionate, “NO!” Did I hate school? I’m not sure I did, looking back over twenty years later. That’s a thought that has been with me most of this September when I do my annual month of listening to that Green Day song that takes me back to my 7th grade year. I may have been wrong about my distaste for school. Let’s examine the reality.
If you were to ask the 7th-grade me what school was, I probably would have told you it was a place to learn. I would still say that is the purpose of school. Nowadays, I might refute how well our school system meets that stated goal, but that is beyond the scope of this blog post. The question on the table is did I (or do I) hate learning? I don’t think there is truth to that. I think I did and still do enjoy learning. The caveat is I have to be interested in what I am supposed to be learning. I have ADHD, and ADHD, according to Dr. Bill Dodson, is an interest-based nervous system, meaning whatever is interesting to the brain is what gets the attention. When I was in AP US History class my junior year of high school, I never studied, but I easily got an A. I like history. Whereas, my mind wandered while reading some book for English class that I hated. So, was the real problem with school undiagnosed ADHD? I don’t think so. I mean, yes, I had undiagnosed ADHD, and it was causing me problems. But that’s not the whole issue. I wanted to escape more than just a learning environment that wasn’t built for my brain.
The other aspect of school is social. I have always struggled fitting in and making friends. 7th grade meant attending a new school and making new friends, something that did not go as I had anticipated. To make a long story short, I felt I would be popular and have a burgeoning social life, unlike what I experienced in elementary school. In 5th and 6th grade, I started noticing that the boys in my class were hanging out without me. I thought they were my friends, but when I noticed I was not the one who got the phone call asking to hang out, I felt isolated. Much to my chagrin, that pattern continued in junior high. So, there I was, running laps in gym class, listening to Green Day, and thinking I hated school, when in reality, I was suffering from social rejection and social anxiety. Yes, it was anxiety I was suffering from. I didn’t have the words to explain why I always had a stomach ache the night before returning to school after a break, but in hindsight, yeah, I was totally an anxious kid. So maybe, that’s it. Maybe I wanted to escape anxiety. There may be some truth to that, but I think the real answer is larger than that.
Did I not enjoy a learning environment that wasn’t built for a brain like mine? Yes. Did I suffer from undiagnosed social anxiety? Yes. When those two things are coupled, anyone would want to escape school, but I think the real reason I wanted to escape in 7th grade was I didn’t like life. I could give you a list of what I didn’t like about my life at that time in my life, but that is not the point of this blog post. The point is I rejected reality. I wasn’t accepting life as it was. I did not want to admit I was struggling. I did not want to seem weak. However, I needed to admit I was struggling. In denying that I was struggling, I missed an opportunity to grow.
I was once asked what advice I would give to my younger self, and the answer I came up with was: “You are where you are meant to be.” I said that because I have come to learn our struggles don’t keep us down. Our struggles help us grow. If we look at life like it sucks, then that is all we can see. However, by embracing our challenges, we can grow and become someone we always wanted to be.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a famous athlete. Then, when I got a little bit older, I wanted to be a famous actor. Somewhere in there, I also wanted to be president. All of those things have one thing in common. They matter, or so I thought. I wanted to leave an impact on the world. I wanted people to think I was a big deal. What I couldn’t see is that I was already a big deal. The other day, I told someone, “It’s kind of like a beautiful mosaic. If one of those tiles is missing, it doesn’t look right. It’s not as beautiful.” So, the answer to what I wanted to escape is reality. I thought I wanted a reality that was different from what I had when in reality what I needed was to enjoy life as it is. I’m sure that’s not what Billie Joe Armstrong had in mind when he wrote “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” I don’t know what that song is about. However, in September 2026, this is the message I’m realizing after reflecting on that song during this month. I still struggle accepting reality as it is, but I’m working on it.