3. Perspicacious
Perspicacious
Every frown, every furled eyebrow, every hint of sarcasm or irony was picked up by their child antennae.
Being a natural child and as perspicacious as I am, being a teacher really aggravated my imposter syndrome. I'm so metacognitive and I know how keen and intuitive children are, and it drove me crazy. I felt like everything I did was being scrutinized and I went mad like a method actor who got waaaay too into the role. Like Joaquin Phoenix in "I'm Still Here", or more tragically, like Heath Ledger as the Joker :(
Except I didn't play everyone's roles perfectly and act as they needed me to act. And I didn't take kindly to those who told me to stop taking myself so seriously and laugh more.
I laugh enough! I'm a comedian! If you don't laugh, you miss the point.
That's besides the point.
Playing all the roles is impossible for any human, and I was letting myself go mad like Atlas. I'd grown to hate Ayn Rand after years of developing a real political and social conscious, and didn't really want to shrug. But there's a lesson there too: I had a friend who committed suicide--a corporate lawyer--for the same reason: He was an Atlas who never shrugged. Maybe Ayn Rand had a point about the virtues of selfishness. But those neocon and neoliberal uber-capitalist investment banker fucks took it way too far.
At some point my brain grew too pregnant, mental mitosis occurred, and in May I decided I would leave teaching and do some soul searching, therapy, deep reflection, and writing I can actually finish (like these here blog posts). I finished out the school year, started a new job which is a project and mission I love, and I started to miss the kids and reflect deeply about my interactions with them and what I learned from them.
I now understand that as a child, adults crossed boundaries all the time and that's why I have shame reactions when I'm now told I've crossed a boundary. I don't want to be a fucked up adult who ruins children and the planet.
I don't want to be Bob Holmes, the foster parent who fondled me at age 7 in Roxana, Illinois. Or the 19 year old male babysitter who crammed his tongue down my throat at a different foster home in Alton, Illinois two years before that. And I don't want to be my mother who left us for 8 years because of her own demons and an inability to get along with my father who was acting abusive, and I don't want to be my father at his worst moments--the times he told me I was dressed like a slut, the time he slapped me really hard across the face and spit on me because I'd sneaked out to attend Terry's party with Gloria though I was told not to. The time he tore my room apart, tore down all the Nirvana posters and Marilyn Manson posters, threw my clothes in the trash, threw away books, threw away Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because "Why would you idolize all that drug use?!" He threw away what he thought were negative developments in me and left my room bare. He place the A.A. big book on my bed. "That's what you'll read."
He was just doing his best at the time. He loved us dearly and didn't want to see us go down the path he and my mom went down. And that led him to act like a psycho, the way the cult in Midsommar were psychos. They truly believed they were being psychos for a noble purpose.
This is why I identify with Laura Palmer so much, and the archetypes and patterns formed before and after her. She is not just one person, she's an archetype, and it wasn't just Bob or her father who killed her, it was the whole town. It was society and what they expect of young women. I think back to watching Midsommar this past Labor Day. Dani was also expected to behave a certain way, and she put up with gaslighting and denying her own emotional needs which is so condoned in our society. Even as an educated woman with what appeared to be a relatively normal family life, this happened. This is what eventually got her killed, and it's what got Laura Palmer killed (via a different path). It got Marilyn Monroe killed too, and countless other women, famous or not. It was going to get me killed at the hands of Jorge Fernandez Castro on New Year's in Budapest 2011. I drank too much that night, and shouted at a person I didn't fully accept as a psychopathic narcissist because I thought there was a language barrier. I was lucky all that happened that night was a black eye and a split lip. I could be dead.
Getting back to my thoughts about the classroom, I didn't want to method act as a loving compassionate teacher anymore because I wasn't feeling loving and compassionate towards myself a lot of days or towards a few students who were shitty to me. I felt like I was being bullied by one in particular and nothing was being done about it. He was just acting like a scared child because he had a fucked up home life and he wanted me to be a strong adult. I couldn't be strong. I couldn't play any more roles and I definitely didn't want to be playing history teacher to people who need to be telling their own history. I was doing a bad job facilitating that. When people method act, they sometimes become monsters, or very spiritually ill.
Just like Carr told Holden the other night in Mindhunter, "When we empathize with a psychopath, we actually negate the self. We deny our own "When we empathize with a psychopath, we actually negate the self.We deny our own beliefs about decency and humanity, and that can be very dangerous."
Just like Carr told Holden the other night in Mindhunter, "When we empathize with a psychopath, we actually negate the self. We deny our own "When we empathize with a psychopath, we actually negate the self.We deny our own beliefs about decency and humanity, and that can be very dangerous."
I didn't want to empathize with every psychopath that crossed my path and become a monster, and I realized I couldn't teach any longer because angry students and staff of color refusing to listen to my lessons because my trauma isn't as big as theirs just wasn't cutting it for me at the moment. I didn't feel heard and I needed to go somewhere I felt heard. I know that's not in most workplaces. It's here in this blog, or music, or running, or swimming, or whatever.
We were on the same path, and our trauma stems from the same place, and I'm acutely aware of my privileged position as a white woman. I hate the white women who slut shame sex workers, fight Planned Parenthood, and support Trump and people like him. But I just wasn't ready to hear that I couldn't teach history. I kept pushing. What I should've been teaching was English still, and more specifically how to push through sexual abuse, emotional and physical abuse received at the hands of caregivers, and dealing with trauma. That's what I knew. As a comedian, you're supposed to shoot from the hip right? Talk about what you know. It's not that I can't teach history but I needed to do it with a team and/or involve students more. The social studies department where I worked was not really a team--they did their own thing and didn't seem to want to collaborate. They probably saw me as insecure and annoying because I asked them for help all the time. But probably not--they just had a lot of shit on their plates, as teachers do, especially in a community where poverty, violence, and shooting deaths of innocent people and children is rampant. I was needed to be stronger, and I couldn't be in that moment. I feel stronger now upon reflection, and if I ever go back to teaching, I'm taking all these lessons and teaching what I know, teaching my truth and letting students link it to theirs so we can all see how our struggle is intertwined.
At the end of the school year 2019, I heard one student, a boy who'd transitioned from being a girl, saying "adults are gross.
What he really meant was likely: "Adults have been trying to fit me into a gendered box all my life when I am gender fluid."
"Adults don't listen to us which is incredibly short-sighted because the planet belongs to us and our children and their children."
"Adults have potentially abused and traumatized me/my friends in various ways."
And so many students said so many things to me that I interpreted but didn't know how to apply the lesson. Teachers everywhere need to start this process. Share their trauma with eachother, support eachother, and work together, so they can support the kids who need it most.
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