There was no plan.

As one of the many students being pushed through the public school system in 2017, there was only graduation. Our ticket to freedom. I didn’t take my SAT. I didn’t apply to colleges. I had nothing in my head except the burnout I was feeling. High school counselors didn’t bother me with my future plans; they only made sure I was on track to earn my endorsement (to this day, I still have no clue what that even means). Talk of my plans after high school were of no interest to them and of even less interest to me.

Senior year rolled around, and my counselors finally pulled me in to let me know that I really needed to take my SAT. They told me, “It’s likely going to be too late to apply to colleges for the Fall 2018 semester”. I would’ve had to have my scores by like October or something, and at this point, it was March. I didn’t really mind, but I knew the SAT was necessary because someone, somewhere, decided it’s necessary, even though high school does not- in any way- prepare you for it. I scheduled it, paid for it, didn't study… then took it. Bombed it. 1070. Who would be impressed by that? I didn’t know. I didn’t give a shit.

Despite the indifference I felt toward the SAT and college, a personal mission of mine was to always be agreeable, mostly responsible, and on top of my work when I was in school. I never got in trouble. Never talked back to a teacher. Never disrupted a class. Never skipped. Did everything in my power to get A’s and B’s. Kept my GPA up. I made sure I was someone that the principal never had to call home about, throughout my entire grade school career.

I finally got to senior season and did all the fun stuff: senior breakfast, senior parade, graduation practice (Texas heat actually makes that not fun); all the things you do to celebrate finishing the thing the state mandates of you. I listened to all the speeches by the smart kids who already knew where they were going to college and admitted it with such pride, because they had their lives figured out (or someone else had it figured out for them).

I walked the stage. I got my diploma. I’m out.

I will admit, there was a time during my senior year where I thought, “I like art. Teaching elementary school art could be fun”. With this realization, three problems came to mind; one, I stopped taking art classes after my freshman year to do other nerdy stuff; two, you don’t exactly need to be Picasso to teach elementary babies to glue pom-poms to construction paper or trace a hand turkey; three–and perhaps the most troublesome of all–I had extremely limited experience dealing with small children, and next to no interest in developing the skills necessary to handle them. Even at twenty-four, when my sister asks, “Can you watch your niece/nephew while I shower?”, my first question is, “For how long?”. Guessing games are not my forte, so I am woefully unqualified to watch kids that cry for a multitude of reasons, ranging from hunger to being tired to being bored.

Senior year, though, I had honed a passion that I had left untouched since middle school:

I liked to write.

In eighth grade, I would dabble in storytelling, and share my works with friends and even sometimes my teachers. Of course, at the time, I unknowingly sucked at it. But I didn’t mind. I liked doing it, talented or not.

When high school hit, I paused writing stories for a while and started documenting my feelings instead. No, I didn’t keep a diary; I wrote on scratch notebook paper that I kept all together. It was the only way a dorky kid with no friends could make sense of everything she was thinking and feeling. When you don’t have friends to talk to, write it down, I always thought.

I took English Four with a teacher I wish I remembered the name of, because I enjoyed her class like no other class before. We read classic literature, like Frankenstein and Beowulf (both a little graphic), Slaughterhouse Five (aliens, really?) and Julius Caesar (that one was pretty cool- who doesn’t like occasional anarchy?). We got to explore our identities as writers by writing about those texts, writing research papers about whatever topic we wanted, or doing little random creative assignments here and there. I had always been good at English classes, but that class was where my interest really piqued.

There was one assignment that we did: a character sketch. I don’t mean drawing because, as previously mentioned, I quit art like three years prior. We were challenged to write a short, one-paragraph essay with as many details as possible trying to help the reader see the character visually. I asked–and this was the defining point that told me that I was a writer–if I could make it up. And this poor, poor teacher said yes…

unknowingly agreeing to read a four-page story.

When she wanted one paragraph.

The story was about a person I had conjured up who was at least half real (someone I knew at the time). I took this assignment, and, well, ran just seems like an understatement. I turned this assignment into my own personal getaway car. I took off with it. Writing it was one of the most fulfilling and enjoyable things I had done at the time. Looking back on the story now, there were certainly a lot of cringey things I would change. That being said, I didn’t have as much practice as I do now. But I edited and edited and edited, and finally felt–mostly–happy with my work.

