My English Teacher Saved My Life

True story.

My English Teacher Saved My Life

 

The first time I met her, she was just a teacher, just another face, and I was in trouble. That was sixth grade, and I was only ten.

I saw her next, in seventh grade, when she came back from maternity leave and we finally got to get rid of the long term substitute we had christened Mulberry. That in itself made me like her a little bit. She was our English teacher, and I was only eleven.

Slowly I began discovering through the class that I now loved, that I wanted to write. I took the mindset that I was going to write no matter what, and my grade began rising, but I found this out only a few weeks too late.

Second quarter was a B.

Events began snowballing, and soon, I saw every assignment as a way to improve, and eventually, only the rare assignment was anything but a hundred. I loved that I loved both her as a teacher, and a person, and her class was my best. The winter that I turned twelve was the semester my grade, for once, rose above my two best friends grades. And I loved every minute of it.

For the next year, the three of us, our triangle of best friends, would lean on each other in most classes, and all of our grades came up due to our "conjoinment," as we liked to call it. We became inseparable, and she, along with everyone else, called us three "the Girls."

There was a period when most of our class, save the three of us, was doing pretty much nothing. She, along with two other teachers who were fed up with my class, came into our homeroom, and yelled at us. We were later told us that we weren’t included in the group they were yelling at. That was the first time I felt special.

 

At the end of the year we exchanged “see you next year’s” And I went home.

          For both of those last quarter’s my grade was an A, and she was still just a teacher

That was seventh grade.

That summer I was happy, my sister and brother were happy, and life was golden.

Eighth grade started, my brother was in sixth grade at my school with me now, and I began writing a story that still continues to this day and has over 60 pages.

The three of us started eating lunch in her room.

October and November and December came and passed. I applied to two magnet high schools; one was for writing and one was for law. We stayed for a bunch of after school events and helped whenever she needed us, and I kept on writing. We started a huge historical fiction unit, and I threw myself into my story.

I turned thirteen.

For both of those quarters I got near hundreds.

January - I took the entrance tests to the magnet schools, and we continued our habit of eating in her room, as well as the room of another teacher.

A huge mistake led to the three of us drinking alcohol in the lunch room. We were placed on long term suspension. Only two of us came back from suspension after a meeting with our school system's superintendent, the third was gone for a quarter. When we came back, everyone treated us differently. A guidance counselor noticed and asked us what was wrong, we said nothing. Later on, she pulled us aside and asked us what was really going on.

That was the first time I trusted her with my feelings.

 

February - my Dad moved back up to Baltimore from Ocean City. He lived 3 doors down from us.

March came; my friend was back for the Maryland Standard Assessments, and in an effort to give myself something to focus on besides the screaming at home, I decided I would make the principals list. I stressed myself, and slowly I began deteriorating inside. And no one noticed through the façade I painted myself with…except her.

Ultimately I missed the list by two grades, both high B's.

English remained an A.

April and May - my best friend came back at the end of April, and my Internet was shut off, forcing me to go to my Dad's for anything I had to do online.

I was accepted to both schools I applied for, and on a whim I decided to go to the law school. I figured I could take Creative Writing at the law school, but I couldn't take law courses at the lit school. My teacher was not too happy that I didn't go to the lit school.

My friend started having problems in her own home life, and the only way I could talk to her was online. Soon, I was over my dad’s until 6PM or later every day, which led to many blowouts between my parents over issues that rotated around me, and many times when I was home, my mother would vent about my father and vice versa.

Then we started a project in Windows MovieMaker that we only had a week to complete. The ancient computers in the school went too slow for me to work and not go crazy, so I was at my dad's until 10 or 11PM for days at a time, trying to make the project perfect.

In some ways, the unsettlement at home made me a perfectionist in some aspects of school, and English happened to be one of them. Then again, in someways I already was a perfectionist in her class. It didn't help that my friend and I were betting on whose project got the higher grade. In the end she beat me by a fraction of a point.

