No One Taught Me
Dealing with emotions wasn’t taught in school
I traced the dotted lines on the Xerox papers like everyone else. Up, down, over, around. I was taught to write letters.
Later I was taught how to match up certain letters to turn them into words. I was shown how to take those words and form sentences. Arranging sentences into cohesive paragraphs was a task practiced for years.
The way I saw it, the objective was to be understood. Reading was a way to understand, and writing was a way to be understood.
That’s why I started writing about my feelings and emotions.
When my teacher read those words she sent me to speak with the school counselor. The counselor eventually called my parents and they took me to a therapist. No one approved of the words I was writing. No one understood my emotions. It seemed no one wanted me to share them either. No one taught me what to do with them.
That’s how I learned that emotions belong on the inside. I believed in adults. I thought they had everything figured out and would tell me everything I needed to know. I trusted them.
