_.png)
Like many others, reflecting back on my university years fills my body with a sense of nostalgia and melancholy. Those were the years of ‘finding myself.’ The promise of endless possibilities. Of long nights and waking up in a twin bed with that sense of knowing worry. Of swallowing little ovals and fast-forwarding through 18 hours in the library, at the same table, eating nothing but an orange, fingers finding words to fill pages of theory and opinion and research.
Throughout those four years at university I’d sign up to take workshops again and again with one professor in particular. Creative Writing 101. Short Story Narrative. Personal Essay. Creative Nonfiction. Those writing classes were a sigh of relief. An interruption from the persona which I had groomed and coaxed myself to squeeze into. Where I could unzip the smothering outfit I’d become accustomed to wearing in front of my parents and fellow classmates. In that small gray room my pen was free to tell the things I’d never be able to. It was a place where I didn’t have to worry whether my snooping mother would read my inner mind or if I’d be judged for who I was. It was a world where my thoughts mattered. A world where I could be anyone: a writer even.
Each class our professor unearthed a printed essay from her satchel and circled the small room, her petite body leaning on the occasional desk for support. I felt shy around her, nervous to be taken so seriously by an adult, embarrassed by her approval of my work. Over the years I’d be captivated by the sound of her voice. Steady and soft, a slight lisp which she had learned to disguise and skillfully cross over, like a bridge made of rope and driftwood. I, too, grew up with rocks in my mouth, and so I imagined her as a young girl like me, hating herself for the sound, avoiding letting out any words with ‘sh’ or ‘th’ sounds. Of all the pieces she’d read to us about her personal life, she never mentioned the impediment. Yet, during those moments at the beginning of class, her voice soothing and unwavering as she spoke about abuse and death and pain, I’d slip into daydreams of my own future. My stomach pressed into the wooden writing slate, back vertical in the air, pen carving lines into a notebook painted with cheap black nail polish.
During one class she read us a short narrative about a woman who had been raped as an adolescent. A woman who, many years later, would return to that spot with her husband, lie face-down in the dirt, and show him the exact scene where a piece of her was stolen. A piece of her that neither of them would find. A hard pit formed in my throat. I wanted to pull and pull and pull it out of me, like snaking a clump of long, dark hair from a shower drain. But it wouldn't loosen. I blinked away the unwelcome images that slipped into my consciousness. Funneled them back to the closed files where I kept them and shut the drawer. Although I’ve never kept a tidy desk, I’ve worked diligently to organize this part of my mind with ship-shape cleanliness.
The assignment connected with her narrative was titled, ‘To the Edge.’ It prompted us to write about an obscure experience. A trauma. A secret. Something unresolved. A text that might nudge the reader to the brink of their comfort, force them to look down at the terrors within, and acquiesce. I avoided the assignment. Pushed it around and around in my mind until it was dirty and scuffed up. Eventually, hunched over our hand-me-down kitchen table, which had been ruined with perfectly round burn marks from a baking attempt, I’d peel open my laptop and string the words together. Arranging and rearranging them until they made sense. Slipping into that flow of writing where time bends and warps and the noise muffles into the background.
I hungered for the days in which our assignments would be returned to us, her comments scribbled in green ink along the margins. Our ‘To the Edge’ essays were distributed one by one across the desks, ensuring privacy. Some students volunteered to read theirs out loud and relished in the comforting assurance of attention to their wounds. That class, I would scan my own paper and find ‘come and see me during office hours’ written at the top of the essay, near the staple. I’d dislodge the thin ribbon of metal and press it into my thumb. I’d feel as if I’d been kicked in the stomach. I’d walk to her office door, hold my fist against the wood, then turn around and sneak out of the building. I’d sign up to write with her as my mentor, to which she would reply, ‘I would love to work with you.’ I’d stop returning her emails. I’d enroll in a teaching theory class instead. I’d wonder how my life might be different if I’d chosen to believe in my voice.
Now, on rare nights, after being alone in my apartment for too long, I’ll open the folder which contains those assignments. I’ll reread the guts of my early 20s. Most essays are saturated with angsty sorrow and doused with adverbs. Some are bold and witty. All of them reveal insights as to who I was at that time. Unsure. Hiding. Eager. Impressionable. I’ll feel proud to have created them. To have known them and shared them with one other pair of eyes. I’ll strive to bear that desperate vulnerability and hope in my grownup world.
It’s that process in writing which I crave and value the most. The adrenaline coursing through me, its visceral energy. The clarity that comes when typing and raw paragraphs take shape out of nowhere, as if they’d been hiding in the blank whiteness of the screen all along, waiting to be wiped clean into existence. How words cling to me every so often. How sometimes in the shower they reach up, needy and flighty, forcing me to tiptoe out of the bathroom and scribble them down before they run back to wherever it was they came from.
Teaching can be a thankless job. Educators often don’t see the change in their students. They’re not present when, years later, that student has an awakening. When suddenly those anecdotes, which had been tucked into the deepest folds of the mind, break through the synapses. Although the time has long since passed from their last interaction, it’s in these moments that a teacher’s job is fulfilled. If I could see her now, I'd thank her for treating me like a real adult. For telling me that my voice mattered, although she may have been the only one who thought so at the time. If I could see her again, I'd tell her that she made a difference. I’d tell her that I’m writing again.