Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.
My to-do list is a mile long. Juggling being a mom of three, a teacher, a wife, and myself, there is not enough time to complete everything on my list. Something has to give and usually it’s my favorite thing, writing.
Blog writing is easy. It’s reflecting on my day and emotions. But creative writing, that is the one that is placed on the back burner. My dream was always to live off my writing. Maybe one day when I’m no longer supporting my little gremlins, it can happen.
I have followed a lot of indie authors on social. Quite a few have been blessed to leave their nine-to-five jobs and pursue writing full time. Most of them have older children or none at all. I am not jealous of them. In fact, it pushes me harder. To know that it’s possible and not to give up.
Most days, I love my job. High school is a weird, strange place. A friend asked me to explain, and I said it was like a Choose Your Own Adventure reality TV show. Students come to me with the craziest things and wait for my response. Usually I give them advice and wait to see what they will do with it. Some take my advice and life is easy. The ones that don’t come back crying or wondering WTF?!? Why I’m so unhappy?
During my planning periods, I leave my decade old manuscript open waiting for inspiration. Most of the time, I just stare at it, my is mind blank, almost taunting me. Eventually it gets burnt out reading and editing students’ scripts. By the end of the day, I’m fired trying to help students come up with unique creative ideas. I could leave it be, but I have to watch all their projects. I learned after my first year of teaching, if I didn’t help them brainstorm ideas, I’ll watch twenty different anti bullying PSAs.
For months I’ve fought my depression, nothing could get through the fog. But just before the new year, it lifted. I’m not pulled me through it but I started writing again. Be it ideas coming to me in my sleep, walking me. Surprisingly, the notes I have left have made sense. Which is fantastic when I read them awake.
So, between doctor appointments and baseball games, I try to work my way through notes left for me. One day I’ll get through my to-do list, but there’s no rush.
If I had all the money in the world and an unlimited amount of PTO so I could take vacations throughout the year and come back to work, oh the places I would go.
Scotland in the fall to experience the stunning autumn highlands wrapped in luxurious sweaters without breaking a sweat. Portugal in the spring, to dine on delicious seafood and amazing wine. I would love to drink Ginjinha while walking down the streets weaving in and out of the stunning architecture. Eventually I would love to explore Germany, although I’m unsure about the ideal time of year would be. I’d steer clear of October, there will be far too many drunk than I care to interact with. Summers would be saved for Ireland, so when it’s raining, cold, and chilly, there’s at least a bit of warmth. While I have been to London, I want to explore all of England. I have read so much about the history that I feel like I have already explored most of the country in my head.
It would be a dream to venture off to Tortosa, Spain. During the second week of July, the town recreates its Renaissance history. Neighborhoods fly their respective banners and colors while the town folk dress in lavish period costumes. The streets and storefronts are decorated with flaming torches and banner. Over 3,000 people partake in the 16th century extravaganza. Even restaurants prepare period recipes. Street performers do their best to encourage everyone to participate in the party.
But once I’m done with Europe and exploring all the castles in history that I have read about throughout my lifetime, I think I want to stay State side.
Our country is rich with history. Each state feels like their own country with different people and different ways of living. Most states of their own unique stores and food that you wouldn’t find over state lines. I can drive across my state of Florida and end up in different towns that are nothing like my own. I used to crave leaving the United States, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate what’s around me.
So hand me a passport or just some magical job with freedom and an unlimited traveling budget.
My first crush is the man that I still kiss goodnight. But our journey was not a simple path. The returns, twists and tricks of fate. They made us work for it. I spent years living in the what if. What if I had answered the question when I was 15? What if I would have reached out throughout college? But now my, what ifs are something different?
It’s something silly. But not silly haha. It’s a silly glimmer of hope. For one day, my husband would feel comfortable enough to share his stories with the world. Ones of sugar cookie soldiers and Pop-Tart attacks.
I should be grateful for everything that he has done. Being a survivor. Never becoming a statistic.
I say it’s by the grace of God he did not become one of those 22 a day. However, he argues I deserve credit for saving him from a potential bullet to the brain.
A large part of me believes that hearing from an E5 or an E6, someone who Hollywood hasn’t glorified. Their stories might help those who the media has jaded. Maybe a glimpse into the lives of those who were not officers. Those who lived through the war knocking on death’s front door.
My husband has demons he keeps inside. I think back, wondering how he survived.
The first picture that he sent me after a lifetime a part was something I was not prepared for haunted eyes. I missed the face that once held laughter and mischief. The man before me had lost his soul along the way.
Next year, it’ll be a decade together. Now, in almost every picture, his eyes shine bright. I wish I could get my husband to write. To share what brought him through the darkness, but also what led him there.
