I've been fortunate enough to be able to pay my experience forward already. I'm 23, and far from stepping foot into a class room with a degree and claiming it with my last name. But I have been gifted with opportunities to mentor and guide kids who are walking in my teenage tracks. Sometimes, I think about where I am and where I've stopped and gotten tangled in messed up situations and forgotten about my direction and I wonder ...when it was I lost the opportunity to have a me for myself....
Last year, I was working with a juvenile home through a non profit. My brother and his work partner had just launched this program and my job was to be the middle man. Rebellious students don't like authority ( trust me, I've been one of them) and usually, it takes more than motivation and belief to get them to apply themselves. So that was my job; cut the authority down the middle, come in unshaven, baggy sweats, looking all sorts of 'me' and find a common ground. Every Tuesday, we'd drive 45 minutes into the heart of the economic battle ground in Michigan and spend a few hours talking with teens. Helping them express their hard knocks and regain their voices from the shadows of society.
The experience was eye opening. Even coming from my background, I wasn't used to working with individuals who have been tossed from foster home to foster home, who have been stabbed by their dads or who have stabbed their dads, who have been raped or who have raped... it was a very different approach to empathy than I've ever had to attempt. But I did. And from what I'm told, I did a good job.
The irony of this is that through all of it... I was spiraling further and further towards my own destruction than most of these kids were. These kids had a legal structure they had to abide by for the most part; they had to go to school (court ordered), come to this after school program (court ordered) and stay home (court ordered). While I... didn't. I had my classes I could choose to go to or not, I had my friends I could go get high with, I had my own car, my own free will, and my own crazy personal life aside from it all. And when I'd go to teach these kids, both at the juvenile home and at my college ( I was a TA for this acting class)... I was completely fucked up. Had no pupils. Had dry mouth. Stumbling around with them as they practice their pieces... and I'm supposed to be their damn role model. I'm supposed to be the one encouraging them and guiding them to enlightenment while I just try maintain consciousness and not nod out in front of the class.
Through all of it, I somehow reached some of them though. I taught some kids how their syntax was similar to T.S Elliot, taught some kids how to do unconventional slant rhymes, and taught others- who could barely read at a 2nd grade level- to memorize their poems. All the while... I had no one teaching me how to be a better me or pushing me to see the bigger picture. I had enablers. I had myself. And I had an ego.
I look back at that experience and the capability I now know I posses and wonder how I helped any of those kids find their amazingness while I was so fucking lost. How did I stop my horrible insides from perspiring and effecting these people negatively? Did anything I did actually resonate, especially if I was being hypocritical the entire time? Are any of them better off now that they've received my helping hand? Or did my mask show itself through it all... and show them that being a complete wreck is just life and even the ones you believe in are tumbling out of control in their own way....
Some days, I miss having that guidance. I miss having someone to check me on my actions and correct me and show me where I'm not doing as good as I could be. Maybe I've just evolved into my own teacher. Maybe I'm teaching myself now, and now I'm my own student learning from my own mistakes and actions. But I can't help but think I'm still spiraling sometimes. I haven't experienced everything. I haven't lived long enough to know what life is truly about. I dont have all the answers... I dont really have any answers.
How do the most troubled individuals concoct such beautiful lessons and at the same time, still be slipping on identical problems to those very lessons themselves?
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