Many arguments spawned out of me spending so much time at my father's. Names were called, and insults were hurled. One made me so upset that I did the one thing I had promised myself I would never do. I was crying, hyperventilating, shaking, and I felt ready to kill someone.

I went into my closet, took a pair of scissors, and drew a line across the upper part of my wrist, where I knew there was little chance of me being seriously hurt. I still remembered the little rhyme one of my friends had once told me. "Side to side, no suicide; up and down, ambulance ride to town."

         It stung, but for a moment all I felt was that physical pain, and my emotional pain was gone. I made seven cuts each about an inch apart across the inside of my right arm. I wrapped my arm in an old black shirt, plugged my iPod into my ears, and cried myself to sleep.

        When I woke up, I felt a sharp stinging as I pulled the shirt away. I got dressed, making sure to wear a long-sleeved shirt. I started to cry when I realized how upset one of my best friends, who had cut for over a year, would be. I skipped breakfast and walked in the rain to school. I got there with my vision bleary and my eyes red, and I realized it was going to be a long day.

Since I had cut my right arm, and I am right handed, every word I wrote made me want to scream. But I had control--too good control, and I acted like nothing happened. But I never was never that much of a masochist, and after a while I was miserable. No one noticed anything. That is, except her.

 

11:45AM, our 55 minute English class, finally came around, and we were watching the 1930's version of A Tale of Two Cities. I almost cried with relief when she said she was giving us another chance to finish the worksheet from the day before; I had already finished. I dropped my head on my hand, and spaced out the whole class, feeling only slightly guilty for not paying attention. I figured I knew the book well inside and out, and I had paid the movie all of my attention the day before. I could pass any test she gave us with flying colors.

That was the first time that I realized that her class was a 55 minute break from the chaos that surrounded me, and one of the few times I could relax and feel at home. At the end of the class, she said she wanted to talk to me. I faked a quick smile as the whole class looked at me, and I said okay. A few minutes later, the bells rang, and everyone left; I sent my friends off to lunch without me.

She asked me if I was okay, and she told me that I looked sad and didn't seem like the same me. I explained as best I could, again trusting her, but never told her about what I had done the night before. She sent me off to lunch, where I was thoroughly questioned about what she asked me. I think I told them I had asked to see my grade the day before and she was showing it to me.

There are times where I speculate that she had seen them, but other times I doubt it. Her desk was directly in front of mine, and it faced me, and if she'd have looked, she might have had a view through my shirt sleeve. There are still some times that I wish I had told her, because it almost felt like lying to disclude them, but I probably would have been sent to guidance anyway. And I couldn't afford a trip to Sheppard-Pratt.

          I think that was the end of April...

 

The first few weeks of May went, amazingly, without event, and my "lines," as I called them, lost the angry, red look, and faded to deep crimson scabs. During the third week of May, my Uncle died, and I went with my mom to the out of state funeral, even though it meant missing the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday out of that week.

After coming back that Saturday, my mom decided she wanted to move to my other Uncle's town in Illinois, to get away from it all. I refused to go after all of the testing I had done to get into Towson, and made up my mind to stay in Baltimore…even if it meant suffering through my dad and aunt.

The next week, my mom told my dad I had decided to stay with my Aunt, and they started fighting, and on that Friday, he pushed her through his glass screen door about the same time I was in her class. She went to the hospital, and I lived in my house alone with four cats for one entire week, from Friday evening to the next Saturday morning.

That same week we started working on practicing and performing pieces of Midsummer Night’s Dream in the auditorium, and on that Wednesday she pulled me aside again. I told her everything I knew, and she told me I was strong and I would figure a way through it, and no matter what she knew I wouldn't let myself down. Again I discluded something: I didn't tell her I had been living alone. I also couldn't take a trip to Social Services. We walked together up until the staircase, and then I went off to lunch, only to be thoroughly questioned. I used the same grade excuse again.

Sunday night: it was about 9PM, and I was working on something for Science on the computer. My dad came in and told me to get out - he was going to bed. I told him to wait for me to save my document to my USB and turn the computer off. He hit me hard on the back of the head, and my head fell forward and slammed into the computer desk.

