Welcome to the Black Parade
As I walked in the double doors of The Middle school I volunteer at, I was overcome by a swarm of pre-pubescent bodies crashing into mine for a group hug. "What an entrance!", a colleague of mine says from behind the podium at the front of the crowded cafeteria. However cheerful this welcome was, my mind was focused on locating one 8th grader in particular. It was dinner time and I knew that she should be in line with the rest of her friends, but she was nowhere to be found. Puzzled as to why I couldn't find her, I walked up to one of her friends and asked "where's Abby?" Her friend Lucy pointed one of her fingers towards to girls restroom and said that Abby had gone in there about 10 minutes ago.
I immediately went to her.
My mind was spinning with memories of last spring when a couple of other mentors and I discovered that she had been self-harming and having a lot of issues at home.
As I entered the small dark bathroom I was hit with a wall of pain, empathy, and flashbacks to my time spent curled up in the bathroom of my middle school.
I could see her through the bottom of the stall crouched in the corner knees tucked up to her chin. Hood up. Earbuds in. Music loud. World on mute.
I knew this position all too well. Something was wrong. She needed me to comfort her, to be there for her, to make her know that I wasn't going to leave.
I sat on the cold floor of the bathroom, mirroring her position. Only the door of the stall separating us. I gently placed my hand on the floor next to her underneath the door to let her know I was there. She lowered one of her sweatshirt covered palms to rest on top of mine. We sat like that for a while. I listened to the beating of my heart competing with the pace of the punk-rock song blearing through her earbuds.
The click of the lock disengaging and the creaking of the stall door as it slowly opened pulled me from my trance. Abby slowly scooted out of the stall to the position next to me and rested her head on my shoulder. She removed her earbuds one by one and lifted her head up and turned to me with red, puffy eyes. It was then, that she began to tell me everything that had happened since I last saw her.
She had gotten a pretty bad kidney infection due to the fact that she wouldn't use the bathroom at school because they are rarely cleaned. She had been in and out of the hospital ever since August.
When her estranged father found out about the infection he accused her mom of neglecting their children and threatened to take Abby and her little sister Kayla away to California to live with him. This made Abby upset because she felt like it was her fault that her parents were fighting and that they might have to move. She told me that her mother wasn't a bad mom, she just had a lot to focus on and didn't always have time to make sure that Abby and Kayla were doing okay.
I assured Abby that nothing that was going on between her parents was her fault, but I knew where she was coming from. I knew just how hard it was to feel like the wedge that is splitting your family apart; each breath you take widens the gap forming within your family. I tried my best to make her understand that she shouldn't blame herself but I know what its like to have a closet full of demons constantly whispering doubts into your mind.
She asked me what subject I was teaching her this semester and I told her it was high school placement. She just looked at me with an empty stare and said, "oh, I'm not going to any of those schools anyway". The teacher came out in me immediately and began to encourage her to at least apply and telling her that I will be there every step of the way to guide her and help in any way that I can.
She didn't seem convinced.
Who was I to blame her? I knew that she had other things to focus on at home. I knew that applying to high school seemed like an unnecessary step in the grand scheme of things with every aspect of her life being to uncertain. I then asked myself, what I did to get through similar hardships when I was her age.
When things got tough at home, I put my headphones in, put the world away, and matched the rhythm of the song to the rhythm of my heart. That calmed me down. I told myself that things might not be okay yet but I was going to pick myself up and carry on because there was no other option. I had to be my own superhero.
I didn't want her to feel like I did: like she was alone.
I looked her dead in the eyes and told her that I was on this ride buckled in right beside her. I said that we would get through this together, no matter what.
"It's all too much...I don't think I can make it" she looked to me with eyes beginning to glaze over.
"When things get tough we'll carry on", I told her as I handed her one of my headphones, "like the beat of the drums in a marching band, we'll carry on.
We sat in silence, letting the rhythm wash away the pain. Her head on my shoulder, both of our hearts beating in time with the music ringing in our ears.
I wrote this for one of my classes at Uni this semester. It’s dark and poignant, but I like it.
What do you all think? Should I publish more of my reflective writings here?
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