His stories could bring more than laughter. They might let other soldiers know they are not alone.
Stories could open the eye of people who have become jaded. Everything that was served for the public to understand the wars of our brothers, who have become the wars of our sons, was drafted to cause fear.
His stories could help those who fought know not everything was in vain. Our troops helped many and saved some who would only try to kill them later.
For those who remain, their stories should be told. But to get my soldier to put his pen to paper. He asks me would read stories of an everyday joe. The world craves glamour like the Seals, Green Beret, or Delta. He was just a soldier that lived day to day.
There have been days when he thinks he should tell his story. However, he dreads the notion that some will believe he seeks only glory. But the reality is he just aspires to be sure that his friends who didn’t come home have their story is heard.
Everyday someone’s son or daughter walks through my door. They are called students. In elementary school, students spend more time with their teacher than they do with their families. In middle school, students suddenly face six teachers. The comfort of seeing the same face every day is broken. Watching sixth graders adjust to this new world is adorable and scary all at the same time. Moving to high school, I watched a lower amount of anxiety pour out of the freshmen. Maybe it’s because I’m a mother or empathetic, but I try to remember that these adult looking bodies in my room are still children.
It’s frustrating to deal with students who just don’t care. In some classes, it becomes a cancer that spreads and students who were working eventually stop. I can’t lash out or treat the cancers like I would an adult. There’s a root to the issue and most of the time it’s outside the classroom. The seniors who are graduating in a few days grew into their own during covid so their reality is warped. The adults didn’t know how to handle what was going on, so they didn’t hold the students accountable and gave them chance after chance to make a half-hearted effort.
This was a failure on our part. How could we expect children who entered high school to care when they grew up watching everyone shut down? Their freshman year, the year where teachers are supposed to instill deadlines and expectations, was null and void. They were still robbed of their sophomore year, where students pick up on social cues and are growing into mini adults. Half online, half in the classroom. Students just weren’t working and those who did work felt like it wasn’t fair.
I was teaching middle school. Kids complained about how it wasn’t fair that the people online didn’t have to do the same amount of work. I had to figure out the nicest way to say “life isn’t fair. It’ll never be fair.” But how do you explain this to someone else’s child without being a dick? I am straightforward, in an age appropriate manner, with my own children. My husband and I don’t hide things from our kids, but that doesn’t mean my students get the same honesty at home. I’ve learned that the hard way when I speak plainly and have been told that I am too harsh and should be more sensitive. I had a student not complete his work, and he responded with a very sarcastic “sorry I didn’t do it.” This was the third assignment that the student hadn’t completed for the quarter, so I was peeved when I responded to him. His mother went to administration saying I was too cruel when I responded with “It’s your grade that’s going to be sorry since you didn’t complete your work.”
I held my tongue that day. I wanted to tell his mother that her child was lazy, disrespectful to me and rude to his classmates. Instead, I smiled and said, “well if he just completed his work, there wouldn’t be a problem.” This student is now a junior at a different high school from where I teach at. His girlfriend is in my program and she’d told me he still doesn’t like to do his work, however he misses me because “I keep it real.”
I don’t want to be mean to my students. I don’t want to raise my voice because I don’t want my son and daughter to deal with that at school. However, it’s a losing battle. My freshmen were in sixth grade during covid so they are little electronic junkies. Headphones in no matter where they go. Glued to their cell phone FaceTiming with friends in class, just like they did when they were at home pretending to care about their classes. I must raise my voice to be heard over their loud chatter, and with 30 people in one room,I’m still not heard.
I wish I could collect all their phones and stash them away. But their parents get upset if they can’t text their child right away. I have to remove myself from a parental mindset. Yes, I want to text my kids during class, but they should give their teacher their full attention. I think covid broke the adults too. They were so used to the consent connection with their child that they don’t know how to function without the instant response.
But then I have students who come to me because they don’t have that connection with their parents. My classroom door needs to be replaced with a revolving one, so I stop having to answer each knock from a girl having a meltdown. My teacher hat kind of goes away although I don’t really put on a mom hat, but I just listen. Sometimes they like what I have to say, other times I get a whining “Mrs. Jenkins!” because I didn’t take their side. I try to give them real life advice for the problems they are facing. Mean girl issues don’t go away just because you graduate and crappy relationship issues only get worse.
One of my male students came in his last few days of school and just word vomited about the problems he was having with his ex. He was graduating, and she was mad about how things ended. I take everything my students tell me with a grain of salt. However, the drama he was dealing with was a lot. The only advice I could give him was you’re graduating. You won’t be seeing her anymore. If she needed him to be the villain in her story, so be it. Someone is always the villain and if you know you did nothing wrong, then let her process that way.
