My Kids

I’m sorry that I couldn’t give you what you needed. I don’t know think anyone could give all 27 of you what you needed, but there are people who could have done better. I should have been more open, more loving, known what the fuck I was doing and been able to give you all what you needed. But I didn’t know what I was doing, I was dropped among you, beaten down by the systems that beat you down. We were stuck together for a year, 30 people in a room, we carried our wounds and weights and we hurt each other with them. I tried to soak up that damage give space for that pain to be let out, but I wasn’t enough and I wasn’t willing to give myself to that cause. I wouldn’t let you see my own weight and wounds, wouldn’t confidently be myself. We grew new wounds from each other and our classroom was no longer able to be the place of safety you needed. You were all alone. I was supposed to be there for you, be someone unabashedly there for you, your trusted friend and mentor. And then I was supposed to leave you after a year. I couldn’t do that. Couldn’t bear to be there and then gone like that, maybe it was the grief, or my own emotional bullshit, or just weakness. So I held back, kept a distance, only offered academic support and intelectual emotional support. Then when one of you would let a desprate crawling need show I would then call up something in a hopeless response to try to ease that pain. But there was nothing I, the emotionally distant asshole, could give you, I only sat there in your pain, got further beaten down by it. I tried, I worked, and maybe I helped, but I wasn’t enough. But I never could be, nothing I could have done would have been enough, as much as I want to hate myself for my fuck ups and failures throughout that year, they were as meaningless as my better moments against the vastness of the shittiness of what you have to deal with. You shouldn’t have to deal with what you have to. You shouldn’t be stuck in a class of 27 students. You should have a better teacher with more patience and a better grasp of what he was doing. You should have more councilors and social workers and administrators, working to help you deal with all the shit you shouldn’t have to deal with. You should have parents who aren’t as run down, beaten down, over worked, underpayed, and under loved. You shouldn’t have to be told that your dad died from taking too much sleep medicine because he over dosed. You should be able to get help for your emotional issues even if they only disrupt your learning and not the learning of the whole class. You should have a better cafeteria and better school lunches. You should have some one other than an idiot in a red jacket for a year to cling to for love.

But here we are, you don't have what you need or what you deserve, and I couldn’t give you anything resembling a replacement for any of it and I have to just live with that. I have to move on, because I can’t go back, can’t try to fix a little bit of the mountain of unfixable problems. I have to try to honor your suffering by working to improve systems that won’t improve. I have to do all that knowing that you don’t get to. You’re stuck there for another year, for more wounds and more weight to be given to you. You will stay there being beaten down constantly, and I just have to hope that you’ll have someone better next year. Someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing, can give you something, can help.

So I’m sorry, sorry for everything you have to deal with, sorry for all of my mistakes, sorry for everything. I hope you can forgive me. I hope you can survive these years. I hope you can stay strong, stay kind and keep some joy alive inside you. Because all I can do right now is hope.