You can guess what happened. As I enjoyed this assignment more than anyone else and treated it like my own personal creative writing club rather than an assignment for a checkbox grade… she read it to the class. My class, while I was present, and to her fellow English Four teachers. I did feel honored (even though she read it in the most monotone voice ever, to the bereavement of myself and my classmates).

Despite the embarrassment, I knew from that assignment that writing was a passion that I had let lie dormant for much too long. I was so focused, from the end of middle school to that point, on finding out who I was by processing my emotions as they happened, that I never stopped to recognize that my identity was in my writing. So, with that in mind, I thought, maybe I should teach writing.

That didn’t start right away. I spent about six months post-senior-year not sure where I wanted to go or absolutely sure that teaching was what I wanted to do. Eventually, I got sick of working fast food, living at home at nineteen, and slinging chicken at 7.25 an hour for sixty-plus hours a week with no goals in mind. I decided then that was the last time I would let myself land at my next-step without another next-step in mind.

I finally went to school, got my bachelor’s in English and my master’s in Education- specifically, Curriculum and Instruction (both from A&M, because gig ’em forever).

This sounds, so far, as if it will be some big success story. After all, I am the perfect archetype. The directionless good kid who kept their head down, didn’t really have future plans, and eventually went on to get their education and their dream job.

One thing that you learn from a young age, and about the only thing that really sticks with you all that time, is that age-old adage: “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”. We grow up with the unchallenged preconception that the only way to enjoy your life is by doing exactly what you dream of doing. You will only be happy if you publish that book, open your art gallery, make that professional sports team, sell out arenas with your singing voice or your comedy, become a rockstar or a five star chef, make millions of dollars, etc. “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”, right?

We continue on with these beliefs like the work seriously, truly does stop once we’ve made it, because that’s how a dream works. But do you wanna know how else a dream works?

By waking you up eventually.

Popstars spend hours upon hours writing, rehearsing, perfecting what their label tells them will sell, running themselves into the ground with exhaustion. Athletes spend hours upon hours practicing, perfecting, eating mostly what is good for them, running their bodies into the ground with exhaustion at the risk of a career-ending injury. Artists spend hours upon hours painting, sculpting, perfecting, trying to sell their work or at least get it out there, only to risk losing the interest and money of the art world to that simple painting of a green dot in the middle of an otherwise blank canvas. Teachers spend hours upon hours grading, making lesson plans, planning intervention, only to receive unlivable wages, immense student apathy, the risk of a shooting, and the occasional “Popcorn Friday” from administration as a, we see you, we appreciate you- rather than a raise.

I am, in no way, saying that pursuing your dreams never turns out to be worth it. Of course that is not true. When the results of your passion yield, of course there’s room for celebration. You made a platinum song? Celebrate. You published that book? Celebrate. Your sports team won a championship? Celebrate. You got a troubled student to trust you and do what it took to graduate? For-freaking-sure, celebrate!

This does not mean, though, that the work stops, or that every labor will bear fruit. Not everything you dream of will happen because you got your dream job.

There is still pain.

There is still sacrifice.

There is still hardship.

There is still failure.

There is still work to be done.

And that is something I wish I would have known before finding myself doing what I thought was my dream.

I have watched, over the past two-and-a-half years of my career, a truly broken system let a lot of fruit wither and rot. I have watched students spend hours glued to their phones watching these random people on social media tell them that there’s no consequences for their actions. I have watched teachers work tirelessly by the soft light of their lamp at their desk grading papers well into the night for the grading period deadline. I’ve watched kids from broken homes bring their parent-taught behavior to school by causing mayhem in the halls. I have watched teachers with daily checklists that only grow longer with every 504 meeting, assignment to grade, district-wide training, teacher feedback form, and lesson plan that needs to be done. I have watched students put hands on each other at the slightest inconvenience or misspoken word. I have watched teachers get berated by their students, told that their jobs are meaningless and their career choice is a waste because the students have been taught that they’re far superior when they made a viral TikTok. I have watched desks being thrown across the room, classrooms trashed, and items stolen by students who have no respect for others. I have listened to countless speeches about being sure to track use of accommodations in case someone’s parent decides to sue the district because you forgot to provide a blank graphic organizer for your student to take notes on during a lesson. I have witnessed not one, but two professional educators–one new to the profession, one that has been teaching for a long time–cry their eyes out within 24 hours of each other because they felt uncared for and unsupported by administration. I have watched as parents have bullied teachers and administrators alike into submission when their kid didn’t receive a “fair” grade, even though they didn’t do the work that the other kids did. I have watched pregnant teachers lose their babies because that one kid got angry over doing work and punched her in the stomach. I watched a principal lose her eyeball because an irate student turned her face into target practice.