I know these students are people’s sons and daughters. My heart hurts when I listen to their stories that they cannot share with their parents. I wish they could talk to their parents with the honesty that they share with me. My kids know they can open up to me without judgment, but they may not feel comfortable discussing their problems with me. Children don’t ever want to disappoint their parents. They don’t want their parents to see them in a negative light, and sometimes it’s easier to talk to a neutral party. I hope other teachers open themselves to their students, being that ear for their students to vent their frustration and fears.
Every November and even some random months, I can’t remember. I would go with my mom to the small Baptist Church at the corner of our neighborhood and we vote. When I was little, I asked her why we were doing this and she said it was to help pick the rules. When it came to voting on bills, she made her selections. But for the local officials I asked were they and she said judges and school board members and other people. And I asked again, “who are they?” Sometimes she would shrug and say I don’t know another time. However, if she knew who the person was, she wanted to vote for them. If she didn’t know, she would let me pick a name that I liked. Hopefully, I was good at picking names when I was a child.
When I turned 18 years old, I had already registered to vote. My 18th year was a presidential election. Unfortunately, I could not vote. I remember looking at the calendar and cursing my birthday because election Tuesday fell 2 weeks before my birthday. I was so mad I couldn’t take part in the election.Some of my friends or classmates told me “you know your vote doesn’t matter right.” And I looked at them and I said “yeah it does.” They said, “Your vote doesn’t really matter when it comes to the president.” I was confused and asked, “What about local bills and laws? We’re voting for officials that go to DC and to Tallahassee. Voting involves more than just deciding who the president will be.”
I’m not sure how everybody was raised or what history they were taught when they were children. But my parents always instilled in me that it was our right to vote and that we need to take advantage of it. Because if you didn’t vote, you couldn’t complain. And another thing, women had just earned our right to vote.
I was born in 1986, that’s only 60 years after women earned the right to vote. This generation that I teach seemed to be a little disconnected from the reality that we’ve only had the right to vote for the last hundred years. To them, 100 years seems so long ago. But when I was their age, there were women alive who remembered not having that right. And it’s not even just about the right to vote that we fought for, because it was a fight. It’s everything else that comes with it. I’ve heard stories about my friend’s Aunt, who, despite having a full-time job with better pay than her father, still needed him to co-sign for her house. That is one generation removed from the women who fought for our right to vote.
I grew up reading books and watching documentaries about America’s history. Some books were fiction, and I thought their stories were exaggerated and what women dealt with. It was hard for me to believe that men would cast stones at women, drag them through the streets and lock them up because they wanted to vote. I thought surely that was something that was only hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Not something that would have happened 66 years before my birth. But I watched the documentaries, listened to first-hand responses, saw the pictures.
How could I not vote?
Recently, and by recent I mean maybe only three years ago, my great aunt, who does a genealogy for our family, posted a picture of a woman on my Facebook feed. She wore a dark fitted dress with a high white collar, little buttons ran down the center, and a pocket watch chain hung at her hip. This is one of my relatives who would come over from Ireland in search of a better life. She worked as a maid for a rich family in New York City. All, while being a part of the suffragette movement, she fought for our right to vote, because she just left a country where women earned their right to vote in 1918.
So when I look at the prompt, and it asks, do I vote… The answer is unequivocally yes, it is quite literally in my blood.
Twenty years ago, I would have told you I wanted to be a scriptwriter. I had all these wild dreams about heading out to Hollywood and writing movies. However, after spending a summer in Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and exploring California, I decided that it wasn’t the place for me. It wasn’t long before I gave up this dream. I never stopped writing, but scripts were no longer my focus. This was back in the early 2000s, the idea of working virtual wasn’t an option. So I changed directions.
One direction was where I would live. I love the east coast. It’s the best coast. The people, the weather, and the speed of life — something about it fuels my soul where the west coast sucked the life out of me. Now I had to add something else to my plan. Where I would live. I had always thought I could live anywhere. That wasn’t true. I need humidity to thrive and the sea breeze washed away my worries. So my living situation had become a key factor in my career search. Virginia, North Carolina, Savannah or even my home state of Florida were where I wanted to grow my professional life.
My professional life needed to match what brought me joy. That’s being creative. I have had jobs in the past where I was stuck in a cubical filling out excel spreadsheets and staring at the wall daydreaming when I could leave. This meant applying for jobs out of state. Florida is great for hospitality but not so much for those who want to work in film, news or marketing. The rational part of my brain knew I might have to leave Florida. But because I was young and dumb, I received more than a few job offers I regret not accepting.
