I see you

in the reflection of the bus window
as I'm standing at a crossing

in the elevator of Russel Square Station
on the steel panel I am a
dancing shadow

opposite me
curving into the tunnel of
the tube
as I am blustering in the humidity
of a packed out train

You are always a surprise to me
I
forget
how much
we are alike

We are hurtling through the underground
and your face blurs into
film posters and faces of the
other people on the train.

Hip students with headphones and backpacks
Old couples with 'visiting the museum today' comfy shoes
Men in suits with laptops and ominous looking folders.

You pop back every so often in the glass.

Peeking at me.

Shadows and reflections reminding me that we are
in fact
one
person.


It is always unsettling
your resemblance is always uncanny

and I am always waiting for the realisation that
you and I belong

The man opposite stands up to exit the train and
I face you.
Alone.

We are both
Alone.

I am not quite sure how to approach you.

Instead, I take out my phone and I write you and me
a poem.

Hoping that maybe here
in this space

We come to be

us

Adrift

As you get older, your world becomes bigger.
I remember when I was younger I felt things with urgency. I never acted out because of this but when I felt something I was adamant in my feeling of it. When I was hurt, I felt it with every fibre of my being.

I am still like this now but I am able to make sense of things in a different way.

Your world is too small when you're young. There are so many lessons to learn and so many things to experience. And one of the hardest lessons is that people leave. People move on. It is inevitable.

If I look back to being in primary, I think that's one of the biggest lessons I learned without realising. That was the first time I was uprooted. I mean sure we moved houses when we young but it was nothing like realising that I wouldn't really see my primary friends again. I loved primary. I had an amazing time there. Whenever I think back to it I always think about how that was where I was happiest.

I'm thinking about this because I've just been scrolling through the twitter feeds of old friends. There are people who I haven't spoken to for 10 years. I haven't physically seen or spoken to them in 10 years. 10 years. These were people who I cared about deeply and now they have all moved on in their lives and I don't know who they are anymore. They are strangers. It makes me sad because I'm sitting here thinking about them and I wonder if they think of me?

Are we all just destined to make our friends only to move on from them?

I'm at a point in my life now where I have my uni friends, school friends and friends from various groups I belong to. But it is hard to keep track of everyone. And I don't have a person. I don't have that one person who is my closest, bestest bestest friend. I think this is what makes it worse. It makes me focus on everyone I'm not in contact with anymore.


So to all my primary friends, you guys were the best. I hope you are all swell and in great places. I send you love and warm wishes.

Love,

T

x

Last day of teaching...

So it was my final day today. I had P1 with year 10s and it wasn't terrible. They gave me a bunch of flowers at the end and a card which they had all signed. It was really sweet. My year 8s all told me sweet things before I left which was also nice. It was a good day.

I felt sick though throughout the day. It is always after the chaos that it hits. I feel like an avalanche of emotions is going to pummel me this summer.

In our group chat, someone said that we shouldn't underestimate what an amazing achievement this is and because I need to aim to be more kind to myself, I am trying to internalise this. I have achieved something great. In 9 months I have become a 'teacher' (although I don't actually get QTS for a month or two I think). Teaching is not for the faint-hearted. It is not a way out or an answer. It is hard work and you make the decision every day to carry on doing it. There are days when you can and days when you can't, days when you're numb and days when you're in between.

I have made it through. And that is no mean feat. Last September, I couldn't see me standing there at the front of a class and now I'm at the other side.

Hi-5 T!

You did it.

This is why we teach

I had my last lesson with my year 7s today. It was P6, after lunch. A lot of the girls were quite early and one of them walked in with her arms outstretched saying, "Misssssss". I stood there and I remember panicking, thinking "is she, oh crap, yeah, she's going to hug me". I stood there with my arms pinned to the side feeling incredibly awkward but also so moved and touched. A few of the other pupils hugged me too. As someone who doesn't instinctively hug, it really highlighted for me why I teach. It was a lovely moment. I know that they will forget me soon enough and I know that they'll move on, but in that moment where they realised that it was my last time teaching them, they were sincere in their sadness.

