I was originally going to write about the irony that, despite the fact that I've figured a way to carve out enough time to update my blog, I haven't worked consistently on any of my book projects lately.
Instead, I read an email. One of my former students--who had left for his LDS mission to Tallahassee a couple weeks ago--is returning home because of, if I'm reading the email correctly, serious thoughts about suicide.
As I mentioned before, suicide is thematic in a lot of the world's literature.* In my course, we'll be talking about Inferno (as mentioned), Hamlet (he contemplates suicide--Ophelia may or may not have killed herself), Les Miserables (Javert), Things Fall Apart (Okonkwo), All Quiet on the Western Front (Paul...maybe), and Maus (Anja Spiegelman). It haunts us, it worries us, and the way we think about it has changed over the years. It doesn't go away, however, no matter how much we talk about it--or ignore it or stigmatize it or dismiss it or ridicule it.
I guess it's fitting that today is World Suicide Prevention Day that this comes up again. Maybe suicide can only be defeated when we refuse to set it aside?
I think, in this case, what has me most off balance is the concept of what I can--and should--do. I get to know my students fairly well, but there are opacities in their lives through which I can't see, inclinations and histories that they have no reason to share with their scrawny, 10th grade English/History teacher. I try to make an impact in their lives, 100 minutes a day, over the course of nine months. It's not a lot--more than some, much less than others--and I always worry that my worry over them is, at best, temporary and, at worst, hypocritical.
Because of how frequently and deeply I have depressive episodes, I don't wish that misery or sadness on anyone. For many students, they aren't "depressed" in the sense of a mental imbalance; they're going through puberty and reality is becoming more tangible. We live in a complicated, harsh world. It can be discouraging. As a teenager, I never really sought out teachers as mentors, guides, or role models--certainly not in a large, after-school, informal relationship kind of way. (The one teacher with whom I built something resembling a mentor-mentee relationship was arrested for pedophilia right after I graduated. I'm not really ready to talk about that.) Since I didn't tread that path, it's hard to know what's the right thing to do. I had one former teacher support me when Peter was in the hospital, but I only reached out to her because she was my landlady (long story). In other words, I didn't seek out those who had been part of my upbringing when I was hurting. So how am I supposed to reach out to support when I don't really know how this even works?
The worst case scenario is a worry that my pretended wisdom (gained from having an extra fifteen years on the kids I teach) will misdiagnose. If a student came to me today, worried about what her life would be like in the future, filled with doubts and misgivings about ever being loved, ever finding success, or in anyway battling the Hydra of depression, I would be anxious to assure her that she was in for immense joy on the way. "You'll grow out of it" would be the thesis, spoken or not.
But what if I'm lying?
If a teacher/mentor had looked me in the eye at fifteen and said, as this YouTuber has said (and I paraphrase), "Your sadness is a cloud, but you're the sun," I would likely think back to that moment and feel betrayed. Who's to say what I am? I, a returned missionary for the LDS Church, an organization that is built top to bottom on the concept of revealing who people really are in the world, get existential crises when I watch a cartoon. Cloud or sun--or cloudy son--I am made up of what depresses me. So if a teacher had tried to reassure me that my sadness would one day pass, I would feel an anxiousness about that advice.
Maybe that's why I'm slow to offer help, even to kids about whom I genuinely care: There are tendrils of conversations and relationships that creep forward through time. They are not always connected to the great moments of happiness--though those exist, too--and I would hate to be one who sowed the seeds of tendrils that would one day trip someone I cared about.
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* American literature, it seems, is interested in affairs, violence, or violent affairs. Think of basically anything by Steinbeck, or The Great Gatsby. There are other examples, but I'm not interested in dreaming them up.
Instead, I read an email. One of my former students--who had left for his LDS mission to Tallahassee a couple weeks ago--is returning home because of, if I'm reading the email correctly, serious thoughts about suicide.
As I mentioned before, suicide is thematic in a lot of the world's literature.* In my course, we'll be talking about Inferno (as mentioned), Hamlet (he contemplates suicide--Ophelia may or may not have killed herself), Les Miserables (Javert), Things Fall Apart (Okonkwo), All Quiet on the Western Front (Paul...maybe), and Maus (Anja Spiegelman). It haunts us, it worries us, and the way we think about it has changed over the years. It doesn't go away, however, no matter how much we talk about it--or ignore it or stigmatize it or dismiss it or ridicule it.
I guess it's fitting that today is World Suicide Prevention Day that this comes up again. Maybe suicide can only be defeated when we refuse to set it aside?
I think, in this case, what has me most off balance is the concept of what I can--and should--do. I get to know my students fairly well, but there are opacities in their lives through which I can't see, inclinations and histories that they have no reason to share with their scrawny, 10th grade English/History teacher. I try to make an impact in their lives, 100 minutes a day, over the course of nine months. It's not a lot--more than some, much less than others--and I always worry that my worry over them is, at best, temporary and, at worst, hypocritical.
Because of how frequently and deeply I have depressive episodes, I don't wish that misery or sadness on anyone. For many students, they aren't "depressed" in the sense of a mental imbalance; they're going through puberty and reality is becoming more tangible. We live in a complicated, harsh world. It can be discouraging. As a teenager, I never really sought out teachers as mentors, guides, or role models--certainly not in a large, after-school, informal relationship kind of way. (The one teacher with whom I built something resembling a mentor-mentee relationship was arrested for pedophilia right after I graduated. I'm not really ready to talk about that.) Since I didn't tread that path, it's hard to know what's the right thing to do. I had one former teacher support me when Peter was in the hospital, but I only reached out to her because she was my landlady (long story). In other words, I didn't seek out those who had been part of my upbringing when I was hurting. So how am I supposed to reach out to support when I don't really know how this even works?
The worst case scenario is a worry that my pretended wisdom (gained from having an extra fifteen years on the kids I teach) will misdiagnose. If a student came to me today, worried about what her life would be like in the future, filled with doubts and misgivings about ever being loved, ever finding success, or in anyway battling the Hydra of depression, I would be anxious to assure her that she was in for immense joy on the way. "You'll grow out of it" would be the thesis, spoken or not.
But what if I'm lying?
If a teacher/mentor had looked me in the eye at fifteen and said, as this YouTuber has said (and I paraphrase), "Your sadness is a cloud, but you're the sun," I would likely think back to that moment and feel betrayed. Who's to say what I am? I, a returned missionary for the LDS Church, an organization that is built top to bottom on the concept of revealing who people really are in the world, get existential crises when I watch a cartoon. Cloud or sun--or cloudy son--I am made up of what depresses me. So if a teacher had tried to reassure me that my sadness would one day pass, I would feel an anxiousness about that advice.
Maybe that's why I'm slow to offer help, even to kids about whom I genuinely care: There are tendrils of conversations and relationships that creep forward through time. They are not always connected to the great moments of happiness--though those exist, too--and I would hate to be one who sowed the seeds of tendrils that would one day trip someone I cared about.
---
* American literature, it seems, is interested in affairs, violence, or violent affairs. Think of basically anything by Steinbeck, or The Great Gatsby. There are other examples, but I'm not interested in dreaming them up.
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