There’s a Tagalog word I always heard growing up: Utang, meaning debt. 
          My parents constantly brought it up in the car. “May utang ka sa akin. You owe me.” Ever since I was young I knew I had owed something to my parents, even though I never actually calculated all of the money I spent on fast food and clothes and trinkets.
          Utang, to me, was more than money. And it went beyond me and my parents. I owed my parents their diligent daughter that they immigrated to America for. I owed my teachers good work. I owed my extracurriculars my time. I owed my friends support, a shoulder to cry on, and a listening ear.
          I lived my life like that. I gave these parts of myself because that was what I owed them, my utang to them. In return I got praised, I got recognition, I got community.
          Junior year came and shifted this balance of debtor and debtee. I kept giving myself to my parents, to school, to my friends. I gave my all and instead of feeling accomplished, I became an empty shell of myself. 
          My daily routine went like this: awake at 5 a.m., school till 2 p.m., rehearsal till 5 p.m., nap till 7 p.m., homework till 10 p.m., sleep (on good days) at 11 p.m.. I’ve skipped breakfast since freshman year but I started skipping lunch too, surviving off of granola and water. The anxiety of my grades kept me awake and on the worst days I only got 3 hours of sleep. I didn’t have the time or energy to do my hobbies. I was irritable and quick to cry, especially in school (at least 3 teachers can attest to that). There was an ever constant feeling of dread, presenting itself as a sinking feeling in my stomach. I told myself, “just get the day over with,” and at some point, I said that to myself everyday. I had given every fiber of my being and ended up with nothing but bits of who I was.
          The first semester of junior year, that was my life.
          My heart couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t keep being miserable. I couldn’t keep living as a ghost of past me. My perceived utang to everyone had to change. 
          During second semester I strove to get out of this mindset. My schedule stayed the same on paper but in practice, little shifts came into my life. I listened to my body and ate whenever I was hungry. I stopped impulsively checking my grades every time I took my phone out. I slowly squeezed some time between homework and sleeping to lay down and relax with a TV show. Instead of giving myself a hard deadline I began to think, “I will get to it.”
          Yes, it sounds like I began to start slacking off. However, in reality, it served me well. I had energy to get through my classes and learn. My grades stayed afloat—stressing myself out over deadlines helped no one. I was happier and that spread to my interactions with people. I cried less, spent more time with family but also kept some time for myself.
          I believe that as people living in a society we owe certain things to our fellow men: kindness, grace, concern. But I also believe that we owe something to ourselves: care, compassion, love; things we often forget as we pay our debt to others. 
         

          For me, what I owed to myself was long overdue.