Worst of all, I have watched countless students who shouldn’t have made it past middle school get ushered across the stage at graduation, even though they’re completely unprepared for adulthood.

And the U.S. Does. Nothing. But blame the teachers, because, “It’s a skill issue”.

You’re absolutely right. It is a skill issue. A parenting skill issue. An administrative budgeting skill issue. An educational structuring skill issue. A, “How the hell do we fix the Sephora tween?” issue.

But what do us teachers know about children, their short-sighted tendencies, and their educational deficits? After all, we only spent thousands of dollars on our content/education degree(s), hundreds more on state exams and certifications, and have years of experience in the field. Of course, none of that is enough for us to have some semblance of an idea as to what we're talking about when we say, “Something’s very wrong.”

If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

That phrase now leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth, and a hollow place in my heart. It also means nothing to the educators making a mass exodus. We all love the “aha” moment that lights up in a child’s eyes, and guiding struggling students toward success. There’s no question about that. But the damning effects of the abysmal salary, the gentle-parenters, the apathetic, undisciplined children, and the lack of support from administration have left us with an ultimatum: leave, or run our mental and physical well-being into the ground as we struggle to support ourselves and our families.

And if the situation gets any more volatile…

there won’t be much of a choice.

I make peace with death in waves. In a call missed, in the shaky rattled tone of another impermanent’s voice clothed in fear, in the leather-tightened and knotted hands of a mother greater than you and I.

These waves have crashed again, and again, and again since you’ve been gone.

A heightened heartbeat thumps loudly in my sweltered hot ears while a knot in my throat sits just above my heart, shallowing my breath, allowing scarce space for my own life to continue.

It’s heavy. Somehow the drumming rings so tall, yet the cavernous depths trench throughout my sternum, the pain so deep it’s disgusting. A sickeningly cruel joke to have been able to love someone so deeply at all.

I spend many moments remembering your voice as clear as a light blue summer sky. Your favorite color was blue and you always told me not to stare at the sun, it would burn my eyes and turn me blind. I can hear the smirk at the end of each word when you answered the phone, the tone of true love when you sang about the bunnies and you giggled, bumping us on the head.

Mamma, you haven’t answered that phone in a very long time.

I suppose you leaving prepared me for all the different ways they would leave, too. Nothing could ever feel the same.

The air is silent and unwavering, while a buzz substitutes its normal liquid movements around all of the material entities that are tossed about the yard. It’s our HVAC unit reminding us we have finally received the so-longed for heat of summer.

In the farthest corners of my vision, this little man stalks his prey. His movements are calculated, shoulder blades tucked in and low to the ground making a visual slow rumble with each step, articulated and soft. He snatches a small bug, chomping through the intermittently shining life that symbolized dusk.

He has made his way through another long day of hunt and play, and now it is time to rest. His slender body lays flat against the still dew ridden ground. Weeks of rainy spring time unrest soaked through the shallowest layers of the earth, helping cool his belly from this long awaited sun.

His fur is as black as the void, but in the summer light you can see the tawny undertones, representing his many ancestors of perfect predators before him. He revels, proud of his simple accomplishments of the day, and for a moment, I too find myself able to kick back and appreciate the similar opportunities that can be so easily taken for granted.

hearts are born broken

swiss cheese organs

full of wholes

life fills the crevices

knits the beating pulp

or tears it further asunder

toss the die

either way you lose

snake eyes empty vessels

As the tour guide paused to give historical details to her group, she ran her hand along the old wall.

A sense of deja vu hit her vividly, powerfully.

All at once she was laughing, running hand-in-hand with her love along the moonlit cobblestone alley. The night air was warm and fragrant with jasmine blossoms. He breathlessly twirled her around to face him. They did not have much time tonight, but it was all either of them had been living for. Her hands went to his head, fingers grasping his thick, wavy hair as they shared kisses that tasted faintly of berries and chocolate. He fumbled beneath her long skirt for a moment until her cheeks were cradled in his hands. He lifted her purposefully to him and she wrapped her legs around his waist. She felt the stone wall against her back while a much more welcome and heated hardness pressed into her eagerly. His sounds of pleasure were muted as he buried his face into her collarbone exposed by her disheveled peasant blouse—

“Signorina, stai bene?”