Sometimes I want to shake that girl. Tell her to take the risk before starting a family. I traveled enough to know that I could leave. I could survive. However, I didn’t want to leave the person I was dating. Even when I knew it wasn’t a forever, end game type of relationship. All of this is laughable because in my late twenties I left a job in political news to move to a different country for my ex husband.
That didn’t last. I felt lost for the months I lived there. I was supposed to focus on writing, but depression set in.I didn’t have something that was mine to keep me busy. Other things also fueled my negative experience. I wrote short stories and wrote the manuscript Angelic Findings. But none of that left me satisfied. I needed to know I was doing something worthwhile.
When I returned from Brazil, they offered me my job back. But things weren’t the same. The election ended, and the company did a massive downsizing. I was one of the handful of people cut. This sent me down a different path. For about six months, I was an editor and producer for a financial show. It was weird. Every edit was under a microscope to be sure it was in compliance. Eventually, I left that job and ended up working for a local news station.
I liked it there. I love how busy and chaotic things were. Hurricane days and breaking news kept things busy. Only I was missing time with my family. Birthdays skipped, vacations missed, holidays put on hold until my shift was over or I woke up from a nap. I needed a change. But I couldn’t follow my dreams of accepting a job in Virginia. We couldn’t leave. My parents are here and they help with my kids. And my stepson’s mom lives here as well. I wanted to leave. I still want to leave. But I couldn’t. I can’t. So I left the only thing I could. I left my career in news.
`However, I didn’t leave the world completely. I ended up teaching, and it’s been oddly enjoyable.
I work with students, teaching them how to write scripts, create films and edit mini news packages. I’m able to do all the things I love everyday, without having a boss breathing down my throat for insane deadlines or people trying to undercut each other for a raise. However, the students do that to each other daily. I try to explain to them that A. We’re not saving lives, it’s not serious. And B… to just do the work their lives would be that much easier.
Sometimes I stare at them and wonder what the future of our world will be. They do some dumb shit on the daily. It makes my brain hurt and I wonder if they eat lead paint chips as babies. But at the same time, most are incredibly sweet. They genuinely want to learn. I’m talking about my high school students. My middle school students had me wanting to jump off a bridge with cement feet.
So this is my twisty turny career path, always something creative, never leaving Florida. One day I’ll escape. I’ll have a cottage in the woods, far away from people. But until then, my students will slowly drive me insane, wondering if their strange ideas doom or save humanity.
I am absolutely exhausted. Today I participated in our school wide lip dub. Holy shit, was that fun. It reminded me why I love working in production. The energy everyone brings to performance can not be matched. Even working through tech problems. They are stressful, but it’s like my brain feeds off of it. I love watching all the pieces fall into place when the world seems against it. My mentor, Mr. Wright, started producing lip dubs in 2014 and I have always wondered how they could produce a high-quality video. Well, now I know.
Today was insane. If you check out my Instagram reels, you can see some of the behind-the-scenes footage from organized chaos. This production was months in the making. Wright spent months sending out emails to the school, ensuring that all clubs and sports were included. Everyone had the chance to submit a song of their choice. Some people slept on this chance and were not happy with the song selected for them. But it wasn’t just up to my mentor. The film club and SGA were a critical part in selecting music and comedic bits throughout the lip dub.
Late days and missed lunches were in abundance. My mentor would walk the path that we would take, mapping out everything to time the music just right. In the weeks leading up to today, he emailed out the final audio mix. He held rehearsals to prepare students for the parts they were supposed to lip sync. Even with all this preparation, problems arose.
The day before the event, we found out that some students were upset about their song selection. We didn’t know they were upset until a teacher overheard students discussing their plans to protest. They would not sing the song that was picked for them by SGA. The club was called women leaders of tomorrow or something along those lines. Remember how I said they’d had months to pick out a song and weeks to listen to the music? The day before the production is not the day to complain. Their complaint was that they were in the cafeteria, and that the song that was selected for them was called stir fry. Apparently, they found this sexist saying “women were being put in the kitchen.” The problem was that they weren’t the only people in the cafeteria. The cafeteria is an enormous space. They shared the scene with multiple language honor societies and wrestling. Thankfully, there was no protest.
We ran through the first part of the lip dub three times. But production even started, students were outside for close to 45 minutes. They were setting up the inflatable helmet that the football players were going to run out of. The Cheerleaders were practicing their stunts, and the band was preparing to play their instruments. Our principal even did a skit in the beginning that was a callback to the year previous and a meme that one of our seniors created when he was a junior last year. It’s a lot of fun to see the student body work. The reason it took so long for us to start was that there were multiple people who weren’t in the correct place. The people who were supposed to be singing were missing, and certain academies just weren’t ready.
