Sometimes I go into The Mind Hole and obsessively hyperfocus on evidence of my existence as a child/teenager… to prove that I was real and Me and to try to figure out what was going on with me at that time. I’m always distrustful of my memory. Anyway, tonight is one of those times.
I found my short-lived Instagram from when I was 15. I was a freshman in high school. In almost all of the pictures on there, I’m completely expressionless. I look numb. The captions are written very differently than how I talk now. It’s clear that I was working very hard to create some sort of #aesthetic persona for myself. I was trying SO hard to be a girl, masking very hard, and emotionally checked out. When I look at the pictures, I barely register them as me.
I now have students who are about the same age as I was there. It’s crazy.
The whole reason I decided to go into teaching was to support kids like me in the way I was supported. But now I’m there, I have two transmasc students like myself, and I don’t trust myself to support them Correctly. I think I really need to spell out what I deserved but didn’t receive at that age in order to do that. Also, my autistic ass doesn’t know how to connect with people.
Everything is so much.
