Category: reflections

lost in the numbers

18 children 

And one teacher 

were killed today

by an 18 year old school shooter.

(And maybe more will not make it) 

The second major incident of gun violence to make it to my news radar this month. 

And there were over 200 that never made it to me. 

We have drills

We have trainings 

We have debriefs 

But we will never have peace of mind

And in hearing about this tragedy,

This unthinkable catastrophic normality,

I think first about where in my classroom would we go. 

Where are the locks and the curtains and the heavy objects to use to barricade the door.

I think about where are the books for throwing in self defense

And where are the sharp objects I could use to break the window. 

And then I think about how the news would reach my person. 

And my people

And I think about how i would recover if this happened here 

how this is community would recover

And I think about how would the situation change depending which class i was with, 

and their dynamics, and their needs,

And how I would best protect them,

And how could we get through this together,

And
I think of of each and every one of them.

The 58 on my class rosters.

And the many more who are not. 

I think of their faces 

(Or half visible faces) 

And I think of the goodness I see in them all. 

And I can’t think of the world without them. 

And
I try to think of anything else 

anything besides the idea, the possibility, of this happening.

19 children were killed.

And 2 adults. 

27th school shooting

212th mass shooting 

1984 people killed by guns 

In the United States of America

in 2022

so far.

And I have to say so far 

Because there will be more.

For these irreplaceable,
individual, incredible human beings

who have taught me how to be a teacher,

i want more for them. 

more than this never-ending barrage of preventable and catastrophic violence.

I want more accountability and action and shelter and healing and care for them. 

and
i want more for me.

Sources: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/, https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1101050970/2022-school-shootings-so-far

things my crackly joints make me think about

Subtitle: the story of how everything in my life is a metaphor for something else in my life

  • stretching joints = practicing stretching out and taking up space
  • feeling for the boundaries of safety and feeling good, listening to what my body tells me
  • you need to ease into this
  • breathing gets you through the hard part, or at least, it helps

excerpts from: Emails I’ve Sent This Week

Answering emails (particularly work emails) is one of my least favorite parts of my day. I don’t understand the level of formality or conventions. I am always afraid I am going to say something slightly wrong, or have a typo, or reply with the wrong tone. But I’m pretty proud of myself this week.

  1. My reply to asking if I would like to work on a costume in the next few weeks: “Thanks for thinking of me! I am currently stretched a little thin, and so I think I have to say no to this one sadly. But I can’t wait to see the show!”
    1. Wow did I just say no to a thing?
  2. My reply to a student (my first one ever!) asking me to write them a recommendation: “It is submitted! Good luck, and let me know what happens with this. The program looks incredible!”
  3. I asked for help!?
    1. “I was wondering if you have any advice for facing the next few weeks. I am struggling to find a way to best prepare lessons for students in school, knowing that in some of my classes as many as 1/3 of the students are out for the next week or so.”
  4. Checking in with students who were on quarantine: “I just wanted to check in and see if there is anything you need looking towards coming back to school. We have missed you!”
    1. I went back and counted, and I have 21 email conversation from students about covid from this week. Each conversation has 3-15 emails in it.
  5. I shared a puzzle I found and liked (found here): “Here is a cool puzzle thing that I found and am going to use for an opener in Geo.”
    1. These are really fun and students loved them and I am excited to do more things like this.

parenthood

to acknowledge that I want a child 
is to acknowledge that my parents wanted me 

that someone wants me
that someone thought the world would be better off with me in it
that without me, something was missing. 

and for some reason my soul has trouble accepting that.
original scribbles

Reflecting (~7 months after originally writing this poem): i really want to be a parent someday. i want to be a soft place for a child to land when things get hard (i heard this phrase recently and its stuck in my head. it just feels nice). I want to be a safe space to be imperfect. i want the experience of parenthood. i think i would be good at it.

guiding thoughts for 2022

Alternatively titled: things learned in 2021

  • trust my note to self from a while back (see thoughts i found in my notes app while cleaning it out pt 2): “I have to consider the possibility that I have not done something wrong up to this point”
    • perhaps i need to approach this year differently than past years: I am not trying to fix all my mistakes from the year before and break all my “bad habits”. I am not trying to reset and have this finally be the year where I get everything together.
    • I don’t want to reset. I am happy where I am.
  • processing things takes time. its messy and chaotic but when the dust clears, things will feel better.
  • sharing thoughts with people i care about helps me feel closer to them. who would have guessed.
  • allow myself to rest. I need more rest than I think I do, and that’s okay.

taking care

Originally written December 25, 2021: My current style of self love, or self care, because they really are one in the same, is very sporadic. I have impressive streaks of hygiene, meeting sleep goals, and staying on top of chores. But more often I have ruts of exhaustion, of “I’ll get to that tomorrow”, of “I’ll be fine without that”. These continue until there is some impetus, something within my body that can no longer be ignored or pushed off. Often its acne, or a muscle, or a joint, or a migraine.