I have had a lot of tough lessons that I forget my good classes. I want to remember this. When times get hard T, remember that they're just kids. They are only ever kids.

They are complicated, troubled and messy but then so are you.

Today wasn't too bad.

What role are you playing?

I was thinking yesterday about roles and how we are all playing one or another.

It began because over this past year, I have developed the firm belief that becoming a teacher is acting out a particular persona. It is yet another role on the earthly stage of life. I have spoken before on my blog about how teaching = acting. But yesterday I realised that we are all playing different roles.

As a teacher, when I step in front of the pupils, they see me as a teacher. They see me as a dispenser of knowledge, a member of the school staff. They don't see me as a human being. Not straight away. My uncle is a doctor and it occurred to me that where I see him as a human, a family member, his patients see him as the person who is going to get them medically. If we saw people who we come across in our daily routines, as humans and not as the role that they are playing, then the world would stop. We'd accept that our food arrived late to our table because the chef was having a bad day. We wouldn't hate politicians as much because they are imperfect like us. We would not mind if that store does not have our size because the salesperson is having a hard time right now and can't afford to buy clothes. We would pay more for services because we would truly realise that the person who is providing the service needs to survive like we do. We would be empathetic and it would make us more understanding but I wonder, would things get done. Would we become too complacent? Does the pressure of fulfilling our roles just mean that we are collectively playing our part? Is this how we survive?

Part of me is realising that it is through these roles that we are productive. If pupils saw me as their equal, someone who was in pain like they are, they might find it harder to respect me as their teacher. It may seem narrow-minded but I think that throughout this year I have been trying to figure out a new persona for myself that is different from my usual 'nice' one. I can't be 'nice', 'understanding' and empathetic' all the time. Sometimes, I need to demand respect- or I will be forever trying to get kids to give in h/w and they will forever be giving me excuses. Empathy needs to come with expectation. I am not just me anymore. I am me the person and me the teacher.

As I write this, I realise how it is restrictive and draining. What if you don't like the role that you are playing? What if the role stops people from seeing who you are? Maybe kids need to see their teacher as human in order to respect them. It's a difficult question.

I have no answer for this- just pondering...

I'm not bitter- but I probably sound it.

Over the last few years, a significant number of my friends from secondary have married. It's confusing for a number of reasons.

Firstly- what on earth ?????????????????????????????????????

I am 22 right now. 22.

22.

I can't even contemplate being a full-time teacher and my classmates are making concrete life choices. One friend got married at around 17/18 and already has a kid. How do you get there?

How does a person get there? 

It becomes more complicated when I think about the people they were when we were 16. There was pain and angst- so much angst. 

We were so young. 

These girls are married now, settled, but just a few years ago they were confused and I was the one who had it together. I'm not saying that I don't have it together right now or that I begrudge them their happiness, but I would never have predicted that they would be married and having families now. Some of them never went to uni. They didn't follow a 'path' or have any direction for their lives and now they are starting one of the biggest journeys that could be embarked upon. 

Everytime that I get a message from someone now about an engagement, I am so pleased and genuinely overjoyed for them, but at the same time it terrifies me. I'm not bitter. I know I sound it, but I am not jealous. 

I am happy with the choices I have made this far. It just makes me think about how much we really cannot predict the future. I have absolutely no idea about how my life is going to pan out. There's this moment in Gilmore Girls where Rory is worrying about getting into college or getting a job (I can't remember which) and Lorelai tells her that she's had it easy so far, everything that she has wanted or gone for, she has gotten. That moment is so real for me. It made me think that I had always done well in school. Alhamdulillah! I know I worked hard but it is a terrifying thought to really come face to face with your own fallibility. It's the truth. And that is hard to internalise. For me, I think there is a part of me which thinks, I have pursued academia, and everything that I could have expected to get, I achieved- is this it now?

I imagine sometimes that I might bump into an old teacher and they'll ask what I'm up to. They'll probably be happy for me, excited but mostly, they will think I always knew that she'd be the one to become a teacher. I can't imagine me surprising anyone. But there will be the inevitable question- what is everyone else up to? And I know that this would be the point where I might say, so and so is married, so and so is engaged, so and so has a kid... Then comes the open mouthed what! wow MashaAllah.