 

I grabbed my bag, ripped my USB out of the port and flew past him out the backdoor, down the courtyard, and up the back steps into our kitchen. I went straight into my bedroom, slammed and locked my door, turned on my stereo to a wall shaking level, and curled up in the corner behind my bed and finally let out about a month's worth of built up tears.

I've always kept a knife under my bed, in case anyone breaks in. I pulled it out, and just held it against my right wrist, and felt a sharp relief as a shallow cut was made into the semi-tan skin. I remembered just then the saying she had wrote in my yearbook, that the pen is mightier than the sword, and I recognized that if I didn't put the blade down, I was going to seriously injure myself.

That was when she saved my life

It was early June of 2008.

I graduated eighth grade about two weeks later, and my 4th quarter as well as my final was an A.

          Two weeks after that, I packed up, and moved to Illinois with my mom. We didn't last long there, and I was back before August.

My mom decided she didn't want me, and I moved in with my dad because I had nowhere else to go. He became too much to deal with, and the neighbors regularly saw me sitting out front crying over the phone to my best friend. I never let him see me cry. I started school, and now I drive past the high school she transferred to every morning on my way to my high school.

I've seen her a few times when we drive by, I think.

 

 

I've since put the knife back in the kitchen, and opted instead for an aluminum softball bat. I can't lie and say that I haven't hurt myself since, because I have.

I'm currently marred with a few dozen not-fully-healed marks. But I've never cut as deep as I did that first time, and I haven't had a suicidal thought since. I cut to get rid of overwhelming emotions, not for attention or "because I like blood," like some other people I know.

It may not be right, but it’s how I survive. I have though, caught myself before hurting, and stopped and written something. Many of which are published here on WritersCafe.

She may not have been able to cure me of my home life, or "fix" whatever was "wrong" with me that caused me to hurt myself, but without her, I wouldn't be sitting here typing this today, because on the night of June 3rd, 2008, I would have killed myself.

I never got a chance to thank her because I never got up the courage to tell her most of this. I didn't want to see her disappointed in me. Now my story is public, and even though I never mentioned her name, if she sees this, she'll know. For those two years, though she might not have known it, she was like a second mother to me, and I couldn’t be more grateful to her for it.

 

That June she stopped being my teacher, and she became the person who saved my life.

That was eighth grade, and I will never, ever forget it.

 

 Mrs. S, I love you, and thanks for everything. <3

Reviews

[UncleFossil]

I have to give you a lot of credit for this one it's about the size of a creative nonfiction yarn that I wrote when I was 25 years old and still in circulation on the web. You should play with the formatting a bit to make this appear as it would in the pages of magazine. Single space the sentences and do the paragraph indent a little smaller with this, the story is good but has too much of a manuscript look.

[Laura]

Heartbreaking story. Your attention to detail made these scenes come to life, which, as an English teacher myself, is painful. It's so important to share this story. Thank you.

[Terra Hart]

It's good, but sad... although it does have a sort of happy ending which makes it better :)
-Terra

[Void Unspoken]

Very nice! I enjoyed it! kind of sad in parts but there's nothing wrong with that. of all people... I should understand that with all the stuff that I write. Great!!!!!

[RonnieBreight]

You gave me goosebumps! :)! Good job!

[Becca*Type2012]

Yes. That is exacatlly how it happened. I was in that triangle, and...you said golden. lol :P Amazing write Jenn. ilynlt

[Ama May Cooper]

This is great. a very inspirational piece,

[Elana Juli Royson]

wow. a great write but so sad. im sorry you had to go through this. its tough for any kid with parents who are abusive and non-supportive. im glad to hear that your life seems to have cooled down. Aside from some minor spelling and gramatical errors, this is a great write. Keep writing and never let life get you down.

[Aislinn Gryffin ((Ashes..]

I can totally relate. Although, I never had an English teacher like that.

[alyssa]

wow!! this is amazing!! teahers have such a big impact on us all!! your story is well written and it really won me over!! great job!! love it!!