When we finally started, it was incredible to witness everything. We did the skit again and then the music seamlessly flowed into the senior class’s lip sync. That’s when the controlled chaos began. After the senior section, they broke apart and were running to their next locations. Football players magically appeared in the helmet. Some showed up in the cafeteria as a part of the national honor society in, or wrestling and flag football. From the cafeteria, we had the next set of singers hop on golf carts and head towards part of JROTC where they were doing the raiders rope bridge event. That went into the step team and the BSU. And straight into JROTC followed by automotive and into construction. We did this three times and every time things got better and tighter. Despite a few minor errors, witnessing the high school kids wholeheartedly engage in their tasks and show professionalism was the most enjoyable aspect of my day.
After that, there was a small break when everybody reset and moved on to phase 3. We recorded Phase 2 earlier because it was complicated. But understanding the match cutting that’s going along with it and how it’s going to flow. Here is the final product! I would love everybody to see the hard work of all these students, teachers and administrators.
After Wright walked phase three and made sure everybody was ready, filming began. I’m pretty sure the universe just wanted to test us today because we had complications in all the strangest ways possible. We almost got done with the first take and something happened in biotech and we had to reshoot. We did a race golf cart scene with our principal and the superintendent of the school board. It was amazing and fantastic until the Osmo’s battery died. This is something that’s never happened in the years of production. We had a group of boys infiltrate the basketball scene and the basketball players could not hear the music, so they didn’t know what to lip sync. Finally, we had 11 minutes left until lunch and we were doing our very last take. We were told that the superintendent had left, and we were going to have to figure out how to match cuts into that scene. But then the universe gave us a break.
When my mentor came out of the soccer scene and the superintendent was in the rival golf cart. The amount of pressure that was lifted off of his shoulders for editing was astronomical. There was a bit of delay in recording, but not much that anybody would truly notice. We got through the softball scene, SGA and basketball. We went through medical and biotech and finally finished phase 3.
Phase 4 was when everybody went to the courtyard. This was utter chaos. The original plan was to have all the students spell out the word hawk. That did not happen. We also still had to record the IT room and the drone room. There was a bit of a pause as we organized the students and went into IT to ask them if they were ready.
Wright moved from using the Osmo to filming with a drone. That meant we had to do another walkthrough just to understand what the framing was and the pacing for the drone. After completing the walkthrough, they sent me outside to assist the students in ensuring that the outside was prepared. Everyone was clueless about what they were doing. Because of course. After a swift talk from Wright to the students, everything proceeded without a hitch. We had two takes, and both were fantastic.
The day was chaotic. Everything happened between 8:00 a.m. and 11:45 in the morning. But it was wonderful. It epitomized everything I love about our industry. Showcasing our students and our school. We let the world know how well our administration works with our students and how our teachers communicate with our student body. This is something that other schools try to reproduce and they can’t do it. And I think a lot of that has to do with the social structure within the school itself. It’s not just the fact that Mr. Wright has been doing this for 14 years and has mastered the experience. It’s all the work that goes into it. The students’ effort to ensure this is an amazing production is commendable.
My favorite part about the whole thing was a surprise. Our 9th grade guidance counselor had a baby a few months ago. Her husband is the baseball coach and while we were preparing to do phase 3, I saw her holding this little tiny infant. He was wearing a baseball jersey. It was adorable. My absolute favorite thing was watching the senior baseball boys holding this little nugget. They tenderly held him while singing, showing their love for their sport, their coach and their coach’s wife. This is the stuff that needs to be shown. This is what people need to understand what makes a successful school. It’s not just about grades. It’s about the atmosphere in the social dynamic that is produced.
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
One of the most annoying things that I encounter has to deal with my faith. I understand that it is typical to ask about someone’s spouse after discovering their faith. However, what is the most belittling is when people find out my husband is an atheist. The first thing most people ask is, “He still lets you go to church?” or “Does he let your children go with you?” Like hold up, wait a minute. When did 2024 turn into the 1950s where the husband dictates what the family does?
Marriage is a partnership, not a dictatorship. I’ve heard of people who are in Jewish / Christian marriages and when people find out about that, they ask, “Do you celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas?” No one is discussing someone limiting anyone’s beliefs. I’m uncertain whether it’s my husband or atheism itself that drives people to ask such questions.
My daughter and I attend church regularly. She is a part of the faith formation and will take her first communion in a year or so. My stepson would be a part of his confirmation class if the other household would take him to his Wednesday class. We didn’t bring up the topic of him attending Wednesday classes, even though his mom was okay with him getting baptized. So he never started the classes. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t attend church. He does, when baseball doesn’t intervene. So that’s kind of limited.
