Stupid, Gullible Sap

I don't think I've ever felt so provinicial, simple, and boring as I did when I went through my phone ridding myself--and therefore seeing again--of reminders of her. The picture of her with a bobby pin in her mouth, hair pulled back into her fist, lips in a cocky take-on-the-world grin that she sent me while she was on the road in Cali made me feel like a teeny little ball of hick. After all, I saw that grin and felt happy for her. Now I realize that was the grin of someone who was free of me--who was on a trip that was literally and figuratively taking her away from me, of her own will and desire. And her doing something so wonderful and independent, as a literal manifestation of leaving me, feels like a slap in the face to any self-image I have as someone who is spontaneous, interesting, or desirable: "Hi, I'm leaving your boring self. This grin is me, without you, growing into myself and leaving you."

Last night, I just wrote exhausted and enraged, and then I sat and thought more about why I felt like an idiot.

It's because I thought for several months now that we separated for completely practical reasons--she'd be 2000 miles away, we didn't know when we'd see each other again, we both needed to work on ourselves, etc. All the texts, all the conversations, the whispered I love yous and the times when she seemed to be yearning for me gave me my stupid hope that she, and us, might just say fuck practicality, and be romantic--that we would take opportunities to see each other, that we would fly out during random breaks, that I would fly to Alicante, that we would meet in different cities when we had time, and we would be partners again, if ones that couldn't spend much time together.

I had no idea that we broke up because she wanted to. I didn't know that her love had faded, that she had wanted to move on.

I guess, if I wasn't such a sap, I would've read her polite euphemisms for what they were. For example, she said part of the reason she didn't want to stay together was becaus she didn't want to feel obligated to talk to me. I was so confused, because I felt like I wanted to tell her things regardless; I didn't see what a relationship status had that bore on our desire to keep in touch. In retrospect, it wasn't that she didn't want to feel obligated to talk to me. That's too specific. It was that she didn't feel obligated to me, and she didn't want to be obligated to me in any sense. She wanted to cut ties, pure and simple. Then she could stride around, and do whatever she wanted.

Second, she said she wanted to meet other people, travel, and grow. That doesn't even really need to be examined. What kind of dumbass believes that that isn't a nice euphemism for "I'm bored with you, and ready to move on?" Me, that's who.

So I could've been intelligent, and seen the signs for what they were.
I'm not, and I didn't.
I've never been left because someone actually just got tired of me. I was talking to Sky the other day about why our relationships ended.

I actually thought it was the case that my relationships have all ended largely because of distance.

Guess that's not the case.

And moreover, I wonder if I now know how Phyllis felt. Distance was an excuse, but not the real, underlying reason, as I later admitted to myself. I had just wanted someone who could be around, and so I tossed her aside.

Distance was a pleasant, polite reason for leaving me, but I was just tossed aside because I got old, stodgy, and boring. And I then spent three months making myself believe that she still wanted me, and that distance was the real reason we were apart. Hooray.

....I guess it's not quite as simple as that. She did still care some. After all, she called me when she parted ways with Melissa, and did just want to hear my voice. So she still cared some, I suppose (?). But that, I guess, is just the natural echoes of a relationship, that even the person who breaks it off must face.

After all, that probably happened after she spent time fucking someone else, so I was just a pleasant crutch to rely on--a hard ride, a hard day, and look, here's someone who desperately loves me who I can talk to make myself feel better. And if it hadn't happened after she'd slept with someone else, some of the other phone calls certainly did, because she was already back on campus. So she'd seen fit to branch out, and meet other people; she just needed a shoulder to cry on for when that got lonely.

Again, that's why I feel stupid. I'm not the person she wants. I'm not the person she loves. I'm not the person she wants to be with. I am the person that she can call when she needs some emotional support.

That's not at all fair to me, because she knows that I want her, love her, and want to be with her. I similarly lack emotional support, and get to rely on myself. The difference is that if I call her, if I reach out to her, it's reaching out to someone I wish I still had, whereas she can just reach out to an available reservoir of love. And it never seemed like an issue to explain to me that she didn't want me, that she didn't want to be with me, but that we were apart because she wanted someone else. Or everyone else, and just to be free. It was just easier to let me wallow and hope. She knew when she left Phoenix for Seattle

--Jesus, did she fuck Chris? Was that who it was? The thing that she told me she wouldn't do? I bet so. That would be just a cataclysmic perfect storm of "fuck it, I'm done with you"--she went and fucked the one person who she assured me she was no longer attracted to. I wonder if they'd spoken about it before she even left me.

Holy fuck.

I'm a stupid fucker, and I hate myself for wanting so desperately to believe that was the case that I bought all that shit. That I bought bad romantic comedy cliches as truth. I'm miserable, and I deserve to be this miserable this far out of the gate for not catching on sooner.

