{My world sucks}
<Slam>
<Slam>
<Slam>
“Fuck you!” <Slam>
One by one the doors slammed in my face. I think had they all left me all at once I might not have survived. Instead I wept, I fought the feeling of abandonment, I felt alone and scared with open wounds bleeding profusely, as they each rejected me one after another, year after year.
{I’m too much for this world}
“You’re too happy. That’s your problem, you’re too friendly. People here can’t handle that,” he said. My husband of 14 years hugged me tight. “You’re sensitive, honest, intense, and you’re Light and you know your shit. And these people, the assholes, they can’t handle it. They’re threatened by someone like you.”
{My world had to change}
I closed my consulting business after 3-4 adaptations, growing and changing as I had over 20 years. As I got more confident in my skills, my client base ran away. As I healed my childhood wounds, my friends, or who I thought were my friends, ran away as well.
{to this:}
I teach now, high school. Part of me feels like it’s a step down: working for someone else, molding my day around an institute’s schedule, working in what other people feel is a thankless job of educating a hopeless generation. Perhaps I’ve gotten lucky, but I’ve got great students this year and I’m excited to teach them. Maybe I like teaching my subject, the same thing I was offering in my small business but to adults who wanted nothing to do with it.
{Will this new world know the real me?}
I don’t have a lot of friends at the school yet. I understand high school departments and their teachers are not as collaborative as elementary and middle school teachers. I do have a few, one in particular, who I’m slowly starting to show my true self to: I’m a good person with a wicked sense of humor, I’m sensitive and get my feelings hurt and I know what to teach and how to teach it, and I’m imperfect and I make mistakes. I say sorry when I’m sorry and I don’t apologize when I know it’s not my shit. I can piss you off and I can make you love me. I can be your most empathetic friend and be so incredibly self-involved you want to vomit. I’m me.
{This is my new world}
“Good morning class! After 3 months of time together, we are now onto our most sensitive subject, Sex Ed.” The wave of reactions is real: eye rolls, some giggles, a bit of nervousness and lots of discomfort.
I begin by discussing the purpose of the Sex Ed Unit and progress onto why it’s important that teens need to know this information. I cover anatomy, saying No, human development, healthy relationships, and make our way to assault and violence. Questions are asked confidentially: all students type into an application that records their questions and who asked it, allowing only the teacher to see it. Students must type 1 of 3 comments: their sex ed question, song lyrics (I particularly like boy bands, or seasonally themed songs lyrics) or a comment about the class or a validating statement to me, but they all must type, in order for them to preserve their confidentially.
It’s brilliant: if they have a question they would never raise their hand to ask, they can ask it. If they don’t have a question, they are still typing away in a room full of students typing. If they have something nice to say to me or about the class, they do.
What I’ve learned is that kids have great questions and if I don’t answer them now, they will get false information from an adult without a good answer or from media today: TV, the internet, movies. If they can ask the question in good faith, they deserve a solid, honest answer that is both academic and human.
While teaching this lesson, I learned
{I must be me in this new world, for my new world to thrive}
They need to be happy. They need to be able to relate to others. They need to have confidence in themselves. They need to be empathetic, stand up for themselves and be relentless in saying No. They need to be willing to protect themselves should the other leave them because they won’t give up what is theirs, what is sacred, what is Light.