The tour guide's concerned query brought her back to the present. She had been slumped against the wall with her eyes closed and she was moaning. The other members of her group were gathered around saying she must have fainted from the heat. One stranger fanned her with a magazine. Another offered her a bottle of water.

“No, no I'm fine.” She embarrassedly waved away their assistance.

As the tour moved on, she quickly fished a pen out of her fanny pack and made a notation on her map. She needed to do research and learn everything she could about the history of this place and the apparent connection to her distant past.

If i was a suicide note

Youd be the pen

If i was a last text

Youd hit the send

If i was skinnier maybe youd see me then

If i was a river

You'd be a dam

Id flow right over into your hands

Why is it true youre all i want again

If i was a shadow

youd be the light

If i went to heaven

Youd be the flight

If i turned my back, im sure youd have the knife

You might see me

But you dont need me

Feed me

Like youre the air that i breathe

I wanna love you,

but idk how to

Found you

But youre not the you that i know

My time has finally come to tell you that I no longer love you. I need to set you free. I can do so much better without you. This is so true, you ruined my dreams. You shattered my soul. I know because I allowed you. All because you're selfish and kept your life a secret for somebody else, so I'm walking away from it all today, a brand new person is here to stay this time. There will be nothing you can say because I really should have said Good-bye like yesterday. But once again I stayed praying, you would change, instead I just endured another one of your games. I'm no longer a player in your crazy masquerade. I will never look back again. Because the road I'm walking on never ends. Pain and heartache is all you've ever caused and too many times I allowed you to ruin me and I can no longer allow this to continue, this has to end today.

I've submitted my first manuscript to an anonymous critic today. Stonzi and I are nervous. I went ahead and even rewrote the beginning and added a prologue, and I'm so excited but heavily nervous at the same time because I'm afraid it'll miss the mark. I spent HOURS editing this story, once for coherency, and again to change the format from third omni to a first person POV with third person chapters for outside occurrences relevant to the story's movement.

Wish me luck.

If you'd like to query to also read the submitted works, please reach out via Messages.

I discount

My body

Because

It remembers

My trauma

My mind

However

Prefers

To forget

In forgetting

I dishonor

Myself

My journey

My future

My past

My loved ones

In forgetting

I allow

The trauma

To build

Upon itself

A cycle

Which brings me

To my knees

Time

And again

On my knees

I’m not praying

Or am I

In my sad, sick way

On my knees

Am I begging

To be taken

Forgiven

Put down

Or helped up

On my knees

Am I crying out

To be seen

Heard

Or ignored

On my knees

Is it the prelude

To finding myself

On my back

Or standing up

My body remembers.

My trauma

Lives there.

When I ignore it

I grant

My pain

Wings

Sadness

Despair

They fly

Into my mind

Dampening

My spirit

Dimming

My light

Shadowing

My soul

Each time

I discount

My body

My body count

Increases

The weight of that

Paralyzes me at times

When I don’t move

My body

The pain stagnates

Then metastasizes

My inability

To move

In healthy ways

Climaxes

So

In those moments

I’ve begun to whisper

Move

Just move

I must

Learn

To count

On my body

Trust

The openness

Of my heart

Move

Into

My own way

Tenderness does not dissolve.

A decade ago I told you I would stay. I would wait. I would come if you called, and no one could ever replace you.

I've said those same words a dozen times by now. But I never meant it like I do now. Like I feel them.

A tugging ache in my chest; a tether or a string humming from the roots of my hair to the skin of my teeth.

I look too quickly to the side and I am flash banged by your smile.

I haven't seen it in years. But I know it, bone deep like a sun burn.

You told me a decade ago you didn't want me to waste my life waiting.

Oh, but how is it a waste when it's you?

When I was made to love you, and to be the very thing you hated, too?

No, tenderness does not dissolve. It consumes itself until it is a hundred times the size.

And I hold it, like I'll hold you should you ever come back.

Bloodied, beaten and bruised, I would use my last breath to ask to hold you.

For I haven't earned the right, but I should like to try.