Mountains

I broke down on Tuesday. Cried. Tons of kids saw me. I had the brutal realization that I am not a teacher. I feel like I'm not connected to many of them, don't have good procedures, and they're not learning. Also, I don't know how to plan, grade, or do really anything.



And to top it off, I had lost my rhymepad. Everything in it--from tattoo sketches, to rhymes from immediately post-Phyllis to now, to vacation details, to Scion quotes, gone. And for the last month, it had been keeping me sane.

Letter to a BAT

They are homeless and hungry, brilliant, exhausted, confused, witty, born of broken homes and whole ones, well-fed, silly, wise, and phenomenal. They don't want to be there, but they want to learn. They don't know that they're smart, because they may never have heard it. They have probably been told the exact opposite--that they're slow or stupid, that they are a behavior problem, that they have attitude issues. The potential within them, the light that shines inside of them, is encased in a shell of self-doubt. I don't know how much I helped them learn English objectives this summer, but I am incredibly proud to have helped smash a hole in that shell, and let them shine through. Help them break that hole, and find out how capable they truly are. That is perhaps the best thing I did this summer. It may the best gift you can give them, and I promise you--do that, and they will follow you.

On the last day of Institute, the five week boot camp for Teach For America teachers; after the last student had left Agua Fria, having completed summer school; I sat in a room full of aspiring teachers who were writing reflections on what they had learned from their summer. Our advisors--wonderful veterans who gave us their smarts, their gimmicks, their trust, their faith, and themselves for the summer--had called us BATs. Officially, it stood for Bold Ambitious Teachers; in our weary group, it was Bad-Ass Teachers--a moniker to perk us up when the coffee couldn't do it anymore. Now our students were gone.

Many of us were crying; it was a hell of an emotional day. We'd spent only nineteen days with our kids--oh, and we considered them ours. I know I did, anyway--but we were attached to their achievement, to their well-being. I was lucky, for I had passed my entire class; most of my friends had had to pull aside some of their kids and break the bad news to them, to watch their face fall and the tears begin. One of my students had an IEP, and therefore passed with a 68.9%, but until I found out her fate, I spent days chewing on my nails, watching her average creep towards passing, knowing that even if she came in every mornign to work on her skills and aced the final, she would not make the 70% passing benchmark. The kids who were the "tough ones," or who had been left behind the most, became for many of us those with whom we worked the hardest. One of my friends spent nearly every weeknight tutoring a student, and watching him progress, only to tell him on the last day it had all been for naught. Of course, none of it was for naught--they had learned plenty of things--but on that last day, that is not at all how it seemed.

So after a morning where for many the failures weighed as heavy as our successes, we were sat down to write a reflection on what we'd learned over the summer, as a letter to next year's BATs--some piece of advice that was Corps Member to Corps Member, rather than advisor to lowly corps member. Even without having failed kids, I was still spurting some tears, crier that I am. When they give us time to write and reflect, I plugged in my little ipod shuffle. The first song that came on was "cold cash and colder hearts," by Thrice. I looked around at a room full of brilliant college graduates who had chosen to dedicate their talents to helping people who needed it, even if only for two years before business school; who were embodying the opposite of the song being wailed sarcastically in my head, and my own tears flowed.

The letter I wrote to next summer's BATs is paraphrased above.

When we came to Institute, wwe were excited to help our kids, and after the week of Induction--six days of TFA seminars pounding our mission into our heads--we felt dedicated to the cause. We joked about having drank the Kool-Aid that TFA was dishing out. TFA seemed like a cult dedicated to taking capable, Type A individuals and brainwashing them into achievement gap guerillas. We looked at the products of TFA training and that seemed like the end result of what we were beginning--creepily insistent on fixing education, with packed schedules, caffeinated circulatory systems and unblinking eyes.

After Institute, though, I see it differently. I don't think it's brainwashing, and maybe you disagree. Maybe it's just extraordinarily subtle and effective brainwashing that I didn't notice. I think it's instead a natural reaction to first-hand exposure to the kids we met this summer--kids who were fiendishly intelligent but who had a wicked aversion to authority, or who got bored easily, or just didn't see the point in a class that bored them, or a teacher who didn't seem to care. We walked in clueless about how to teach, and it's not that we know now what we are doing--but having a kid tell you that you're the best teacher he's ever had is a travesty. It feels great...but then you think "FUCK, I've been doing this for three weeks. What motherfucker with three decades' experience wrote you off and made you feel this way?" That shit will light a fire under your ass, if you let it. And that is the Kool-Aid.

TFA doesn't make it. They just bring you to the tap, and hope you pick up the gauntlet. I aim to. I'll see how I do.



*Name changed. Duh.