But back to my husband and my children’s faith.
When we got together, Tyler knew I was a Catholic. We talked about how I find peace in my faith and we have talked endlessly about why he lost his. Witnessing people murder each other in the name of their God can really do wonders on a person. However, faith wasn’t a big thing for him growing up. For my childhood, my mom took me to church and my dad worked. Even if he didn’t work, he was Catholic and my mom was raising us as Presbyterian. It didn’t cause any problems in our household. We weren’t orthodox and my mom took us so we could learn from people who were more experienced in the faith. So this way of raising children was very familiar to me.
My husband has been by my side through all three of our children’s baptisms. In truth he was the one who pushed me through my postpartum depression and reminded me to set up the baptism dates. He is also the one who will tease me and call me a bad catholic or heathen when I choose sleep over going to mass. Tyler knows my faith is important to me and when I falter in going to church, he is there to support me.
I sometimes question whether my husband is genuinely an atheist rather than an agnostic. Someone who can’t put a name to their faith. I have caught Tyler a few times talking about the unexplained. Maybe the universe has been more involved in our lives than he believed. I have seen him break down and denounce God with a passion when he lost his dog far sooner than we ever expected to lose her. You don’t do that unless you have faith to lose.
What I don’t understand is how perplexed people are that someone who is an atheist would allow his significant other to raise their children with faith. It is absurd that someone so certain in their belief of nothing would be scared by someone’s belief in something. It just makes me value my relationship with my husband more. The way he empowers my faith, that we have civil discussions about things and that he has never once tried to stop me from sharing what I value with our children.
As our children get older, they will leave the house and have the same opportunities I did. They can choose to stick with the religion they grew up with, or convert into something else. Maybe their life will take them on the same path as their father and something might make them lose their faith. That’ll make me sad, but they will be adults in charge of their own spiritual journey. I just want to give them the tools for that journey.
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
I looked up from my laptop and locked eyes with someone I thought I would never see again. I had been reading his obituary before I looked up, after all. He sat there, infuriatingly patient as only the dead could.
“Take a picture. It’ll last long.” He said with a crooked smile.
I rubbed my eyes, but still he sat in front of me, occupying the chair that was meant to be filled by the rest of our living morning friends.
“You’re not here.” I said softly. “You put a bag over your head and filled it with helium, suffocating your life and robbing the world of your talents.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “No one paid attention to my talents. No one cared.”
I wrapped my hand around my coffee cup. Feeling the warmth radiate in my hand grounded me. At least I was still alive, maybe losing my mind, but I was alive. “You’re such a fucking lair. I cared. Melissa and John cared. Countless others do too.”
He leaned back in his chair; the light shining off his freshly shaved head. I’m not sure if ghosts take the look they have when they die or what they are most comfortable with.
“I couldn’t live like that anymore.” He said after I went back to typing.
My fingers ran across the keyboard a few more times before I responded with a simple, that’s nice. What did he expect me to say? He left us here on this realm. To deal with the heartache and pain of the hole he would leave in our souls. He was so young, life was just starting for him and he robbed himself, his family and friends of what might have been.
I finally looked up from my laptop and he was still there. Elbows resting on his knees, his chin in his hands. “Why are you here?”
He reached across the table as if he would take my hand. “I just wanted you to know I was at peace.”
I wanted to desperately reach out, to touch him, but I was scared. Scared my hand would go straight through him or that mind would turn cold. Would my touch let him see into my soul and know the pain that he had left me with? If he was at peace with his decision, then I should be too.
I took a drink and smiled. No one knows the monsters you fight within yourself. If he felt this was the only way to quiet them, then I must have faith he did it for the right reasons. I never saw him as a weak person before. Strong and dedicated to his craft. Determined to fight for what he wanted.
I tapped the table near his hand. My hesitation hurt him. But he hurt me. “Did you find all the answers you were looking for?”
His brown eyes lit up. “You can’t imagine all that there is. The answers are truly in the stars.”
I went back to writing. I didn’t want to ask him anything else. One could only pretend to have a conversation with the dead before others start to wonder if you skipped your meds. I swore I heard him tap the table, but when I looked up, he was gone.
I started writing this prompt a year ago during lent, and they revisited the prompt today. So I figured I would finish this.
I’m not entirely sure if I believe in fate and destiny in the sense of predestination, but I think we have the option of different choices and paths to take, and those paths shape us.
Sometimes when my husband smiles, I see glimpses of the past. He’ll get the same spark in his eyes that he had almost twenty years ago. Something that I thought he lost after the hard road he has traveled to get us to where we are now.
