This summer started out as a combination of my childhood, freshman year, and all of my mothers worse nightmares. Going to Walmart is a night out on the town, dorm life, lucky charms, pizza, sack lunches, and a truck drives around every morning spraying for bugs. This was my life during Teach for America training in Cleveland, Mississipi. There were several factors that distinquished this experience fromt hat of my childhood. The first being that I was surrounded by some of the most visionary and driven people. The second being that the stakes were high and I had a responsibility to the children I was and would be teaching, to help change their trajectory. This mean little to no sleep, little to no appetite, and little to no freetime. There was little time or energy to write about the day to day emotional struggles that I faced during these two weeks, but these two weeks were life changing. They broke me down and forced me to make a decision that had been long overdue. During these weeks I hit rock bottom.
Sometimes it takes rock bottom to show you what you have been blind to. I hit rock bottom. Rock bottom was somewhere between crying myself to sleep and feeling that everything I'd worked so hard for made no sense for my life anymore. Rock bottom was quitting an opportunity of a lifetime because I was not prepared. Rock bottom was sorrow, pain, isolation, and hopelessness.
How did I get here? The girl that smiles 90% of the time and always chats joyfully. The girl who has a million and one people who love her. It didn't happen overnight, but the interesting fact is that it was revealed in a night. The revelation being simple, fear and insecurity had taken over the parts of me that had in the past shown so brightly. They had reduced me to a sad and confused young lady.
Fear is one of those tricky oxymoron's that is hard to navigate. Fear keeps us from running out in front of cars, drinking and driving, stripping down naked and running around in the rain (ok maybe this one would be ok every once in a while), and laying in bed everyday during those times when life pulls us downwards. Conversely, fear also keeps us from realizing our potential- fear is the voice in our head that says we will fail. Fear is the feeling that because one bad thing happened that nothing good will ever happen again. Fear cripples us, but fear can also drive us.
I had allowed the fears of the past two years to infest my mind and body. I was crippled by the haunting fact that maybe I couldn't change things, maybe I was as powerless as I had so often felt as a social worker or in my most of my personal relationships. Self awareness had granted me knowledge of this fear all along, but I was panicked and didn't know how to do anything positive with the knowledge. I instead escaped the fears by what I thought was a positive change, a new city and a new career. I'd still get to help the children that tugged at my heart so dearly, but I would be able to run from the past.
After several sleepless nights and the realization that I was incredibly per-occupied and therefore severely ineffective with my third graders, I broke down. I stopped doing my lesson plans and told myself I had two days to determine what I could do to fix the problem. For the first time in two straight weeks I ate a full meal, slept a full night, and went for a long run. I then tried to work on my lesson plans again, but the crippling fear overwhelmed my body and I knew that I had made a mistake. I knew that I wasn't in a place to help those of our society being held back because I needed to break free of my own chains. I told myself for the first time in a long time, that I could take care of myself and only myself. I wrote the hardest letter of my life, I developed a plan so that I would not end up homeless and unemployed myself, and I packed my bags.
I left at 9pm and drove 10 straight hours through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. It was the most revolutionary journey of my life. I could feel the history and the stories of these roads. The stories of the people of the deep south, plagued by oppression and poverty, yet also filled with kind and good hearted people. It was as if the roads, in the darkness of the most isolated parts, were speaking to me. They were reassuring me that I would be ok, just as they had survived their histories. The roads also spoke a different tune. A tune of passion and controversy. They spoke of the people who constantly fought the odds, and they reminded me that I should never loose the fire that set me along the path I had led. They showed me that I must learn to balance the fire with kindness and never forget about or give up on myself. Around Atlanta, I felt I was home, and had nothing left to learn from the roads. At this point I almost fell asleep at a rest area, but I pushed on through the last leg, home to my beloved Athens and I slept for 12 hours through the day and woke up ready to face my next chapter.
If there is a song that sums up this chapter of my life, it would have to Imogen Heap's "Speeding Cars".
