I took the May '18 SAT, and scored a 1530, 730 RW and 800 math- but my essay was 6/2/6.
Honestly I don’t really understand how I could have possibly gotten a score that terrible, I took AP Lang this year and maintained a 100 throughout the entire year. I guess I didn’t study the SAT writing rubric as much as I should have. Regardless, I’m unfortunately stuck with this abysmal score- so what should I do? I got an 8 on my ACT writing (not my best work either… but I did get 36’s on both ACT writing/reading) but I’m proud of my composite. Will colleges understand that I can write though the other essays on my application? Is it worth the retake? (I REALLY do not want it to come to that)
I just wanted you to know you’re not alone. My daughter took the May SAT also (first attempt) and scored very similar to you. She didn’t study for the essay at all, so I guess she didn’t know what they were looking for in analysis. She is taking the SAT again on Saturday. Unfortunately, she registered for “with essay” and the deadline to change that has passed. She’s going to try to drop it Saturday morning because she hasn’t had time to figure out how the scores work and practice.
I wish there were a way to send your scores without the essay. Maybe someone else will chime in, but if you don’t want a red flag in your application, my advice would be to retake 
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Your score isn’t that terrible. You didn’t analyze though, and that is pretty common. What can you do? Retake if you like, and foucs on how the author constructs the argument, rather than what the author says. Most colleges don’t care about the essay. The ones that do, well, they are all super selective anyway and if you get denied, it’s probabaly not due to the essay score.
If OP got a 36 ACT with an 8 in writing, I don’t see why there is any need to retake any of these tests. Send the 36 and forget about the SAT.