My husband, Tyler and I met in high school. He was a senior, and I was a freshman. As fate would have it, the school district decided that his four years of JROTC would no longer count as an art elective. Now, in his last year of school, Tyler had to choose between band, art, or drama. He picked drama since he couldn’t draw or play an instrument.
At the beginning of the year, my drama class was around 16 girls and one boy, Dan Mosley. I think he lasted a week before he had his schedule changed. For a short time, we were an unruly group of girls before a tall, dark stranger was sitting at the desk behind mine.
Truth be told, I am naturally shy, so I do not know how I began talking to him. Especially so since I thought he was cute, and usually, when I think someone is attractive, my mouth does not work. However, with him, it was like word vomit. Maybe because I was in a room full of females and we outnumbered him. Or possibly the idea of him being so much older than I was; I saw no threat. Whatever the reason was, we became friends. Some days he sat at the desk to the right of me, and we would talk, and other days he would sit behind me and play with my hair that covered his desk.
Looking back at our life, it reads like a Young Adult novel. Of course, my real-life crush just so happens to be the definition of a book boyfriend. I laugh because I’ve seen a meme, “Fictional men raised my standards.’ Girl, your only requirements are dark hair and trauma.'” However, when I first met my husband, he only had dark hair. It wasn’t until after two deployments did he gain the trauma.
Tyler’s transfer to our class took place early in the year. I know this because our generation is marked by one life-changing event: 9/11.
Before that tragic day, the weeks were blurred together. The only thing I vividly remember from the month of August is the tall, good-looking guy with a crooked smile invading our girls only drama class.
On that morning, I can remember practically every detail. I was in my Spanish two class, where every moment was forgettable until someone rushed into the room. The person shouted at my teacher to put on the news. The entire class turned their attention to the tv. Students were talking amongst themselves as my teacher frantically tried to call her daughter. She lived in NYC. My classmates and I watched, and I began arguing with anyone that would listen. I grew up around planes my whole life. The anchors kept saying that a small Cessna flew into the first tower. I knew that was impossible to be true. The plane wouldn’t look the way it did if it was a Cessna. As the anchors tried to make sense of the situation that was going on, a second plane flew into the tower’s twin. At that moment, I stopped talking. The world froze, and everyone had a single thought: we are under attack. As I digested what I had just witnessed, another thought filled my mind: The guy I had a crush on was going to war.
One thing that attracted me to my future husband was his enlistment in the army. Growing up with my family serving in all branches except for the navy, I found his dedication to our country attractive. And discovering that he enlisted the summer before he was eighteen just made it that much better. But when he enlisted, we were at peace.
An announcement came across the loudspeaker, and we were told that they would dismiss us from our last-period class. I am sure I was a part of the few people who were eager to move. My last period was drama, which meant I would see Tyler and talk to him about everything that happened. The entire class sat on the floor in front of the tv. I remember leaning against him and asking him what he thought was going to happen. He may have looked at me, but I was too focused on the news coverage. I just heard him say, “I guess I’m going to war.”
Two weeks passed, and so did his eighteenth birthday. I don’t know why these memories have stuck with me, but they have. He went skydiving with his mom and got the Sky Dive America’s Uncle Sam tattoo on his shoulder.
So now the guy I had a crush on had a tattoo, jumped from a plane, and was going to war. All he needed was a motorcycle to complete the bad boy package. But Tyler was anything but that. We’ve talked about high school, and he said he never really was one of those people who hung out with one group. He was friends with everyone. He played sports, was a part of JROTC, and didn’t care who you were as long as you weren’t a dick.
At the beginning of December, I chopped off all my hair. It was a rebellious move because my mom loved my long hair, and I was mad that I didn’t get to go to the Buzz Bake Sale. The Bake Sale was a local rock concert festival. I know it was a ridiculous fifteen-year-old move, but that was all I could control.
When I went to school that Monday, I wasn’t comfortable with my decision anymore. My hair was like a comfort blanket. The longest point reached my butt, and I had chopped it up to my ears. When I sat down in my seat, I felt a pencil swatting at my hair. “I like the hair, little one,”
Suddenly, I didn’t hate my hair anymore.
As the school year progressed, Tyler started taking another classmate and me home from school. That meant I no longer had to take the bus home every other day and since he drove a ford ranger with a bench seat in the front, I sat in the middle. At first, he would simply drop me off at my place, but as we got closer, we spent time together, discussing stupid things. It didn’t matter if it was about class that day, and how life was going, or music we liked. Our conversations were how I learned he only didn’t just enjoy country music. He liked the same pop-punk nonsense as I did.
