Hopefully, your gap year experiences can be used for new essays. You said your old ones weren’t the best anyway. That being the case, why use them again??
I’m going to suggest you read the thread I’m about to link. This was a u.s. citizen with top grades, NMF status, great essays and LOR, great ECs. Like you, he didn’t get accepted anywhere his first round of applications…and really no one could figure that out. He took a great gap year applying to mostly different colleges. He did re-apply to one school and was rejected for the second time. His second application list was a much broader one in terms of selectivity.