June 9, 2020

#writingstagram #diary
Today I have many thoughts, so I'll set a little of it down in writing.
I think the senior year of high school is a time to practice 'how to live on your own.' Because once you become a twenty-something, no one intervenes in 'my' life, and no one can give direct help. Because it's a time when you have to seek out everything yourself, and though you can occasionally receive help from those around you, the amount of that help is extremely limited, and you must get used to results that depend entirely on 'my own effort.' But I realized this only well past my twenties, and all I could think was: why couldn't I find people around me who told me these things?
So today I cast these words once more at the students in my charge. That I try to treat all of you here not as 'students' but as 'human beings,' and that I want to meet you in a horizontal relationship. That after you graduate you don't have to think of me as a teacher, but I'd like you to treat me as one 'person.' I said I want to respect each person's individual differences, that I try to respect them, and that while valuing the individual's choices, I'll help with what I can. Since everyone has the desire to be respected first, I said I'd consider that feeling and try to give to all of you more, 'me first.' Though it's not an easy thing, I hoped that if I open my heart this way, you would open yours too, and that it would be a year in which you practice living on your own.
Although I don't share a similar living or family environment with them, and in a way grew up in a very different environment, I keep telling myself that if my 'different heart,' my 'different room to breathe,' can make the seniors in my charge happy, that's enough. To the point that parents feel 'this year's homeroom teacher is a little different,' and the students all feel, even a little, that I am 'different' — I'm already a somewhat different person at school, but I spend my days hoping that, if it helps the students I meet, that's good.
The memories of the countless times I wasn't trusted as I grew up to senior year, the memories of conflicts with people, your past selves who were wounded and couldn't recover — I try to accept all of that as it is, and that's all the more why I said I want to give you, one last time, the boundless trust, warmth, and empathy that I can offer. I haven't felt their eyes shine this much in a while, but I should remember today those eyes that, for a moment, regarded me as a decent enough person. Even if later they see this writing I wrote today and ask what kind of writing it is, that's something for me to think about later. Today I was glad. The task left to me now is to sleep soon, go to school early tomorrow morning, and prepare my body and mind to listen to the stories in their hearts they couldn't finish telling......
It's past midnight. I should stop writing.