One day, he came into class and plopped down in his seat. He didn’t have the same positive attitude as usual, and I asked him what was wrong. He said he got in trouble with his mom for going over his text message limit again. I turned bright red and asked, “well, who are you texting?” he just laughed and said, “Gee, I wonder who’s been texting me every day.” I might have been part of the reason he had to get unlimited text messages.
We would play twenty questions, however, those twenty questions would somehow last well into the night. It was fun getting to know someone this way. It felt more like we were sending letters as opposed to text messages, and it took the pressure off taking him face-to-face when I saw him the next day.
The closer we came to the end of the school year, the sadder I got. He was going to graduate and go off to the army, and I was going to continue on with my life as if he had never walked into it. I didn’t have any right to be sad about him leaving. We weren’t dating. We were just friends. I knew he was dating someone at the beginning of the year, and eventually, they broke up around February. I had to ask him when it happened because I wasn’t sure. That part of his life wasn’t important to me. We were just friends, and I didn’t even entertain the delusion that we would turn into something more.
At some point in the spring semester, I learned that Green Day, Blink 182, and Jimmy Eat world were on tour together. I was beyond excited and begged my mom to let me go to the concert. None of my normal concert going friends were going, and she said I had to have an adult accompany me. I ended up asking a family friend if she would take me, and she said yes.
I was so thrilled that I was going to see my favorite bands I overloaded him with information. At some point, he told me he had never been to a concert before. This shocked me. I had been to a BackStreet Boys Concert, seen Melissa Etheridge at Sunfest while in middle school, and just saw No Doubt play at Sunfest a few weeks prior. I guess all my excitement must have given me the courage to invite him to join us. Because at that point in my life, I was never that brave.
I am pretty sure I died a little inside when Tyler said he would go. Though we were just friends and I had a crush on someone else who I thought I had more of a chance with, I couldn’t believe Tyler said he would go. I think he said something about his mom not wanting him to go at first. But he told his mom he was eighteen and had already signed up for the army. He was going to go to the concert.
Mental break in writing because looking back and experiencing these emotions as a thirty-six-year-old (well, thirty- seven since I took a year break) is almost as unnerving as it was when I was fifteen. I am nervous about how my husband is going to react to reading my post because he reads everything I write. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to hold back. I have a hard enough time remembering what I did at the beginning of the week. I just hope I don’t mix up things from twenty years ago.
The concert wasn’t until the beginning of May, which meant it was a few weeks away, and for a fifteen-year-old, it felt like an eternity.
We texted along the way to the concert. Trying to figure out where to meet. My family friend, Joy, thought everything happening between us was adorable. I told her to stop. We were just friends. Trying to remember events from twenty years ago is kind of a blur. I don’t remember him getting there or how long we waited for the first band, but I’ll never forget when the music started.
The first band was Jimmy Eat World, and to this day, they are still one of my absolute favorite bands. As they played through their album Bleed American I sang along to every word of every song. I remember feeling self conscious at first. Wondering if Tyler would think I was silly, but in the end, it didn’t matter. The music took over, and I was there to have a good time. If this boy I liked thought I was silly, so be it. If he was going to like me, it would have to be for me being me, not a pretend version of myself.
As the last chord of The Middle played, I was a ball of energy. We were waiting for Blink 182 to come on. I need to pee and find food. Nothing has changed in my concert going habits in twenty years. I beelined it to the bathroom and picked up a sweet corn arepa on my way back to our spot on the lawn. However, Tyler had made his way a little closer than where we were for Jimmy Eat World.
Blink 182 started with Travis spinning in on his drum set above the crowd. I guess Tyler knew more of Blink’s song because this time he sang along with me. High-speed music coursed through me. At some point, I must have mentioned that I was having trouble seeing because he ended up picking me up, and I watched most of the show like a koala on his back. Then Adam’s Song came on. If you haven’t heard that song, I highly suggest it. It’s a slow, powerful song about a friend who commits suicide. I remember his thumb running against my forearm.
The rest of the concert was a blur. I barely remember Green Day. I know they were good, and I enjoyed it, but I was still on a high from being a tiny koala. Eventually, the concert ended, and we all went home. I remember talking my head off to Joy about the music and how thankful I was that she took me. She asked if I was sure if I was just thankful for the concert and not anything else. I didn’t understand what she meant at the time.
After taking a shower and snuggling into the sheets, I got a text. It read. Thanks for inviting me. The next one said “I liked us.”
Only there wouldn’t be us until thirteen years later. Tyler went to the army and war. I lived my life. I finished high school, went to college, partied, traveled the world, had my heart broken, broke a few hearts myself. I even got married and moved to Brazil. I never expected a friend request from the boy at the rock show to change the course of my life. But I’m glad it did.