What about you? When are you getting married?


(sigh)


It is hard to grow up when your head isn't moving at the same pace as time and biology.

It is worse when everyone else is growing up and maturing in a way other than getting their grades.

It's not enough anymore to be the 'good kid'.

It's not enough to be the 'one who was prefect and head girl'.

It's another ballpark altogether now-

and I am resisting but I can feel it starting to chafe. I know that a time is going to come when the new version of 'growing up' will be demanded of me and I am not ready. I don't know if I ever will be.

Gosh it sucks.

A year ago...

This time a year ago, things were tough. I had submitted my essays on May 1st and what followed was doubt, disbelief and pain. I remember that the theory of affect and the line 'things fall apart' kept running through my head like a song; I thought about them constantly. 

There was this emptiness. Just so much emptiness. 

I know that I was privileged compared to other graduates; I had a destination. I knew where I was going. But I kept thinking about everything that could go wrong. I spent a lot of time wallowing and I didn't tell anyone. To this day, I don't think I have ever told anyone how truly painful those few months were from May-September. It is only third year. It isn't the be all and end all of life but it feels like it. It feels like the world is splitting apart and you are right at the heart of it. Knowing that I was going to start my PGCE course was hard because there was an immense build up in my head. I was absolutely terrified. Just so completely and utterly terrified.

Sitting here, a year later, I feel the same. Slightly different, but the same. If I am kind to myself, if I could find a way to be a cheerleader for myself, I would say that I a proud. I am almost at the end of my second placement. 25th May and I am done. I have my assignment but other than that my last lesson will be Wednesday P3. I cannot wait. 

I have managed to get through the year and even though I am still anxious and worried, I have come so far and I need to cheerlead for myself because no one else is going to do it for me. 

That's what sucks. I hate that I do myself the injustice of not telling anyone how I feel. I bottle it up and instead of releasing the hurt, I contain it until late at night when no one will be able to see or hear my stifled sobbing. It's pathetic really.

Note to self: if you had a bucket list the top of the list would read "find a best friend - someone who you can hug and cry to".

Note to self 2: this time last year you discovered your left for The West Wing. See, when things fall apart, sometimes there are crevices of joy.

Note to self 3: you won't see the year 10s again after 9:30 Wednesday morning. You can survive them.

Note to self 4: you are enough. Internalise this. You are enough. You will find what you are looking for. But I hope, more than that, you realise that you never actually needed it.

x

T

In the lonely hours.

(Are you real?)


Or
                            a
                                      figment
                                                       of
                                                                my
                                                                            imagination

Sometimes it fells like you are right here.

But most
           of
            the
                 time
                       you
                           are
                                 running
                                                             away
                                                                                away
                                                                                             away

Genes

Your father was abusive.
A violent drunk.

The four of you will often say:
"We're lucky really. We got out of that shithole"
or something along those lines.

"You're lucky really. You got out of that shit hole"

But the shit hole never left you.

It followed you the way chicken pox
attacks like wildfire
never to be satiated.
Always on to the next victim.

You got out of that "shit hole"
But you dumped us in with you
because the bullied always become bullies
and because when you left,
you took the abuse with you

It is a disease that clung.

The few times I have looked and spoken to him I
have felt sick
and uncomfortable,

He is a stranger.
The ill-gotten stories of
his grandchildren
are trump cards he plays
but i refuse to play the game.

He does not know me.

Yes, you got out of that "shit hole"
but the disease has mutated.

You probably don't think it's here anymore
but I can feel it
in the air

and it makes me sick
with anger.

Mum, you got out of that "shit hole"
but your father was never really gone
and even though I do not know the man that
other girls would call
(grandfather)

sometimes

I think I have met him through you.

Liminal spaces

There are moments when we are talking
when a bridge opens up between us

and I almost step onto it-

I can feel the firm concrete and the relief
but I always back away

the waters are too choppy and
deep.
I'd drown and I am not good at
the forward crawl.

I am back stroking
through cloudy water and
clinging oil.

The bridge offers emulsion

but

I always step back,.