I am going to work on, instead, taking care of myself gently and consistently.

on being the only trans person in the room

This is a series thoughts in my attempt to process a meeting at work where we discussed trans people and students in such an abstract way that I felt invisible.

To be trans is to be traumatized. 

To come out is to choose authenticity but also to choose more trauma — not because you want it but because it is inevitable. When I am in public I am afraid of “looking too trans”. I am afraid of what people will say to me. I am afraid of what people will do to me. I am afraid that I only have myself to rely on or protect me. I feel alone.

This violence has never happened to me. But it happens to people like me, for being people like me, every day. I have accepted that I will face people who hate me before we have even met. I have accepted that because I need to in order to survive.

Part of coming out for many people is sharing your new name. Names hold power. To be trans is to take that power back. To fully attempt the human super power of self definition.

There is so much in changing a name or pronouns. 

It is not a small or a quick decision. 

It is a decision filled with anxiety and pain and stress. Asking for this change is an incredibly difficult step for a student to take. It is one that is not taken without a tremendous amount of thought and consideration. To choose to come out as trans is to choose to have to prove that you know yourself better than anyone else does, to a judge to a doctor to a school. And to have to prove that over and over and over.

And to, after all this pain and anguish and celebration of making it to the moment of living in truth, be told that the “official record” is more important than your lived experience is detrimental to someone’s sense of self and belonging. 

A document with name your parents chose before they even met you is somehow more official than one that you labored over and tested and changed and finally found something that made you feel whole. I don’t understand. 

To choose to dead name someone is to tell someone that you don’t care about the pain and trauma and bravery and hatred and joy that got them to this point. It is to say that your comfort is more important than this person’s personhood. We cannot do that to students.

deep breaths

I began to bind my chest when I was 8 years old.
I remember feeling ashamed.
I remember feeling confused.
I remember feeling helpless.

But as it became apparent that my body could not be controlled
I tried even harder to minimize the evidence.
Tight tank tops turned into layers of camisoles
which turned into layers of compression sports bras
each one a size smaller than the last.

Binding made my back ache and ribs bruise.
I couldn’t seem to take a full deep breath.
But without it
the pain was much deeper
much more all consuming.

It wasn’t until the age of 20
that I was able to breathe fully for the first time.
A deep breath filling my chest, allowing it to expand entirely.

And that takes its toll on a person.
12 years of taking shallow breaths
of holding back.
of hiding.
of monitoring every millimeter.

These full lungs make me lightheaded.
There’s too much oxygen,
Too much possibility.

bambi

Note: The following poem was written during the summer of last year, as I began to make sense of what happened during a difficult time in my high school experience. As someone who is works with teenagers, with high schoolers, I need to understand my own struggles in high school and part of that is looking at what led me to be stuck in a relationship that was detrimental to my mental health, my friendships, and my sense of self. My hope is that through open and honest processing of my past, I can find my voice for the future.

Content Warning: Abusive relationship

_________

I don’t often let people into my head.
I’m much more willing to let them into my heart, but not my head.
Things in there are so broken and disconnected. Locked behind opaque glass doors with dark silhouettes of perfume bottles and ceiling fans and cassette players behind them.

I can’t remember what happened in those movies we watched together.
But I can remember the music of the credits:
The opening music told me that I was in for the horror I did not want to see, the blood and gore and psychological torture.
But the closing music was worse. It told me that the preview was done and the real horror was coming.
The horror of manipulation and guilt and shame
Of perfect insults, seemingly harmless to anyone who might have heard
But that shattered me more each time.

She called me Bambi
Soft and sweet
Gentle and innocent
Someone to be protected

She called me Bambi
I looked like a deer in headlights, she said,
Frozen and helpless
Innocent and weak
Easily controlled.
She spit those words at me through the open door of her car as I tried to walk away
She said it mockingly as I sat back in the passenger seat.

She said it for the first time reaching to hold my hand
She said it so sweetly, pushing my hair out of my face as she complemented my big brown eyes
I had thought she meant I was pretty
Really she meant I was prey